Best of 2009: Ryan Chittum

Chittum picks his top stories from 2009

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 31, 2009 at 12:37 PM

1. Audit Interview: Mark Pittman "This is not business journalism’s finest hour. But it is our biggest opportunity ever." 2.... More

Best of 2009: Greg Marx

Marx picks his top stories from 2009

By Greg Marx   Dec 30, 2009 at 03:00 PM

The Wrong Stuff This piece was a lot of fun to work on, because it involved doing some reporting to... More

Best of 2009: Clint Hendler

Hendler picks his top stories from 2009

By Clint Hendler   Dec 30, 2009 at 08:00 AM

Carl Malamud, Public Printer You may have never heard of the Government Printing Office, a massive bureaucracy that’s responsible for... More

Best of 2009: Dean Starkman

Starkman picks his top stories from 2009

By Dean Starkman   Dec 29, 2009 at 08:00 AM

Note to Audit Readers: The Audit will be taking off its green eyeshade and pince nez during a holiday break... More

Best of 2009: Megan Garber

Garber picks her top stories from 2009

By Megan Garber   Dec 28, 2009 at 01:36 PM

1) Common Knowledge Part of the first unit in CJR's Press Forward series of future-of-news dialogues, this essay explores the... More

CJR (Mostly) Dark Until the New Year

By The Editors   Dec 23, 2009 at 04:36 PM

The headline pretty much says it all. We're heading out for the holidays and won't be doing much posting until... More

Winter Reading List Revisited

A reader-recommended list of books for journalists

By The Editors   Dec 23, 2009 at 02:59 PM

Earlier this month, we asked readers to recommend a book to members of the journalistic community. Below, we present an... More

Setting the Record Straight

The president, the press, and the public option

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 23, 2009 at 11:47 AM

In an interview with The Washington Post yesterday, President Barack Obama rejected criticism that he had compromised too much just... More

GQ Revisits Murdoch’s Snatching of the Journal

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 23, 2009 at 11:45 AM

GQ has the story of the day in the business press—and not just because Audit Chief Dean Starkman and I... More

About That Journal Citi Story

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 23, 2009 at 09:32 AM

Yesterday, I praised The Wall Street Journal for its fortitude in running a story saying hackers had stolen tens of... More

Good COP, Bad COP

Reflections on covering the Copenhagen climate summit

By Betwa Sharma   Dec 22, 2009 at 05:35 PM

COPENHAGEN—Political deadlock and convoluted information came with the territory for journalists covering the climate change summit in Copenhagen, where world... More

Tuesday Links: Donations, WSJ Short-Arm, Goldie’s Corporate Welfare

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 22, 2009 at 05:20 PM

Steve Outing, like me, likes the idea of asking readers for donations. He just thinks The Miami Herald is going... More

The Best Stories of 2009

What were some of your favorite stories from the past year?

By The Editors   Dec 22, 2009 at 03:33 PM

The holiday season isn’t only about stressful shopping excursions and even more stressful family get-togethers; it’s also, traditionally, a time... More

Sorkin Is Good on TARP Payback Fees

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 22, 2009 at 02:08 PM

Andrew Ross Sorkin has a good column in the Times today looking at how bankers are making money off their... More

An Oops at USA Today

Exactly what was Ben Nelson’s position?

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 22, 2009 at 12:25 PM

Waiting in a train station in Bath, England, yesterday as I wondered what was happening with health reform, I spotted... More

The Journal’s Citigroup Hacker Story

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 22, 2009 at 09:52 AM

The Wall Street Journal's fascinating scoop this morning on Russian hackers stealing tens of millions of dollars from Citigroup is... More

Monday Links: Brass Replica, CDFI Funding, Reuters Caves?

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 21, 2009 at 06:46 PM

The Wall Street Journal's Greg Zuckerman, with a new book out on a guy who made billions betting against subprime,... More

Blog Posts Worth Reading

By Greg Marx   Dec 21, 2009 at 04:30 PM

Apropos of the Dana Milbank column on Joe Lieberman I discussed in this afternoon’s Campaign Desk piece, the poli-sci blogger... More

The Post on Where the Fed Went Wrong

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 21, 2009 at 03:53 PM

It's good for Ben Bernanke that his re-confirmation as Federal Reserve chief is all but assured, because the Washington Post... More

Seizin’ Greetings

Tis the season for misplaced apostrophes

By Merrill Perlman   Dec 21, 2009 at 03:20 PM

Pity the poor apostrophe. Even in this, the jolliest of seasons, its traditional role is misused, abused, and forgotten. As... More

The Polarization Express

You can’t blame legislative gridlock on polarization alone

By Greg Marx   Dec 21, 2009 at 03:12 PM

Dana Milbank had an interesting column over the weekend countering the conventional wisdom on Joe Lieberman: rather than undergoing some... More

