Justin McLachlan

I've been working on a new tool that I hope will make it possible for professional and amateur journalists to join together to map the social networks in their communities. I'm not talking about Facebook or Myspace, but the real-life social networks all around us that are hard to detect without some work.

Here's what Investigative Reporters and Editors says about this kind of work:

This is a new approach for journalists, but other professions have utilized this approach for decades for a wide range of research projects such as analyzing:

• who has the most powerful connections in a community
• what ethnic group is disenfranchised in a community
• how terrorist cells or criminal groups operate
• interlocking board of directors of corporations
• international trade data

There are a lot of possibilities, but no easy-to-use tools to work with. That's where Connectifyed comes in. It will combine social network analysis with skilled journalists and crowdsourcing to create stories that weren't possible before.

I'm not sure when Connectifyed will go online, but If you want updates about beta testing and the launch date (when one is picked), you can sign-up at Connectifyed.com.

I have a love-hate relationship with my dogs. Sometimes, they do bad things in the house (well, one of them does -- which one though, is sometimes difficult to tell), which makes me want to lock them in the crate. Take this morning for example. I woke to a garbage can sprawled out across the floor so that the left over taco meet inside could be eaten.

It was a decidedly unhappy morning and both of them spent it as far away from as they could get. But then, they do cute things, like snuggling up to me on the couch or sprawl out on my bed. And then, there's these pictures. Who couldn't love dogs that look like this:



This is Sydney. Truly the sweetest dog you'll ever meet, her only down-side is that she sheds. A lot. It's quite gross and keeps me and the broom well acquainted. She's not keen on the water, so trips to the dog beach can be interesting and loud noises send her into hiding.


What can I say? Rivers is, at heart, a spaz. Frenetic. It's a feature of the breed (Weimeraner), so we can't blame him too much. I think he's largely responsible for most of the mischief, but he's not as smart as Sydney, so she could be setting him up. That aside, he's also very sweet and gets very excited at the notion of going outside, even if it is on the leash. He'll eat anything left within his reach, including bags of bread or cakes that you've just baked and left on the counter to cool.

A debate is ongoing at Twenty-something Journalist over the merits of journalists going to graduate school. Some are pro, some are con.

I fall into the pro category, but it's not simply because I recently finished a grad program myself. I happen to be one of those people who thinks that education for education's sake is always a worthy endeavor.

That aside though, what advice should we give each other about going on to graduate school. The answer is that, it depends.

What are your goals? Going to grad school (or not going) will largely depend on how an advanced degree can help you meet those goals. If an advanced degree won't help you get where you want to be, then maybe your resources (time and money) will be better spent elsewhere.

• Goal: SKIP THE SMALL-MARKET JAIL SENTENCE
  Okay, so it's not a jail sentence for everyone, but for me, working in small markets to get the requisite years of experience in journalism was killing me. I'm not a small-town kind of guy. I live in San Diego now, and even *it's* a bit small for my tastes. So will a master's degree let you move up the ladder faster? A few years ago, probably not. But today, the waters are churning in a different direction and journalistic employers are starting to recognize that not having xx number of years doesn't mean a lot. Like other industries, we too, are starting to understand that education (particularly if it comes with an advanced skill set) can substitute for experience and that skill and ability are just as important as on-the-job experience.
  
• Goal: GET SPECIALIZED TRAINING
  This is a yes. There are many journalism graduate programs that specialize in certain areas (like investigative reporting at Point Park University or entrepreneurial skills at The City University of New York) or let you specialize in whatever you want. My program at WVU let me work toward a thesis project that involved three special skill sets, all useful for today's journalist: investigative reporting, online production/development and converged media (video, audio, print, photos). Not all programs do this, though, and some are strictly mass comm research oriented, so be sure and fully investigate the program you're considering.
• Goal: GET TRAINED, PERIOD
  If you're undergrad wasn't in communications or journalism, it can be difficult to get a job in the field. A grad program in journalism could obviously help -- though many grad programs expect some basic journalism coursework to have already been completed. If you haven't, you'll likely have additional graduation requirements imposed.
  
