Matthew Wells
contributes to a range of British media outlets from his home in New York.
Blog posts in total 14
Posts
Good luck with the job: New Yorkers' tips for Mark Thompson
The British media seems pretty chuffed that outgoing BBC director-general Mark Thompson has landed a prestigious new berth across the Atlantic, running the New York Times.
New York's 9/11: 'The country is in mourning more for jobs than the dead of ten years ago'
I am one of the handful of BBC journalists who have been in New York City for every one of the 9/11 anniversaries. It will always be a hard story for me to assess objectively. It is the reason that I ended up here, and my most vivid memory of arriving, just six months after 11 September 2001, ...
Sir Harold Evans on the failures of journalism
Matt Wells spoke to Sir Harold Evans in New York: As Editor of the Sunday Times, you helped make it distinctive by giving it a strong investigative arm. Do you see that kind of strength in reporting and in news outlets these days? And what thoughts have you about whether the shift towards onli...
How Facebook sells itself in Washington
Facebook is these days valued at more than $50 billion, but you'd never guess it visiting its Washington DC office It looks more like The Office than some K Street lobbyists' palace. But don't be fooled - there are plans to move a lot closer to Capitol Hill very soon. I was shown around by ...
The ambitions of a young journalist in Southern Sudan
By any standards, Deng Kooch Diing is a remarkable young journalist. He's the parliamentary reporter for the Juba Post, in Southern Sudan. Juba will soon become the capital of the world's newest country, if the voters there hold sway following the referendum taking place this week. That vote ...
TV is more opinionated than print in US media culture
As founder and editor of MediaGuardian, Emily Bell went on to be editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited. Last year she upped sticks to become Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at New York's Columbia University. I asked for her take on the differences between the media in London...
Big ambitions of journalism students in the USA
Emily Bell knows pretty much everybody who has worked in the British national media in the past 15 years. As founder and editor of MediaGuardian, she went on to be editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited (where she gave this humble hack some writing space around the 2004 US election). Most recentl...
Filling the gaps in foreign coverage
Ethan Zuckerman is about as far away from a big-city newspaper editor as it gets. He lives in rural Massachusetts, is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and co-founded a site in 2004 that's dedicated to reaching the parts old media doesn't reach: Global Voices. The site i...
How to make money as a pay-by-click journalist
Writer Will Stape represents part of the new cohort of US citizen journalists.
The New York Times as video
Last spring, when the New York Times launched its daily news video show, TimesCast, one of the bold ideas was to turn the cameras on itself. The Page One Meeting - or editors' morning conference, as most British papers would call it - is right at the heart of the decision-making process. With...
Confessions of an NGO media-minder
The relationship between media-operator and media-minder in disaster relief can be tense. Sarah Wilson (above) has been a media officer for Christian Aid for six years, specialising in the Caribbean and Latin/Central America. Her official job title for the NGO is 'journalist'. I was...
US media responds to soccer boom
"An investment in the future" - that's how one senior executive from the giant US sports broadcaster ESPN described its ground-breaking World Cup coverage. Fanciful talk in the US media of football getting real traction has been around for decades, but now it appears to be real. Almost 20...
Michael Wolff: at the intersection of old and new media
He's got an influential column in a glossy magazine, but he's also behind a cutting-edge online news aggregator. Michael Wolff admits to biting the hand that feeds him. He's not the most popular media commentator in New York City, but he's been one of the most prescient since the dawn of ...
Gawker and the online video revolution
Perhaps no new media site represents the blog revolution in US journalism better than Gawker. Founded seven years ago by the former Financial Times journalist Nick Denton, it aimed to bring some sceptical British news sensibilities to the rather cosy and deferential world of Manhattan media re...
