Comments of the Week

February 22-26, 2010

By The Editors   Feb 26, 2010 at 04:57 PM

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

Takeaway from the Summit

Decoding what was said during yesterday’s health care reform meeting

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 26, 2010 at 03:36 PM

For weeks leading up to the president’s health care summit yesterday, the media tossed around phrases like ‘kabuki dance,’ ‘dog-and-pony... More

Do Articles About Toxins Causing Autism Cause Hysteria? They Don’t Have To.

By Alexandra Fenwick   Feb 26, 2010 at 03:22 PM

New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof's recent piece discussing a study showing a possible link between chemicals in the... More

Ace Ventura, Whale Detective

By Alexandra Fenwick   Feb 26, 2010 at 01:00 PM

Today The New York Times had an unintentionally hilarious story examining the intentions of a killer whale involved in a... More

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Rubio’s haircut isn’t—or shouldn’t be—the story

By Greg Marx   Feb 26, 2010 at 11:17 AM

On his way to a truly spectacular and ignominious flame-out, John Edwards seems to have left at least one political... More

A Few Sour Notes In National Journal’s Chamber Piece

By Holly Yeager   Feb 26, 2010 at 10:37 AM

National Journal goes in a good direction this week, with a long look at a powerful Washington institution that gets... More

No Context on the Fed’s New Fangs

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 26, 2010 at 10:25 AM

Since when has the Federal Reserve been an investigative pit bull? Since never. But don't look to the major papers... More

The Counter-Plagiarism Handbook

Tips for writers and editors on how to avoid or detect journalistic plagiarism

By Craig Silverman   Feb 26, 2010 at 10:09 AM

Last week, I examined why news organizations aren’t using plagiarism detection services to root out literary thieves. Technology has a... More

Audit Notes: NYT CDS, Embargoes, Obama Folds

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 25, 2010 at 08:59 PM

I had some reservation about the Times story on Greece and credit-default swaps this morning. Although I liked the idea... More

Reinflating the Bubble

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 25, 2010 at 06:28 PM

A relative of mine just got this in the mail from Bank of America Home Loans (ie: Countrywide) offering to... More

Press Crimes?

Scrutinizing whether media outlets spurred on the war in the Balkans

By Bojana Stoparic   Feb 25, 2010 at 03:44 PM

On November 20, 1991, Serbia’s newspapers and TV stations picked up a startling report: forty-one Serbian children had been massacred... More

True to Form

Online journalism, like print journalism, can be a variety of things

By Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend   Feb 25, 2010 at 03:35 PM

Even the ways we think about revolutionary forces shape our revolutions. Revolutions are products of multiple institutional and personal decisions,... More

Critical Condition

Can a retailer-sponsored book review keep its critical hands clean?

By Jordan Michael Smith   Feb 25, 2010 at 03:33 PM

Christopher Hayes is a European-style social democrat, who worked at the left-leaning In These Times before assuming his current job... More

Brief Encounters

Short reviews of books about the future of journalism and a career at the Times

By James Boylan   Feb 25, 2010 at 03:20 PM

The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again By Robert W. McChesney... More

What Happened Here?

Joan Didion’s forty-year-old cautionary tale still fits America

By David L. Ulin   Feb 25, 2010 at 03:05 PM

It was my mother, of all people, who introduced me to Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. This was in the... More

A Success Story

The Web is the star, but print is the unsung hero

By Murray Carpenter   Feb 25, 2010 at 02:57 PM

In coastal Maine, community journalism has been running on parallel tracks in recent years. On one track, an aspiring publisher... More

An Rx for Reporting

Yesterday’s strategies failed on the health-reform story. Now what?

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 25, 2010 at 02:55 PM

Just before Christmas, a CNN poll asked Americans whether they favored or opposed the health-reform bills moving through Congress. Forty-two... More

Competing Takes on Today’s Summit

By Greg Marx   Feb 25, 2010 at 02:18 PM

Coverage of the morning session of today's big health care summit focuses, unsurprisingly, on how the assembled political worthies are... More

Online and Overseas

Less hand-wringing over state of science journalism

By Robin Lloyd and Cristine Russell   Feb 25, 2010 at 12:22 PM

SAN DIEGO—What a difference a year makes. The intense handwringing over the future of science journalism in the wake of... More

The Cost of Living, Part II

A shout-out to the San Francisco Chronicle

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 25, 2010 at 11:42 AM

Containing the runaway cost of medical care is the thorniest of all the thorny issues in the health-reform debate. There’s... More

Are Swaps Helping Create a Greek Death Spiral?