LAT’s Kristof Keeps an Eye on the Overdraft Racket

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 21, 2009 at 01:07 PM

The press too often loses interest in a story once some change is done to appease the restive, however incomplete... More

Bloomberg Scoop on Twitter’s Search Engine Payday

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 21, 2009 at 09:57 AM

We finally know how much Twitter got paid by Google and Microsoft's Bing to index its content: $25 million. Bloomberg... More

Friday Links: Under the TARP. WaPo Results, Shadow Space

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 18, 2009 at 05:19 PM

The Wall Street Journal does some solid reporting on the machinations behind the TARP exits. This is interesting: Some Citigroup... More

Walk the Line or Walk Away?

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 18, 2009 at 03:28 PM

Blogworld's got an interesting back-and-forth going on about the morality of walking away from a mortgage. I've got to admit,... More

Q&A: Bill Leonard

A former government classification watchdog explains a year-end deadline

By Clint Hendler   Dec 18, 2009 at 02:47 PM

You’ve heard of the climate deadline looming in Copenhagen, and the health care deadline looming on Capitol Hill. But this... More

Putting the ‘green’ in ‘Green Lantern thinking’

By Greg Marx   Dec 18, 2009 at 12:08 PM

I think Brendan Nyhan and John Sides, while right about the underlying argument, go a bit too far in faulting... More

Going Beyond Glass-Steagall II

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 18, 2009 at 10:17 AM

John McCain is getting all mavericky again. He's now on board for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall and the breakup of... More

Today in Health Care Reform Punditry

By Greg Marx   Dec 18, 2009 at 09:39 AM

David Brooks opposes the Senate health bill. Paul Krugman supports it. Meanwhile, liberals are in revolt over the idea that... More

Corrections for the True Connoisseur

Celebrating some of the year’s strangest corrections

By Craig Silverman   Dec 18, 2009 at 09:39 AM

Like a chef who becomes bored with steak and potatoes and begins seeking out the strange and sublime, my taste... More

Thursday Links: Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, Fan/Fred, Tablets

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 17, 2009 at 07:51 PM

I've suggested this for a good while now, only half in jest, and now The Miami Herald is doing it:... More

What’s Behind the Drop in Obama’s Approval Ratings?

By Greg Marx   Dec 17, 2009 at 06:00 PM

As Barack Obama’s approval ratings have declined over the last few months, the slide has often been explained as a... More

More on Why We Won’t Tax Banker Bonuses

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 17, 2009 at 05:10 PM

Nobody loves a critic, they say, and from my experience at The Audit it's mostly true. So I love it... More

Covering Copenhagen: A Day in the Life

A reporter acclimates to the climate summit

By Andrew Freedman   Dec 17, 2009 at 03:52 PM

COPENHAGEN—I arrived at the United Nations climate summit last Friday, near the end of the first week of negotiations, just... More

Deficit Reduction and Windfall Taxes

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 17, 2009 at 10:44 AM

There a number of reasons for instituting a windfall tax on bankers, and they've been most ably spelled out by... More

The Devil in the Details, Part IV

Who benefits from wellness incentives—an overweight colleague, your boss, insurers, or you?

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 17, 2009 at 08:00 AM

Every lobbyist swarming Capitol Hill these days knows that, when it comes to legislation, the devil is always lurking in... More

Wednesday Links: SEC and CDOs, Meyerson, Wasted Crisis

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 16, 2009 at 06:49 PM

Here's more ammo for the just-blow-up-the-SEC-and-start-again crowd: NPR's Planet Money and ProPublica report on a questionnaire sent to CDO market... More

Great Detail from the Journal on Congressional Travel

By Greg Marx   Dec 16, 2009 at 04:37 PM

About a week and a half ago, The New York Times ran a story about congressional junkets that are paid... More

Copenhagen Watch: Bipolar Coverage Disorder?

With each announcement, media shift between optimism and pessimism

By Curtis Brainard and Cristine Russell   Dec 16, 2009 at 03:45 PM

As the heads of state from 110 countries began to arrive at the United Nations summit in Copenhagen for the... More

WaPo on (Another) U.S. Giveaway to Citi

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 16, 2009 at 03:44 PM

(UPDATE: I originally said in the headline and lede that the Post had a scoop here. That's not right. The... More

The Legality of Publishing Hacked E-mails

Were journalists right to be leery of the “ClimateGate” leak?

By Diana Dellamere   Dec 16, 2009 at 12:52 PM

The publication of thousands of e-mails hacked from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit led to furious arguments... More

Whose ‘Sexting’ Are We Really Worried About?

