Russ Choma's blog

A multimedia project from the AmericanObserved blog examining our hits and our misses.

As the semester winds down and we turn out our final issues, our beloved professor sets the tone.
 
David Johnson, hard at work... hard at work?
 

After the barn-burner of a post I just made, how about something lighter. Like how our work compares to everyone else's.

For devoted readers of the AmericanObserved blog, you'll know I've long had a chip on my shoulder about the placement of the Observer on the AU SOC's Web site. Well, the school has a new Web site, and so does the SOC. The content isn't dramtically different, although it looks a littl more modern.

We've got podcasts, video and live-blogging, but we here at the Observer are about to miss the next boat -

My goal with this blog was to talk about the Observer, not my personal pet peeves or uninformed opinions about journalism, but I'm going to venture into Twitter territory today.
 
I'm generally fairly skeptical of its application as a news tool - great for (self-)promoting, and okay for news-gathering. My blog-mate Anna will heartily disagree. Probably via a tweet.
 

I was lucky enough to be assigned Jim Brady as my alumni mentor. He's one of the SOC's most accomplished alums - until very recently, the executive editor of Washington Post Newsweek Interactive. In fact, it was the day after I was notified he'd be my mentor that he announced he was leaving the Post.
 

We've been talking about one-source stories a lot over the past several days - on the blog and among ourselves on the Observer staff - but it's nice to have an expert chime in.
 

With all that said... it's not impossible to have a one-source item.
 

Anna brought up the issue of one-source stories and she's right: things would've been a lot easier if we had laid things out before hand. We should've been more alert about the source issue.