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 25, 2010 at 10:14 AM

It's a good idea for The New York Times to point out that Wall Street is betting against Greece after... More

Breaking Up With Newspapers; A Love Story

By Alexandra Fenwick   Feb 25, 2010 at 09:56 AM

The manufactured pomp and circumstance of Valentine's Day has come and gone but this essay, written by Mimi Johnson, the... More

Audit Notes: Rewrite, Taibbi’s Coffee, TBTF Antitrust

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 24, 2010 at 07:52 PM

Jonathan Stray of the Nieman Journalism Lab finds that of 121 stories on Google hackers being traced to schools in... More

Was IndyMac a Sweetheart Deal or Just Sweet?

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 24, 2010 at 05:03 PM

The Los Angeles Times is good to point out that the consortium of billionaires and might-as-well-be-billionaires, including George Soros and... More

The Upshot of Embargoes

Oransky launches blog examining controversial publishing standard

By Curtis Brainard   Feb 24, 2010 at 04:52 PM

A longstanding and controversial topic of conversation within the science journalism community—news embargoes on peer-reviewed research articles—will now receive regular... More

Destination: Haiti

It took chartered planes, buses, commercial flights, SUVs, motorbikes, helicopters, and some incredible luck to get in and out of Haiti—twice

By Emily Schmall   Feb 24, 2010 at 04:27 PM

It was sweltering when the Blackhawk landed on the narrow airstrip of the USS Carl Vinson, a United States air... More

News Flash: Obama WILL Run for Reelection.

A CJR conversation on today’s Politico “exclusive”

By Clint Hendler and Greg Marx   Feb 24, 2010 at 03:05 PM

This morning, the front page of Politico announced an exclusive story. The headline? "W.H. privately plots 2012 campaign run." This... More

“Our Society Will Be a Free Society”

Newsweek’s Maziar Bahari on press freedom in Iran

By Christopher Livesay   Feb 24, 2010 at 12:07 PM

Maziar Bahari endured beatings, interrogation, and solitary confinement during his 118 days in a Tehran prison cell this past year.... More

What’s a Toyota “Exclusive?” at This Point?

Bloomberg pushes the definition

By Dean Starkman   Feb 24, 2010 at 12:00 PM

What is an exclusive, anyway? This is more than journalism competition issue. As readers sort through the news gusher, it's... More

When Government Acts Like Private Industry

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 24, 2010 at 10:28 AM

The Wall Street Journal is good this morning to look at how public entities dirtied their hands in the bubble... More

Audit Notes: Underemployment, Rogue Industry, Schedule A

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 23, 2010 at 07:40 PM

The St. Petersburg Times's has an excellent profile of an MBA who's gone from a six-figure job to bagging groceries... More

Audit D.C. Notes: A Meta, Mega-Krugman Profile; State Tax-Receipt Nosedive; Traffic Tix as Revenue Source? Maybe.

By Dean Starkman and Holly Yeager   Feb 23, 2010 at 07:04 PM

--Larrissa MacFarquhar’s 10,000-word New Yorker profile of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has kind of a meta-feel to it,... More

More Network News Employees Out of the Picture

News analysts react to the ABC News cuts

By Lisa Anderson   Feb 23, 2010 at 06:59 PM

The relentless drumbeat of job loss across the media industry pounded at ABC News Tuesday afternoon with word that as... More

WSJ Ledes on the OPR Report

Elsewhere, confused language makes for confusing copy

By Clint Hendler   Feb 23, 2010 at 05:35 PM

When reading through the major papers’ coverage of the release of a series of documents surrounding the department’s investigation into... More

Delacorte Lecture with David Remnick

Watch Remnick’s Delacorte Lecture here

By The Editors   Feb 23, 2010 at 04:57 PM

On February 10, 2010, New Yorker editor David Remnick delivered a Delacorte Lecture at the Columbia University Graduate School of... More

Bloomberg’s Overdraft Story Doesn’t Have the Goods

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 23, 2010 at 03:27 PM

Bloomberg has its heart in the right place with a story on banks seeking new prey, err, revenue streams to... More

Olympic Media: Who’s Owning the Podium?

