Finalist for a Mirror Award, and more (real) news to come

It’s really obnoxious when somebody slacks off with their blog, only to reappear with a post that’s about how they’re a finalist for an award.
Totally rude, totally annoying, totally what I’m doing right now.
But wait!
I have some big news that I’ll be sharing here later this week. News that’s only a little bit about me. It’s really about online news …

News organizations launch clubs, share content

It’s been a little more than two months since I joined PBS MediaShift as an associate editor, and that means I’ve produced two features for the site (in addition to my editing and site management duties). Below are excerpts from the articles. Enjoy.

Cats Sleeping with Dogs? Rival News Orgs Share Content, Revenues

by Craig Silverman, October 21, 2009

Next month, newspapers all …

New column for Columbia Journalism Review Daily

If Regret the Error doesn’t satisfy your interest in media errors and corrections, you should read my new weekly column for Columbia Journalism Review Daily. It’s called — surprise — Regret the Error and runs every Friday on CJR.org.
I’ve written eight columns so far, and you can read them all here. This column is a chance for me to connect …

UPDATED: A night at the Press Club, a grant from the Canada Council

I’m back from attending the National Press Club Awards Dinner in Washington on Monday. I spent the morning at the Newseum, and you can read my report about it here. I also had lunch with Slate’s Jack Shafer.
That evening, I attended the awards dinner and was lucky enough to meet two other winners in the press criticism category: David Folkenflik, …

Regret the Error wins press criticism award; work for ROB mag earns gold medal

Well, it’s been a rewarding few weeks for me. Allow me to take a moment and toot my own horn.
On June 6, I shared a gold medal at the Canadian National Magazine Awards for my work on the Corporate Survival Guide published in Report on Business magazine.The award is shared with Mark Schatzker, Sabitri Ghosh, and Lisa Fielding. Here’s the …

Snippity snap! CJR fires a dart at the Ottawa Citizen

I follow the Columbia Journalism Review’s online work via its RSS feed, and the publication rarely reports on happenings north of the U.S. border. Today, however, it posted some Canadian content from the magazine’s latest issue.
Unfortunately, one of our largest daily papers — and the big media company that owns it — comes off looking pretty backward. CJR haded out …

The CBC’s bad citizen contributor terms of use

In March I highlighted some of the problems with the terms & conditions for The Gazette’s new hyperlocal citizen journalism website. One of my biggest concerns was the section requiring people to waive their moral rights in order to contribute to the site. Simply put, it’s not a right that needs to be waived in order for The Gazette to …

On CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada tomorrow

I’m going to be on the CBC Radio program Sounds Like Canada tomorrow morning. The show airs at 10 a.m. local time across the country. (I don’t know the exact time my segment will air.) Orato editor Paul Sullivan and I joined host Stephen Quinn for a discussion about citizen journalism.
I was asked to go on the show because of …

Freelancing the future

I’ve been following Adrian Monck’s series (1,2,3) of blog posts about how “journalism is not to blame for the decline of newspapers.” The most recent one, which quotes from a post/speech by News-Record editor John Robinson, got me thinking about the changes we’re seeing in the world of media and publishing — and how these changes are impacting freelance writers.
The …

The Gazette’s new hyperlocal website and the importance of moral rights

Thanks to Roberto Rocha, I just learned that The Gazette will soon be launching a hyperlocal website for the West Island of Montreal. Steve Faguy also has a post up about it.
The site is in “late beta testing” and anyone can visit and sign-up. In general, I think this is a step in the right direction for the paper. The …