I was just re-reading Roy Peter Clark's "The American Conversation and the Language of Journalism." Always a good thing to do. I think I might needle-point "Get the name of the dog" and put it above my desk. It's a concept that's repeated all over the place nowadays but can't be said enough, particularly when we're pedal to the metal getting the paper out.

This bit that Clark quotes from Brit scholar John Carey gets at the heart of it: "the good reporter must do everything in his power to... isolate the singularities that will make his account real for his readers—not just something written, but something seen."

And Clark illustrates it with this gem:

I remember a police story that came out of my end of town. It was hot, oppressively humid Florida day, and things started to go badly inside a house on 63rd Avenue S. First the air-conditioner broke down, making it unbearably sticky for husband, wife, and mother-inlaw.Mother-in-law’s irritation increased when the television set also went on the blink. (The reporter didn’t tell me, but I wanted to know what she was watching at the time. Was it Jeopardyor Wheel of Fortune or The Dating Gameor One Life to Live?)

The old woman complained to her son-in-law that the television was not working. So the son-in-law did what any Florida man would do under such circumstances: He shot out the screen of the television set with a handgun. What followed was a stand-off with police and his eventual surrender.

The reporter, Doreen Carvajal, does tell us, bless her, that the man’s foul mood and subsequent violence were influenced by his imbibing 24 cans of beer that day. Black Label beer. Not Heineken or Budweiser or Coors. But Black Label.

No wonder he shot out the television.

The full text can be found here.

A look at the weeklies across the city

By David Taber

The average Bostonian might be concerned about a detail tucked into the 18th paragraph of story. about the rise in births by caesarean section in the bay state in the Boston Globe.

“That findings about C-section rates were part of a larger annual report on births in Massachusetts. That study also found that racial gaps in infant mortality rates persist in the state, with African-American babies more than 2 1/2 times more likely to die before their first birthday than white infants,” the story reads.

By Lou Manzo
Formerly of the South End News

The nuts and bolts of community journalism in the small rural community of Acornhoek, South Africa are the same as Boston’s South End. What’s different is everything else.

The newsroom of The Villager is open air, allowing for a cool breeze to sweep through the office in the afternoon. The reporters are all female and black. Giraffes, warthogs and impala graze in the fields. Last week one of our reporters covered the murder of a local man—at the jaws of a hippo.

The Villager is published by Amazwi—“voices” in Zulu—a two-year-old NGO working to empower and educate female voices in rural South Africa through media arts.

My role there straddles two worlds. I manage the internet site—providing a window into the world of rural South African life for those outside the community—and I also work with the women on their reporting—stepping back into a different era. While some people have cell phones, there are no directories. Tracking stories necessitates fieldwork that is both frustrating and refreshing at once. Some chiefs, for example, don’t yet feel it’s necessary to answer our female reporters. In other ways, this is a land that journalists can only dream of at home.

There are no public relations firms, no spokespersons and no “off the record” rants. Interviews are refreshing for their candor. It’s truly the no-spin zone.

By Nate Leskovic
ACJ Treasurer

Boston’s rival street papers have sheathed their blades and left the cutthroat journalism world behind with a recently announced plan to merge.

Spare Change News and Whats Up Magazine, traditionally sold on the streets by homeless vendors, are hammering out details that would tuck the culture-centered Whats Up inside the more hard-news Spare Change as a separate section.

“To get this plan moving will benefit everyone—readers, staff and vendors,” says Spare Change Executive Director Emily Johnson. “We’ll be working with a lot more writers and I think it will make it a lot more appealing.”

By Katie Liesener
ACJ Education Liaison

If, like politics, all journalism is local, then community journalists are the privates sent to the front. Last month, an array of captains and generals from some of the finest news organizations in the country came to rally the troops at the "Making the Most of your Local Advantage" conference, co-hosted by the Alliance for Community Journalism and the Nieman Foundation.

A sold out crowd of reporters and editors from weeklies in small towns and big cities across Massachusetts sat rapt and scribbling as journalistic trailblazers Lane DeGregory, Ben Montgomery and others divulged their secrets Oct. 20.

How to sink your teeth into a new neighborhood

Being the new reporter in town is like arriving late to a party. You are forever entering mid-conversation.

Everywhere you go, residents are buzzing about the latest events, dropping shorthand references and leaving the "obvious" unsaid.

Your head is turning as fast as your pen is scribbling. Who? What? Where? Huh?

The irony of course, is that you – the stranger without a clue – are supposed to become this community’s expert source of information. So where to begin? How does a new reporter at a community newspaper get a feel for the place, its people and politics?

Pete Stidman
acj.org

After four years of putting out their newspaper on pure volunteer power, the Fenway News board of directors has hired writer Stephen Brophy as editor.

“We still have to hold their feet to the fire,” said Brophy, speaking about real estate developers during his acceptance speech at the Fenway News annual meeting on June 14. “There are ways to be involved, and the newspaper is an essential part of that: a way for people to know what's going on and affect what's going on.”

On changes at the paper, Brophy is conservative yet ambitious. He is interested in bringing in new advertisers to support more pages, publishing a website and adding content that bridges the divide between long-term Fenway residents and the student population.

By Katie Liesener
acj.org

What goes on at the State House?

That not so simple question has a widely fractured answer, with many pieces of the puzzle scattered across the internet.

Openmass.org, launched in February, is tackling the problem by organizing data from the state’s website, news stories, and blogs to create a clearer, easy to navigate picture of Beacon Hill.

The site tracks newly signed and proposed laws, upcoming public hearings, and hot-button issues (such as health care and same-sex marriage), providing a short description of each along with relevant links – all in a clean, simple format.

By Pete Stidman
acj.org

Keeping up with the ever-changing landscape of the web has been difficult for small, independent news organizations, not to mention the trepidation some editors feel from watching the bigger dailies go through their troubled transitions. But papers in the South End and Jamaica Plain are apparently studying the trials and errors of others and moving forward. Both recently put their content online, along with some nifty new features.

Although JamaicaPlainGazette.com is still technically in beta mode according to Gazette editor Sandra Storey, it has already received some compliments from readers. The Gazette has had its events and teasers for the top stories online for years, but the new site is a giant leap forward.

By Roy Peter Clark
Poynter.org

It was my recent pleasure to work with a journalist named Mila Koumpilova, born in Bulgaria, but now practicing her craft in the United States. Her command of English is flawless, and she knows more about the technical aspects of the language than most native speakers.

In a seminar, we discussed this example of dense writing, shown to me years ago by the great writing coach, Kate Long:

A bill that would exclude tax income from the assessed value of new homes from the state education funding formula could mean a loss of revenue for Chesapeake County schools.