And who oughta be disqualified?

By The Editors   Feb 23, 2010 at 02:53 PM

Here we are right in the midst of Olympics season, and just like everyone else, CJR has caught the snow... More

Remote Control

How Joseph Pulitzer built a media powerhouse—in absentia

By Tom Goldstein   Feb 23, 2010 at 02:48 PM

Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power | James McGrath Morris | Harper | 559 pages, $29.99 What is... More

Digging Deep

Beyond day one on the torture ethics report

By Clint Hendler   Feb 23, 2010 at 02:03 PM

It can’t be fun. Late on a Friday, some important, extremely controversial, highly complicated, and very long government document drops.... More

NYT Shows Banks Playing Dirty on Overdrafts

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 23, 2010 at 10:21 AM

The New York Times is excellent to spotlight how banks are using aggressive marketing tactics to try to trick customers... More

Better Communication Begets Trust

Experts press for localizing climate coverage

By Robin Lloyd and Cristine Russell   Feb 23, 2010 at 10:18 AM

SAN DIEGO—Amidst growing polarization and public confusion over global climate change, there has been plenty of finger pointing about the... More

Audit Notes: Goldman-Greece, Planet Money, Leverage Limits

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 22, 2010 at 07:37 PM

The Wall Street Journal flooded the zone on the Goldman-Greece debt scandal with a troika of stories today. On page... More

At HuffPost, the Old College Try

The outlet branches into college news

By Megan Garber   Feb 22, 2010 at 06:22 PM

There’s a species of journalism we often forget to include when we talk about our fabled ‘new media landscape’: college... More

CJR Holds a Town Hall Meeting

And finds a cross-section of public opinion on health reform

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 22, 2010 at 04:37 PM

The polls continue to say that roughly half of Americans don’t support health reform. A Zogby poll finds that about... More

On Bad Times, Times Does Good

By Holly Yeager   Feb 22, 2010 at 03:18 PM

With the unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent and a staggering 6.3 million people jobless for six months or more—the... More

Sebelius Discovers More Rate Increases

And the press finally takes note

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 22, 2010 at 02:40 PM

We were pleased to see HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discover that high rate increases proposed by Anthem Blue Cross were... More

An Unfortunate Analogy

By Mike Hoyt   Feb 22, 2010 at 02:00 PM

In Howard Kurtz’s Monday Media Notes column in The Washington Post today comes word that the Church of Scientology has... More

Exit Strategies

Why are there so many ways to leave?

By Merrill Perlman   Feb 22, 2010 at 12:02 PM

The Eskimos may—or may not—have many words for “snow,” but we English speakers certainly have a number of words to... More

The WSJ Is Hit and Miss on Geithner

By Ryan Chittum   Feb 22, 2010 at 10:38 AM

The Wall Street Journal has some interesting reporting this morning on Tim Geithner—reporting that doesn't do him any good. But... More

A Transparency ‘Victory’ Lap?

By Clint Hendler   Feb 22, 2010 at 09:37 AM

This morning's Politico Playbook brings word that the Obama administration will pick a series of policy initiatives highlighting the White... More

Marco Rubio and the Republican Elite

Wielding national political power without elite support is a pipe dream

By Greg Marx   Feb 19, 2010 at 01:06 PM

Marco Rubio seems to be the breakout star of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the yearly gathering of right-wing... More

To Catch A Plagiarist

There are tools to catch plagiarists in action. Why don’t news outlets use them?

By Craig Silverman   Feb 19, 2010 at 12:13 PM

As the general manager of the iThenticate plagiarism detection service, Robert Creutz has unique insight into the recent Gerald Posner... More

The Anthem Saga Revisited

What exactly was the Times trying to tell us?

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 19, 2010 at 12:04 PM

The story idea seemed reasonable—a follow-up to the news that Anthem Blue Cross planned to raise rates on individual policies... More

Audit Notes: The Fed Move Means…;Reuters on the SEC, Apple; WaPo on CRE gloom, etc.

