daniel prazer

Back when I was an undergrad journalism major, I worked with an amazing professor, journalist, and friend to this day, Cheryl Heckler. My senior year, we tried like hell to work out an independent study where we’d both go to Kosovo to get a taste of journalism during wartime. A friend who worked at Buzz Coffee, and who served in the Army in Kosovo, gave me this advice: “Don’t step off the pavement. There could be land mines, especially in the Russian sector.” I went to a shooting range and rented a Glock, wanting to be prepared for the worst.

Unfortunately — or fortunately — it didn’t work out. We weren’t able to get visas, and the airfare would have been prohibitively expensive. When I met my wife Ann, I couldn’t fathom taking the kind of risks that conflict reporters and photographers routinely take. I’ve always morbidly joked that if she ever left me or — God forbid — something tragic happens to her, I’d join the French Foreign Legion. I think, now, that I’d rather be a conflict reporter.

If you haven’t seen Restrepo, you owe it to yourself (and I’d argue your country) to see it. It streams on Netflix and is widely available. The trailer is below, but be warned that it contains some not-safe-for-work, soldierly language.

The co-director of Restrepo, Tim Hetherington, died today in Misrata, Libya, and three other photographers were injured, one gravely.

When I talked to Cheryl today, I asked her why Hetherington’s death was affecting me as much as it is. She said, in her typical cut-to-the-point way, “Because their stories are so real, and because you know, if not for Ann, it could be you in that casket.”

There are a lot of heroes in this world. I’m honored to know a few — firefighters, police officers (one killed in the line of duty), people who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, people who did and do amazing things without thinking about it. I know the former company commander of the unit shown in Restrepo.

But what conflict reporters do on a daily basis is a wholly good thing. They put their lives on the line so that we, far, far away from the fighting, have an impartial picture of war. And maybe that’s why I feel the same way about Tim Hetherington that I feel about that police officer killed in the line of duty, the firefighters who don’t make it out of burning buildings, the soldiers who come home with injuries visible and injuries to their psyche. Tim Hetherington represented the best of all journalists, and that’s why anyone who’s ever written under a byline is mourning him today.

So I bought a digital back issue of Field & Stream magazine yesterday through Zinio, which I’d never used before. And I don’t have an iPad, just a laptop and desktop, so while it seemed a bit silly at the time to pay $4 for a digital back issue, I knew I’d have a harder time finding the paper copy.

Well, consider me converted. I get the iPad now—actually, I’m waiting for the HP Slate to come out with a stylus and running Palm’s WebOS, easily the best damn operating system I’ve ever seen on any phone. But I’m completely sold on the notion of digital paper, especially for a publication that’s all about conservation, like F&S. $10 for a digital subscription? That doesn’t sound too bad to these ears.

The writing for print—especially magazine—journalism has been on the wall for ages now. And it took a real hit when Conde Nast discontinued Gourmet, but now it’s out in an iPad app. So if this is a way for publishers to crank out the high-quality content again, I’m all for that, and my wallet is open.

The Australian has a great story of NewsCorp (and Fox and the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones and, oh, The Australian) chief Rupert Murdoch’s views on the iPad:

“It may well be the saving of the newspaper industry”, by making it cheaper to distribute content to a broader audience, Mr Murdoch said. He expected the iPad to have eight or nine competitors within 12 months.

“There’s going to be tens of millions of these things sold all over the world,” he said.

Let’s hope he’s right. It’s often been said that more people than ever are reading news content, but fewer than ever are paying for it. All eyes are on the WSJ as they try their pay-for-content model. Will the iPad provide that outlet? Is it digital paper?

Hell no. But I’m a traditionalist, and I refuse to buy an e-book reader until I can take notes on the damn thing.

Gizmodo summarized a much longer (and well-worth reading) article thusly: it’s a good starting point for the tablet.

But so far, there’s nothing the iPad does that my Palm Pre can’t.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple reps have been meeting with publishers ahead of its expected release of its tablet on Wednesday. Which could be amazing news — absolutely amazing — for the struggling publishing industry.

Apple representatives have been in New York this week talking to the largest trade publishers, according to industry executives. They said Apple had proposed an arrangement under which publishers would get to set the price of their books, with Apple taking a 30 percent commission and the publishers keeping the rest. Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, declined to comment on what he called “rumors and speculation.”

Depending on whether Apple sets an upper limit on pricing, its model could be much more appealing to publishers, who resent how Amazon has aggressively discounted their books. Typically, Amazon charges $9.99 for new releases and best sellers, a price that other e-book vendors, including Sony and Barnes & Noble, have effectively been forced to follow.

Apple revolutionized the electronic music market with the iTunes store, and with the New York Times preparing to charge for content, I can’t help but think the iTunes model can blow the lid on this awful publishing industry — both traditional book and newspapers. With the sheer size of the tablet versus the iPhone, you could buy and comfortably read newspapers online. Think a portable version of Politico‘s digital print version.

When I worked in the newsroom and had access to the AP Photo feed, there were certain photos labeled Graphic Content. Most of them showed bodies, or people in near-corpse states, and they were hard as hell to look at — the kind of photographs you can’t unsee.

But they told their stories better than the more family-friendly shots.

I’ve long been a fan of the Boston Globe’s Big Picture feature. Gorgeous high-res shots from around the world. This one’s titled Haiti six days later.

People run toward a U.S. helicopter as it makes a water drop near a country club used as a forward operating base for the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010. Relief groups and officials are focused on moving aid flowing into Haiti to survivors of the powerful earthquake that hit the country on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

If you’re an adult, you need to see it. You need to click the photos that are labeled graphic content. You need to see what you’re not seeing elsewhere. Then you need to help. I’m a huge fan of Doctor’s Without Borders, who lost some staff in the earthquake, and the UN’s World Food Program, who are getting emergency rations to the people who need them. Please. Give.

So Jon Gambrell, who graduated from Miami University’s journalism program in ’04 (I think), is now the AP Bureau Chief in Lagos, Nigeria. It turned out to be great timing for him, what with the Christmas underwear bomber departing from Lagos. I’ve been reading his updates on the Wii News Channel, of all places.

His Twitter feed is nothing short of amazing. Check it out.

And Jon, keep chasing the stories, but for God’s sake, be careful.

So Jim VandeHei, executive editor of Politoco, has been named to a term on the Pulitzer board, which is great news for the top prize in journalism.

There’s been some huffing and puffing about online journalism being included alongside traditional print organizations for the Pultizers, and rightly so. Bloggers who fancy themselves investigative reporters, lacking any editorial oversight or journalism training, certainly aren’t on par with the Boston Globe, which spent years and millions of dollars investigating the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. And blogs that merely aggregate real reporting and add a paragraph of commentary certainly aren’t on the same level—there’s no way I’d expect to be eligible for a Pulitzer for this post.

That said, Politico is a great step in the right direction. With papers closing their doors (or in precarious financial states) around the country—the shuttering of the print editions of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News come to mind—adding Politico to the Pulitzer board makes sense. It cranks out a daily print issue in D.C., but only while congress is in session. Its bread and butter is its amazing Web site and original reporting. After just a few years, it has the clout to pull in heavy-hitting politicians and, well, politicos as guest writers from all spectrums.

Now, if only we can get papers like the Boston Globe to see this business model makes sense, maybe it’ll stop bleeding $1 million a week.

Frankly, if this deal goes through, it may be good news for the venerable Alt-Weekly. Its parent company is already in bankruptcy and it’s laid off a bunch of DAMN good reporters. Having the paper in the hands of somebody who — gasp! — wants to run papers can’t be any worse than being owned by ticked-off creditors.