Best products from r/Journalism

We found 36 comments on r/Journalism discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 79 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

Top comments mentioning products on r/Journalism:

u/UnoriginalUsername8 · 3 pointsr/Journalism

Not Australian, so i can't help you with the Australian issues, but I can help out with the first part.

Your statement "the way I wrote it is less journalistic and more telling a story, most of it reads like a novel, it's probably not very professional." I am a staff writer at a magazine where I write long pieces, so here are some thoughts on that:

The "professionalism" or journalistic nature of your piece has nothing to do with the structure, but its intent; just because it's not a hard news piece with an inverted pyramid structure, does not automatically disqualify it as professional or journalistic

For example, this random Washington Post story on a new budget proposal has all the elements of a "professional" news story immediately recognizable: a broad lead that lets readers know exactly what the story will be, followed by specifics, data, info, context, etc. Here's its lead:

President Obama’s new budget proposal calls for ten of billions in new spending and several revisions to the nation’s tax code, all of which could have a sizable impact on new and small businesses.

But then check out this piece: Frank Sinatra Has a Cold by Gay Talese for Esquire in 1966. It's widely known as one of the best pieces of American magazine writing by one of the best writers of the generation. This is journalism, too. It sets scenes, and uses detail you're just not going to find in a newspaper piece, and it reads significantly more like a novel. Here's its lead:

FRANK SINATRA, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.

There's a significant value for people who can tell stories beyond the inverted pyramid structure, and I particularly appreciate people who can write non-fiction stories with with such vivid detail and unique writing style.

If you're more passionate about the storytelling aspect of non-fiction stories, instead of hard news, I'd recommend perusing the longform.org site for links to present-day stories that do it well. I'd also recommend these books for some inspiration and for intro into authors you may dig:

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight by Marc Weingarten

The New New Journalism by Robert Boynton.

Feel free to send me a PM.


u/pierreberton · 2 pointsr/Journalism

Since you said French or English and you've posted about Montreal, I'm assuming you're Canadian. In that case, I'd recommend Behind the Headlines: A History of Investigative Journalism in Canada. Dry, but will give you some great background into those that have come before you.

For more historical stuff, check out some anthologies of work by folks like Peter Gzowski or Pierre Berton.

Something else I'd recommend (not a book but still awesome) is the CBC's six-part series Spin Cycles about public relations. Incredibly in-depth, has a strong Canadian angle and demonstrates how closely linked the worlds of PR and journalism truly are.

If you're looking for great long-form writing, I enjoy the New Yorkers anthologies in topics like sports writing or profiles. If you're into music writing, a general best of music writing anthology is put out every year that includes work for a variety of publications.

And if you want some of the dark-side of Canadian journalism, you can check out Jan Wong's memoir Out of the Blue which documents her depression and how the Globe and Mail pretty much threw her out on the curb.

u/brofession · 11 pointsr/Journalism

The Columbia Guide to Writing About Business is a solid intro to business ideas and coverage, if a bit dated. The Bloomberg style guide has a ton of information on what to look at specifically on certain financial beats. It references its own terminal a lot in looking up data, but most of that can be found searching yourself. Marketplace's daily radio show is very US-centric, but it does a good job of explaining complex global topics at a layman's perspective.

And some advice from me: I studied political science in school hoping to cover statehouses and campaigns and got thrown onto the business beat by coincidence. Always remember governments can make a big difference in how businesses operate because they set policy and they're often massive consumers themselves. And always remember that no one person or entity acts independently in an economy. Everything from financial reports to board changes to politics and weather events in one part of the world can have big ramifications from what happens to a business on the other side of the planet.

Good luck! PM me if you have more questions and I'll try to answer best I can.

EDIT: Forgot about the Reynolds Guide to Business Journalism. It's free but a lot of the beats are focused on a western audience. You might find the economics and the energy chapters particularly useful.

u/RhinestoneTaco · 2 pointsr/Journalism

>did some research

If you have data on the economic and circulation-numbers state of community weekly newspapers in the U.S., please let me know. I'd love to read it.

I can only base my viewpoints on Pew's State of the News Media analysis on print news circulation, as well as generalized surveys and studies.

I have no doubt that print weeklies will survive for a while longer -- especially in some markets, like the rural midwest and in areas with a much older-than-average population base. But it's not an economically viable medium for transmitting news in the long term.

A book you should check out, when you get the chance, is David Mindich's Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News

>People still know they have to pay for my newspaper.

I'm sure that business model will last you well into the future.

>And web advertisement is worthless.

Yet somehow start-up online news sites and popular blogs have managed to make it work by developing new ways to metric ads, reach audiences for increased presence, and other ways of innovation. Interesting.