By Dean Starkman and Holly Yeager   Feb 19, 2010 at 11:52 AM

The Fed move means... ...an end to emergency measures—Bloomberg. ...an end to easy bank profits—the Times. ...the financial system is... More

“The cute little program, which will be produced without any help from any grown-ups…”

By Megan Garber   Feb 19, 2010 at 10:02 AM

Made for each other: Good Morning America and...The Onion. "NEW YORK—Saying they were bored and there was nothing fun to... More

Heckling the Times

By Clint Hendler   Feb 19, 2010 at 09:49 AM

It's interesting to hear the reaction that Tucker Carlson gets when he defends the New York Times's commitment to accuracy... More

Watch It Live: “paidContent 2010” Conference

By Megan Garber   Feb 19, 2010 at 08:45 AM

Today in New York City, paidContent is convening a group of media-business leaders to discuss the state--and the future--of financed... More

Audit Notes: An NYT Dud on Regulators; A Good Day for M&I; FT on AIG; HuffPo on Mortgages, etc.

By Dean Starkman   Feb 18, 2010 at 07:28 PM

--Dean Baker is right to criticize the Times story this morning that reported on talks to set up a financial... More

Some Stimulus Coverage More Stimulating Than Others

By Holly Yeager   Feb 18, 2010 at 05:22 PM

On the year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, figuring out good ways to cover the stimulus is... More

BREAKING: Stephen Colbert Reads Cat Fancy

By Megan Garber   Feb 18, 2010 at 02:52 PM

It's a great world we live in, folks, that would produce an image like the one below. It is presented... More

Meltdown

By Clint Hendler   Feb 18, 2010 at 02:14 PM

As the Northeast digs and melts its way out from feet of snow, now seems like a fine time to... More

Tunku’s Silly Lists

By Brent Cunningham   Feb 18, 2010 at 02:12 PM

Tunku Varadarajan’s lists in The Daily Beast of the top twenty-five “most influential journalists” on the right and on the... More

More on Politics and the Economy

By Greg Marx   Feb 18, 2010 at 01:11 PM

A short follow-up to my “It’s Still the Economy, Stupid” piece from earlier this week: John Sides, whose post on... More

As the Hamster Wheel Turns

As productivity demands soar, journalists need to talk

By Dean Starkman   Feb 18, 2010 at 08:38 AM

In a piece on growing discontent on The Associated Press’s business desk, Gawker reported that the desk has a deal... More

Q & A: David Barstow

The New York Times reporter talks about the Tea Party movement

By Greg Marx   Feb 18, 2010 at 08:00 AM

As the conservative Tea Party movement has picked up steam over the past year, leading national media outlets—many of which... More

Audit Notes: Koblin Continues on Kouwe; Old Reformers; A good, quick WSJ probe; Charlie Moves Over, etc.

By Dean Starkman   Feb 17, 2010 at 06:40 PM

-John Koblin continues to turn in strong work for the Observer on the Times Bizday plagiarism story, this time with... More

On the Social Security Battlefront

Reporters and their sources

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 17, 2010 at 05:11 PM

For months, Campaign Desk has observed that reporters covering health reform have used the same sources over and over. Now... More

Let the speculation begin!

By Clint Hendler   Feb 17, 2010 at 03:46 PM

From James Rainey’s column in today’s Los Angeles Times on Ira Glass and his radio show, This American Life: In... More

Post Capitol-izes on Snow

Traffic is way up at blog focused on local weather

By Curtis Brainard   Feb 17, 2010 at 01:50 PM

Beneath the snowstorm-induced climate feuding that has pervaded the media for the last few weeks, an interesting thing is happening:... More

Threading the “News Analysis” Needle

By Dean Starkman   Feb 17, 2010 at 08:44 AM

The lines between news and news analysis, and news analysis and opinion, are necessarily fuzzy. Most people would agree about... More

Audit Notes: NYO on an NYT Plagiarism Problem; Three Good Ones in the WSJ; plus Wolf

By Dean Starkman   Feb 16, 2010 at 07:16 PM

--John Koblin at the Observer broke an important story about apparent plagiarism involving Times business staffer Zachery Kouwes. A Times's... More

