Tom Davidson

My friend and former colleague Bill Day and I just finished a great six-week course in entrepreneurial journalism for 18 graduate students in American University’s Interactive Journalism master’s program. We set out to be intentionally provocative, because Bill and I have seen too many great ideas for projects and products turn into smoldering wreckage because [...]

The very interesting social-media curation tool Storify was released in private beta on Tuesday at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference. It neatly twists the idea behind Flipboard. Flipboard automatically generates a list of stories that might interest you, based on links suggested by people you follow on Twitter or your Facebook friends. Storify reverses the flow – [...]

The National Journal is making a major effort to revamp its websites, and it just made a brilliant hire, my old friend and colleague David Beard. The Journal’s gain, of course, is someone’s loss – the Boston Globe‘s. Sadly, this is another example of the continuing brain drain of smart digital leaders from traditional newspaper [...]

My friends at the Online News Association put together a terrific program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham for entrepreneurial journalists and others interested in starting news and information sites. (Thanks to the Gannett Foundation for the necessary financial support.)  I spoke a bit about emerging business models to support these kinds of sites (and – plug [...]

When you check out Tigers.com this morning, you see video of a brilliant catch … but not of a badly botched call that cost a team a perfect game. Similarly, if you check out TwinsBaseball.com, you see video of home runs … but not an equally botched call that cost the Twins (disclosure: my favorite team) [...]

I’m doing this, well, just because I can. (People who make up asinine policies first need to understand the underlying technology.) Hat tip @JeffJarvis – who will not seek damages for me linking to him.

My favorite ballclub opens their brand-new stadium today, so forgive me if I seem a bit preoccupied. Watching all the hoopla – on multiple media platforms at once – gives us all another lesson on the folly of the paid-content argument from some traditionalists.

Matt Mullenweg is at it again. He’s the creator of WordPress, one of the free tools that’s reinventing the world of media and the very definition of what it means to be a “journalist.” How does Mullenweg justify giving away the results of years of work? Then working more untold hours on upgrades (helllll-ooooo Version 3!)? Then [...]

Over at the GrowthSpur blog, Mark Potts and I have posted about a bunch of free tools we like that are highly useful for entrepreneurial journalists. (Oh – and that jokey lead about hardware stores? Not a joke. I’m so bad that the Fabulous Sue Corbett (trademark pending) jabbed me in a one-act play about Noah’s [...]

Offered with no comment, and minimal context: The writer, Eileen Spiegler, is a longtime colleague, and a gifted copy editor. From her online musings on a random Wednesday: “Sometimes I wish the newspaper was as interesting as my Twitter stream.” Discuss, please.