Monthly Archive

December 2005

• Politics

  AP Readies For A Good Fight - One of These Days There's nothing like a slow news week for reporters to concoct a bitter and divisive - but hypothetical - battle that's only three years away.

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 30, 2005 05:25 PM

• The Audit

  Why Are Journalists So Rich? Some people say journalists don't know how to handle money, but it simply isn't true. And while our own wealth-building skills are formidable, the folks at BusinessWeek put us to shame.

  By Mark R. Mitchell

  December 30, 2005 03:21 PM Comments (1)

• The Audit

  New York Times Discovers Another Trend - Far, Far Away, and Seven Years Too Late The Times tells us housing is cheap - until you read deeper into the article, where it becomes apparent housing is actually getting more expensive.

  By Steve Lovelady

  December 30, 2005 08:30 AM

• Behind the News

  A Bad Year? Yeah, But, Oddly Enough, Good Work Kept Popping Up Surveying the year-end lists by media critics, we found ourselves dismayed that so little of the good work done by journalists came through.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 29, 2005 03:16 PM Comments (5)

• Behind the News

  “If You Use My Name, They’ll Make Fun of Me” The New York Times grants sources anonymity because they don't want to be mocked for "the sumptuousness of their lives."

  By Liz Cox Barrett

  December 28, 2005 08:30 AM Comments (1)

• Behind the News

  Fifty Areas Where You Fall Short U.S. News brings us a list that feels like what might happen if one's personal insecurities were handed to a newsroom of reporters to pick apart.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 27, 2005 02:38 PM

• Behind the News

  The Times and the Post Go Silent On Us Why won't the papers discuss the meetings they had with the president about whether to publish two major stories?

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 27, 2005 02:17 PM Comments (1)

• Behind the News

  Five Great Stories You Didn’t Read in 2005 In the spirit of the season, here's our list of five outstanding stories from local and regional papers you might have missed this year -- but shouldn't have.

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 26, 2005 01:27 PM

• Behind the News, The Water Cooler

  Ilena Silverman on Editing “The Lives They Lived” The editor of the New York Times Magazine year-end obituaries issue discusses how the subjects were chosen, written and edited.

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 23, 2005 05:01 PM

• Behind the News

  Press Plays Hot Potato With Seven Year-Old Scoop No one seems to want to claim responsibility for the scoop that bin Laden was using a cell phone to call his minions.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 22, 2005 05:34 PM

• Politics

  The Wiretap Debate Takes Familiar Shape Bloggers turn over the wiretap debate, some using facts, others bringing their own biases to bear.

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 22, 2005 01:29 PM Comments (2)

• Politics

  Electricity: For Real, or Fleeting Fad? No one ever accused pollsters of asking the right questions. A new Associated Press-Ipsos poll is a case in point.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 22, 2005 08:10 AM

• The Audit

  GM Hits Rock Bottom, Detroit’s Reporters Never Leave Cubicles As the fortunes of General Motors take a turn for the worse, reporters in the automaker's hometown, Detroit, aren't working their sources to get the scoop.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 21, 2005 06:20 PM Comments (1)

• Behind the News

  Reporters Face Bad Commute, Bad Numbers and Bad Fashion As day two of New York City transit strike dawned, newspapers were busily “flooding the zone.” But with every “flood” of coverage comes, of course, both high and low moments.

  By Liz Cox Barrett

  December 21, 2005 02:58 PM

• Politics

  The Pajama-Clad Opine Upon the Frozen Hordes There's maybe only one group of people living in the New York metropolitan area that has not been terribly affected by the transit strike: Bloggers.

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 21, 2005 02:06 PM

• Politics

  Jack Abramoff’s Press Corps Now that Doug Bandow has become the latest pundit caught with his hand in the cookie jar, we're starting to learn just how many other writers and think tanks staffers are on the take from special interests.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 21, 2005 01:20 PM

• Politics

  Congo, Corruption, Republicans, and Bono A landmark election in Africa, a tour of Republican Washington, McCain's and Giuliani's presidential prospects in '08, and Time's "People of the Year."

