Arthur S. Brisbane, the public editor of The New York Times, turned his attention this week to the newsroom’s use of Twitter. He quoted from an e-mail interview with me, which I am posting in full here, with a few tweaks and links.
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Posts Tagged ‘NYT’
‘What Is This Thing Called the Web?’
January 22, 2011
Fifteen years ago today, on Jan. 22, 1996, The New York Times — which already had a news service behind a paywall on AOL — started its free Web site, jolting newspaper publishers and editors across the land to follow suit. A happy birthday tweet prompted me to go on a memory-jogging journey with the Wayback Machine looking for another newspaper site born that month. Back then, I was working for The York Daily Record in southcentral Pennsylvania. The existential headline on this blog post is from an article I wrote for that paper in December 1995, part of a five-day series explaining the Internet. (I had been a computer dabbler since I was a teenager.)
The article is reprinted below, with permission (My favorite line: “Some people believe the Web or some future souped-up version of it will transform society. Others think the accent in ‘hypertext’ should be on ‘hype.’”) The series was later archived on the paper’s rudimentary Web site (logo at above left), a precursor to the now-thriving YDR.com. That site was pushed into the world a bit early, thanks to some bad weather.
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Coffee, Hot and Cold
June 12, 2010
Inside Third Rail Coffee at 240 Sullivan St. in Greenwich Village.
This is a quickie coffee post, dashed off while watching the U.S.-England World Cup match and discussing the propriety of promiscuously using “tweet” in news articles.
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In the Blend at Birch Coffee
June 5, 2010
It was painful to pass so close to Stumptown at the Ace Hotel without stopping, but I was glad I did, finding myself off the lobby of another boutique hotel, the Gershwin, in a different temple to caffeine — Birch Coffee. I had been wanting to visit after noticing it on The Times’s list of the best of the new coffee cafes. It was love at first visit.
The decor gave me a warm feeling right away. True, you’re not going to find a half-dozen varieties of obscure single origin coffees from as many countries, as you would a couple of blocks away, but there are chairs and stools, something Stumptown eschews. And food. And wine. And beer. And a lending library upstairs.
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First Week With the Apple iPad
April 11, 2010Updated April 21, 2010.
The world probably doesn’t really need another iPad review, does it?
There’s a glut out of them out there.
And I’m not a tech reviewer. I’m a gadget nut, so feel free to discount my enthusiasm by the appropriate percentage. After all, I did pre-order this thing sight unseen so it could be delivered on Day One.
So this post will be impressionistic, just some notes on my first week with the device.
First: It’s fast. Snappy. It makes the iPhone and the iPod Touch seem slow. It makes a Macbook seem slow.
Second: The battery life is amazing. You don’t even think about the battery. I plug it it in every night, and have used it heavily many days. It has never dropped below 50 percent.
Remarkable for an Apple product: It doesn’t get hot — unlike my Macbook Air, or my iPhone, which can get uncomfortable to the touch and sluggish with heavy use. I have often thought that Steve Jobs was trying to brand me with his products. No more.
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First Minutes With the Apple iPad
April 3, 2010
It’s still syncing.
While I prepare myself for the inevitable post-purchase depression and “why can’t I do that, Mr. Jobs” revelations, here are some unboxing pictures and a video from my Posterous page.
At some point I’ll list the pros and cons. But I’m done with the posting and tweeting today. I doubt there’s much new that I could say about it.
Technology isn’t my beat, so I’ll leave the iPad news and reviews to my colleagues at Bits. (Here’s an earlier post about how I made the purchase decision.)
For me, the iPad is first and foremost a book and media reader. Read the rest of this entry »
A Grumpy Brazilian in an Aeropress
March 26, 2010
I don’t remember how I first came across the Aeropress, but as soon as I saw it, I wanted it. I had been looking for a way to make coffee — espresso in particular — in my office without creating a lot of mess. For the past few weeks, I have discovered that something like this is possible. No longer am I the slave to the stale, vaguely machine-flavored Illy served upstairs in the cafeteria or the over-roasted swill found in the Starbucks shops of Midtown Manhattan.
Using air pressure, the press extracts delicious “espresso” (not really) from two scoops of finely ground coffee. Top it off with hot water, and you have an Americano. So far I’ve had the best results with the Kenyan Gatomboya from Stumptown and the Novo Decaf Espresso carried by Cafe Grumpy. I heat the water to 175 degrees Farenheit using this Breville electric kettle, served up in these supposedly unbreakable glass mugs.
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A Guide to Good New York Coffee
March 12, 2010Here’s a great New York Times article last week by Oliver Strand about the growth of the culinary coffee scene in New York City.
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Considering the iPad as a Kindle Replacement
February 1, 2010
You’ve seen the new toy. You’ve seen the experts debate: Will the Apple iPad “save” newspapers, journalism, book publishing? Will it kill the Amazon Kindle? Is this the death of the laptop, and the PC as we know it? Has Apple just signaled the death of the ultraportable MacBook Air? Will it replace smartphones like the iPhone or Nexus One? Has Apple just pwned another media marketplace — sorry Amazon, Google, Microsoft? Goodbye, netbooks? Farewell, computers?
Blah, blah, blah. Nobody knows the future, so such pronouncements are justifiably viewed as so much hype.
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An Opinion About Blue Batak
September 28, 2009
It is a little known fact that coffee improves your objectivity as a journalist. O.K., I’m kidding.
I don’t believe in “objectivity” and usually avoid the word. It sounds like an impossible God-like standard. Most people who use that term are setting up a straw man. I prefer terms like balance, neutrality, fairness. And conventional newspaper journalism can certainly reach conclusions, so long as they are supported by evidence, and qualified.
This just happens to be a topic on my mind and in my Twitter stream. The fairness/objectivity debate is in the air.
I work for a news organization that promises fairness and ethics. Like Buddhist enlightenment and perfection in general, they may not be attainable. The value to the reader comes from aiming for the worthy goal, without fear or favor, bias or prejudice. Even the best newspapers print corrections every day, but they still set accuracy as the standard. We don’t give up because perfect accuracy is unattainable.
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