journalism

 Aside from blogging regularly for the Observer, I am also a staff writer for the site. Last night was perhaps one of my most challenging stories on which to report. Well, make that my writing partner, Matt Stevens and I. 

In keeping with trying to highlight forgotten or undercovered stories, I recently read a story about the increasingly rapid disintegration of the national PTA, the organization formed to get involved in schools. In a Washington Post focus on schools, Michael Chandler digs into the causes of this groups decline, and the future of advocacy.
 

Flip Mino: An easy-to-use portable digital video camera that could be going wireless after being acquired by Cisco Systems.Cisco recently announced they want to buy out Pure Digital, the maker of the Flip line of portable digital video cameras, for $590 million of stock .

As others have noted, now is a bad time to be working for a newspaper.  Advertising is drying up, papers are going bankrupt, reporters are being furloughed, bought out, or let go in droves, and some papers are even closing entirely. 

There has been much talk recently about how to save newspapers, and I came across a possible solution that makes a whole lot of sense.

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, spoke to our Writing for Converged Media class yesterday about his job covering the intersection of technology and politics for the Washington Post, and how technology is changing the face of politics and journalism today.