Journalism in the 21st Century

New writers are thrilled just to see their name in print. I remember when I was just starting out, interning at San Francisco Magazine. It was the eighties and I was all of 23, full of enthusiasm and stupid good will. The idea of getting paid for what I loved almost sounded illegal. "Any time you write, you should be paid for your work," a slightly older and paid colleague told me. I had just written a little ad for the magazine's personals section:      San Francisco classifieds bring single bunnies up to date      Getting personal      Now! The graphics department added a bunny. After that, marketing brought me into a meeting to bolster copy for a Shell ad. I willingly obliged. I wasn't paid and didn't even think of being paid. Again, I was chastised by my older colleague. I was beginning to feel like a chump, but that feeling was soon overpowered by the thrill I got interviewing a local comedian for our special birth...

"In this corner, we have a very large man with bulging biceps and fire spewing from his eyes! Yes, it's the U.S. Government!" "And in this corner (crowd applauds wildly) the averagewoman, played today by the once fabulous editor, now struggling freelance writer who can't afford her rent, let alone a root canal or that trip to St. Martin she's been longing for!" [cue: bell at boxing ring] If you are a writer trying to wend your way through the maze that is the "government shutdown", you're a little like you've always been: unclear on where you'll next find food or whether food stamps will continue. In the event that you make, oh, $1,000 this month instead of your usual $552.32, will you be on a 'spend down' with Medicaid, who can't apparently understand that a contractor's income fluctuates wildly? And as with most things American, apparently the right for anything beyond basic medical is a luxury. Don't you...

Growing is painful, or so we're told. It's never a joy at the time, but in hindsight those jarring, embarrassing, soul search-inducing moments we have with our difficult bosses and editors can push us toward a higher level. I was thinking today about some of the lessons my tough bosses taught. Without naming names or publications, here they are - in no special order: Don't reveal your reporting methods in the story, other than to say "by e-mail" or "by phone" if appropriate. For example, don't say "Joe said Ginger was a difficult boss after he looked at my picture of Ginger on the desk." It's important to keep everything in the right context, but don't pull up the curtain for your reader. If you're quoting excessively, you probably don't know what you're talking about. Do enough reporting and research to thoroughly understand your subject. Use The Economist as a model for how to do it right. Just write "he sa...

At 8:15 on August 6, 1945 Japanese time, "the largest bomb ever used in the history of warfare" flashed above Hiroshima. When figures were tallied, an estimated one hundred thousand lives would be lost in the name of democracy. Survivors, like Mrs. Nakamura and her three children, would live with the memory of radiation sickness and death through-out their lives. The widow of a tailor killed in the war, Mrs. Nakamura scraped together a life for herself and her family as a seamstress. After the bomb was dropped, she unthinkingly plunged her symbol of livelihood into the receptacle which for weeks had been her symbol of safety - the cement tank of water in front of her house, of the type every household had been ordered to construct against possible fire raid. As the horror of events unravelled, her children - five-year-old Myeko, eight-year-old Yaeko, and ten-year-old Toshio - would ask questions. "Why is it night already?" asked Myeko. "Why d...

I'll admit that I've been fascinated by the progeny of Prince William and the Duchess, Kate Middleton, but now that he's born and we know the name, enough. In Syria, an estimated 6,000 children had died as of June, according to the UK's Guardian newspaper. Who knows the real number or how dramatically that number has grown; and the figure obviously swells when one adds their parents and other adults. I realize that since the world is full of heartache, it's uplifting to focus on the future King (unless he abdicates), but neither should we ignore the pressing humanitarian issues plaguing the world today. Ditto the impact of climate change on the very children we are trying to protect. And while the so-called royal baby doesn't deserve the hype, most certainly Anthony Weiner et al (somebody Leather) doesn't either. As journalists, let's focus on what matters. It was painful to see Wolf Blitzer interview Miss Leather on his CNN program last night. ...