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 20, 2005 06:21 PM

• The Audit

  Stock Traders Say Grinch to Steal Christmas, Reporters Write it Down 'Tis the season for simplistic media stories, so perhaps it's unsurprising that the retail sector's complicated variables proved too much to tackle for the nation's business journalists.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 20, 2005 05:47 PM

• Behind the News

  Bias Study Falls 43.7 Percent Short Sizing up the media's shortcomings is a fuzzy sport. Wouldn't it be nice if someone came up with a meter you could point at a passing story to get a readout on the velocity and direction of its bias?

  By Felix Gillette

  December 20, 2005 03:53 PM Comments (1)

• Politics

  Bush Hypnotizes Blogs into Nuance Maybe it was the mesmerizing hand movements, but President Bush's Oval Office address last night elicited less partisan zeal in the blogosphere than usual.

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 19, 2005 02:21 PM Comments (2)

• Behind the News, The Water Cooler

  Seth Mnookin on Judy Miller, Arthur Sulzberger and Outward Bound Seth Mnookin discusses his recent Vanity Fair article about Judith Miller and the New York Times.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 16, 2005 06:28 PM

• The Audit

  Barred From Meeting, Reporter Gets Mad The New York Times has printed yet another story about itself, and the best thing we can say about it is at least there's no mention of Judith Miller.

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 16, 2005 05:55 PM Comments (1)

• Politics

  The Dark Prince Is Gone - Or Is He? With the announcement that Robert Novak is moving to Fox News we wonder: can Roger Ailes convince Bob to tell us what he told the special prosecutor about the Valerie Plame affair?

  By Paul McLeary

  December 16, 2005 05:35 PM Comments (1)

• Politics

  They’re Coming Out of the Woodwork Two columnists turn out to have been cashing checks from scandal-plagued lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Who's next?

  By Paul McLeary

  December 16, 2005 04:41 PM Comments (1)

• The Audit

  Post Gives Up, Admits Stock Market Utterly Defies Explanation It's not every day that a business columnist cooks up a suspect trend and then tells his readers repeatedly he has no idea why the trend is so.

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 16, 2005 03:58 PM

• Behind the News

  In Defense of Wikipedia At the end of the day, Wikipedia looks less like the reputation-munching monster it's being portrayed as, and more like the future of information in the Internet age.

  By Bryan Keefer

  December 16, 2005 01:14 PM Comments (6)

• The Audit

  A Top Speed Race to Report the Numbers - and Reuters Crashes Faced with scant details on a breaking news story, should a business reporter run with speculative numbers, or wait to get those numbers right?

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 15, 2005 04:19 PM

• Behind the News

  NPR’s Dvorkin’s Dubious Exercise in Labeling National Public Radio's ombudsman, Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, posted a curious piece of ombudsmanery yesterday concerning NPR's habit of turning to think tank flacks for commentary.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 15, 2005 03:57 PM

• Behind the News

  The New York Times: It Reads Your Mind So You Don’t Have To We can always count on the New York Times' Thursday Styles section to provide us with low-hanging fruit.

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 15, 2005 02:31 PM

• Politics

  The Froomkin Follies Dan Froomkin's "White House Briefing" column on WashingtonPost.com has the staff of the paper - and bloggers - in a tizzy.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 15, 2005 01:57 PM Comments (7)

• The Audit

  The British Biz Press Digs Up Some Good Stories on Agricultural Policy Agricultural policy is hugely important, both in the U.S. and abroad. So why has the American press failed to help us understand what's going on at the latest round of WTO talks?

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 14, 2005 06:28 PM

• Politics

  The Times, the Post and the Monitor Give a Backdrop For the Iraq Election Before tomorrow's elections in Iraq, it's worth pausing for breath -- not to diminish the significance of what will surely be a milestone, but to bring a bit of realism to it.

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 14, 2005 04:14 PM

• Politics

  On Novak’s Cue, Blogs Demand Bush Spill Beans Robert Novak says people should "bug the president" to reveal who leaked Valerie Plame's name to Novak, and bloggers happily comply.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 14, 2005 01:16 PM Comments (2)

• Behind the News

  A New Arab Media Rises From the Rubble In the explosion that killed An Nahar publisher Gebran Tueni in Beirut Monday could be heard the echoes of a new battle being waged over the media in the Middle East.

