Rachel Kaufman, freelance reporter

I'm an interrogator of gargoyle lovers, frog fondlers, and the eternal optimists saving the news industry. These are some of the stories I've written.

Blog

The next Gawker editor?

By • May 26th, 2008 • Category: Blog

I got to write Names and Faces for the Post again, which is always exciting. For just one day, I become an expert on Britney and LiLo and Brangelina and other people who I usually try to ignore. But writing about celebrities is somehow much more entertaining than reading about them, so when it’s my [...]



A Like Affair With Words is back, sort of

By • May 22nd, 2008 • Category: Blog

Playing with graphics, HTML, and CSS is like being on vacation for me, which is why I’ve spent the day and a half since returning from my “real” vacation by messing with this blog. I think the majority of weird, layout-breaking HTML and broken graphics are behind us by this point, so feel free to [...]



Poetry: The Owl and the Pussycat

By • Feb 28th, 2008 • Category: Blog

I. The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, ‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love, What a beautiful Pussy [...]



On ego searching, and why it matters

By • Feb 21st, 2008 • Category: Blog, Uncategorized

Great post last week from Growing Your News Website about journalists responding to conversations that involve them, even when these conversations are taking place not on the MSM dot-com that employs them. Great example: Erie Media-Go-Round mentions the Erie Times-News probably every other day. But ETN reporters never join the conversation. Sure, in this particular [...]



For journos and webheads: Growing Your News Website

By • Feb 20th, 2008 • Category: Blog, Uncategorized

Last week I learned that the Watertown (NY) Daily Times, despite putting all its content online for free, is losing out to a competitor, NewZJunky.com. Howard Owens, awesome blogger and journalist, wrote “Never before have I seen a newspaper.com get trounced in its own market by any competitor — not even a TV station. NewsJunky.com [...]



Tuesday’s Tools: I, Rearrangement Servant

By • Feb 19th, 2008 • Category: Blog

For what might be the most random and unpractical Tool ever, I present Wordsmith.org’s Internet Anagram Server (or “I, Rearrangement Servant”). I suppose this would come in handy when you needed to be witty, or if you had a character in your novel who loved anagrams, or if you were a blogger trying to come [...]



Hooray! ?????

By • Feb 15th, 2008 • Category: Blog

I am a fan of a new 20% project Google has rolled out: translation bots in Google Chat. Add a specific e-mail address to your buddy list (my bot of choice is en2ja@bot.talk.google.com) and if you send it a message, it will spit back a translation. This is a lot faster than Babelfish and what [...]