Category Archives: Miscellany

It’s coming...

By Michael Becker | Published: February 23, 2010
We’re now tar­get­ing the 3.0 release for early May via wordpress.org God help us. WordPress 3.0 is almost here, and the new menu sys­tem looks sweet. Cross-posted from my Posterous site at Becker’s Online Journal
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Reflections of a Newsosaur: Maybe others should copy early LAT deadlines

By Michael Becker | Published: February 22, 2010
As rev­o­lu­tion­ary as fore­thought might be in some news­rooms, the smart front pages pro­duced at the LAT since the tighter dead­lines were imple­mented sug­gest that early closes could lead to more of the deep, inter­pre­tive cov­er­age that news­pa­pers are uniquely equipped to deliver. By play­ing to print’s sin­gu­lar capa­bil­ity to illu­mi­nate com­plex and sub­tle sub­jects, [...]
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To Catch A Plagiarist

By Michael Becker | Published: February 20, 2010
Journalists often talk and write about how bad it is, which makes me won­der why we find it accept­able to do almost noth­ing to pre­vent it? The gen­eral atti­tude towards pla­gia­rism check­ing seems to be, “Let’s save our money and let read­ers and other peo­ple catch the culprits.” via cjr.org This comes from Craig Silverman [...]
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School Sued For Spying On Students With Laptop Cameras Says It Was A Security Feature, Turns It Off

By Michael Becker | Published: February 19, 2010
The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania was recently sued after allegedly spy­ing on a stu­dent using a school-owned lap­top via the laptop’s built-in Web cam. In this note to par­ents, sent Thursday night, which we obtained, the school says it was a secu­rity fea­ture, and that it was only used “for the nar­row pur­pose of [...]
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Atlanta Progressive News fires reporter for trying to be objective

By Michael Becker | Published: February 16, 2010
At a very fun­da­men­tal, core level, Springston did not share our vision for a news pub­li­ca­tion with a pro­gres­sive per­spec­tive. He held on to the notion that there was an objec­tive real­ity that could be reported objec­tively, despite the fact that that was not our edi­to­r­ial pol­icy at Atlanta Progressive News. It just wasn’t the [...]
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