> get so tired of academics and people looking at the industry from on high saying print is dying.

Because by every available metric, print is dying. Please note here that "Print" means simply the publication of news using ink and paper. I am well aware that newspaper organizations do most of the original news production and reporting in the country. Which is why I highly support their turn to better online presences -- so they can reach the audience they want to reach, and we can all benefit from a properly informed society.

>Based on the big, national dailies you're trending an industry that includes weeklies, magazines, free papers on and on.

All of which are faltering, economicly, on the national scale.

I have nothing against your standpoint that community weeklies are important. They are where I got my start in journalism, where I did almost all of my professional work in journalism.

My problem comes at your dismissive approach toward blogging, self-reporting and entrepreneurial journalism. They are the nature of the modern market. They are how people get clips now, how people prove themselves, and how people cover a community and give voices to people in an era of failed print platforms.

It's a silly -- and frankly incorrect -- opinion to have toward the facts of a changing news audience and a changing news structure.

I'm lucky I'm the one teaching the journalists of the future.

u/coldstar · 3 pointsr/Journalism

Professional science journalist here. Stories primarily come from scientific journals (the big ones such as Science, Nature, PNAS, PLOS ONE, etc, and smaller niche journals). We read through the listings for the journals each week and pick out any that look worth covering. Many journals, especially the big-name ones, put out embargoed journal highlights and press releases before publication. For instance Science puts out its upcoming scientific issue Sunday night with a Thursday embargo. For the smaller journals that don't do embargoes, we typically will just keep an eye on the journals web listing of accepted articles. All articles these days indicate a "corresponding author" with an email address. I never really have issue getting my emails returned, but then again I work for a well-known glossy magazine.

Besides journal articles, there are press releases from institutions, universities and research groups. Some of these are public releases while others are embargoed. By far the biggest repository of these releases is EurekAlert.org, which is produced by AAAS (the makers of Science). While a lot of press releases are publicly available on the site, you will need to be a credentialed and registered member of the media to peruse the embargoed content.

We also will head out to scientific conferences. Depending on where you live there's likely to be a few conferences near you throughout the year. Some conferences, such as the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting, take place in the same place while others, such as the Society for Neuroscience's meeting, move around a lot. For press these events are free and we'll typically spend a few days reporting news stories, chatting with scientists for feature ideas, looking at posters and not getting enough sleep. Scientists often say the conferences are exhausting, but we do everything they do and then have to write about it at night.

There are a few other ways to get stories, such as from social media stalking, FOIA requests, government meetings, making contacts within the field, and looking at faculty webpages.

For anyone else considering entering science writing as a profession, I highly recommend choosing a science-focused graduate program instead of a more general J-school track. Good schools include UCSC (arguably the best), MIT, NYU and BU. For /u/foundanamethatworks I recommend A Field Guide for Science Writers as a good starter book. You can get a used copy for around $12 off Amazon.

Let me know a bit more about your situation and I can probably recommend some good resources. Also feel free to PM me in the future if you need any advice!

u/cowperthwaite · 12 pointsr/Journalism
  1. You've chosen a terrible case if you're having this hard of a time, already, getting the documents.

  2. Until you're experienced, I would NEVER suggest choosing a federal case. The FBI rarely, if ever, talks, let alone to someone they don't know.

    A halfway decent book on the topic is How to Write and Sell True Crime by Gary Provost. I don't agree with everything he writes, but it's going to take you through the basic first steps you need to. It's also going to go through picking a case, which I think is really important in this instance.

    Link: https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Sell-True-Crime-ebook/dp/B00FGFYFV4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1504826601&sr=8-2&keywords=true+crime+how+to

    So, I'm going to start with some basics, which have already been mentioned by the other posters.

  3. You need to get the case documents. (police)
  4. You need to get the court documents. (courts)
  5. You need to see if it's feasible to get the transcripts from the trial. (courts)

    So, here's the thing. The FBI is covered by FOIA and most, but not all, states have much better laws than FOIA that allow you to get these kinds of things easier and cheaper. This is why fed cases are so much harder, usually, than state cases.

    Record laws vary from state to state. Colorado has big exemptions for police records, as an example. Others don't.

    Those records will give you leads on who to contact.

    But the bigger issue is, maybe you should choose an easier case. Maybe you should find some easy, long-hanging fruit, so to speak, first.

    As others have said, this is likely best approached 2-3 years after sentencing.

    Maybe if you give us some specifics, we can point you in a better direction, or help with specific questions.