CJR on the Polks

Past coverage of today’s winners

By Clint Hendler   Feb 16, 2010 at 04:50 PM

This morning, the administrators of the Polk Awards, one of journalism’s most prestigious prizes, announced 2009’s recipients. We’ve structured this... More

A Polk for Pittman

By Dean Starkman   Feb 16, 2010 at 04:41 PM

Long Island University announced the winners of the 2009 Polk Awards this morning, and we at The Audit want to... More

Snow Fights

Storm coverage muddles politics and science

By Curtis Brainard   Feb 16, 2010 at 04:19 PM

Last week, in a front-page story, The New York Times responded to the latest instance of global warming skeptics seizing... More

Special Issue

A problematic discussion

By Merrill Perlman   Feb 16, 2010 at 02:10 PM

Gene Foreman has an issue with “issues.” “I see the misuse of ‘issues’ as a synonym for ‘problems’ as part... More

The “Brave Bystander” Effect

By The Editors   Feb 16, 2010 at 01:15 PM

This morning, we learned that the George Polk Awards have created a new category for videography--and that the category's first... More

Does the Path to Middle East Peace Stop in Doha?

Al Jazeera’s influence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

By Noah Bonsey and Jeb Koogler   Feb 16, 2010 at 12:16 PM

It is no secret that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more deadlocked than at any time since President Obama took office.... More

A Grecian Formula for Globalized News

By Holly Yeager   Feb 16, 2010 at 11:20 AM

The New York Times had a strong Sunday story about Wall Street’s role in masking the Greek debt that is... More

Sounding the Alarm, or Just Sounding Off?

Playing politics with national security may not be a great idea, after all

By Greg Marx   Feb 16, 2010 at 09:13 AM

In his capacity as editor of The Washington Post’s editorial page, Fred Hiatt takes a lot of criticism—some of it... More

Oh, Sh__!

By Clint Hendler   Feb 15, 2010 at 05:34 PM

Take a look, folks, at how Politico’s effort to avoid offending our delicate sensibilities by blanking out most of a... More

The Devil in the Details, Part VI

Needed: a health care primer for Fox News

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 15, 2010 at 01:59 PM

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

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid

More indications that the economy drives political outcomes

By Greg Marx   Feb 15, 2010 at 01:55 PM

One of the side effects of what’s been dubbed the “the permanent campaign” is a proliferation of reporting on public... More

The Times doubles up on Information Access

By Clint Hendler   Feb 15, 2010 at 12:19 PM

Yesterday The New York Times turned in two stories on news organizations’ recent usage of the Freedom of Information Act... More

U.S. Press Digs Into IPCC Story

Articles still fall short of ambitious work in the U.K.

By Curtis Brainard   Feb 15, 2010 at 10:04 AM

A couple of America’s leading media outlets finally dug into the recent controversy surrounding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change... More

Audit Notes: Bloomberg on the Financial Protection Agency; FT’s Volcker Get; Norris Gets Almost There; Greece as Bear Stearns, etc.

By Dean Starkman   Feb 12, 2010 at 06:30 PM

--Bloomberg does a good job tracking the dimming prospects of a consumer finance protection agency, yet another indication, as far... More

Comments of the Week

February 8-12, 2010

By The Editors   Feb 12, 2010 at 05:06 PM

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

Tonight on Channel 5: Some Say They’re Terrorists…

…Tune in tomorrow for the facts

By Clint Hendler   Feb 12, 2010 at 03:33 PM

If you watched NewsChannel 5’s two night "investigation" last week of allegations of terrorist training at Islamville, a Muslim "compound"... More

A Plan for ‘Best Practices’ on National Security Reporting

By Greg Marx   Feb 12, 2010 at 03:06 PM

The stories about Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Barton Gellman’s departure from The Washington Post have generally emphasized his new job as... More

The Times’s Last Goldman Story Mostly Held Up Fine

But it’s not a zero-sum game

By Dean Starkman   Feb 12, 2010 at 12:47 PM

Yesterday, I said Goldman had a minor but valid point in spokesman Lucas van Praag's unusual public response to last... More

Live, from Paley: What’s the One Skill Journos Need Right Now?

