I’ve now been castigated by my one-time boss for dropping the ball (well, I guess he could still have me fired, but at least now I he can’t force me to write up a story on some obscure Russian petro-merger).
So, without further ado, Scott Jagow back in the blog-hizzle…

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When I left my graduate journalism education with a shiny master’s degree in hand, I took a job at the Salinas Californian.

A 20,000-circulation newspaper in an agriculturally-focused city.

It wasn’t the most glamorous, but at least it was full-time and it was real journalism (if you consider Gannett “real journalism.”)

But some colleagues have had a tougher time since 2003 — or have decided to try a go at freelancing.

One of them — Lisa Chamberlain — just posted an insightful thought on the post-graduate plans for a lot of j-schoolers I know.

And it seems the one career service offering we get — is a weekly e-mail, with stuff like this:

Freelance Blogger, TV with MeeVee. Seeking snarky writers to cover reality TV, sci-fi, and pop culture news for our new blog. TV with MeeVee. Writers should have a working knowledge of HTML (link building, basic formatting), a firm grasp of pop culture, and most mportantly, a sense of humor. Keep in mind the turnaround time for stories is short (primetime to 9-10am PST). See site (http://www.tvwithmeevee.com) for examples. Salary is $20/post, 2-3 posts/week. Deadline is rolling. To apply, please submit a 3-4 paragraph review of a show that airs within the next couple of days or a current TV-related news item to freelancejob@meevee.com. June 21

Scary.

So, the illustrious host of the Marketplace Morning Report, Herr Scott Jagow, is in Deutschland for the World Cup this week (yep, that’s why you haven’t heard his voice at 5:50 a.m.!).

Here he is with Marketplace contributor — and former German Fulbrighter — Curt Nickisch.

Scott has been, as he puts it, “blogging”, from Europe. But really, he’s sendy daily e-mails to his mom — so I thought I’d actually help him enter the 21st century and share his insights into Germany culture, and fußball for anybody whose interested. (One note: I’ve edited some parts for taste — they are in brackets).
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Okay, that’s it.

I am no longer a Firefox user. And it’s not because I’ve gone back to Safari or Internet Explorer (in fact, I am out of the IE market for good, since Microsoft stopped coding the browser for Macintosh).

Nope, I am now on the Flock bandwagon. I first heard about it from a Slashdot discussion; and interestingly one of their main investors, we just interviewed on Marketplace this week.

Flock is built using Mozilla technologies, which means I am still, technically, using a browser constructed on the same frame as Firefox.

But Flock is far more integrated with a number of the web’s best features, including, Flickr photo sharing, blog posting software, RSS, and del.icio.us.

It’s still in beta (version 0.7, to be exact) — and I’ve already had a couple of bugs crop up (including some problems working with Adobe Acrobat Reader).

And I’ve also had a hard time adjusting to the way it handles tab browsing — its just as powerful as Firefox, but the way you open and close your tabbed windows is different. Not better, not worse — just different, and maybe on a steeper learning curve.

But, as someone who is going to be doing a lot of web publishing, it seems as if Flock is my browser for the forseeable future.

The way it allows you to blog from within the browser is great and developed seamlessly, but its not a revolutionary comment — there’s been Firefox blogging extensions for a while now. But the pop-up clipboard is great. I even used the clipboard, and its drag-and-drop abilities, to blog this entry.

Still, it’s the photo features that are especially powerful and unique — you can even pull up a photo slideshow viewer from within the browser.

If you blog, use Flickr, or spend a lot of time on any social networking site, I say try Flock out…at least to see if it works with the way you browse.

Howell Raines, when he was at the New York Times (pre-Jayson Blair) talked about how he was rebuilding the Times’ newsroom to ‘flood the zone’. It’s a term derived from sports and football, whereby an offense can overwhelm a zone defense by sending more offensive players to a designated spot than defensive players able to cover them.

Raines’ flooded the zone on 9-11, and in other stories, by dumping reporters and resources into a single project.

In Pittsburgh (thanks to Romenesko), we know they are flooding the zone over the news that Pittsburgh Steelers star quarterback Ben Roethlisberger entered surgery following a motorcycle accident (in which he was not wearing a helmet).

ESPN today was basically all-Roethlisberger-all-the-time. Now, as a sports fan, I see the importance of the Super Bowl QB facing career-threatening injuries — and ESPN can cover sports however it wants.

But for Pittsburgh residents, it seems as if the two hometown papers could be using their resources a little better than assigning 14 reporters to a single motorcycle crash.

There are Pittsburgh political and news stories — of significance — that deserve those resources.

And, notice the LA Times show-stopping coverage of Nevada’s legal system. Why can’t these two well-heeled Pittsburgh newspapers cover the national political scandal continuing to develop less than 100 miles away, in Ohio.

UO-Camp-11

Originally uploaded by Sbocaj.

Ahhh, the beautiful power of the Internet. I stumbled upon a former an old friend’s flickr page, where he has posted photos from when I was a counselor at…wait for it….Computer Camp.

Here I am, at karaoke night.

Despite what mom taught me, I always skip breakfast. I am usually in too much of a rush to have any time to cook or even pour milk. It’s not because I get up too late — its all a matter of opportunity cost.

Food vs. news.

And I choose (b); I spend my mornings reading the hard-copy of the New York Times.

Then I hit the computer and scan for more news, that’s not fit to print.

At Marketplace, we have a morning news meeting at 8 a.m. It’s pretty much the heartbeat of the show and the newsroom, so, you have to show up prepared and well-read. Keep in mind that the following is partly in preparation for that, so its heavy on business stuff:

(Photo courtesy Flickr:azulchinasky)

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