Net Neutrality will keep information highway open for all
Everyone needs the internet, and we need it to be open and free. That’s the net we’ve always known, the one that’s powered our economy, our culture and our sense of what’s possible.
Opinion column for WRAL.com (December 12, 2017)
Listen to the people who care
When I was a reporter, I would sometimes find myself asking: How do I make people care? But the assumption underlying the question “How do I make people care?” is that people don’t. That just isn’t true.
Blog post for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation (February 24, 2016)
As one of only three or four staff writers (depending on the moment) for the Independent, the alternative weekly newspaper serving the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, I wrote about basically everything. I covered city council meetings, bills before the state legislature, art exhibits, anti-war protests, gay rights issues and the local music scene, among many other things. (See my archives page for links .) My occasional column, The Monitor, explored issues of media and technology in a local and regional perspective.
“Fiona is proof positive of what the common tools of reporting can do when put in the hands of an uncommonly hard worker. Nothing is taken at face value, everything is reported out and then conveyed in clear, precise prose. She does great credit to her profession and her paper.”
– Judge’s comments of David Carr, media columnist, The New York Times, in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) competition. My stories, “Inside The Herald-Sun,” “Technobarons of the 21st century,” and “A tangle of telco laws” won First Place for Media Reporting/ Criticism in 2007.
Here are a few of my favorite articles:
Mighty, mighty broadband
The small city of Wilson is leading the way in providing faster, cheaper Internet service. (June 18, 2008)
Ideas don’t have to cost an arm and a leg
Tackle Design’s idealistic young partners are making things the world needs—and they want your help giving those things away. (December 13, 2006)
Technobarons of the 21st Century
Telephone and cable companies are trying to create a vertical monopoly. If they succeed, they’ll destroy everything else we love about the Internet. (May 17, 2006)
Inside The Herald-Sun
One year after a traumatic takeover by the Paxton Media chain, Durham’s hometown newspaper offers more local content, but less news. (January 18, 2006)