Books read, 2014

I had hoped to beat 2013’s total of 14 books, and am midway through two excellent ones, but both are slow-going, both because they’re fairly hefty reads during the holidays, and because I’m savoring them both: Tim Powers’ tour-de-force Declare, which melds World War II and Cold War espionage with genies and, from the looks of thing, Biblical apocrypha, and the incredibly comprehensive The Frood, a biography of Douglas Adams which includes many never-before-seen outtakes that never made it into the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy stories or other works. Both are fantastic reads and both are slow going.

Feb. 28: Top Secret America by Dana Priest
March 16: Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams
May 28: Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
June 1: Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold
June 9: Doctor Who: Shada by Gareth Roberts and Douglas Adams
June 15: The Last Kind Words Saloon by Larry McMurtry
July 5: The Government Manual for New Pirates by Matthew David Brozik
July 31: The Radleys by Matt Haig
Aug. 25: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas
Aug. 26: The Magician King by Lev Grossman
Sept. 23: Grimbeard Goes to Prison by Samwise Didier
Oct. 12: The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman
Nov. 11: Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
Nov. 22: Skink–No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen

Stay away from Last Kind Words Saloon, by the way. I’m not sure what McMurtry was going for there, but it reads like the old “be awful to you until you break up with me” maneuver and is all around unpleasant. Forget “not watering your plants while you’re away and letting them die” or “forgetting to pick you up at the airport” awful; we’re talking “I let your dog out of the house and it got hit by a car and died” awful. You’ve been warned.

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I'm in the Columbia Journalism Review. Sort of.

My name was one of those in an ad taken out by the California Teachers Association, announcing the winners of 2013 John Swett Awards for Media Excellence.

I won an award for my coverage of the parent-trigger movement in the San Bernardino Sun and Los Angeles Daily News.

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Investigative Reporters and Editors 2014 conference panel liveblogs

I just returned from a 10-day vacation in San Francisco, both for my father’s 70th birthday and to attend to the 2014 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference.

As the Los Angeles News Group helpfully paid for my membership and conference fee, I liveblogged the 19 (!) panels I attended. I attend IRE conferences — this is my second; I attended the 2010 conference in Las Vegas as well — for the practical advice and “how to replicate my awesome investigation” outlines and tips, not war stories, so note that the liveblogs are light on those and favor news-you-can-use (assuming you’re an investigative journalist, at least).

Here then, are the liveblogs. I’ll be updating them shortly to add any supplemental tip sheets and handouts provided by the speakers:

1. Investigations that focus on forgotten victims
2. On the beat: Education
3. 60 (data-driven) ideas in 60 minutes
4. The Kingmakers: Tracking money and influence in politics
5. Open records: New challenges to access
6. Small newsrooms, big stories: Doing data-driven investigations with limited resources
7. The data-driven story: Conceiving, launching and taking it home
8. Campus coverage: Student loans debt and aid
9. Mining documents to build your investigation
10. On the beat: Local government
11. Investigating veterans issues
12. Deep dive: Mobile-first journalism making big stories work on small screens
13. They’re watching you: Investigating the surveillance society and protecting your work from prying eyes
14. How to find stories in government contracting data
15. Campus coverage: Sexual assault and other crimes on campus
16. Investigating in a small town
17. Using Twitter data to tell stories/
18. Friendly fire: Investigating do-gooders and crowd-pleasers/
19. Open source tools for news
20. Web tools, tips and tricks for investigations%

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The greatest journalism video of all time

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iPod Top 100: 2013

A little later than usual this year, but here’s what I was listening to the most in 2013.

Previous editions can be found here: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

There’s probably something a psychologist could tease out of the number of female rockers on these lists, which seems to be the only consistent element over the years.

1. “Party Kids” – Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside
2. “The Sword By My Side” – The Thermals
3. “Awkward” – San Cisco
4. “Black Sheep” – Gin Wigmore
5. “They Told Me” – Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside
6. “Holy Roller” – Thao & The Get Down Stay Down
7. “Summer in the City” – The Eels
8. “Island Song” – Zac Brown Band
9. “Slyd” – !!!!
10. “Water” – Brad Paisley
(more…)