William M. Hartnett

To be sure, I’m driven to insane, irrational rage every time I see the words “to be sure” in a newspaper story. I have no explanation, it just pisses me off. Never mind the question of whether anyone, anywhere actually speaks like this. The answer to that question is, obviously, no. But does anyone, anywhere [...]

What is it with me and overpriced products with key components made of cheap, brittle plastic? First there was the glove compartment handle in my Volkswagen, which I’m clearly having trouble getting over. Now, a similarly cheap but important plastic bit has fatally wounded my beloved Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones. Without these headphones to cancel [...]

>Newspaper ‘Cold War’ Ends in Carolina After McClatchy Deal (E&P) Just an interesting story about integrating The Charlotte Observer and Raleigh’s The News & Observer under the McClatchy corporate banner. I think I spotted the word “synergy” in there. What is this, 1999? Check out the story if you have time in your schedule for [...]

>Update to Zillow v. Arizona (James Fee) For the real estate-obsessed among you. This Arizona flap doesn’t really have a specific link to the world of newspapers and journalism, on which I try with varying degrees of interest to keep the blog at least semi-focused. As I said before, however, Zillow and services like it [...]

>Philadelphia Journalism’s New Order (NYT) The NYT’s story about The Philadelphia Inquirer just seems out of tune to me. Like the statement that The Inquirer “… is being watched by journalists to see whether a once-great newspaper with scaled-back ambitions can still fly.” Did awards and foreign bureaus really make all those “once-great” newspapers truly [...]

As featured at Stuff On My Cat. Twice.

The neighborhood of the week real estate feature is about RiverWalk in West Palm Beach. DOWNLOAD THE PRINT SECTION Print pages in PDF: Right-click and save-as to download (14.9 MB, 16 pages)

OMGWTFBBQ, what an awesome Interweb find. How I got there: Mike Stucka three weeks ago posted to NICAR-L a link to Flash Earth, a very cool “experimental application that uses satellite and aerial imagery from from online mapping websites.” Followed link from Flash Earth to the site of its creator, Paul Neave, “serial Flash fettler [...]

Reading Lucas Grindley’s rundown of first-quarter earnings reports from a few major media companies, I wondered whether the revolutionary changes to newspapers’ business model are being truly reflected in the newsroom. I’m not talking about layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. I mean in philosophies, policies, priorities and goals. I know everyone’s newsroom is evolving, at [...]