By Greg Marx   Dec 16, 2009 at 12:30 PM

According to a study on “Teens and Sexting” released Tuesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Center, the practice—which... More

Nobody ‘Needs’ a Civil War

Friedman’s unnerving model for the conflict in the Muslim world

By Greg Marx   Dec 16, 2009 at 12:24 PM

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has a well-established record of believing that forceful action (read: violent conflict) is a... More

Bloomberg Tough on Too Big to Fail

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 16, 2009 at 10:24 AM

Bloomberg takes a good look at the fading chance to anything meaningful to reform the financial system, noting that "Two... More

NYT’s Creativity On the Unemployment Story

By Dean Starkman   Dec 15, 2009 at 05:56 PM

The Times deserves a little something extra in its pay envelope for this morning's unemployment package: a story based on... More

Covering Joe

Is Lieberman a villain, or just taking care of the folks at home?

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 15, 2009 at 04:20 PM

Any student of politics or any journalist who covers politics knows that members of Congress look out for their constituents,... More

Not Quite Classified

By Clint Hendler   Dec 15, 2009 at 04:12 PM

The Obama administration’s Task Force on Controlled Unclassified Information has, per the president’s request in a May 2009 executive memorandum,... More

A Study of Reading Habits

How have devices like the Kindle changed the way you read?

By The Editors   Dec 15, 2009 at 02:24 PM

It’s the holidays and the e-reader has been anointed as the hot gift this year (sorry, Tickle-Me Elmo). The mobile... More

Threats to Environmental Journalists on the Rise

In Copenhagen, press freedom groups call for action

By Betwa Sharma   Dec 15, 2009 at 11:18 AM

COPENHAGEN—Cherelle Jackson turned a deaf ear to the threatening calls she got after publishing the first two parts of a... More

A Long, Slow, Drawn-Out Death for Magazines, Or Not

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 15, 2009 at 10:56 AM

Today Folio tries to put a positive spin on the huge number of magazines that bit the dust this year... More

WSJ Excels on Retirement Risk for Execs, Employees

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 15, 2009 at 10:47 AM

I love this Wall Street Journal story this morning on how CEOs, despite their rich paydays, often get automatic gains... More

Say it Ain’t So, Joe

Online outlets lead coverage of Joe Lieberman’s health reform reversal

By Greg Marx   Dec 15, 2009 at 10:24 AM

It became cliché long ago to note how the online political discourse can take on a life of its own,... More

A Shout-out to the Associated Press

For exposing a big loophole in the health reform bill

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 15, 2009 at 09:19 AM

Back in August, Campaign Desk pointed out that President Obama’s much-ballyhooed consumer protections required the media’s critical eye as legislation... More

Monday Links: Banks Winning, Volcker’s ATM, TARP Paybacks

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 14, 2009 at 06:23 PM

This is a really solid Bloomberg story on lobbying and how the bank lobby has really won, even if new... More

Everybody’s Got an Angle

WSJ’s Thomson on NYT’s Carr

By Dean Starkman   Dec 14, 2009 at 05:42 PM

It’s probably an understatement to say that we at The Audit weren’t nuts about the prospect of News Corp. buying... More

The Shield after Senate Judiciary

A victory was notched, but the battle’s not won

By Clint Hendler   Dec 14, 2009 at 04:21 PM

Last Thursday, the journalism organizations at work on a shield bill won two victories in quick succession. In just about... More

Settlement Reached on Bush Emails

By Clint Hendler   Dec 14, 2009 at 04:09 PM

Perhaps the most Byzantine of all Bush-era records scandals draws a step closer to ending today with the announcement by... More

Mark Pittman, In His Own Words, On Camera

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 14, 2009 at 03:12 PM

You've read quite a bit by the late Mark Pittman of Bloomberg. You've read quite a bit about him here... More

Singulars Bar

Pronouns and nouns need to be monogamous—and non-sexist

By Merrill Perlman   Dec 14, 2009 at 01:47 PM

Grammar is a strict matchmaker: singular subjects must be paired with singular verbs, and plural subjects can associate only with... More

The Next Most Underreported Health Reform Story

What will happen to SCHIP?

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 14, 2009 at 11:57 AM

Where are the chips falling, so to speak, when it comes to the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)?... More

Post Examines Unkept Promises in Afghanistan

By Greg Marx   Dec 14, 2009 at 11:20 AM

The Washington Post’s Griff Witte has turned in some strong reporting from the Af-Pak region over the past week, including... More

Carr on the Journal’s News Pages Moving Right

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 14, 2009 at 10:22 AM

David Carr has a good column about the rightward tilt of Murdoch's The Wall Street Journal, which before he took... More

Revkin Taking NYT Buyout

Veteran climate reporter to leave paper after Copenhagen summit

By Cristine Russell   Dec 14, 2009 at 09:55 AM

Andrew C. Revkin, one of the most influential and respected reporters on the environment, will take a buyout from The... More

