James Mitchell

"Someone asked me before I flew to South Africa: “How do you find stories? How do you know what to write down?” For a moment, I toyed with the idea of puffing up my chest and launching into a detailed diatribe on almost four decades in journalism and how experience coupled with knowledge and skill allowed me to ply my trade at the highest level on one of the world’s great newspapers. But I chose the truth and confessed that, most of the time, I have absolutely no idea how journalism works."

"Jordan Flaherty, a community organizer and journalist based in New Orleans who is the editor of Left Turn magazine, will be attending and participating in the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit next week. He and other journalists will be coming together to put on a workshop called, “Grassroots Media and Movements for Justice,” and share their insight into how investigative journalism can benefit social movements."

"Call it Reader's Despair Syndrome, a condition that is afflicting New York's young and old with equal viciousness, but which tends to produce the most dramatic symptoms in people in their 20s and 30s, who retain hope that they will one day become more productive and virtuous in their Internet reading habits."

"USA Today, a brand recognized by business travelers, is tapping into the location-based mobile market with new offerings and incentives on Gowalla."

"The newspaper industry is starting to meet its new bosses – the hedge funds and banks that are moving in as rich family owners and starchy executives move out. Although the objectives of these new owners remain unclear, insiders say the transition period promises more upheaval at newspapers just as they begin to emerge from bankruptcy protection."

"Some specialized Romanian media outlets, such as Academia Caţavencu or Gsp.tv have already been charging users for their web content. But are Romanians willing to pay for online generalist journalism? Although it seems a reasonable solution for journalists, experts consider that the market is not prepared for this change and estimate a big loss of readers for Adevărul Holding, unless other media companies adopt the same measures."

"Plummeting newspaper circulation, disappearing classified ads, “unbundling” of content—the list of what’s killing journalism is long. But high on that list, many would say, is Google, the biggest unbundler of them all. Now, having helped break the news business, the company wants to fix it—for commercial as well as civic reasons: if news organizations stop producing great journalism, says one Google executive, the search engine will no longer have interesting content to link to."

"By appearing on stage at the Apple event and by launching an iPad app that the Times wants to monetize in every possible way — an app from which Apple will likely make money as well — the Times is becoming more of a business partner with a company it covers incessantly. And when Apple promoted the Times so visibly before the in-store selling date of the iPad, given the millions of people who visit Apple’s home page each month, it was giving the Times a huge boost."