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For something totally silly, especially if you're a fan of sites like Stuff White People Like , here's a new one: Stuff Journalists Like . Like 'Professional Organizations': Journalists need to connect with others who enjoy long talks about deadlines, copies and incompetent editors. That is why journalists like professional organizations. Groups like Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors give journalists a sense of community and a place to feel better about the career choices they have made. (Via Miranda Writes .)

Fascinating brief link on Romenesko today, to a conservative blog that links to a claim that the mortgage/credit crisis is all the fault of the Atlanta Journal Constitution! Back in 1988, Bill Dedman did a pioneering Computer Assisted Reporting project for that paper, The Color of Money , comparing mortgages issued to people in white and black sections of the county. No surprise, blacks -- no matter their income levels -- didn't get mortgages as easily as whites. Dedman won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. The column linked on Red State Conservative was by Mike Masterson of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, who says: ...a former investigative reporter for Atlanta’s daily newspaper likely pitched the snowball that grew into the avalanche and buried our leading mortgage institutions... ...exposed the practice of redlining by banks that routinely declined risky home loans in low-income neighborhoods... Dedman replies to the Red State link, See what he did? Hearing "black,"...

After a long respite, some new research links, and a couple more references to what's going on in the world of laid-off journalists: We Were Print a blog from several "Former and Soon-to-Be Former Print Journalists". Includes a body count, and links to job listings. 42 Things I know from William Lobdell, recently bought out at LA Times, about the current state of newspapers (and the Times). The research links: News : The Newsfilm Online Digitisation Project offers selected newsfilm from ITN/Reuters archives , by subscription or free browsing. PopURLs , shows the most popular links on the Web today. Beijing Olympics News from NewsNow. Reference : A Chronology of Data Breaches , from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. I've used this in the past but don't think I linked it. Very helpful when searching for past hacking or theft incidents. A Big List of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff from ReadWriteWeb. Public Records : Criminalsearches.com : this beta from People...

Great discussion by Jay Rosen on the Jessica DaSilva flap (yesterday's post) at Pressthink: Big Daddy Newspaper Has Gone and Left Journalism . Lots of links to reaction to her blog and the story of dying newspapers in general here. Most of all, a link to a new site that is an antidote to the 'curmudgeon class': Tree House Media Project . Check out the blog , too. You gotta love a site that proclaims: Fuck Craig's List. Fuck Wall Street. Yes, we have ample reason to be bitter. Times have never been worse for newspaper journalists. And Da Silva? The girl's got a future in some sort of journalism. Here's her comment on the Pressthink posting: I admit I'm young, but I like to think of myself as optimistic and hopeful about journalism. And I attribute that to having an open mind in describing the role of journalist; it's not just paper anymore. Another problem I (and my peers) have encountered in internships is an eagerness to turn us away from journalism or ...

On the journalism front, there's a little flurry of discussion over how news organizations need to rebuild themselves, leading to this memo from Tampa Tribune editor Janet Coats on the plans for an 'interactive newsroom' joining the newspaper, online and television news processes. Last week, lots of bloggers and commenters reacted to a posting by Tampa intern Jessica DaSilva, "It's worth fighting for" , quoting Coats' talk with newsroom staffers. Lots of the comments here were negative (sample:) Wow, you really are young and naive, aren’t you? Someone sent me the link to your blog, and I almost had to laugh, it was so ridiculous. I’m truly amazed that in one of your other posts, you can tell reporters to stop whining and do something about their situation. What, praytell, young lady, would you like them to do? This lead to Ryan Sholin's posting, Declare your independence from the curmudgeon tribe . Hmm. It's hard all around, and on some of these ...

Via the McClatchy VP Howard Weaver's blog, Etaoin Shrdlu , I was stirred by the report on a column in the Macon Telegraph by Editorial Page Editor Charles Richardson, Why We Do What We Do . Richardson, responding to attacks on his paper for printing the wonderful McClatchy Washington Bureau report on the detainees at Guantánamo , accusing the editors of being 'unpatriotic': We are afraid some of our readers have a stilted view of our constitutional duty. But first a little history. Our country was founded as a nation of laws. ...Should the American press emulate the history of the former Soviet Union's Information Telegraph Agency of Russia, better known as TASS? Should the American press become the propaganda arm of the government such as "The Attack" newspaper in Nazi Germany, set up by the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels? Is that what our founders had in mind? Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Gene Weingarten writes that the recent Washington Post buyouts haven't affected his written product, at all: Yanks Thump Sox . (Thanks to Doug Fisher .) Note the version with errors noted finds more than I would ever have caught in a hurry.....

It's really good news to see ProPublica go live. It's the new independent investigative reporting site started by former Wall St. Journal editor Paul Steiger, and has been eagerly anticipated. In just a few minutes of looking around I'm impressed with the twice-daily Breaking on the Web update links to new investigative stories, a good place to get caught up on the news. I found links here to a couple interesting stories I didn't seen scrolling several other news sites. The original postings look interesting too. Editor and Publisher has more . And for really Goodnews, check out this "Google News" page . Click on any story and get the explanation of why this exists. But just browsing this fake Google News page will make you smile. It's the news of the world as it should be. Think there's no racism in this presidential race? Jeff Fecke at Shakesville is collecting attacks and subtle digs on Obama . Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof comments . Also on this ...

