Links 1-24-10
- “A Eulogy for Old-School Newsrooms” came out in the American Journalism Review’s December/January issue. It was written by Carl Sessions Stepp, a UMD professor.
- NY Times going to start charging for Web content
- Interesting story on Gail Huff/Scott Brown conflict of interest in the Boston Globe
- Government should keep its hands out of journalism’s future, says FCC Chief
- When pigs fly? National Enquirer going for Pulitzer for John Edwards discovery
- More journalists going to the Dark Side
- Journalists/PhDs have their hands full in Haiti
- The Google News problem
- Not looking good for the Washington Post
A Captivating Tale
New York Times reporter David Rohde’s five-part series, “Held by the Taliban,” is one of the best pieces of journalism that I’ve ever read and serves as an important reminder that America still needs major newspapers like the New York Times and old-school reporters like Rohde to uncover truth in faraway lands.
Rohde, an Afghan journalist and their driver were kidnapped on Nov. 10, 2008, and held hostage for 7 months, 10 days by the Taliban.
The piece begins:
THE car’s engine roared as the gunman punched the accelerator and we crossed into the open Afghan desert. I was seated in the back between two Afghan colleagues who were accompanying me on a reporting trip when armed men surrounded our car and took us hostage.
Another gunman in the passenger seat turned and stared at us as he gripped his Kalashnikov rifle. No one spoke. I glanced at the bleak landscape outside — reddish soil and black boulders as far as the eye could see — and feared we would be dead within minutes.