Heading to Ireland to cover religion

As my Columbia classmates prepare for home, beaches and master’s project work during next week’s spring break, I will be getting on a plane tomorrow to Ireland. I’m going as part of a class of 16 students for Columbia’s “Covering Religion” course, a trip provided through the Scripps Howard Foundation.
The class has taken these trips [...]

Spot.Us: Journalism and micro-loan financing

Last week Columbia hosted its “Changing Media Landscape” panel along with Hearst. It featured some top new media journalists, including: Sewell Chan, editor of The New York Times “City Room” blog; Slate’s chairman; a St. Louis Post-Dispatch designer behind the “Papercuts” newspaper layoff blog; a blogger from the multi-lingual European site Cafebabel.com; and then 26-year-old [...]

Election tomorrow: Columbia covering NYC

In another self-promotion bit, the Journalism School is covering the election tomorrow at the site www.columbiajournalist.org/elections.
A good chunk of the school’s students are contributing to the site tomorrow, which features a video broadcast, radio broadcast and new media broadcast airing from 7 p.m. to midnight EST.
There are also six deadline print stories, with corresponding multimedia [...]

Interviewing Elmo

My teacher divvied out the items on the AP calendar, giving me the assignment to cover “Elmo Live.” The new holiday toy was being released today at the Times Square Toys “R” Us.
Now, I wasn’t initially thrilled about the event or its 9:30 a.m. start time, but that was all erased once I [...]

Making your own luck

When I tell people about the story I did on cocaine use at Santa Clara, they often ask how in the world I got that story.
I usually respond with one word:
“Luck.”
In some ways, that’s true. I was lucky I found a dealer willing to talk with me on the record so long he was anonymous. [...]

NYU professor limiting blogging about class

I just happened upon this link on Romenekso that caught my eye, which was occurring at the other New York J-School, NYU.
The story is about a girl in a “Generation Y” class who blogs about the behind the times attitudes in her class.
Long story short, the professor gets upset that she is being criticized, [...]

Obama and McCain at Columbia

First, some excellent coverage of the day’s festivities from the J-Schoolers at Columbia: www.obamamccainatcolumbia.blogspot.com. (Disclosure: I contributed a couple pieces on this.)
It’s been a zoo here today at Columbia: police surrounding the campus, entrances closed, having to show a school ID to get on campus.
After finishing classes, I went out and did some reporting, adding [...]

Obama and McCain to Columbia tomorrow

Proof that I’m not at Santa Clara anymore: Tomorrow, John McCain and Barack Obama will appear together at Columbia. (BTW…note the snarky dig from the LA Times at the Columbia college paper’s “intrepid” reporters.) Anyway…
It should be an interesting day at school. The bigger news story tomorrow will be their joint appearance at Ground Zero, [...]

Goodbye Indianapolis, hello New York

One week into my New York journey, and I already feel like a veteran on the subway. Of course, when people ask me how to get to the bridge or where some street is, I haven’t a clue. Yet anyway. I’m still adjusting to the fact that this is my home for the next 10 [...]