Opening Day in Oakland, With Prospects of Doubleheader of Anguish for A’s Fans As the A’s take the field for their home opener Friday against the Seattle Mariners, the team’s overachieving glory days depicted in last year’s “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt as General Manager Billy Beane are a warm, if distant glimmer. While Opening Day […]
Category: New York Times
Merger With Investigative Unit Likely to Mean Major Shift in Bay Citizen Coverage: New York Times, March 29, 2012
Once a media reporter, always a media reporter. Although I had not written my media column in the San Francisco Chronicle for several years (I left the paper in 2007, but Media Bytes had ended well before that), The Bay Citizen assigned me the story of their own merger; because of an arrangement they had […]
Bay Citizen, Center for Investigative Reporting to Merge: The Bay Citizen, March 27, 2012
Once a media reporter, always a media reporter. Although I had not written my media column in the San Francisco Chronicle for several years (I left the paper in 2007, but Media Bytes had ended well before that), The Bay Citizen assigned me the story of their own merger. It was a good chance to […]
Pig Farmer’s True Prizewinner is His Fantasy Baseball Team: New York Times, October 2011
I broke this story at the end of the 2011 baseball season, when the best fantasy baseball player in the world – with winnings of more than $300,000 over the past three years – was revealed to be Idaho pig farmer Lindy Hinkelman. Modest Farmer, Managing Mogul The National Fantasy Baseball Championship, a contest paying […]
Bay Area’s Little Leagues Overflow With Would-Be Giants: New York Times, April 2011
SAN FRANCISCO — The good vibrations from the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory last fall continue to reverberate in the Bay Area, where children inspired by the improbable success of the Giants’ assemblage of castoffs have overwhelmed local Little Leagues. Youths who had never played the game suddenly saw themselves as Cody Ross or Tim […]
I can get Satisfaction
I come across a lot of startups in my work as a technology journalist, and quite often I can’t tell if they have any shot of making it. I admire the passion, but I know that they face many hurdles, and many will fail. I don’t know if Get Satisfaction, the startup that I profiled […]
Feel better, Om Malik
I’d like to join the chorus wishing for Om Malik‘s speedy recovery. In today’s New York Times, I have a story about how Om suffered a heart attack just after Christmas — and how other A-list bloggers like Paul Kedrosky and Michael Arrington warn how stressful it is to have to constantly update a site. Om was […]
Shed a tear for Dow Jones
I wrote a story in today’s New York Times about how Dow Jones has lost its spot in the Standard & Poor’s 500, getting replaced by GameStop, a shopping mall seller of new and used video games. For Dow Jones, the demotion is but one more sign of the painful move into Rupert Murdoch’s fold. For […]
The virtues, and sins, of editing
As a writer, length has always been important. As a newspaper reporter, I tended to write long stories, trying to cram in every detail I had gathered. As a freelance writer, I’m frequently paid by the word. I love long-form journalism, and am enjoying writing for magazines and dreaming up book projects. Yet I struggle with […]
New York Times: Outsource my chores to India
The New York Times today published a story I wrote about how small businesses and individuals can outsource even mundane tasks to “virtual personal assistants” in India. In reporting the story, I found many people using these affordable services in a variety of creative ways: A woman in New Jersey who works for a health […]