Author Archives: Robert Basil

Taking notes

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Robert Basil

Starting early last year I noticed that students would take photographs of notes I’d written on the board with their smart-phones. What a great idea, I thought – at first. Then I noticed that on some assignments my own on-the-whiteboard language … Continue reading →

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Vocativ: News from the deep web

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Robert Basil

Another new top-of-the-morning visit these days is Vocativ. It’s a news site that reports on stories I often haven’t seen elsewhere. What sets is apart from traditional online reportage is how it finds stories. From the website: Vocativ is at … Continue reading →

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Aeon: Intellectual Culture

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Robert Basil

My new favourite place to go very morning is Aeon, a marvellous multimedia site devoted to intellectual culture: “big ideas, serious enquiry, a humane worldview and good writing.” From the About page: Aeon has four channels…. Most weekdays, it publishes … Continue reading →

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News Literacy 2016

Posted on March 8, 2016 by Robert Basil

While we’re talking about Jay Rosen, let me introduce you to an initiative he started the other day with some of his graduate students at NYU: NewsLiteracy2016. This is a wonderful project. Jay’s announcement on his Facebook feed: One of … Continue reading →

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Self-revision

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Robert Basil

It is hard to edit one’s own work into its final version; you always need a second pair of eyes. One can, though, review and recast one’s work using intelligent techniques. My former mentor NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen mentions two … Continue reading →

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Puzzling Advertising: Who is the intended audience?

Posted on March 6, 2016 by Robert Basil

This advertisement by Vanda Pharmaceuticals (shown a dozen times a day, it seems, on MSNBC) is for a drug called Hetlioz. (It’s very expensive.) Vanda says Hetlioz helps blind people who have a rare condition called Non-24. These folk have trouble sleeping through the night and staying … Continue reading →

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Practice

Posted on March 6, 2016 by Robert Basil

As a teacher and as an editor, my counsel to students and writers often seems too obvious even to say. For instance: “You can’t complete a large project in a short time. Proceed bit by bit” (or “bird by bird“). … Continue reading →

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Smart/Dumb

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Robert Basil

In my profession some colleagues believe that marking hard – giving more D’s than B’s, for instance – correlates with a high level of “rigour” in teaching. To my mind, though, there is often no connection between grade distribution and … Continue reading →

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L’Esprit D’Escalier

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Robert Basil

Things have changed, if just a little bit, in ten years. From January 2005: I’ve been hearing dialogue everywhere, dialogue that seems to be coming from the same play. At the end of party I went to recently, a woman told … Continue reading →

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So, you think you can’t write …

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Robert Basil

Dana Fontein, a fine blog writer over at Hootsuite, posted a really helpful piece this morning, “So You Think You Can’t Write: 8 Writing Resources for Non-Writers.” Many believe that they simply cannot write, or that they aren’t a “writer,” when … Continue reading →

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