• Goal: BE A TEACHER
  If you think teaching is in your future, either in a few years or a few decades, then grad school is almost a must. Most universities won't hire professors that don't have master's degrees and in most places you can't be tenure track unless you've gone on to get a PhD, either. The nice part for people like me, who are still relatively young and have some extra time (I freelance, so my schedule is my own), you can make some extra money by becoming an adjunct at a local university. It usually only takes the master's degree (though a few on-the-job years won't hurt).

The decision to go to graduate school for me was a combination of some of the above (I'm also considering law school in about two years, but that's a whole other story) and part of me wishes I'd done it right out of college. But I waited for about three years (I finished undergrad a semester early, in January 2003) so I think the combination of my professional experience plus the master's degree has made me a pretty competitive job candidate.

When should you go? I can't answer that for you, no one can. In this business (as in most, but more so in journalism), years-on-the-job are always very helpful. But again, even that tide has started to turn in news business. Other industries have figured out how to hire and promote based on skill, ability AND experience, we're just figuring that one out. The opportunities for well educated, well trained journalists will get better going forward.

Like I said above, it's going to take a careful weighing of your goals against what a graduate degree can get you. Here's some advice to go away with: Don't listen to the person telling you that graduate school is a waste of your time, and don't listen to the person telling you that you have to go to graduate school (now!). Listen to yourself.

Charles Cretella, a copy editor / editorial indexer is suing the Times, saying they discriminated against him because of his age and "perceived sexuality" after a younger male trainee complained that Cretalla sexually harassed him.

The Courthouse News service has the documents. While it's hard to discern who was sexually harrassing whom from Cretella's complaint -- one item in the suit, in which Cretalla describes a training session with younger guy, George Duncan, caught my eye.

So, uhm, what kind of work place is the Times exactly? And "not concentrating on his training session" is seriously an understatement if I've ever seen one.

Anyway, Cretella is asking for unspecified damages for emotional distress and all that stuff.

Jim Romenesko's media blog at Poynter is a staple in my Google Reader. I've always been drawn to it because he doesn't mix in opinion or commentary. He simply passes on media stories with enough detail to let me know if I'm interested in reading the whole piece.

And judging by the hundreds of responses I received a few years back when he published (along with my email address) an email I sent to him, I'm not a lone. It's a popular blog.

Or at least, it was. Or, it won't be? I noticed something on Twitter this morning: a sort of backlash against the industry-wide death rattles he seems fond of publishing. It's a sign to me, at least, that he's out of touch and that his influence isn't carrying over into the next generation of journalists.

It's not so much about age, as it is about state-of-mind. Really. When I launched twentysomethingjournalist.com, a discussion forum for like-minded young journalists, I wasn't trying to offend anyone or cut anyone out. Really, I don't care what age you are -- if you value innovation and aren't unwaveringly bound by a blood-oath of allegiance to a product printed on dead trees that no one really reads anymore, then I think you'll find something of value at twentysomethingjournalist.com.

My thesis project, WhereDoubtRemains.com, is a finalist in the student category!

The others are:

• University of California, Berkeley, Mauro's Shift


• Taylor Hayden, Western Kentucky University, Closer to Home: A Daughter Becomes Caregiver


• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill & Universidad de los Andes, South of Here

Good luck to everyone. There's some good work in there.

(The complete list is here)

For years, my friend Kris and I have talked about writing a book.

It'll be what's called "creative non-fiction." Think, a news story that reads like a novel. Completely factual, but told in narrative form with lots of those details that newspaper editors usually frown upon. One of my former professors (and a member of my Master's committee), wrote one a few years back, called Dead House.

The only real difference is that we're also characters in the story, not just the authors. I like to share, so here's the first few paragraphs of the first chapter -- completely raw and unedited. So take it for what it's worth.

Turns out my case was special and I was sent straight ahead to very special window number 8. I was done in under two minutes, easily. But the picture about was the scene when I left. I'm estimating at least 200 people in line when the doors opened.

My first bylined story at Sharesleuth.com was published this week. I'm the "with" after Chris Carey, who did an amazing, painstaking job of tying a lot of people and companies together in a way we haven't seen before. That still doesn't matter to the critics and detractors, though.

Anyway, we did a lot of work upgrading the Movabletype installation to version 4, but it gave us the chance to tweak the templates a bit, too.

My next story should be up soon (disclaimer: soon is a relative term). I've spent quite a bit of time working on it, and no, Mark Cuban has no financial position in this one. So back off.