April 13th, 2011 by Bill Lascher I admit that the story – and this entire series, delayed as it may be – has meandered from its path. Nevertheless, I’m also wrestling with how to respond honestly to my experiences, with what happened in my brain on the journey and whether it’s self-indulgent to serve this soup of thought (it’s a little too stagnant to call it a stream) to you, instead of a straightforward report of the who and the what I saw where and when. Which approach provides the real, honest reporting?
Read the rest of Heart of the Monster: Journey to SEJ 2010, Part 3
March 22nd, 2011 by Bill Lascher
June 11th, 2010 by Bill Lascher Will following the footsteps of Melville Jacoby, a World War II correspondent and my grandmother’s cousin, help me cover the gulf oil spill?
Read the rest of Following a War Correspondent’s Footsteps to the Oil Spill
May 18th, 2010 by Bill Lascher 
Michelle Rafter, Blogathon Organizer and Owner of WordCount
One of the more interesting features of the 2010 Blogathon is today’s guest post exchange day. Blogathon participants have wandered about the Internet to post on each other’s blogs. Visiting Lascher at Large today is
Read the rest of Guest Post – All for one and one for all: why writer communities
May 7th, 2010 by Bill Lascher Like Jen Willis, today I attended an investigative business journalism seminar organized by the Reynolds Center. Unlike Jen, though, I don’t feel as pessimistic about the potential for freelance journalists to do investigative work. Nor do I feel staff writers should lament, at least not for the long term. What I took
Read the rest of The Free(lance)dom to Investigate
April 23rd, 2010 by Bill Lascher I agree that SEO isn’t about conforming to a robotic standard, but it’s also not about speaking to people, it’s about speaking to some sense of the mean average of what people are looking for. The thing is, if we want to succeed — both in reaching people and in drawing them back to our work — we can’t just be producing what the public is looking for, what the public wants to read. We must, we absolutely must tell the stories that the public doesn’t know it is looking for, that the public isn’t looking for, that the public hasn’t even conceptualized the terms for. If we don’t, in very short order we will tell fewer and fewer stories that matter, that impact society and we will lose not only all impact, but all value we are capable of offering the public.
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April 1st, 2010 by Bill Lascher Yesterday afternoon President Obama shocked the country when he announced plans to open parts of the Atlantic and Alaskan coasts to oil drilling. Though the Pacific Coast was left untouched, the move could open up huge expanses of ocean elsewhere.
Many environmentalists treated the news as a betrayal and yet another delay in
Read the rest of All Things Not Considered in NPR’s Oil Drilling Coverage
November 25th, 2009 by Bill Lascher Finding Community | Stopping to Breathe | False divisions | Continuing the discussion | Other Voices
I arrived in Los Angeles late Monday afternoon. As I landed, I watched the sunset turn the Santa Monica Mountains that golden hue they turn in late fall, caught glimpses of the skyscrapers
Read the rest of Making the most of making the media
November 2nd, 2009 by Bill Lascher The Ventura County Star reported Oct. 30 that Ventura County Superior Court Judge Glen Reiser halted the demoliton of the Wagon Wheel hotel. The stay came after what seemed like the end of a long fight between developer Vince Daly and the San Buenaventura Conservancy.
Many comments
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October 21st, 2009 by Bill Lascher What are you doing this Saturday?
Perhaps you’re taking a stand to help slow climate change by participating in one of more than 4,000 actions in 170 countries being organized by 350.org. The number, as the organization will tell you, represents the parts per million of carbon dioxide thought to be
Read the rest of A life, a career, a world repurposed
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This is a copy of a blog post I wrote today at 
