Web Journalist Blog

I have to admit, I had high hopes for HBO‘s new show The Newsroom, but when I saw the trailer… I cringed.

The reviews are still coming in since it debuted tonight, but while discussing it with other journalists over Twitter, I remembered a much better show.

It’s a relatively unknown Canadian show that debuted 16 years ago… with the same name. (If I recall correctly, legendary The Seattle Times photographer Alan Berner was the one who told me about it.)

The Newsroom (1996): Wikipedia | IMDb

I’d describe it as The Office, but in a newsroom… also, it was five years before the original The Office was on the air.

Thanks to the web, you can buy the show on Amazon, rent the DVDs via Netflix or… see the entire first season (in pieces) thanks to YouTube.

Here is the first episode… enjoy!

Compare and tell me what you think!

If you liked it, here’s season one:
• Episode 2: Part I | Part II | Part III
• Episode 3: Part I | Part II | Part III
• Episode 4: Part I | Part II | Part III
• Episode 5: Part I | Part II | Part III
• Episode 6: Part I | Part II | Part III
• Episode 7: Part I | Part II | Part III
• Episode 8: Part I | Part II | Part III
• Episode 9: Part I | Part II | Part III
• Episode 10: Part I | Part II
• Episode 11: Part I | Part II
• Episode 12: Part I

Friend and colleague Mekahlo Medina, who is the NAHJ Unity board representative and who is also running to be on the NAHJ national board of directors, has created a series of promotional videos to get people excited about this summer’s journalism conference in Vegas.

I’m Unity’s co-program chair (along with AP‘s Paul Cheung, who is running to be AAJA‘s next president), and one of our goals was to truly take advantage of the conference’s diversity and have a fully integrated and progressive convention.

Here’s a video Medina produced after a quick interview with me yesterday:

Unity 2012 Las Vegas Robert Hernandez from Mekahlo Medina on Vimeo.

In case you don’t know, the Unity conference brings the Asian American Journalists Association, Native American Journalism Association, National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalism Association together for a MEGA convention that happens only every four years.

• Here’s the conference programming: http://www.unityconvention.org/program.cfm
• Pre-registration for the conference ends June 29th… so go register! http://www.bit.ly/UNITY12reg

Clearly I am biased, but take my word for it… this will truly be a progressive, diverse conference. Cheung and I did a BlogTalk radio discussing why you should attend UNITY12.

For the lastest Unity 2012 news, make sure you check out the conference Tumblr: http://unity12convention.tumblr.com/

I wrote a quick post offering updates and information I’ve learned since launching the Learn Code for Journalism project.

This the experiment project that mashes up Codecademy’s Code Year with Google+ Hangouts, enabling journalists to learn programming socially.

Read it here: http://learncodefor.journalismwith.me/2012/06/18/what-i-have-learned-from-launching-the-learn-code-for-journalismproject/