Culture

The Los Angeles Toxic Tour: Request for Proposals

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[Download this RFP as a PDF]

Would you like to bring the award-winning “Toxic Tour” reporting project to Los Angeles? Newsdesk.org and Spot.Us welcome proposals from journalists interested in developing new coverage of pollution and environmental health in Los Angeles communities. Proposals are due Nov. 12 for short-term projects using text and multimedia to document pollution and communities in greater Los Angeles. Topics include neighborhoods, economics, industry, land use, transportation, politics, activism, environment and health.

Democracy

‘Secrecy Bill’ debated in South Africa

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The Protection of Information bill would allow government officials to classify information as secretive, in order to ensure national security and to prevent espionage. Journalists or citizens caught disseminating classified information could face up to 25 years in prison.

Economy

Kindle to iPad: Bring it on

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This wasn’t a discussion about computing, although the little Kindle did mention, offhand, that it was surprised the iPad was not going to come with any USB or Firewire ports, and so on. Rather, we concentrated on the book-reading and shopping experience exclusively.

Newsdesk News

Newsdesk.org relaunches Web site

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San Francisco designer Willo O’Brien and technologist Andrew A. Peterson worked closely with Newsdesk.org editor George Shirk to develop a new site, which sports plenty of social-media and self-promotional muscle, along with an elegant, clean design.

Democracy & Civics

Blogging Booms Worldwide, Repression on its Heels

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With Internet use booming worldwide, tens of thousands of new blogs written in Farsi, Arabic, Chinese and other languages are inspiring both civic activism and government crackdowns.

Worldwide, nearly half of all imprisoned media workers are online journalists or bloggers, according to a new study by the Committee to Protect Journalists that names Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Tunisia and Syria as leaders in online repression.

Democracy & Civics

What now for J-Schools?

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It was a sobering moment.

The new director of the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, David D. Perlmutter, last December distributed a chart to members of his school’s professional advisory board. It showed that applicants to the school were so flat this past year that practically anybody who applied was approved for admission to the two-year undergraduate program. It begged the question many people in the field are asking, to wit, what’s a journalism school to do?