Friday Links: Goldman and AIG, Bernie’s Life, Why a Windfall

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 11, 2009 at 10:57 PM

The Wall Street Journal has a major story tonight, presumably slated for page one of tomorrow's paper, showing that Goldman... More

Early Results from the Newsday Paywall

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 11, 2009 at 06:02 PM

It's no surprise that Newsday's Web traffic declined after it put up a paywall. What is surprising is how it... More

WSJ Follows the Loopholes on Regulation Bill

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 11, 2009 at 05:21 PM

The Journal found a good angle for its curtain-raising story on the House financial-regulation vote today. The paper digs into... More

Stimulus was not ‘Mostly an Infrastructure Spending Bill’

By Greg Marx   Dec 11, 2009 at 04:26 PM

A story in today's Politico seeking to explain why John McCain has been so critical of Barack Obama since the... More

Copenhagen Watch: Haggling at Halftime

With scoops hard to come by, journalists converge on the latest rifts

By Curtis Brainard and Cristine Russell   Dec 11, 2009 at 03:04 PM

"The battle of the drafts has begun," The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin announced at the top of her Friday article... More

Comments of the Week

December 7-11, 2009

By The Editors   Dec 11, 2009 at 02:27 PM

Every Friday, we excerpt some of the most insightful, articulate, interesting, and entertaining comments we receive each week. Think we’ve... More

Don’t Need to Wait, Get the Record Straight

WaPo’s Public Enemy correction brings the noise on Twitter

By Craig Silverman   Dec 11, 2009 at 11:20 AM

Call it the correction that launched a thousand tweets. Over the years, many errors and corrections have spidered their way... More

Easy on the eyes

By Clint Hendler   Dec 11, 2009 at 10:31 AM

Does the below video, showing a souped-up prototype e-tablet version of Sports Illustrated, portend the future of magazines? I don't... More

Overplaying Goldman’s Bonus Move

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 11, 2009 at 10:28 AM

Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) is making some baby steps on pay, but the press way overplays what is essentially... More

Thursday Links: Sorkin, Rosie, Ginnie Mae

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 10, 2009 at 05:27 PM

Andrew Ross Sorkin sounds better notes on The Daily Show than he does in most of his own columns. "The... More

On Covering the Newspaper Business

By Greg Marx   Dec 10, 2009 at 05:20 PM

One theme touched on in my interview with E&P’s Greg Mitchell today is, with the upcoming closure of that publication,... More

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 10, 2009 at 04:46 PM

CJR contributing editor Michael Massing has a proposal for Google CEO Eric Schmidt, whose op-ed "How Google Can Help Newspapers,"... More

McClatchy Takes on the SEC’s “Too Big to Punish”

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 10, 2009 at 04:42 PM

McClatchy continues its fine recent watchdog work with a package looking at the SEC's slap-on-the-wrist regime. It's a smart new... More

Q & A: Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell

E&P’s editor-in-chief on the magazine’s sudden demise

By Greg Marx   Dec 10, 2009 at 01:58 PM

The media industry received an unpleasant bit of news on Thursday: the magazine Editor & Publisher, which has covered the... More

LAT Delivers Reporting from Afghanistan

By Greg Marx   Dec 10, 2009 at 10:44 AM

A footnote to my piece this morning lamenting the general lack of reporting out of Afghanistan over the last couple... More

The UK Windfall-Tax Bombshell’s Second Day

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 10, 2009 at 10:32 AM

The Wall Street Journal and New York Times go A1 with second-day(ish) stories on Britain's bold bid to slap a... More

Generally Speaking

Official pronouncements dominate recent coverage of Afghan war

By Greg Marx   Dec 10, 2009 at 10:01 AM

Take a quick survey of leading news sites over the last few days, and it’s easy to conclude that President... More

Senate Judiciary Considers Shield Bill, Part III

By Clint Hendler   Dec 10, 2009 at 09:43 AM

The hearing has ended with the committee passing the bill. You can still read the once-live tweets from me and... More

Rebel with a Cause

Molly Ivins in high definition

By Megan Garber   Dec 10, 2009 at 09:00 AM

Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life | By Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith | PublicAffairs | 360 pages, $26.95 On... More

Wednesday Links: Lost Docs, No-Bid Bonds, Ex-Im

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 9, 2009 at 06:35 PM

ProPublica pushes back against the idea, furthered by a recent New York Times column, that the administration's loan-modification program is... More

Brief Encounters

Short reviews of books on foreign reporting and journalists who risked it all

By James Boylan   Dec 9, 2009 at 05:20 PM

Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting By John Maxwell Hamilton Louisiana State University Press 655 pages, $45... More

