Dr. Spaulding

Every new blog post at The New Yorker’s Back Issues makes me want to buy their complete archive (available on a 120GB hard drive in return for an investment of $179). But then yesterday, I stumbled across this in Cook Library: It’s the bound copies of the magazine, filling several bookshelves, on the library’s fifth [...]

Kenneth Stukes is freelancing for WYPR and has landed two pieces on the air: Local Farmers Markets Drawing More Customers and Teenage Street Vendors Hawk Bottled Water. He says the most important thing he’s learned so far from his radio work is to believe in his pieces and his writing: Both stories were ideas that [...]

Former Sun reporters Rafael Alvarez, Heather Dewar and Rashod Ollison will be reading this week at the New Mercury Readings. It’s a great chance for you to meet interesting people and they seem to like having students around. I hope I’ll see you there. Wednesday | July 28| 7 p.m. | 1401 Light Street

I love the slideshow assignment. It gives students a break from writing and a chance for a few of those lessons to sink in while they work on something physical and hands-on. And studying slideshows gives us something fun to do in class. Here’s four I always use: One in 8 Million, The New York [...]

On the subject of slideshows, this is one of my favorites about a local subject. I mentioned this when I wrote about Telling Our Stories, but it deserves a special mention. Jed Kirschbaum has worked at The Baltimore Sun since 1978. He discusses his work in this photo/video slideshow by Elizabeth Malby. A particularly powerful [...]

From Mashable today, here’s an example of a photo/video slideshow on how New York City food trucks are using social media. I know of one mobile food vendor in Baltimore using Twitter: Kooper’s Chowhound, aka @BRGRwagon. Anyone know of others?

Mark Twain apparently wasn’t a fan of interviews. In a newly published essay written in either 1889 or 1990, Twain writes: “The Interview was not a happy invention. It is perhaps the poorest of all ways of getting at what is in a man.” Can’t say I blame him. I’m always nervous during interviews and [...]

Walt Bogdanich knows how to do an investigative interview. He’s a Pulitzer-prize winning assistant editor on the New York Times Investigative Desk. Before that, he was an investigative producer for Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, a man known for his tough interview style. Bogdanich discussed the interview process at the IRE 2009 conference in Baltimore. [...]

The light was on in the Mencken Room today, but the door was locked. This was the first time I’ve seen someone in the Enoch Pratt Library’s Mencken Room. It’s usually open only by appointment. I knocked figuring I could steal a glimpse of the Sage of Baltimore’s books, desk and typewriter while the librarian [...]

Steve Luxemberg read this passage from Mencken’s Newspaper Days at last month’s New Mercury reading series: I soon found, as every young city editor must find, that Sunday night brings the zero hour of the week. There is, ordinarily, very little news stirring, and that little tends to be a great deal less than exhilarating. [...]