  By Lawrence Pintak

  December 14, 2005 11:15 AM

• Politics

  The Best of Several Bad Options Is Still a Bad Option Cable services shouldn't let the Federal Communications Commission bully them into offering "family-friendly" programming packages.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 13, 2005 05:10 PM Comments (4)

• Behind the News

  Tortuous Waffling, Abroad and At Home Condoleezza Rice goes abroad, political magazines debate torture and Ken Auletta subjects the publisher of the New York Times to an interrogation of his own.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 13, 2005 02:48 PM

• Behind the News

  Deconstructing Press Performance on the White Phosphorus Story Why did the British press beat American news outlets on the story of white phosphorus use by the U.S. military against Iraqi civilians?

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 13, 2005 02:08 PM Comments (3)

• The Audit

  Forbes Elbows Weekly Reader Aside How does Forbes stack up against the popular children's magazine? Not very well, it turns out.

  By Mark R. Mitchell

  December 13, 2005 11:47 AM Comments (1)

• Behind the News

  “Take Back That Compliment, You Cur!” Blogs bash the New York Times for having the effrontery to accuse them of being skillful and effective.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 12, 2005 02:23 PM Comments (1)

• Politics

  Wherein We Learn More of the Propaganda Machine Each time the Bush administration has been caught manufacturing news, top officials claim ignorance and innocence. But the more we learn about the latest payola program, the less likely that seems.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 12, 2005 01:53 PM

• Behind the News

  In Dowd World, Only the Babes Shall Prevail Apparently, in Dowd World, it's more than okay for a multi-million dollar newscaster to be a babe, but not so good at all to be a pretty-boy or a hunk.

  By Steve Lovelady

  December 10, 2005 04:08 PM

• The Audit

  Who’s the Grinch? Microsoft or the Media? Is the world's most successful company committing one of the greatest inventory screw-ups ever? Or is the Xbox shortage just a shameless publicity stunt?

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 10, 2005 09:00 AM

• Politics, The Water Cooler

  Anthony Shadid on Reporting in Baghdad and Telling the Story of Ordinary Iraqis

  By Paul McLeary

  December 9, 2005 05:33 PM

• Behind the News

  Hot Celebrity Gossip That’s Only Two Weeks Old! The Los Angeles Times' print circulation struggles are no secret. But now the paper faces a threat so dire, so menacing, the Associated Press decided it deserved an entire article: Barbra Streisand.

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 9, 2005 02:24 PM

• The Audit

  Who Needs Facts? Flashy Headlines are Much More Fun "House party is over," says CNN in a headline on its Web site. But if the party's over, the Los Angeles TImesis the annoying guest who refuses to leave. So who's right?

  By Liz Cox Barrett

  December 8, 2005 07:01 PM

• Behind the News

  Songs of the Hurdy Gurley Man George Gurley sits down in a diner on 9th Avenue to eat a late lunch. By the time his burger arrives, the sun has long ago set, and somewhere across town his girlfriend Hilly is just getting off from work. Gurley thinks there might be trouble ahead.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 8, 2005 02:27 PM

• Remembering Lennon, and Trying Not to Forget Pearl Harbor

  By Paul McLeary

  December 8, 2005 11:19 AM Comments (1)

• The Audit

  Talkin’ ‘Bout MySpace Generation Last month, BusinessWeek loved baby boomers. This week, the magazine loves another demographic group -- young people. But why, exactly, that's worthy of a cover story, we're not sure.

  By Liz Cox Barrett

  December 7, 2005 06:09 PM

• Behind the News

  In a Close Call, Tribune Co. Almost Meets Its Public The annual Manhattan meetings of newspaper executives trying to impress stock analysts aren't where we usually look for fireworks -- until MoveOn.org tried to crash the party.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 7, 2005 03:21 PM Comments (6)

• It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like … Some Sort of Holiday

  By Liz Cox Barrett

  December 7, 2005 02:59 PM

• Behind the News

  The Farmer You Keep Reading About, and the Reporters Who Love Him How did Jon Vessey and his California farm come to be featured in five major news outlets over the past two months?