A Failure of Skepticism

Stolen Valor and the effort to expose bogus battlefield heroics

By Russell Working   Dec 9, 2009 at 05:03 PM

Two years ago, a weekly paper in suburban Chicago profiled an elderly character who had been asked to lead the... More

Freeze Frame

A photojournalist finds himself increasingly shut out

By James Lo Scalzo   Dec 9, 2009 at 04:21 PM

I’ve encountered plenty of prohibitions on picture-making in fifteen years as a photojournalist. But the most infuriating came recently at... More

All the News Fit to Sing

An interview with the man behind Pakistan’s musical news cartoons

By Ayesha Akram   Dec 9, 2009 at 04:14 PM

American coverage of Pakistan tends not to focus on its role as a media laboratory, but a sudden growth of... More

The FT’s Wolf Highlights the Chinese Problem

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 9, 2009 at 03:42 PM

The Financial Times's Martin Wolf zeroes in on one of the critical economic problems that led to the credit crisis... More

HuffPo: “Tiger Woods Sex (VIDEO)”

By Clint Hendler   Dec 9, 2009 at 03:05 PM

The Huffington Post has reached a new level in its unending quest to to create “content” for the sake of... More

Copenhagen Watch: Disarray in Denmark?

With its first leaked document, the climate summit warms up

By Curtis Brainard and Cristine Russell   Dec 9, 2009 at 02:48 PM

The big news out of Copenhagen yesterday was the leak of an informal agreement drafted by the Danish government. The... More

Mark Knoller Knows

CBS Radio correspondent can tell you where the President’s been

By Clint Hendler   Dec 9, 2009 at 01:35 PM

Today President Obama will slip into Air Force One, wing over to Oslo and, once again, touch foreign soil. Not... More

The Botox Beat

Using the press to fight a proposed tax on cosmetic surgery

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 9, 2009 at 11:19 AM

First came the medical device makers and now the plastic surgeons. Both groups have a problem. You see, Congress wants... More

The UK Windfall-Taxes Its Bankers

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 9, 2009 at 10:15 AM

The big news of the day, by our lights, comes from across the pond, where British regulators continue to outclass... More

Mourning Becomes Electric

The rituals of grief can still bring a fragmented audience together

By Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend   Dec 8, 2009 at 05:28 PM

Fragmented. Few words are used more often to describe the media environment today. People disappear into their iPods, iPhones, BlackBerrys,... More

Tuesday Links: Pay Matters, Tablet Econ, Windfall Tax, TBTF

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 8, 2009 at 05:11 PM

This is a must-read Financial Times column from a few days ago on why compensation really is an important issue... More

FOIA after the Open Government Directive

Measure, monitor, and improve

By Clint Hendler   Dec 8, 2009 at 03:33 PM

With today's launch of the Obama administration's Open Government Plan, we’ve passed another milestone on the path towards a new... More

Reuters Overpromises, Underdelivers on New “Crisis”

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 8, 2009 at 02:58 PM

Here's a Reuters story that could desperately use some of that long-form, enterprise reporting the wire service says it's going... More

Sex Isn’t the Story

The real controversy behind the Baucus-Hanes affair

By Greg Marx   Dec 8, 2009 at 02:41 PM

“The scandal isn’t what’s illegal; it’s what’s legal.” That line, usually attributed to Michael Kinsley, has been repeated so often... More

The Rise of True Fiction

Some of the best new films and books live between genres

By Alissa Quart   Dec 8, 2009 at 02:30 PM

Staff Sergeant Will James fiddles with the bomb like an IT tech on methamphetamine. He works quickly despite his seventy-pound... More

Winter Reading List

What are some books that journalists should read this winter?

By The Editors   Dec 8, 2009 at 12:38 PM

About a year ago, we asked readers to help us compile a list of journalism-related books that would make for... More

What’s So Public about a Public Plan?

The language says it all

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 8, 2009 at 12:28 PM

Word comes from Politico that maybe—just maybe—the Senate is nearing a deal on the public option. You remember—that larger-than-life legislative... More

Myths of Mexico

The media’s simplistic depiction of the ‘drug war’

By Michelle Garcia   Dec 8, 2009 at 11:30 AM

In 1891, my great-great-uncle, Catarino Garza, attempted to overthrow the Mexican dictator, Porfirio Díaz, by launching an armed revolution from... More

Open Government Plan Launches Today

By Clint Hendler   Dec 8, 2009 at 10:19 AM

At 11am, the Obama Adminisitration's in house senior techies--Aneesh Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer, and Vivek Kundra, the Chief Information... More

The Times Gets Tough on the Credit Raters

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 8, 2009 at 10:07 AM

The New York Times takes an excellent and necessary look at the Big Three credit-rating firms—critically important enablers of the... More

Monday Links: What About JP?, BB BW, McLean on Goldman

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 7, 2009 at 09:53 PM

Bloomberg's David Reilly writes a good column pointing out that while Goldman Sachs is getting all the flak right now,... More

WSJ Unbalanced on Business and Carbon

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 7, 2009 at 09:15 PM

The Wall Street Journal goes A1 with a "you don't say!" story saying Big Business is mad about the EPA... More

Poverty’s Poet Laureate

A new portrait of Dorothea Lange

By Julia M. Klein   Dec 7, 2009 at 05:57 PM

Dorothea Lange was an elite portrait photographer, a government-funded propagandist, an artist, and, most famously, a photojournalist who helped invent... More

Copenhagen Coverage Watch: “Hopenhagen?”

