Finding local stories in national and international news isn’t always easy. But many big stories have local angles, and the news organizations that make the effort can tell important local s...
Nearly 20 years ago, Bridget Hegarty gave me one of the best interviews of my career. This past Christmas Eve, she paid me one of the best compliments of my career. Often journalists don’t lea...
https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/a-source-reconnects-from-a-20-year-old-story/
My old company has essentially proven a point I have made at least twice in this blog: that many newspapers’ value now is mostly the value of the real estate they own. A Ken Doctor report toda...
One of the best things about being a reporter for the Omaha World-Herald was that we were always on deadline. Even before digital publishing gave constant deadlines to all journalists, the World...
I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be for survivors of sexual abuse by priests to watch “Spotlight.” It was plenty uncomfortable for me as a reporter who merely had the unpleasant j...
Mimi and I saw “Rock the Kasbah” Sunday. I don’t cover entertainment much here, so I’m not going to write much about the movie itself. For that, I recommend David Corn’s excellent piece...
Contact information on a news site is certainly a matter of customer service. I’d argue that it’s also an essential form of community engagement. But what about journalism ethics? Is easy acc...
https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/contact-info-and-ethics/
Fifteen years ago, a story I wrote about gays in the ministry was illustrated by a photograph of a former Lutheran pastor kissing his male partner. It was the second installment of a three-part, ...
Jay Rosen has a thoughtful take on “Good Old Fashioned Shoe Leather Reporting,” the “single source of virtue” in American journalism. It feels like hyperbole when Jay writes about shoe-le...
I left the Omaha World-Herald for the second time 10 years ago. After sharing some lessons earlier this year from my much shorter time at the Cedar Rapids Gazette, I started reflecting on my time...
https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/lessons-from-a-decade-at-the-omaha-world-herald/