Author Archives: Lauren Rabaino

What I’ve been up to these past few weeks

Phew, what a crazy three weeks it’s been! I’m writing this post from Seattle, where I’ve now been officially living for a full week. Yesterday was my first day at The Times. Here are a few highlights about the move … Continue reading

Seattle WP Meetup Friday. Just found out Matt Mullenweg is hosting a last-minute meetup tonight at the Pike Pub & Brewery downtown. Headed down there now. If you’re here and you’re free, come join us. Yes, that means I made the 20+ hour drive up here from California and am now officially living in Seattle. More on that later.

I’m headed to The Seattle Times

Big news today in the life of Lauren Rabaino: I am taking a job at The Seattle Times as a resident producer. For those of you who don’t know, I left Publish2 at the end of December. Since then, I’ve … Continue reading

California Supreme Court rejects noncompete clauses. This is old news but I discovered it today from a lab technician in Santa Barbara. I’ve signed a few noncompete agreements in my day, and apparently they’re void here in California. “Californians have the right to move from one company to another or start their own business and can’t be prohibited by their employer from working for a competitor in their next job.”

Detroit Free-Press uses Intersect to map and document Asian carp journey. My personal critique at 10,000 Words on Free-Press’ use of the storytelling tool. Overall, I don’t think it’s a good medium for the content type, but give them kudos for real-time, on-the-spot reporting.

Sample uses of WordPress’s Twenty Ten theme

I love Twenty Ten. (Really, it’s what I was thankful for this Thanksgiving). The theme’s structure, typography and general functionality make my mouth water. It’s more than “just another WordPress theme.” The best part: It’s so damn versatile. With just … Continue reading

How I lost my WordPress virginity

I started to write this post for the Carnival of Fail about CoPress. But I realized that the CoPress story wasn’t really mine to tell (passing the mic to Bachhuber) and didn’t end up writing a Carnival of Fail post. … Continue reading

What was important in my life during mid-2009

I haven’t used Google Tasks since the summer of 2009. I opened up my task list today to start using it again and was amused at what tasks still exist there. I won’t explain any of these things. My favorites … Continue reading

Happy Mother’s Day

To all the mothers out there, I hope you have a wonderful day.  I know my mom is — the six words I used to describe her for The New York Times‘ “momoirs” were briefly on the homepage this morning, … Continue reading

Knight News Challenge Survey Results Graphic

To capture the data collected by our informal Knight News Challenge survey, I created this infographic.

Why the New York Times’ Pay Model is Similar to NPR and Spot.Us. David Cohn’s awesome idea to implement a points system for readers who pay a subscription fee to the NYT.

Personal reflections on Osama Bin Laden’s death

I am from the generation shaped by 9/11. I still remember that somber day in 2001. I was in seventh grade. I woke up to my dad watching TV, probably around 6 a.m. PST, telling me that a plane had … Continue reading

Even In Real Life, There Were Screens Between Us. This NYT guest piece by Syracuse student Caitlin Dewey captures exactly what modern love is like in an online world. I’ve had many-a-fling that played out the same way. For the record, offline love is a million times better.

Five Things AOL’s Patch Is Doing Right. My latest 10,000 Words post about things we can learn about openness and transparency from Patch, despite other criticisms of the hyperlocal effort. These are easily-adoptable concepts for all newsrooms.

Photos from Hardly Strictly Young at RJI

From April 17-19, a small group was invited to the Reynold’s Journalism Institute for a conference geared toward inventing alternate implementations for the Knight Commission report (read my reflections). These are a few moments snapped from my iPhone.

Reflections on Hardly Strictly Young

Last week I learned that David Cohn knows how to tell a joke, bust a move and host an awesome conference. In all seriousness, the Hardly Strictly Young conference was a whirlwind of new people, old friends, big questions, bright ideas … Continue reading

Thoughts on using Facebook Connect

A former teacher of mine saw my recent post on 10,000 Words about The Washington Post’s news aggregation tool, Trove, and wrote me a concerned email. She’s interested in using the app, but doesn’t want to hand over all her … Continue reading

Weight lifting progress report

It’s been exactly two months since I started the StrongLifts 5×5 weight training program. The progress report so far (weight includes the weight of the 35lb bar): Squats: 52.5 lbs Bench press: 50 lbs Overhead press: 40 lbs Deadlifts: 65 … Continue reading