After weeks of pessimism, coverage of summit opening shows optimism

By Curtis Brainard and Cristine Russell   Dec 7, 2009 at 05:30 PM

As delegates from 192 countries descended on Copenhagen for the start of the United Nations climate treaty talks today, the... More

Is Politico Really ‘New Media’?

Just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s not old-fashioned

By Greg Marx   Dec 7, 2009 at 04:23 PM

The official announcement today that Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei has been elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board went out of... More

‘A Minor Regional Prophet’

Paul Hemphill wrote the stories he was meant to write

By Steve Oney   Dec 7, 2009 at 03:54 PM

Paul Hemphill, the first published writer I ever knew, died in Atlanta last summer of lung cancer at the age... More

Just Because

Let us count the reasons why

By Merrill Perlman   Dec 7, 2009 at 01:35 PM

One reason why columns like this are written is because so many writers don’t realize when a tautology has them... More

“He Could See Over”

A pal remembers Mark Pittman

By Dean Starkman   Dec 7, 2009 at 01:09 PM

This is a eulogy for Mark Pittman, a Loeb-award-winning Bloomberg reporter who died on Thanksgiving, given by his friend and... More

Irony du Jour

By Megan Garber   Dec 7, 2009 at 12:57 PM

Without further comment, check out the name of the latest publication to make an impassioned and apparently earnest attempted takedown... More

“A closed meeting on openness”

By Clint Hendler   Dec 7, 2009 at 12:44 PM

The AP has a hard-edged story bringing the news that a hall full of federal employees will be attending a... More

Politico Takes On the ‘Tick-Tocks’

By Greg Marx   Dec 7, 2009 at 12:14 PM

Mike Allen and Alexander Burns had an interesting piece at Politico yesterday on the art of the “tick-tock”—that staple of... More

“Obama Overexposed?”: Upon Us Yet Again

Carr puts a new spin on the old question

By Megan Garber   Dec 7, 2009 at 11:14 AM

Three words sum up, I think, the current state of our generally scenic but sometimes arid Media Landscape—three words manage... More

The Medium is the Message

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 7, 2009 at 10:22 AM

Michael Scherer at Time magazine's Swampland blog on D.C. politics picked up on a little jab from the press-critic-in-chief last... More

The Most Underreported Health Reform Story

And the senator from Nebraska

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 7, 2009 at 07:00 AM

Friday night the Senate gave grudging support to a provision in its health reform bill—the so-called CLASS Act, short for... More

WSJ Warns That Systemic Risks Remain

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 7, 2009 at 06:05 AM

The Wall Street Journal has a good column this morning warning pretty starkly about the huge risks that are still... More

Man on the (Digital) Street

A new Web service helps reporters find the perfect quote

By Janet Paskin   Dec 6, 2009 at 04:06 PM

It all began innocently enough. In fifteen years as a PR guy and serial entrepreneur, Peter Shankman had become something... More

Friday Links: More Enterprise, Citi TARP, Snake Oil Salesmen

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 4, 2009 at 05:41 PM

Good news in the news business (really!). Reuters tells PaidContent it's committing more resources to longer-form enterprise reporting as part... More

Google This: Swisher, Schmidt, Burn!

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 4, 2009 at 05:29 PM

Kara Swisher at the Wall Street Journal's All Things D blog has this gleeful translation/evisceration of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's... More

PayMeNow, ChargeMeLater

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 4, 2009 at 05:21 PM

Gawker has this jaw dropping announcement that Time Inc. is now charging its freelancers for "the privilege of being paid... More

Comments of the Week

November 30 - December 4, 2009

By Sara Germano   Dec 4, 2009 at 04:41 PM

Every Friday, we excerpt some of the most insightful, articulate, interesting, and entertaining comments we receive each week. Think we’ve... More

Reuters Scoop: FBI Eyes on SAC Capital

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 4, 2009 at 04:24 PM

Reuters has the humdinger story of the day. What's mostly a profile of FBI agent B.J. Kang breaks quite a... More

Copenhagen’s “Climate Pool”

Eleven international news agencies launch Facebook blog

By Curtis Brainard   Dec 4, 2009 at 03:35 PM

The Associated Press and ten other international news agencies have launched “The Climate Pool,” a Facebook page that they hope... More

Intruder Alert!

