Good. Better. Done. A blog about doing great work... and my mother.

“Whatever you believe / You might be wrong.” — Paul Thorn   When I was in college, I was part of a small group of journalism students who took classes that were basically about the Internet. This was 2005 or so. Journalism on the Internet wasn’t new, but it was for journalism schools. Anyway, we (…)

Please pardon the brief pause today from your regularly-scheduled work-related post. Today’s blog is about some smart thoughts I heard at a conference last week. Wise words about work will be back on Monday. -Dan [View the story "Digital East 2012: The 10 Best Things I Learned." on Storify] Digital East 2012: The 10 Best (…)

About nine months ago, I launched jstart.wikispaces.com, a wiki of journalism resources. It’s massive now — some 500+ tools and tutorials for journalists. The problem is, it’s tough to sort through all of that and figure out what the best tools are. So I’m launching a new project: ToolsForReporters.com, a weekly newsletter geared specifically to (…)

There is a lot of frustration in the news industry right now. We have this amazing distribution system called the web. We’re entering a golden age of storytelling. Every year, more and more people are taking time for stories. And we’re still not making money. But consider the following: Peter Durand patented the tin can (…)

I got asked to speak to a class of business students about two weeks ago. The students were all upperclassmen, all entrepreneurial-minded. I talked about learning how to adjust to life after college, and then we got into the Q&A. One student asked me if I had any heroes in journalism. “I’m not going to (…)

You’re a newspaper. You’re looking for a way to tell an interesting story, to engage users and make $50,000. Quick: How do you pull it off? I’m thinking about calling up the team at Quarterly. It’s a new subscription service for interesting people and brands. Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic, Gretchen Rubin at the Happiness (…)

The PhD with whom I share an office wall at RJI just published a cool study on how readers react when they stumble across news. In it, she makes a number of really interesting points about serendipity and the news. And before I go any further, I want to say this: Many of the points (…)

Back in December, I went out to Phoenix for NewsFoo, a conference for 150 of the brightest minds in news. I’m not sure why I was invited; my guess is that I was there to keep the group’s average IQ from skewing too high. Regardless: I was there, and at the conference, I got to (…)

Forbes ran a story on their website this week about Best Buy. The lead paragraph read: “Electronics retailer Best Buy is headed for the exits. I can’t say when exactly, but my guess is that it’s only a matter of time, maybe a few more years.” Then it went on to detail numerous problems with (…)

I was in New York City last week, and I went shopping with a friend. Or, more accurately: She went shopping, and I came along to try on funny hats and annoy her. Nevertheless: She took us to a store north of Columbus Circle. I’d never heard of the store before. It was called Century (…)