    But I'm going to double down on: you should find a different case.
u/AntaresBounder · 2 pointsr/Journalism

Additional resources and suggestions to think about:

  1. Talk to one of your English teachers about starting a journalism club. Even an English teacher not trained at all in the “rules” of journalistic writing can help you improve your writing. Also it world give your writing focus, an audience, and a place to warehouse it(as an online publication is easiest and cheapest). Also figuring out how to start a school newspaper is great training for understanding how news is made.
  2. Check out some online resources like these open courses: MOOCs from Michigan State University, Ohio State University, The University of Texas at Austin or News University from Poynter, lots of free educational resources here.
  3. Read a book (or 40). I’m an English teacher, but when I took over the journalism program at my school I read as many books on journalism that I could find. If your library doesn’t have much, ask them about inter-library loan. You can borrow books from other libraries and get them sent to your library. If you can, get your hands on a copy of the AP Stylebook. Even an older(an cheaper) version would get you the basics of the primary journalistic style in the US. A copy of Katina Paron’s A NewsHound's Guide to Student Journalism is a more student-friendly and less technical introduction tithe basics of news gathering. Highly recommended!
  4. Read the news. Local, regional, national. Find really good sources to emulate. No paper is perfect, but learn from their shortcomings. Read widely. See how multiple organizations cover the same event. Count the number of sources(both quoted and anonymous).
  5. Learn the elements of newsworthiness (list ) inside and out. Work on developing you nose for news. What is useful, interesting and necessary for your readers to know?
u/Philabrow · 5 pointsr/Journalism

Your best bet to cover your own arse from any defamation is to actually read the law on libel/defamation.

This is the most common legal problem you will face with publishing interviews, but is unlikely to be a problem with what you are doing unless they say something particularly bad or you make them out to be a douchebag. It's a complicated law and I really recommend you look it up and seriously read into it if you are going to be publishing a lot of interviews.

I'd recommend you record the interviews, as well as ask them to state the spelling of their name into the microphone when you start so A) you get the spelling of their name correct and B) when you listen back it's clear which recording it is.

If you happen to know teeline or any kind of legitimate shorthand then it is important you date and sign the notepad at the front, as well as date the top of pages at the beginning of each interview.

It's important for your quotes that you have fully identified the person being quoted too, so don't start with "Stuart said". It needs to be formatted as something like "Stuart Freebridge, Head of Transportantion at Lincoln County Council said:" This only needs to be done the first time they are quoted, afterwards you can shorten it to Mr Freebridge etc.

I am by no means a qualified journalist! I have done some work experience but nothing paid and I'm only a second year journalism student. The law is extremely important and I really recommend you get something like McNae's.

That book is a handy reference and it is vital you read some of it if you are going to be publishing a fair few interviews on a variety of subjects.

A lengthy post, so sorry about that and I hope this helps! If you want any interview tips I have some I give out to the freshers when they work on my publication, but this post is long enough!

TL;DR : LEARN THE LAW ON DEFAMATION AND LIBEL.

u/j_allosaurus · 2 pointsr/Journalism

Is there a specific region you have in mind? Do you feel you have a good grasp of that region's history, politics, culture, traditions, language? You seem to be basing it all on the danger, when reporting from war-torn regions is about telling difficult stories. Why is it so important for western reporters to go to Syria, Afghanistan, etc and write stories for an American audience? Not for the danger alone, certainly.

This is an excellent memoir from an Arab-European journalist, now a national security reporter for the Washington Post, who has been reporting on Islamic extremism since she was a college student. Worth reading.

If you have a region in mind: learn the language. Immerse yourself in the history. Spend some time there before offering yourself as a reporter. When you pitch outlets: what can you offer an audience in your reporting that another reporter can't? What insights, context, story ideas can you offer? Why should an outlet agree to publish your work instead of another reporter's work?

I definitely would echo that learning how to report is going to be your first step. It sounds like you are drawn to on-the-ground reporting instead of being at a desk or making calls or sitting at a City Hall meeting. You don't need to go to a war zone to do that! There are almost certainly under-covered communities in your backyard that many journalists won't or don't visit as often as they should because it's uncomfortable, or because it takes more work to build those source relationships than in city hall. Hang out at the courthouse for a few days--not for big name trials, but for arraignments and bail hearings and eviction hearings--and your journalism senses will almost certainly start to go off.