Being liked in Washington is a sometime thing—just ask Desiree Rogers

By Steve Daley   Dec 4, 2009 at 03:24 PM

It’s December and real Chicagoans are making ready for the onset of a Lake Michigan winter and for the arctic... More

The Headlines Tell Us Everything

The Congressional Budget Office weighs in on premiums

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 4, 2009 at 02:05 PM

The release of the Congressional Budget Office’s report this week predicting how health reform might affect insurance premiums dished up... More

Archival Research

New study finds there’s no clear standard for updating or maintaining online news archives

By Craig Silverman   Dec 4, 2009 at 11:12 AM

Of all the requests she’s received to erase information contained in online articles, Kathy English, the public editor of the... More

Bloomberg Covers Yet Another Swap Flop

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 4, 2009 at 10:17 AM

A Bloomberg story this morning points (me, anyway,) to a simple conclusion: state and local governments need to stay away... More

Thursday Links: FDIC Fudge, Plutocracy, Pale Sales

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 3, 2009 at 07:06 PM

Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil says the FDIC is setting a real fine example for its charges by fudging its own books.... More

Hacked E-mails and “Journalistic Tribalism”

Climate coverage is imperfect, but is it ideologically biased?

By Curtis Brainard   Dec 3, 2009 at 06:53 PM

In a column for USA Today on Tuesday, Jonah Goldberg argued that the mainstream press hasn’t given enough attention to... More

Afghanistan Factbook

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 3, 2009 at 05:28 PM

John Hanrahan over at the Nieman Watchdog blog has this interview with Columbia University economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, one of... More

No “P” in the (White House Press Corps) -OOL

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 3, 2009 at 04:58 PM

With a lot of fuss from mainstream media outlets about bloggers from less-than-objective outlets like the Huffington Post, Salon and... More

NYT Inside the Comcast-GE Deal

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 3, 2009 at 04:12 PM

The New York Times is just flat-out impressive this morning on the Comcast deal for NBC Universal. Its Andrew Ross... More

Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Scientifically

Scientific American names Mariette DiChristina first female EIC

By Sara Germano   Dec 3, 2009 at 04:10 PM

Scientific American, the United States’s oldest continuously published magazine, today announced the appointment of Mariette DiChristina as the eighth and... More

Getting Schooled

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 3, 2009 at 03:30 PM

A report released yesterday by the Brookings Institution, "Invisible: 1.4 Percent Coverage for Education is Not Enough" (pdf) found that... More

The walls come tumbling down…

By Clint Hendler   Dec 3, 2009 at 01:08 PM

Robert Wilonsky, a writer for the altweekly Dallas Observer, passes on a corporate memo that is reportedly causing unease among... More

Senate Judiciary Considers Shield Bill, Part II

By Clint Hendler   Dec 3, 2009 at 10:06 AM

The hearing has ended, but click the replay button below to see once-live tweets from myself, the Society of Professional... More

Yes, Virginia, There Really Are Cost Controls

What miracle will bring down the price of medical care?

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 3, 2009 at 08:00 AM

At this point in the health reform debate, press coverage is beginning to sound a lot like 1993-94, when the... More

A WSJ Look at Creepy Iranian Repression

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 3, 2009 at 06:01 AM

The Wall Street Journal has an important piece of foreign reportage on the front page this morning. Farnaz Fassihi reports... More

Wednesday Links: Sí, SI; NYCWSJ; NHL Dollar

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 2, 2009 at 04:57 PM

I've thought for a while now that the last best hope for newspapers and magazines was some sort of e-reader... More

CNN Blogs Afghanistan

By Megan Garber   Dec 2, 2009 at 04:32 PM

Earlier today, Clint called for a more comprehensive media treatment of the United States's new Afghanistan strategy--one, in particular, that... More

FDA Pressed on Interview Policy

By Clint Hendler   Dec 2, 2009 at 02:52 PM

Today, a coalition of media organizations including the Association of Health Care Journalists and the National Association of Science Writers... More

Bringing It All Back Home

The Washington Post closes its last remaining national bureaus

By Jill Drew   Dec 2, 2009 at 02:24 PM

Beltway politicians and bureaucrats love to generalize about “the American people”—who they are, what they want, how they feel about... More

Omission Control

The media on everything Obama didn’t say last night

By Alexandra Fenwick   Dec 2, 2009 at 01:59 PM

Much of the post-speech analysis last night focused on what Obama didn’t talk about at West Point in his 33-minute... More

They’re Baaack

A crucial FT report shows egregious Bubble Era lending practices returning

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 2, 2009 at 01:39 PM

David Leonhardt is somewhat sanguine about the state of the financial system given its apparent steadiness after the Dubai World... More

But How Will it Play in Puli Khumri?