By Megan Garber   Feb 12, 2010 at 12:01 PM

At the Carnegie/Paley conference's session on entrepreneurial journalism just now, Jeff Jarvis asked his panelists to engage in a 'lightning... More

Regulating Health Care, Part II

Anthem Blue Cross exposes the holes in rate regulation

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 12, 2010 at 10:52 AM

The pols and the advocacy groups have told us for months that health reform is supposed to produce tighter regulation... More

A Good Counterintuitive Piece on an Ex-Goldmanite

By Dean Starkman   Feb 12, 2010 at 10:12 AM

There are a lot of reasons to like this Bloomberg profile of Gary Gensler. First, it's into the weeds of... More

Streaming Today: Carnegie/Paley Conference on “Solving the Challenges of the News Frontier”

By Megan Garber   Feb 12, 2010 at 08:30 AM

Today, at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan, a collection of smart thinkers will be convening to discuss "A... More

Audit Notes: Bloomberg Day

By Dean Starkman   Feb 11, 2010 at 06:34 PM

It’s all-Bloomberg, all-day here on Audit Notes™ --Nobody can manipulate the data ocean in a Bloomberg machine like Bloomberg News,... More

U.S. Military Releases Freelance Photographer in Iraq

By Greg Marx   Feb 11, 2010 at 01:33 PM

A brief item in the January/February print edition of CJR noted that 2009 marked the sixth consecutive year in which... More

Palin’s Populist Appeal Still Mostly Missing in Polls

By Greg Marx   Feb 11, 2010 at 11:30 AM

Nothing draws attention on the Internet like a column about Sarah Palin, so David Broder’s latest—arguing that the former Alaska... More

Delacorte Lecture with James R. Gaines

Watch Gaines’s Delacorte Lecture here

By The Editors   Feb 11, 2010 at 11:23 AM

On February 3, 2010, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism hosted James R. Gaines, editor-in-chief of the multimedia online... More

The Times, Goldman and the SocGen Problem

The bank has minor, but valid point in tiff with the paper

By Dean Starkman   Feb 11, 2010 at 11:20 AM

The NYT’s Sunday story on the AIG-Goldman collateral fight didn’t break any major news, but it certainly added some useful... More

“You Are the Woodward to My Bernstein,” and Other Journo Valentines

By Megan Garber   Feb 11, 2010 at 10:59 AM

Last year, around this time, the good people at 10,000 Words unleashed unto the world a series of sappy-because-funny/funny-because-sappy Valentines.... More

The Long View on Green

After 40 years on the job, Joe Hebert reflects on covering energy and environment

By Curtis Brainard   Feb 10, 2010 at 04:45 PM

From Three Mile Island to the cap-and-trade debates on Capitol Hill, H. Josef Hebert spent over half of his forty-year... More

Audit Notes: BW on Issa; NYT Probes Long-Term “Care”; Eye on CDS; Extreme Tealeaf Reading, etc.

By Dean Starkman and Holly Yeager   Feb 10, 2010 at 04:43 PM

--BusinessWeek has the very good idea to profile Darrell Issa, the California Republican (and wealthiest member of Congress) whom it... More

Health Reform on C-SPAN

Is that really the issue?

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 10, 2010 at 03:27 PM

Republicans waved a new flag of health reform opposition right after New Year’s, when Florida governor Charlie Crist attacked the... More

Tweeted: Columbia’s Talk with David Remnick

By Megan Garber   Feb 10, 2010 at 12:30 PM

For the next hour or so, The New Yorker's David Remnick will be talking magazines, journalism, and books with Columbia's... More

Note To Self: Palin and the Handy Memo

By Alexandra Fenwick   Feb 10, 2010 at 11:04 AM

In the days since Gawker caught Sarah Palin with crib notes scribbled on her palm during her weekend speech at... More

All Eyes On NHTSA

Press lessons here

By Dean Starkman   Feb 10, 2010 at 10:48 AM

The business press continues to turn in devastating reporting on Toyota’s problems and the parallel failures of its main regulator,... More

New Financial Sheriff in Town, Part III

Times highlights SEC’s latest crackdown—on an Estonian brokerage

By Dean Starkman   Feb 9, 2010 at 11:35 AM

The Times continues the business-press tradition of hailing new regulators as saviors from the previous bad regulators. "S.E.C. Enforcers Focus... More

Unforced Error at Salon

“O’Keefe’s race problem” story goes astray on key detail

By Greg Marx   Feb 9, 2010 at 11:32 AM

It’s not often that, barely a week after sparking a mini media circus by being arrested on federal property in... More

Flip Through The Years, with Palin and Fey

By Clint Hendler   Feb 9, 2010 at 11:08 AM

The Magazine Publishers of America and the American Society of Magazine Editors have jointly produced a neat little video that... More

Father and Son

Should Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner be reassigned?

