I’m relaunching this diary as a Journalism Blog

So it turns out that, for a journalist, I’m not very good at keeping a daily journal. Perhaps that’s because even I was bored by the minutiae of my daily life. Imagine how the readers of this blog (if there were any) felt.

In the meantime, for the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking that there ought to be a way for me to share some of the practical wisdom about journalism that I’ve acquired over 25 years in the business. I’ve been ramming it down the throats of the unsuspecting interns who I train here at Sirius OutQ. But perhaps there are some j-students, working reporters, or even ‘civilians’ who would get something from my ramblings.

Well, ‘ramblings’ probably isn’t the right word. What I actually had in mind was more quotidian. Starting now, I plan to stop blogging my life (pretty much), and start blogging very practical tips, tricks, rules to follow and rules to break in the everyday practice of broadcast journalism.

These entries won’t be the kinds of things you get in journalism school classrooms, at least as far as I can tell from the J-school educated interns who come to me. I will have little to say about journalistic theory. Instead, they will be narrowly-focused notions, nuggets, peeves, tropes — and the occasional rant — about broadcast news writing, reporting, researching and delivery.

These will all by as seen from my unique perspective, which is that of a news director and anchor, supervising a very small newsroom, on a single channel, servicing a niche audience, on a national satellite radio service (too many commas, I know, but they’re there for clarity). That means many people may disagree, or think my views are too conventional or narrow, or not conventional enough. So take all these observations for what they are worth. Your mileage may vary.

Now, to begin. Again.