This isn't the first time I've felt this way. On Oct. 3, 1995, OJ Simpson was found "not guilty" by a jury of his peers in Los Angeles. I was craning my head around an open window to watch the one television at work in nearby Burbank. There in LA, the trial was not only sensational but it was hard to think of much else during it. I feel similarly today, when an unjust verdict was decided in the George Zimmerman trial. While I respect the jury -- a phrase that's becoming pat to say -- I don't respect a system that allows a defense to hire better lawyers, or draw ineffective witnesses for the prosecution. While we all sympathize with poor Rachel Jeantel , it's fair to say she didn't do her dead friend many favors. Throughout her testimony, I wanted to hug her and say, "It's all right; just tell the truth." But in the U.S. justice system, as with many the world over, truth is subordinate to clever lawyering, polished witnesses and a l...

Facebook-speak affords the latest twist on, "It's not me, it's you." Yes, by now it's a cliché to say our "friends" on FB, for the most part, aren't really our friends. Yes, some of them are, but the rest are a mix of distant cousins, former employers you'd be persona non grata to unfriend, (if you're a writer) fans, cute guys in Italy you'd love to meet and the one marginal celebrity who's ever spoken to you (with the Friend request, undoubtedly, having been accepted by his publicist). But what do we make of the volatility of Facebook friendships, the unending desire to defriend followed by, perhaps, the execution of that all-mighty button: "unfriend"? And if we are unfriended, what are we to infer if say, that individual still or chooses to follow us on Twitter or retains a Linkedin relationship? Don't even get me started about the other social networks; believe it or not, I still have a marginal life that does no...

Scandal week . If this past week has brought anything to light for the media, it's that everyone but Fox News understated the Benghazi situation. This reporter, all along, was pushing for transparency and strongly suspected that President Obama and Secretary Clinton were covering up the truth. Suspecting is not the same as stating, conclusively, but it's the role of the press to follow curiosity as the clues unravel. Instead, what the so-called "liberal" press did, mostly, was accuse Fox News, the Republicans and those crazy Conservatives of a witch hunt. Yet in hindsight, even the fair and balanced Grey Lady needs to be squirming this week. Clearly, Obama wanted to be re-elected. What happened beyond that regarding the watered-down talking points indicates that his agenda was furthered before Susan Rice spoke on camera. Coincidence? Further, regarding the AP scrutiny from the Department of Justice, there is no reasonable explanation for the latter to snoop ...

I wasn't the biggest Obama supporter, but I came round. By the time he was elected, I'd joined the pandemonium, against the protestations of my one Republican friend: "He's up to something. I don't trust him." I told her I wasn't quite sure if I did either, but I had to support his (wildly) liberal agenda. However, ever since Benghazi or wait, maybe about the time all my friends started getting laid off, I began to question him again. Don't get me wrong: the alternative (Mitch Romney, as Letterman calls him) would have been national suicide. OK, that's dramatic. But so many scandals, so much subterfuge, so much telling the American public he had nothing to do with it. What will it be this week? Hillary on the Hill asking, "What difference does it make?" was some convincing emotion. She had to have known darn well what difference it makes/made. Shame on this president for all of these news items: Recession, Corexit in the Gulf of M...

Last Thurs., Apr. 18 I was still watching CNN, horrified by the bombings on Boylston and now obsessed with the faces just shared by the FBI. I played those videos over and over again, as we all did. Then, I heard the re was a shooting and possibly an officer killed at MIT. Someone had the presence of mind to say that the Boston PD, Fire and EMS were on a live audio feed. I posted the following over the next hour: Laurie Wiegler ‏ @ WriterWeegs 18 Apr Boston Police, Fire and EMS Live Audio Feed http://www. broadcastify.com/listen/feed/62 54/web   … via @ Broadcastify Laurie Wiegler ‏ @ WriterWeegs 18 Apr MIT campus police officer ...

While watching coverage of the police and FBI and several CNN anchors go after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, my senses were so overly heightened that for a while, I took a (very uncharacteristic) nap, dreaming that my ex-boss told me my web site looked great, before springing to attention to continue watching the manhunt. I was watching when CNN's reporter heard the gunfire in his earpiece around 7 p.m. Friday, then followed along as that middle-aged lady reporter with the pert hairdo was told to get out of the way by police. Sirens, screeching police cars, a populus told it's ok to come and then sorry, no it's not, go back in. In the midst of all this drama, I wish the media had remembered that while it's important to inform the public, we neither expect nor want you to slither around the bushes behind that house where the suspect was holed up, bleeding from the head, in that poor guy's boat. ( By the way, why is there a fund to buy him a new boat? Shouldn't the cops ...

