Here’s a potentially useful trick for reporters, journalists and anyone else who needs to track websites for changes that may contain potentially newsworthy information. Problem: Reporters monitor dozens of Websites related to their beats for new documents and information. …

Over the past several years, I’ve had 2–3 books going at any given time, which has allowed me to get through a few dozen books each year (despite being a relatively slow reader for someone who writes and reads for a living). …

Fourth in a series of occasional essays on the current state of local news in the U.S. There weren’t many openings for reporters when I graduated from college, and that’s how I found myself interviewing for a position at a newspaper in Berlin, NH in the summer of 1996. That…

Third in a series of occasional essays on the current state of local news in the U.S. There was a time when journalism came from the same place as Kurt Vonnegut’s novels or George Carlin’s stand-up comedy. It was a place with extreme distrust for institutions and extreme empathy for…

Second in a series of occasional essays on the current state of local news in the U.S. My news addiction started innocently enough in the third grade. I loved the Bruins even though I could not skate, and I loved the Red Sox even though I was terrified of the…

First in a series of occasional essays on the current state of local news in the U.S. “When a new dictator takes over a country, one of the first things he does is seize or close the newspapers. Apathy isn’t as heavy-handed as a dictator. …

I have two jobs where I spend a lot of time reading other people’s writing: I spend 40+ hours per week as a regional managing editor for Patch media, where I oversee a team of ten journalists who post content on more than 100 local news sites in three states. …

Over the weekend I learned that Ron Gonen, the subject of my 2007 book Blood & Volume: Inside New York’s Israeli Mafia, died in October 2020. He had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a rare but aggressive form of cancer, and the cancer did not respond to treatment. He was 72. …

Posting this hear because I actually have friends who are not on Facebook who wanted to read it…. I was 31 when my Dad died in 2004. Not too long after that my Mom noted that was about the same age she was when her mother had died and said…