Journalists should think how a medium can help them getting the information across. And if they don’t know how to use the tools, young guns can help them. Cause in the end, every good journalist wants his story to be heard. And you know what? The sames goes for bloggers!

Continue reading Stop Wondering What Readers Want, It Leads to Mediocrity

Newspapers are dying – you probably know that by now. Online news is their hope, but there’s no business model (yet). We can be sure of thing though: at some point, somebody has to pay for quality news. It doesn’t really matter those who are paying are readers or advertisers. What matters, is that quality newspapers can show their audience that their news is worth paying for.

Continue reading What Journalists Can Learn From Rock Stars

Last June, I was facing a potential boring Sunday evening. So I twittered whether anyone knew an inspiring, rock ‘n’ rollish or just tough journalism movie. Man, I received a whole lotta great tips from my fellow twitter users. As a blogger at a newspaper, I loved the blogger-versus-journalists references in State of Play, dreamed of an All the President’s Men scenario and sang along with Tiny Dancer when watching…

Continue reading 16 Movies for Journalists, the Follow Up

For those of you who don’t know me: I’m a blogger at a Dutch quality newspaper. Last week I went to see State of Play, a movie about a grumpy old reporter who investigates a billion dollar scandal. He gets some help from a newspaper blogger. The funny situations – ‘I don’t have an opinion, maybe I should read some blogs’ – and the ‘damn fine reporting’ inspired me. They…

Continue reading 24 must-see movies for journalists (and 3 series)

My modest career achievements are a direct result of blogging. Ever since I started Spotlight Effect in October 2006, blogging gave me one great opportunity after another. From traveling the world with geeky rockstars to starting a news blog for my favorite newspaper. So why are my friends, family and I so excited about my first article in print which was published today? I’m a blogger for crying out loud,…

Continue reading Bloggers should ‘drag’ journalists into the eye of the storm

Hunter S Thompson is a hero of many. The writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the most honest book about the Hell’s Angels appeals to thousands of young journalists. He invented Gonzo Journalism. A style in which the writer became the story. ,,Structure was thrown out of the window, replaced by a shambolic, yet magical, rollercoaster ride of artless hedonism,” as the BBC puts it. How can we reinvent this rocking genre in a digital age?

Continue reading Reinventing Gonzo Journalism in a digital age Part 1

,,I’m jealous of David Remnick. He’s only fifty years old, but already has the Pullitzer Prize and runs the best magazine of the world, The New Yorker,” said Holland’s most popular talkshow host Matthijs van Nieuwkerk when I interviewed him in the studio of his show. ,,You should look up his bio, do a Google search. I’m sure he will inspire you and your readers as well”.

Well, I took this…

Continue reading How the early work of your heroes can make you a hero

When you’re a journalist who starts a blog, you’ll have to kill some of your darlings. To give you an example: I’ve been in the School of Journalism my whole life. My dad taught me the basic rules for journalism and kept repeating them every time I wrote an article. Like: sub headers consist of one or two words from the following paragraph. For years I obeyed that rule, even…

Continue reading How killing certain press rules and adopting others makes you a high profile blogger

Although I don’t know one word of Japanese, I did get an article published in the April 9th Edition of Fuji Sankei Business-i newspaper, which is being circulated to 200,000 readers a day nationwide. This is how it happened.

At the end of last March, I received an email from Masaru Ikeda. He’s running a system integration company in Tokyo and writes a weekly column about Internet innovations for the Sankei…

Continue reading How I got my first article in Japanese published