William M. Hartnett

Nothing much, really. I finished up some data entry this morning and had shrimp fried rice for lunch. Also, more than two out of four people in my newsroom are getting bought out or fired by the end of the summer. So, that’s fun. No getting around this fact: It’s going to be pretty hard [...]

Via the Associated Press Managing Editors by way of my own managing editor, the Iowa Newspaper Association is organizing assistance for newspaper employees affected by that state’s recent tornadoes and floods. Mash your mouse right here to see how you can help out a colleague. They’d do it for you. As Steve Buttry, editor of [...]

Following up on Charles Apple’s list of newspaper job openings (link via Danny Sanchez), here are a few at the Houston Chronicle. The following message from Chornicle recruiter Diane Cowen comes courtesy of Chronicle reporter Terri Langford on NICAR-L:
Newspaper layoff and buyout stories continue to trickle out, but we at the Houston Chronicle are still [...]

Not to make too much of The Wall Street Journal story calling The Washington Post’s LoudounExtra a “flop,” — the recent mini-backlash against Curleyism that no doubt prompted the story is in many ways more interesting than the story itself, after all — but it does provide a convenient excuse for me to ramble on [...]

Just getting this on the record: I still personally hate anyone who has ever used a “Call it a/the case of …” lede (including, unless I’m very much mistaken, myself many years ago in a weak and foolish moment). Also, “person of interest” is a stupidly meaningless and especially annoying example of cop talk that [...]

The question of whether even journalists still read ink-on-paper newspapers, as posed by Robert Niles last week, was interestingly timed, given a conversation I recently had with my brother.
Both he and my sister-in-law were, until three or four years ago, daily newspaper reporters in a top-50 market. They’re in their early 30s, and between them [...]

Mike Pride’s essay in the current issue of CJR, which one apparently can’t get online, is an excellent read. After nearly 30 years as the Concord Monitor’s editor, Pride spent his final year before retirement as a reporter. Or, as he puts it, “my job became to provide content.” If only every editor would do [...]

Friend, former colleague and beard-owner Will Sullivan reminded me of a point I meant to touch on in my big honkin’ Backyard Post introductory post. In adding that post to his world-famous Journerdism jambalaya links, Will, who was involved in the project before decamping to the STL, noted that Backyard Post is an example of [...]

I’m going to mention the word once, then not only will you never hear or see me use it again, I might actually go so far as to punch squarely in the neck anyone who insists on using the word in relation to the product I’m about to announce: Hyperlocal.
There, I said it. An utterly [...]

Granted, the difficulty I have finding street addresses of newspaper buildings while working on Paper View Monday updates doesn’t exactly top the list of life’s great injustices. It is, however, incredibly annoying in a low-grade way that, like so many things I complain about in this space, is almost certainly unique to me. Nearly every [...]