By The Editors   Feb 9, 2010 at 10:54 AM

A conflict-of-interest concern that’s been rumbling around The New York Times was dragged into the open over the weekend by... More

Audit Notes: Bloomberg Backs the Buck; WSJ on Future State Taxes; Big Money vs. Student Loansharks; Mortgage Banker Schadenfreude, etc.

By Dean Starkman and Holly Yeager   Feb 8, 2010 at 06:18 PM

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner did his best on ABC News’s “This Week” to shoot down Moody’s speculation that the U.S.... More

“John Murtha Dead”: ‘Funny’? ‘Typical’? ‘Finally’?

By Megan Garber   Feb 8, 2010 at 02:45 PM

Sometimes, the systems news organizations have put in place to make news more social--admirable as those systems generally are in... More

Meta Data

Self, meet yourself

By Merrill Perlman   Feb 8, 2010 at 11:43 AM

Lady Gaga and Elton John, two of the music world’s most self-referential and self-aware performers, sang a duet at the... More

Behind the Veil: Covering Iraq’s Women in Hiding

CJR presents an ongoing video series about the work of investigative reporters

By Center for Investigative Reporting   Feb 8, 2010 at 11:42 AM

ABOUT THE SERIES Welcome to The Investigators, an ongoing Web video series produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting highlighting... More

Is Health Reform Dead or Alive?

Wanted: a newsmaker to give us the word

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 8, 2010 at 11:01 AM

Last week, one Washington insider asked a Washington journalist why she had not written that health reform was dead. The... More

The Wall Street End Game

By Dean Starkman   Feb 8, 2010 at 10:56 AM

Barry Ritholtz sees no new news in yesterday’s Times piece recreating the AIG/Goldman talks, which forced the insurer to hand... More

Isis, Oh, Isis

By Justin Peters   Feb 5, 2010 at 06:32 PM

Earlier this week, Max Blumenthal, a journalist who has written for The Nation and other outlets, wrote a piece for... More

Audit Notes: Wessel on Press Failure; Cohan On a Bailout Mystery Pair; NYT on Student Loans, etc.

By Dean Starkman   Feb 5, 2010 at 06:28 PM

--David Wessel, the WSJ's economics editor, displayed admirable candor to a roomful of his financial press colleagues, I thought, in... More

O’Keefe, Etc.

A closer look at a couple more issues surrounding the conservative videographer

By Greg Marx   Feb 5, 2010 at 04:56 PM

James O’Keefe is a hell of a problem for the press. Whatever else he is, O’Keefe is an instigator par... More

“Waves in a Shallow Pan”

Has climate coverage in the MSM lost its authority?

By Philip J. Hilts   Feb 5, 2010 at 02:59 PM

CAMBRIDGE—Like doctors gathered around the operating table in mid-surgery, a group of media experts at Harvard yesterday offered their diagnoses... More

Bond Market Blow-Ups

By Holly Yeager   Feb 5, 2010 at 02:21 PM

If another reminder is needed that we should all pay more attention to the bond market, the Greek debt crisis... More

The Press After Citizens United

Campaign finance experts chime in on a new era

By Clint Hendler   Feb 5, 2010 at 02:21 PM

Over the last two weeks, reporters covering campaign finance have ably chronicled the scope and effects of the bitterly divided... More

Dumb Blonde Story

Sunday Times botches the science in piece on the “princess effect”

By Craig Silverman   Feb 5, 2010 at 11:59 AM

Dr. Aaron Sell, a researcher at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California, has been hearing from... More

The Cost of Living Archive

An archive of Trudy Lieberman’s “The Cost of Living” articles

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 5, 2010 at 11:29 AM

Below, you will find links to every entry in Trudy Lieberman’s “The Cost of Living” series, in descending order. 02/02/11:... More

The Cost of Living

How cardiologists used the press

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 5, 2010 at 09:41 AM

Containing the runaway cost of medical care is the thorniest of all the thorny issues in the health-reform debate. There’s... More

USA Today Wins Oakes Award

“Smokestack Effect” garners another prize for outstanding reporting

By Curtis Brainard   Feb 4, 2010 at 07:00 PM

A USA Today investigation which found that the air outside thousands of schools across the country could be at least... More

Audit Notes: Bloomberg on Why It’s Hard Being Green; K Street Roll Call; Reuters on AIG’s latest, etc.

