Friday, December 18, 2009
RE Gift / Chicagoland / Media Gifts for Journalists
Posted by Whet Moser on 12.18.09 at 03:20 PM
Lomography Sidekick Canvas Bag ($50). Elegant without looking stuffy; fits a laptop and has a modular camera bag.
Edirol R-09HR ($279.99). The Ferrari of field recorders, and priced to match. Small, built-in stereo mic, USB transfer, expandable memory.
Sony TC-D5M (since you have to buy them used, the price depends). The radio geeks at transom.org swear by them. They also recommend minidisc players; mine from about 2002 has outlasted a couple mp3 players.
Field Notes ($9.95 and up). The venerable Coudal/DDC notebook. You're darn right I use them.
Rite in the Rain Kit ($27.98). Will all-weather, writes-upside-down pen. Good down to -30F! They also sell various forms of hunting journals ("turkey hunters are faced with an overwhelming load of data to remember about turkey behavior"). Field Notes's only true competition, IMO.
Literary Journalism, ed. Norman Sims and Mark Kramer ($10.85). Don't let the (ugly, boring) cover fool you - it's the best anthology of its type I've ever read. Worth the price of admission just for Brent Staples's "Mr. Bellow's Planet," one of the best things I've ever read about Chicago, race, and winter.
Beyond the Game by Gary Smith ($10.80). Not just the best living sportswriter, arguably the best living literary journalist. This might be my favorite single-author journalism anthology; you don't have to be a sports fan to appreciate it.
Bodum Travel Press ($19.99). One of the suggestions when I asked my colleagues what gifts they'd give a journalist was "drugs." Coffee's the only drug I can wholeheartedly recommend, and I love my travel french press.
Comments (3)
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I can wholeheartedly recommend scores of drugs. Literally, scores.
Also, the Zoom H2 is another great hi-fi recorder. Not as snappy looking as the Edirol, but $100 cheaper and just as functional.
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The Zoom H4n, which I'm trying to talk myself into, has a stereo pair and can accept two outboard mikes as well. Probably more useful for musicians (guilty) than for journalists, but it's only $300.