Lots of buzz about "Off the Bus" blogger Mayhill Fowler (see previous post ), after a profile in the Los Angeles Times and a Howard Kurtz column in the Washington Post . Oh, and a New York Times profile too. This woman has taken amateur journalism to a whole new level. Good for her. Over at BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis discusses Mayhill 's stories, too, and some comments he got about her and whether she should have identified herself as a journalist. But he is more concerned that in some of the comments, people who were obviously journalists didn't identify themselves as such, and sees a worrisome trend here. Certainly something I've noticed, especially in blogs discussing media, like Bob Norman's Daily Pulp blog covering South Florida media. So many comments coming from people who obviously work for the media, but completely anonymous. I know it's a question of worrying about their comments getting back to their editors, but hey, no one can get a letter to...

In all the blogging and commenting this morning about last night's speeches, one stands out for me. In The Moderate Voice , by Pete Abel: Three images from last night’s TV coverage will stay with me for years. 1. McCain’s reptitious, ill-timed, and creepier-than-usual grin … like the Cheshire cat on sedatives. 2. Clinton’s defiant smirk, as her NYC supporters shouted “Denver, Denver, Denver.” 3. Obama mouthing to Michelle after his speech, “How’d I do?” — and her apparent response, “Good. Real Good.” Says Abel: ...if Americans truly do vote more on gut than on reason, then these images suggest (already) who will win in November … in a landslide. On the news research front, Al Tompkins had links to a couple new tools in his 'dozen things I'm diggin'' sidebar, things that can answer one of the most frustrating questions asked of news researchers: how big is it, and how many swimming pools/football fields/Empire State Buildings will it fill? From Nikon, Universcale ...

I'm intrigued with today's story about the Bill Clinton rant against the author of the negative Vanity Fair story about him, recorded by "amateur reporter" Mayhill Fowler ( at Huffington Post ), because Fowler is the same reporter who reported Barack Obama's comments at a San Francisco fundraiser about 'clinging to guns and religion'. (Dave Winer discusses .) After the first story, I pictured a young blogger, but it turns out Fowler is a 60-something former Tenneseean with a lifelong family interest in politics , who's worked her way into a position as a frequent 'Off The Bus' blogger. This is exactly what the 'Off the Bus' project was hoping for , I'd think, using bloggers to find news the major media misses. It's just one of several intriguing new ways of getting news that have been showing up this election year. They don't always last (I remember Voter.org from the 2000 election) but make things interesting while the d...

Miami Herald columnist Fred Grimm, in his new blog The Grimm Truth , makes a statement about journalism and blogging that strikes true to me, Blogging, Circa 1968 : Writing for a small town newspaper, knocking out one little story after another, every day, writing about everything that moved, I was utterly intertwined in the life of the community. And the community wasn't shy about telling me I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. I was blogging. I just didn't know it yet. This one will be on my daily visit list.

In the Houston Chronicle, a story out of a National Press Club conference: Journalism old-timers find campaign coverage disturbing . Jack Nelson, Jules Witcover, Hal Bruno and others seem appalled at the state of journalism these days. Jules Witcover, who began covering Washington in 1954 and has covered every presidential nominating convention for the past 44 year, agreed. "To an old geezer like me" he said, " I find it very disturbing and distorting." The American Journalism Review asks, Whatever Happened to Iraq? For long stretches over the past 12 months, Iraq virtually disappeared from the front pages of the nation's newspapers and from the nightly network newscasts. The American press and the American people had lost interest in the war. Guess it's not just the press that isn't keeping a proper eye out: in Wired's Danger Room blog, Pentagon Watchdogs Swamped by Military Spending; $152 Billion a Year Goes Unaudited . And, on a completely unrel...

Over the weekend, a few things have caught my eye and I wonder what they mean: At HeraldWatch , there's a rumor that the Miami Herald may be getting ready to lay off 230 people . Not surprising, but sad anyway. Things aren't good at newspapers these days. The Herald recently had some buyouts and lost long time senior reporter Martin Merzer, photographer Nuri Vallbona, and business writer Susana Barciela, among others. I guess it wasn't enough. Even more disturbing to a former Herald library employee, there was an earlier posting reporting on a memo from editor Anders Gyllenhaal suggesting the library functions may be outsourced . ( Update :) a new blog, Papercuts , is tracking newspaper layoffs. There was such a thing several months back is this the same one? (Via Buzzmachine.) ( Update: ) More on the Miami Herald from Random Pixels , who has been keeping an eye on editing on the Web site, and other Herald matters. Lots of interesting discussion going on about the future...

Some days it seems the future of news is secure, especially when you see something like the list of Knight News Challenge winners, projects all listed here in a PDF. There's some good stuff here.