Looking forward to the future of journalism

A tough year for the mainstream media. But is watchdog journalism really dead?

2009 was a brutal year for the Express-News. We lost a third of the newsroom in March from painful layoffs, and the exodus of talent was demoralizing, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Even after the layoffs, we’re still occasionally losing bright journalists who don’t see much of a future in mainstream news. They might … Read more

Living Stories: Google’s new method of packaging news online

Paul Bradshaw wrote an interesting review of Living Stories, Google’s vision of how news should be read, shared and discussed online. Related: What’s Evernote for? How about making a vast, searchable archive of all your files Partnering with the New York Times and the Washington Post, Google has created an experiment that tries to move … Read more

How journalists use social media

In this great post at Mashable, Leah Betancourt profiled five journalists, including yours truly, and asked why we use social media: There’s a lot of hype behind measuring social media ROI. But what about the payoff on an individual basis? Those who invest time into social media on a daily basis need to see a … Read more

Truth needed to be told about Tiger Woods’ car wreck

I hate celebrity news. So it should be refreshing to read the chorus of complaints about the media unfairly wallowing in the muck of Tiger Woods marital “transgressions.” Here’s what reader “w_sands” posted on an Associated Press story on our site: Woods says he let family down:” Is this really any or our business? If … Read more

How two newspapers teamed up to cover a nuclear plant

As South Texas deals with a seemingly never-ending drought, San Antonio Express-News Environmental Reporter Anton Caputo teamed up with Austin American-Statesman Reporter Asher Price for a story about the water supply that cools nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project in Matagorda County. The utility companies of both cities own a stake in STP, which … Read more

Old news in newspapers? Not always

Interesting letter-to-the-editor today in the San Antonio Express-News written by Linnea Schlobohm, who sums up one of the main themes of this blog better than I ever could: After reading Brian Chasnoff’s beautifully crafted story on the San Antonio River, “Paradise Lost to Progress” (Front Page, Sept. 6), I remembered a recent TV comment predicting … Read more

Texas Tribune stakes claim for watchdog journalism

Texas Monthly’s Evan Smith, who is leaving the “national magazine of Texas” to launch the nonprofit Texas Tribune, is swiftly staking a claim for watchdog journalism by hiring reporters with a strong track record of digging up important stories. The Tribune, a fledgling Web publication, is going to cover state government and politics. It announced … Read more