A full Afghanistan debate would feature Afghanis

By Clint Hendler   Dec 2, 2009 at 01:26 PM

President Obama’s speech last night, concerning America’s path forward in Afghanistan, was primarily directed at a domestic audience. Obama had... More

The Obama Doctrine?

How helpful are last night’s Obama/Bush comparisons? Not very.

By Megan Garber   Dec 2, 2009 at 11:47 AM

In the flurry of reactions to Obama’s Afghanistan speech, we’re seeing a lot pieces like this: “Echoes of Bush in... More

Show and Tell

An enlightening history of the Danish cartoon controversy—minus the cartoons

By David Gura   Dec 2, 2009 at 11:29 AM

The Cartoons that Shook the World | By Jytte Klausen | Yale University Press, 240 pages, $35 Many Americans will... More

West Point Reaction Roundup

Summarizing reactions to Obama’s Afghanistan speech

By Greg Marx   Dec 2, 2009 at 10:31 AM

A new war strategy consists of more than a speech, of course. But President Obama’s address to cadets at West... More

Chris Matthews: Trolling for Insight

By Megan Garber   Dec 2, 2009 at 09:23 AM

Chris Matthews was in rare Matthewsian form in his coverage of Obama's Afghanistan speech last night. To wit, courtesy of... More

A Little WSJ Slice of Trump’s Life

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 2, 2009 at 06:15 AM

Here's a good Wall Street Journal story this morning on yet another Trump feud, this one with a former casino... More

Tuesday Links: Goldie’s Guns, WSJ.com, Reprints

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 1, 2009 at 06:39 PM

Alice Schroeder, Buffett's biographer, writes in her Bloomberg column that she hears anecdotally that Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) bankers... More

Crouching Tiger…

By Megan Garber   Dec 1, 2009 at 05:39 PM

So one of the more mystifying aspects of the Tiger Woods story has been the fact that so much of... More

Just Another Cyber Monday

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 1, 2009 at 04:18 PM

Oh, brother. The fifth annual round of "Cyber Monday" stories are here to hype a pure concoction of the online... More

When Tiger Updates Cry Wolf

By Megan Garber   Dec 1, 2009 at 04:14 PM

In the aftermath of TigerGate--or HydrantGate or SpurnedSwedeGate or DriverGate or whatever we're calling it--many in the media have been... More

Live Blogging “Starting Your Own Media Company” with Fred Wilson

By Diana Dellamere   Dec 1, 2009 at 03:58 PM

CJR staffers will be live blogging this program at the Columbia Journalism School with influential venture capitalist, Fred Wilson. The... More

Spock Crock

AP piece shows what happens when a narrative gets ahead of a story

By Greg Marx   Dec 1, 2009 at 02:03 PM

Yesterday’s narrative-perpetuating Politico item on stories the president doesn’t want told seems to be, to borrow a phrase, “driving the... More

An Inside Look at Huckabee and Clemency

By Greg Marx   Dec 1, 2009 at 02:03 PM

The murder of four Seattle-area police officers has, beyond the immediate tragedy, turned in to a major political headache for... More

The FTC to the Rescue!

By Diana Dellamere   Dec 1, 2009 at 01:36 PM

The Federal Trade Commission is holding a meeting today and tomorrow on the future of journalism. (No need to re-check... More

Into the Woods

How should the media be covering the car crash heard ‘round the world?

By The Editors   Dec 1, 2009 at 01:35 PM

Tiger Woods, you may have heard, got himself into a little fender-bender late last week. Since then, we've been greeted... More

Hertz Drops a Libel Suit

By Dean Starkman   Dec 1, 2009 at 12:41 PM

A tip of The Audit’s green eyeshade to Aaron Elstein and Crain’s New York, which seems to have gotten some... More

The White House and Politico: Enough to Make You [Sic]

By Megan Garber   Dec 1, 2009 at 12:36 PM

As Greg mentioned last night, Politico—or, you know, “the POLITICO”—has published a particularly Politicobnoxious piece entitled “7 stories Barack Obama... More

Afghanistan Piece Goes Astray

Otherwise-decent AP story misses a couple of points

By Greg Marx   Dec 1, 2009 at 10:42 AM

With the world waiting for President Obama to announce his new plan for Afghanistan tonight, the AP offered a dispatch... More

Stay Classy, 1938 Style

By Clint Hendler   Dec 1, 2009 at 10:32 AM

Of all the way to address Salahi-gate, Henry Morgenthau III's reminiscence in today's New York Times has to be the... More

Moral Force

Why Mark Pittman matters

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 1, 2009 at 09:47 AM

The first time I ever talked to Pittman was for an Audit Interview back in February. We do these Q&A's... More