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 7, 2005 02:07 PM Comments (2)

• Politics

  Rummy’s Compassionate Side Comes Out The Secretary of Defense, it turns out, really just feels sorry for those confused reporters working in Iraq.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 6, 2005 04:09 PM Comments (3)

• Iraq, Vollman and Resurrecting a Forgotten Conservative Icon Time looks at the insurgency, New York Review reviews Vollman and conservatives bite back.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 6, 2005 12:53 PM

• Behind the News

  Can’t Anybody Here Count? We've often remarked that journalists snap into brain freeze when faced with the prospect of covering a story filled with numbers, and AP television writer David Bauder has proved to be no exception.

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 6, 2005 12:39 PM Comments (1)

• The Audit

  The Sunday Times Rocks!!! The best thing about the Sunday Times is this writer they have named Ben Stein. He makes business and financial stuff really simple so even we can understand it!!

  By Mark R. Mitchell

  December 5, 2005 08:16 PM Comments (5)

• Iraqi Pro’s and Con’s, and a Christmas Betrayal

  By Paul McLeary

  December 5, 2005 01:11 PM

• Behind the News

  The Pitfalls and Perils of Dancing to Wall Street’s Tune Finally, a backlash against all of the one-trick ponies occupying executive suites at media companies has begun to emerge.

  By Steve Lovelady

  December 5, 2005 12:51 PM Comments (6)

• Behind the News

  When Spooks Were Reporters and Reporters Were Spooks It's been a busy week for Fake News. But at least one commentator is pining for the days when even more news was fake.

  By Paul McLeary

  December 2, 2005 05:26 PM

• The Audit

  The Business Media Misses a Big Story in Washington The battle over the FCC's decision to support "a la carte" cable for consumers should make for a great story - if only the press would write it.

  By Gal Beckerman

  December 2, 2005 05:00 PM

• Politics

  Treating Ghost Detainees As Invisible To the new terms "extraordinary rendition" and "black sites" we can now add "ghost detainees." So why isn't the rest of the press learning along with us?

  By Edward B. Colby

  December 2, 2005 04:38 PM Comments (2)

• The Audit

  Does It Even Know What It’s Selling? As Bill Gates recently wrote, "the next sea change is upon us." For newspapers, that means they must do no less than reconceive their basic business model.

  By Richard J. Tofel

  December 2, 2005 03:00 PM

• The Water Cooler

  Stan Tiner on Calling for Help in a Headline, Editing the Daily Disappointment, and Forming a “Newsroom Trust”

  By Liz Cox Barrett

  December 2, 2005 01:09 PM

• The Audit

  The Latest Numbers Are Out - and Our Eyes Glaze Over

  By Mark R. Mitchell

  December 1, 2005 08:45 PM Comments (1)

• Politics

  Christmas Sends Washington Times On a Search For That Slippery PC Crowd 'Tis the season for stories about how Christmas is purportedly under attack from politically correct liberal heathens.

  By Felix Gillette

  December 1, 2005 05:07 PM

• Bribing Iraqi Editors? Hey, No Big Deal

  By Liz Cox Barrett

  December 1, 2005 12:41 PM

• « December 2008
• « November 2008
• « October 2008
• « September 2008
• « August 2008
• « July 2008
• « June 2008
• « May 2008
• « April 2008
• « March 2008
• « February 2008
• « January 2008
• « December 2007
• « November 2007
• « October 2007
• « September 2007
• « August 2007
• « July 2007
• « June 2007
• « May 2007
• « April 2007
• « March 2007
• « February 2007
• « January 2007
• « December 2006
• « November 2006
• « October 2006
• « September 2006
• « August 2006
• « July 2006
• « June 2006
• « May 2006
• « April 2006
• « March 2006
• « February 2006
• « January 2006
• « December 2005
• « November 2005
• « October 2005
• « September 2005
• « August 2005
• « July 2005
• « June 2005
• « May 2005
• « April 2005
• « March 2005
• « February 2005
• « January 2005
• « December 2004
• « November 2004
• « October 2004
• « September 2004
• « August 2004
• « July 2004
• « June 2004
• « May 2004
• « April 2004
• « March 2004
• « February 2004
• « January 2004