Amir Kurtovic's Page

Getting a journalism degree in 2009 seems like a dumb idea. There are no jobs. Not only that, so far in 2009 U.S. newspapers have cut almost 12,000 jobs, according to Paper Cuts. Huge newspaper companies, such as Hearst, McClatchy, and The New York Times, find their once soaring stock prices left valueless while upstart Internet companies with no track record of profitability are valued in the millions and billions.

Wanting to become a newspaper journalist in 2009 is like wanting to become a st… Continue

The New York Times is considering charging a $5.00 monthly fee for access to its website, according to various media reports. The decision should come sometime in August and could make the Times the first major U.S. newspaper to establish a pay-wall around its online content.

The New York Times Company stock price has taken a beating over the last year, dropping nearly 70%. And besides borrowing $250 million from a Mexican billionaire and trying to sell the Boston Globe, the Times’ debt rating… Continue

If you are like me you have often had a hard time trying to record a phone conversation. Sometimes you might be in a noisy environment and you can’t put the person on the speaker phone, or other times you might get the call on a phone with no speaker phone at all.

After looking around for a while, I think I have found the easiest and most reliable way to record a phone conversation.

The Olympus TP7 Telephone Pickup is basically a little microphone that you plug into your ear. You simply hold t… Continue

For the last week I have been busy on Helium.com. If you are not familiar with Helium, it is a website that allows writers to publish articles, get rated, compete in writing contests, and earn a little bit of money doing it all.

I signed up on Helium because I planned to write a blog post comparing various citizen-journalism websites and places where writers can get paid for their work. I must admit that at first I was not really that impressed with the website. Since I planned to write about w… Continue

I am often astonished by the amounts of articles that bloggers write about … well … blogging. It’s as if they are stuck in an echo-chamber, all screaming the same thing, and amazed to find that everybody agrees with them. I think it’s time to face facts. Blogging is nothing new. It’s nothing revolutionary. It’s nothing amazing.

When you really think about it from a techincal point of view, a blog is nothing more than a “content managment system.” A blog simply makes it easy to publish informati… Continue