In 1994, I got a call from an editor I knew at a Seattle-area newsweekly. Computers for personal use—and the companies that made them possible—were getting a lot of attention due to this newly accessible Internet. I’d been a full-time journalist and now worked in tech. Would I be interested in writing a snappy regular column explaining computer industry developments to mere mortals?
Many people don’t have a clue how journalism works. Journalists may have less access to events and their newsmakers than the general public. All this for a career choice that has limited job options.
Those are the headlines from my recent temporary return to full-time journalism after a several-decade hiatus. The full story I lived through as a fact-chasing Rip Van Winkle is more nuanced. Yet dramatic cuts in journalists’ ranks and an apparent increase in attempts to control what’s produced not only makes doing the work more challenging, it may combine to undermine what the public gets in good journalism, especially at the local level. Continue reading Observations of a gentleman journalist→
MoPOP Marvel curator Ben Saunders and Frank Catalano. (GeekWire Photo / Clare McGrane)
It informally began with the Seattle Public Library and ended with the New York Public Library. In between, there were official moments with Marvel superheroes, a tree octopus, moldy mainframes and a yodeling pickle.
That was the 14-episode run of the GeekWire pop culture, science fiction and arts podcast that I hosted from August 2017 to November 2018, with the outlier library pieces before and after acting as, well, bookends. Dubbed for shorthand as the “popcast,” it was a mix of in-studio interviews with field trips for on-site audio walkthroughs, also spawning a dozen-and-a-half stories. Continue reading Popcast recap: From 2001 to yodeling pickles→
Disneyland’s Star Tours, kept current thanks to digital “new magic.” (Frank Catalano Photo)
Media are plural. That may seem like an obvious grammatical observation. But when people talk about “the media,” odds are they are combining many applications and formats in their minds: news, entertainment, fine art, informational, video, audio, text, and other criss-crossing slices of the “media” pie.
The Lenovo Flex 4 laptop and its ill-fated keyboard.
You never realize how much you depend on the smallest thing until it fails. Like a key on your laptop.
Last month, I traveled to San Diego to attend the ASU+GSV Summit, an investor- and company exec-focused education technology conference. I’d committed to writing about it for GeekWire. That meant lots of note taking during sessions, nighttime drafting of stories, and the usual stuff that goes with the practice of “writing.” Continue reading On the road, on deadline, without a space bar→
I will openly admit that yes, I’ve won two awards for my recent writing in GeekWire from the Society of Professional Journalists. And I’m delighted to have done so.
In 2012, I wrote what is arguably the GeekWire column of which I’m most fond: “7 steps to raise a geek child.” It was borne out of my experiences raising my son and — not surprisingly — had echoes of my own upbringing, all with the intent of sharing what I’d learned with colleagues and friends who were then new parents.
As our communications technology has improved, what have we learned about avoiding the spread of medical misinformation and rumor in the three decades between AIDS and Ebola? Apparently, not enough.
Over at GeekWire, I draw comparisons and share lessons gleaned from my experience as a one-time health/science reporter, someone who began covering AIDS 30 years ago and before it received a lot of mainstream attention. I also add a perspective on how public health professionals today are using social media and the web — tools that didn’t exist three decades back — to propel good info and play Whac-A-Mole with the bad.
But as part of the research for the GeekWire column, I dug up an ancient digital file (probably written on an Apple IIe or early Mac) that summed up the advice I offered other broadcast news reporters at the time, in 1986. It was one of a series of columns I contributed to a newsletter of the Associated Press, AP Broadcaster. Continue reading AIDS to Ebola: Tech changes, rumors persist→
In some respects, what our parents and grandparents thought of as the “Big C” is now the “little c.” Cancer survival rates, for a variety of reasons, have improved overall. The earlier detection of many common types of cancer still comes as a emotional shock, but there is much more public information. And thanks to technology, more choices.
In 1994, I got a call from an editor I knew at a Seattle-area newsweekly. Computers for personal use—and the companies that made them possible—were getting a lot of attention due to this newly accessible Internet. I’d been a full-time journalist and now worked in tech. Would I be interested in writing a snappy regular column explaining computer industry developments to mere mortals?
