Medill Newsroom, Chicago

Today’s continuing-education episode took place at Medill’s downtown Chicago newsroom, where graduate students and their faculty editors/coaches are performing, not just practicing, the craft.  

(Far more satisfying than tonight’s three-months-overdue installation of an Okidata C6150dn laser printer on the home network, it probably goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyhow. The new scanner waits for another day.)

It was good to be back in a news meeting after a while, and better still to think about what’s still right about the news business – principally the people who choose to be in it. I took the same good feeling away from a new media “capstone” class on Wednesday, where I gave a cheerful presentation about journalist/technologist teamwork that I called “When worlds collide.”

No end-of-the-world collisions downtown.  Just the process of encountering, checking, synthesizing, and reporting facts across multiple media.  And in a room far more brightly lit than any at the City News Bureau of old (“Hello sweetheart, get me videography”?).

Maybe I should celebrate my good day by buying a better router.