On Friday night, Bruce Springsteen played a concert in Florida, Trayvon Martin’s home state. He added a song to the set list that I was hoping he’d play — “American Skin (41 Shots)” — and performed it with an intensity fitting the occasion. Springsteen wrote the song more than a decade ago in response to the killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant, by four New York City police officers:

“It ain’t no secret, it ain’t no secret 
No secret my friend
You can get killed just for living in your American skin.”

 I heard a similar message last week when President Obama said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” The president was reminding us that just because he lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, don’t think for a second that black teenagers are living in a transformed America. 

We’ve gone from Bradlee, Woodward and Bernstein to … CmdrTaco?

Yes, and it’s okay to embrace it.

The newest Washington Post Co. hire getting buzz is not a swaggering executive editor or a pair of relentless muckrakers. He’s Rob Malda, the founder of the tech news site Slashdot, who is better known in some circles by his moniker, “CmdrTaco.” This WaPo Labs move reaffirms my belief that just as the country’s top papers scout other newsrooms for investigative reporting or narrative writing stars, they need to embark — even more aggressively — on similar hunts for geeks who get journalism.

At Stanford, we’re perfectly positioned to be the foremost incubator of the technologist-journalist. I’m delighted that several Computer Science majors are taking my Digital Journalism course this quarter. And Ann Grimes, the director of our Graduate Program in Journalism, has been a trailblazer in this area, teaching an annual Digital Media Entrepreneurship course. Below is a video that describes Ann’s class.

Those of us who were at The Post during what I’ll call The Rob Curley Experiment understand that success in one venue doesn’t necessarily translate to another. But one difference here is that WaPo Labs, by design, functions as a startup within a so-called legacy media company. It also goes without saying that 2012 is not 2007.

I surmise two things: 1.) From birth, he has been conditioned to loathe New England teams; and 2.) He sees sports talk on Twitter differently than, say, a discussion of politics or religion. Substitute “Romney” or “Obama” for Belichick (the Patriots’ dour, hoodie-wearing coach) and imagine what might ensue.

As innocuous as a 39-character jab at a football coach seems to be, it exists on a fault line in modern journalism. Twitter gives reporters and editors an outlet to have a more raw, interactive, conversational dialogue with their audience than they’ve been accustomed to in the past. It’s the virtual equivalent of sports fans at a bar, swapping commentary as the game rolls on. One crucial difference is that there’s a printed record of each word and the ability to screen-capture it for eternity.

Does it matter that Anthony is on record as a Belichick hater? The Patriots are a game away from the Super Bowl, which means they are newsmakers — and Reuters covers the news and the people who make it. As social media editor for Reuters, does everything Anthony write reflect on his news agency?

I’ll raise this on Tuesday to see what Anthony and the students have to say.

As I prepare to teach a Digital Journalism course next quarter, Chris Cillizza has been on my mind lately. If you are not familiar with him, Chris writes “The Fix” politics blog for The Washington Post.

At The Post, I didn’t work closely with Chris and can count on one hand the number of our lengthy conversations. But he left an impression for this reason: By tapping a deep reservoir of energy and an upbeat personality — and by doing the hard work required to build sources and break news — he has managed to become a brand of his own. In some ways, he’s unshackled from the 135-year-old brand of his employer.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no doubt that Chris gets his phone calls returned faster because he works for one of the nation’s most influential newspapers. And without its Post affiliation, “The Fix” would have a fraction of its current web and Twitter audience. Still, the various “Fix” platforms are popular, in part, due to the strategic leveraging of Chris as a personality and not as a faceless byline.

In the video below, he explains a news philosophy modeled after a Las Vegas casino’s 3 a.m. buffet, rather than the prix fixe menu of a restaurant that requires a dinner jacket.

Third-year medical student Joyce Ho, left, works with graduate journalism students Saman Ghani Khan, middle, and Georgia Wells on election night.

One of the best things about Stanford is the diversity of students. This quarter, I am teaching young women and men from China, Pakistan and South Korea. In addition, Joyce Ho, a third-year student in the School of Medicine, is taking my public issues reporting course and a companion multimedia class.

Joyce is studying with us as part of her Stanford-NBC News Global Health Media Fellowship. Over the summer, she worked in the communications department of the World Health Organization in Geneva. After this quarter, she will head to New York for an NBC News internship with Dr. Nancy Snyderman.

I am in awe of how quickly Joyce has picked up the nuances of news reporting and writing. As her beat for the Peninsula Press, the website of Stanford’s Graduate Program in Journalism, she is covering — no surprise here — health issues.

In a recent blog post, Joyce pondered the lessons she’s learning in journalism and medical school classes. She found more similarities than you might imagine.

“In a way, being a reporter reminds me a lot of being a physician-in-training — both roles require me to go into a room, learn an individual’s story inside out, and present the learned information for a further goal,” she wrote. “In Professor Brenner’s ‘Public Issues Reporting’ class, the journalism students practiced interviewing techniques not too far off from the interviewing skills I learned through Stanford’s ‘Practice of Medicine’ course. Both classes emphasized empathy towards the subject. Both courses taught the art of extracting information through carefully worded questions. Similarly, the theme of ‘Keep asking open-ended questions to draw out more information from the subject!’ appeared in both courses.”