- travel
- Mexico
The soul outside Merida's "artistic" center
On a torrid April midmorning, I stood with my kids in a thin sliver of shade cast by a building in Ciudad Caucel, a sprawling suburb on the western edge of Merida, Mexico. There were already several people pressed up against the building so I had to stand partly in ...
- journalism
Writing for radio: a quote-based writing method
Writing is hard work. When preparing a radio script, I put off that hard work as long as I can, focusing on the quotes and scenes, and only starting to write at the very end of the job.
- Programming
- django
- wagtail
Wagtail: replicating a database with fixtures
Replicating your development database on your production server isn't as easy as copy-paste. A bug in Wagtail makes it doubly difficult. Here's a step-by-step guide that worked for me.
- Programming
- Haiti
50 lines of code behind one line of reporting
Education in Haiti is unequal, but how unequal? To find out, I scoured the internet for data, then applied a little basic coding to get an answer. The techniques I used were simple but come from the world of programming, not journalism. A simple parable about the use of coding skills in a journalist's daily work.
Hunting for William Hall
In the year of our lord eighteen hundred and fifty seven, a volunteer in the British Navy from Horton, Nova Scotia stood almost alone in a rubble-strewn courtyard in Lucknow, India. Behind him, a force of British troops and loyal …
Gritty journalism on a shoestring: send some string their way!
Six staff members. 10 freelancers. 14 awards. 50,000 visitors a month. 10,000 facebook followers. 500 hundred original stories a year. And they do it all for an annual budget of $20,000 USD! Lado B is no milquetoast pamphlet for store …