The Journalism Shop

It's interesting who you meet online. Chris Brogan recently wrote a post on "friending," which said the following (in part):

On services like LinkedIn, I will connect with anyone, but I will only write recommendations for people whose professional work I can vouch for myself in some capacity. To me, this is a matter of how much of my reputation I’m willing to extend to the other person.

I can certainly support this philosophy. For example, I noted that I would not presume to request an endorsement from Brogan, since our contacts have pretty much been in the "John comments on Chris' blog" category.

But as I was writing my comment, I was thinking in the back of my head of someone whom I've never physically met, Anne Boles Levy, who chose to provide me with a recommendation anyway. (And I also recommended her.) Anne, you see, was formerly known as the Inland Empress (no relation to Ontario Emperor), and wrote a blog under that title until she relocated away from the Inland Empire.

Well, the Inland Empress is married to an emperor, who goes by the name of Brett Levy. Levy himself is a daddyblogger, and a former employee of the Los Angeles Times. As such, he is certainly aware of the issues facing traditional journalism today, and work with others to do something about it. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and recommend it - I think you'll see why I did.

Meet the Journalism Shop:

Welcome to The Journalism Shop, an easy-to-navigate site for finding highly skilled newspaper veterans interested in taking on freelance assignments. All members are former Los Angeles Times staffers offering a wide range of skills and interests, from investigative reporters to book reviewers, page designers to project managers. If you are looking for help with a complete editorial project, email us and we'll get you in touch with the right people.

The Levys are obviously tech-savvy, and they're using various tools to reach out, including a Facebook page.

And that's where I discovered that Brett wrote about the project in his daddyblog, DadTalk. The post title? "Dad Ignores Kids, Builds TheJournalismShop Website"