What's happening to the English language? A twinkly-eyed customs agent at Heathrow would say I don't even speak English. When I arrived at his station in 2008, fresh off a trip to Prague, I breathily spat that I was "so glad to be back where I could speak English." He looked at me with an eye roll. "So is that what you call what you speak in your country." It was enough to bother me for, oh, since 2008. It's a story I recant as often as it's appropriate, but lately whenever I'm explaining to my French ESL student why we speak and write the way we do and how this differs across the pond. Unfortunately, I'm finding I have to also defend myself in my own country and outside the tutoring environment. Like when I'm watching a L'oreal Paris commercial and they brag that their product means "less wrinkles". Less wrinkles?! What happens when my student sees this, especially after one of our lessons on n...

What's happening to the English language? A twinkly-eyed customs agent at Heathrow would say I don't even speak English. When I arrived at his station in 2008, fresh off a trip to Prague, I breathily spat that I was "so glad to be back where I could speak English." He looked at me with an eye roll. "So is that what you call what you speak in your country." It was enough to bother me for, oh, since 2008. It's a story I recant as often as it's appropriate, but lately whenever I'm explaining to my French ESL student why we speak and write the way we do and how this differs across the pond. Unfortunately, I'm finding I have to also defend myself in my own country and outside the tutoring environment. Like when I'm watching a L'oreal Paris commercial and they brag that their product means "less wrinkles". Less wrinkles?! What happens when my student sees this, especially after one of our lessons on non-count vs. c...

I woke up this morning -- yes, I am 141, which apparently I accomplished through mosturizer and my new vegan lifestyle -- to find that my boyfriend (a spry 92) had broken his Kindlette. For those of you still reading this in the 21st century, that's Kindle gone all Jetsons on ya, so small that I can only see it when my fake eyeballs are lasered up with biojuice. Sometimes it's hard to pick the right pair in the dark, but I do my best. Anyway, the news story we read today is about Britney Spears III inheriting a fortune from her best friend, Lindsay Lohan XI, and then blowing it all on, well, blow. I wasn't too happy when coke made a comeback, but at least it woke up the 200-year-olds at my mom's convalescent home. I seem to recall vaguely that the US, all but California that is (which seceded from the Union in 2071, and shame on you for forgetting that), was going to war with Canada. I know you 21st century readers won't believe that, but gosh darn it's t...

Saturday Girl Why I will miss the six-day-a-week postal service Today's news that the U.S. Postal Service is cutting back to five-day delivery hit me kind of hard, even though it was not surprising. I have to support it. I knew they were in the red, after all. I just worry that this portends something a little bigger -- like no service. For all the kids out there who don't care about this, let me explain why this hurts: bigger than the transition from albums to CDs to iTunes, bigger than landlines to mobiles and real-life pals to Facebook friends, the postal service transition could be dark, really dark. Letters from my past My grandmother Mimi used to send me letters (see photo). When she passed, I had access to her thoughts, how she wanted me to find a nice Jewish boy , keep reading, keep doing well in school, and when I had a moment read her latest proverb.  Mimi took proverbs and with her calligraphy, turned them into art for the J ewish Heritage of Los A...

I don't know if he is or he isn't.  A journalist. I know he's got his own show on CNN, but some nights he's like the ongoing Ridiculist of Anderson Cooper's. Some days I like Piers, and other times I just bristle at his mere existence on the telly. I'm not one of those Anglos who get all hot and bothered hearing a British man speak my name. I've been to London many times, and plan to return in a few months. I am fully aware that they aren't so taken by our accent, so I do my best to keep my fascination with theirs under wraps. My latest issue with Mr. Morgan is his treatment of my girl Chelsea Handler. I call her "my girl" because were it not for her book "Hello Vodka, it's Me Chelsea" I might have stopped drinking vodka altogether. I was beginning to worry that it wasn't natural to enjoy Greyhounds (the drink) alone anymore. It's one thing to call oneself a slutty alcoholic -- which, to my recollection, Handler ...