Just remember, though--it's okay to be drawn to certain aspects of the work, but be ethical to your sources and ethical to your audience.

u/vianetzy · 4 pointsr/Journalism

I use this.
I plug it into my recorder, stick the earbud in my ear and it does a perfect job. The audio of both ends sounds great. I was really pleased when I first used it. Still am. It's hands-free and a great investment.

u/JaymeKay · 11 pointsr/Journalism

There are several annual collections published as books. One of my favorites is the Best American series

u/timworden · 1 pointr/Journalism

Some good resources are the Associated Press Stylebook, the Elements of Style, and The Elements of Journalism. The Elements of Journalism gives some good tips for journalists like objectivity and truth. Good luck in your studies.

u/kevinmlerner · 1 pointr/Journalism

Two of my perennial favorites, which I'll add to some of the terrific suggestions below:

  • 'The Elements of Journalism' by Kovach and Rosenstiel. Great grounding in the essential principles of the practice. There's also a decade-old online supplement.

  • 'The Influencing Machine,' a graphic non-novel by Brooke Gladstone, offering an easy-to-read overview of a lot of thinking about journalism and media, including a discussion of journalism's real biases.

    But besides those, much of the writing, especially on technology, gets old very quickly, so as other people have pointed out, books aren't always your best route. Get yourself into the social media conversation about journalism, where you'll find people like @romenesko and @jayrosen_nyu and many many other astute and intelligent commentators taking on the issues that are going to shape your career. But those two books are a solid foundation of the ideas underlying journalism.
u/jleach16 · 1 pointr/Journalism

Read as much music journalism as you can. Read it in NYT, the LAT, Guardian, WaPo, the Tribune, watch it on ABC, CBS, wherever. Figure out who you like. Read biographies and memoirs and history of music books. Then, write. Write a review of an album. You don't even have to publish it. Just try to write something kind of like your favorite music writers. Find your voice.

And also read about journalism in general. Read some books on newswriting. This is my go-to advice for all aspiring writers.

James Kershner's Elements of News Writing is a great practical guide that touches on basic practices and gives advice on how to write a variety of pieces, which you'll no doubt find useful.

Also, pick up a style guide and stick to it. AP style is pretty much the industry standard. You can get an older version that is much cheaper and still get ahead of the game.

Then read Zinsser's "On Writing Well" and "Elements of Style" by Strunk and White. They'll help you find ways to streamline your writing and cut the fat.

TL;DR write a lot. Read more.

u/birthday-party · 3 pointsr/Journalism

Simple tip this is not, but I found that William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" is a fantastic read. It goes through basics on conciseness and writing factually, but also has specific guidelines on writing nonfiction (travel, humor, business, sports, arts, etc.) Also helpful on how to rid yourself of cliches and clutter.

u/mncs · 5 pointsr/Journalism

The Elements of Journalism is a good place to start. The best way to learn how to write it is to learn how to read it. Find sources you trust, you know to be quality, and figure out how they put a story together.

u/EYEMNOBODY · 1 pointr/Journalism

>Reality is I don't even have any way of knowing that what you say is true. In fact, given your post history and utter failure to back up what you have to say with any sources whatsoever that it's not accurate.

Verifying everything I said is pretty easy for anyone that knows how to do basic research, especially since I broke down most of the points.

​

>Why didn't I think you were a journalist? Because most people who say "THE MEDIA NEEDS TO COVER THIS" aren't a part of the media.

I didn't say the Media Needs to Cover This, I asked a question, " Why aren't any news outlets covering the truth about what's going on with Vaping and Big Tobacco?"

​

>They're capable of recognizing that it's a complex ecosystem filled with different competing organizations with different competing interests.

It's more like competing journalists and it's not that complex of an ecosystem given that there is even more lateral movement in the industry today than there was twenty years ago and there was a lot back then. If you're not a Chomsky fan you should at least check out Bagdikian.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Media-Monopoly-Completely-Chapters/dp/0807061875

u/elerner · 11 pointsr/Journalism

When I'm recording interviews for transcription or note-taking purposes, I use one of these. Picks up both halves of the conversation and works with any phone and pretty much any stand-alone voice recorder. The quality is just about what you're hearing on the call itself, though having a proper handset (rather than a flat cellphone face) will probably give you even better results.

If you want to actually use the audio in the final product — and you don't want it to sound like a phone call — you need to have your subject record their end of the conversation locally. NPR actually does this all the time, to the point where they'll send you instructions when they set up the call time.

u/teebrownies · 3 pointsr/Journalism

Inside Reporting was a book I found really useful in some of my intro classes. I highly recommend it.

u/Mdan · 2 pointsr/Journalism

If you've not read Brooke Gladstone's book, The Influencing Machine, I highly recommend you check it out. Should be required media literacy reading. http://www.amazon.com/The-Influencing-Machine-Brooke-Gladstone/dp/0393342468

u/TomJBeasley · 3 pointsr/Journalism

Anyone who is doing any form of journalism should own a copy of McNae's Essential Law. The law is complicated and very important.

Familiarise yourself with defamation and privacy law.