I used to get flashbacks every August. The aching sadness would start to swallow me on the anniversary of the Aug. 2, 1985 crash of Delta Airlines Flight 191 in Dallas, followed by another collective sob on the anniversary of the Aug. 16, 1987 crash of Phoenix-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in Detroit. As a…
I’ve never been afraid to go places few women have gone before, and to take names and kick butt. Thanks to my father, I learned to rebuild the engine in a 1964 Dodge Dart so I had a car to drive in 1974. (I named it Rocinante and aimed it at windmills.) I won’t reiterate…
Today is fair pay day. Here’s my part: I got into the journalism racket back in 1975, when the newbies were relegated to the manual typewriters and when it was considered too demeaning for a male reporter to be assigned to the “Womens” section of the newspaper. Although I’d completed one meager semester of journalism…
I was asked to be the wrap-up Rapporteur for the 10th International Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin last week. The conference had the Twitter hashtag #isoj, and, partly because it is Webcast live, people were watching and Twittering about it in real time on at least four continents. (Here…
I always thought it was odd to hear flat out declarations that there can be no life on other planets in the absence of water. How egocentric! So you’re saying that life can only exist if it’s precisely like us? Really? That’s the feeling I’m getting right now in the woe-is-us, hand-wringing sob-fest about whether…
I’m shocked (shocked, I tell ya!) at the high percentage of prudes and fraidy cat nannies in the Nevada press corps. It’s Nevada, for crying out loud, home to Reno, divorce capitol of the world in the north, Vegas Sin City in the south, and legal brothels in between. It’s a place where even the…
So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. –Molly Ivins I am one lucky journo. So many times in the past 30 years I paused, looked up to the heavens, and thanked the stars that someone was actually paying me…
I come from the “follow-the-money” school of journalism, so I’ve written about more than my share of billions over the years. But Alan Mutter took my breath away with his post cataloging the staggering volume of dollars that have fled newspaper help wanted, or so-called “recruitment” ads. Newspapers have lost more than half of their…
The students and I talked current events today in my Web Publishing and Design class, and the chit chat wasn’t about the Super Bowl or Super Duper Tuesday. It was about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo and what that could mean for all of us. One among them knew that Google’s CEO reportedly called Yahoo’s CEO…
Some followup notes from my delightful conversation this morning on KNPR’s State of Nevada, with host Dave Berns and his panel of so-called “witty academics.” (The audio with David Damore, Ken Fernandez and me from University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Eric Herzik of University of Nevada, Reno, is here.) During the show, I mentioned…