For the first time, the annual "Unity: Journalists of Color" conference is missing the National Association of Black Journalists, which withdrew from the event and its parent organization amid a disagreement over finances. A new group, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, is attending, bringing new faces to the conference and a new name: “Unity Journalists.”
A new study finds that Blackberry and iPhone users differ significantly from Android smartphone users, both demographically and in their use of mobile media for consuming news. "For news organizations, this suggests that iPhone and Blackberry owners are likely to be the most receptive audiences for their mobile products," Fidler writes.
M.L. (Mike) Elrick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and vice chair of the Guild unit at the Detroit Free Press, has announced he's leaving the newspaper to become an investigative reporter at the city's Fox affiliate. "This is a miserably difficult decision to make and I pray I made the right one," he told Crain's. "I have the best job in the city, and I am very sorry to leave the Free Press. I hope to come back some day. I think it's a great paper doing the lord's work."
In the never-ending case of Carbs v. Fat, it's the New York Times Gina Kolata v. the Times' Gary Taubes, whom CJR calls "one of the most interesting health writers in the country. He is an exhaustive researcher, an astute critic of experimental methodology, a historian of science and influential polemicist. But he can’t catch a break from Kolata. This is awkward, because they both write for the same paper."
The biggest surprise of the London Olympics? It’s not the lack of traffic problems. It’s not the empty seats… It’s the press room food. In six Olympics, this is the best press food I’ve ever had. In England. Over Italy, Australia, the U.S. and Canada.
An oldie but a goodie that Romenesko linked back to yesterday. Back in February, he started collecting "words journalists use that people never say." Loggerheads, risible, mercurial and simplier but rarely spoken words such as reeling, lauded, slated and mull made his initial list, and commenters have added a long list of others.
The Spokesman-Review in Spokane fought to protect the name of an anonymous commenter accused of defaming a Republican Party official. Now NPR reports that journalists are divided over whether newspapers should go to the mat for people who post anonymous comments online.
The LA Times and the San Diego Reader published stories online based on hoax news releases claiming to be from the office of Laura Duffy, U.S. attorney for Southern California. A group angry about Duffy targeting medical marijuana facilities says it sent the releases, which claimed Duffy is cracking down on local pharmacies.
The Washington Post has received a $500,000 Ford Foundation grant to fund four new newsroom positions and expand the paper’s government-accountability reporting. Romenesko has the memo.
A Los Angeles journalist who tweeted gripes about NBC's Olympic coverage and included a public email address for NBC's president has had his Twitter account suspended. Twitter claims Guy Adams posted a private email address and that doing so violated company policy.
