Modern Journalist Toolkit 10: Color Me Quick
One antidote to overresearching, overreporting, overthinking, and overwriting is a really tight deadline. This video offers some takeaway tips on quick reporting in the field: For many freelancers, breaking news is part of a mix that keeps things fresh and exciting. For writers who are used to working in isolation, there’s a satisfying sense of […]
Modern Journalist Toolkit 9: Long-distance clients and time zones
Choosing to work with far-flung freelance clients typically requires two schedule modifications. The first is a flexible attitude, and the other is a system to manage the different time zones. Flexibility with your schedule Your existing commitments may mean that you can’t or don’t want to work in the mornings, evenings, weekends, local holidays, etc. If you […]
Modern Journalist Toolkit 6: Yusuf Omar on Reporting with Snapchat
Yusuf Omar is a cell-phone trailblazer. He finds unconventional uses for apps like Snapchat, Facebook Live, and 360 video for telling serious news stories, most of which are viewed on small screens. Omar is the new mobile editor at the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English newspapers, with a print circulation of more than […]
Modern Journalist Toolkit 5: Taking Notes & Recording Interviews
I put fresh batteries into my tape recorder shortly before I hopped on the DC Metro for my interview with Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland. I’d pulled a personal favor with somebody who in turn asked for a favor to get me the private face time, and I’d done all my due diligence […]
Quick Online Portfolio Solutions
[Updated in 2022] Once upon a time, in a decade long, long ago, I hand coded my own freelance writer website. To save money. (You’ve probably already heard that time is money, but apparently I hadn’t.) Back then, the site looked pretty good–for somebody who did it via HTML for Dummies. Problem was that I […]
Introducing the Modern Journalist Toolkit
Welcome to the Modern Journalist Toolkit, an ongoing series that looks at new approaches and methods to support reporting and writing. Expect to see a fair amount of technology—some of the most frequent questions I get are about what apps and tools I use—but also new attitudes and strategies that make sense in the 21st […]
On my bookshelf: Solrevolution
“My” new book has been published! I wrote the South African sections of Solrevolution, which has finally arrived from Sweden thanks to the South African postal strike ending. If Monocle were to create a coffee table book in Swedish about solar energy, this is what it would look like. Another post soon to come on […]
Face in the Kenyan Crowd
These have been boom years for cartography geeks, and talking with Juliana Rotich–the Kenya-based, MIT-trained innovator behind crowdmapping sensation Ushahidi, as well as many other BAFA projects–was one of those interviews that makes it easy to love being a journalist. The creation of a healthier ecosystem in Nairobi’s Silicon Savannah where entrepreneurs can thrive depends […]
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