By Dean Starkman and Holly Yeager   Feb 4, 2010 at 06:27 PM

--Bloomberg has a smart take on the problem of subsidizing green jobs: a lot of them are created in China.... More

The Ethics of Undercover Journalism

Why journalists get squeamish over James O’Keefe’s tactics

By Greg Marx   Feb 4, 2010 at 02:57 PM

When news broke in late January that James O’Keefe and three other men, two of whom were costumed as telephone... More

Landrieu on the Line

Two Louisiana political reporters on why James O’Keefe’s Landrieu story wasn’t news to them

By Alexandra Fenwick   Feb 4, 2010 at 01:17 PM

When ACORN provocateur James O’Keefe and three accomplices were arrested at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office last week in... More

Hearts, Minds, and the Satellite Dish

America’s televised message in the Arab world is dull and poorly managed

By Justin D. Martin   Feb 4, 2010 at 11:01 AM

CAIRO—The United States government has on occasion distressed over the nature of TV news in the Arab world and its... More

The Journal Reveals Yet Another Mortgage Bug

By Dean Starkman   Feb 4, 2010 at 10:49 AM

This is just a good story by Carrick Mollenkamp in the Journal this morning, showing one more trapdoor in the... More

Questions for Question Time

Presidential Q&As may not be the key to better politics

By Greg Marx   Feb 4, 2010 at 08:16 AM

The widespread media enthusiasm that greeted President Obama’s televised Q&A last Friday with Republican congressmen now has an official outlet.... More

A Passion for Print

Why newspapers are thriving in Kenya

By Karen Rothmyer   Feb 4, 2010 at 06:00 AM

Not long ago, I was party to a minor squabble between two guards who work at the apartment complex where... More

Darts and Laurels

New profit demands raise questions about a commitment to quality

By Alexandra Fenwick   Feb 3, 2010 at 06:46 PM

In September, soon after the Times Publishing Company sold the venerable Congressional Quarterly to The Economist Group, the new owners... More

Audit Notes: WSJ v. Pay-to-Play; NIM(Budget)BY; Limousine Liberal, etc.

By Dean Starkman   Feb 3, 2010 at 06:03 PM

--Pay-to-play is a scourge of local and state government, and the Journal does a good job ferreting it out this... More

WSJ Cancels Energy/Environment Blog

Two years after launch, popular site mysteriously dumped

By Curtis Brainard   Feb 3, 2010 at 03:55 PM

After a mere two-year run, The Wall Street Journal has, for some inexplicable reason—or, rather, for some reason it refuses... More

Toyota No Longer Attacking the L.A. Times

By Dean Starkman   Feb 3, 2010 at 02:05 PM

The business press has done well documenting Toyota’s spiraling problems, including this morning’s news that U.S. regulators are accusing the... More

Criticism of IPCC Continues

American media still missing in action

By Curtis Brainard   Feb 2, 2010 at 07:08 PM

American media are still missing in action on the controversy currently embroiling the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In addition... More

Audit Notes: Reuters Withdraws; Leaving Las Vegas; Reregulation, etc.

By Dean Starkman   Feb 2, 2010 at 07:02 PM

--Talking Points Memo had a nice catch of Reuters pulling a story headlined "Backdoor taxes to hit middle class" after... More

Weeklies On the Rise

The center of gravity shifts in the world of business journalism

By Chris Roush   Feb 2, 2010 at 06:59 PM

In the offices of the weekly Denver Business Journal there is a bulletin board known as “The Daily Beating.” On... More

More Than a Job

The emotional toll of journalism’s ‘transition’

By The Editors   Feb 2, 2010 at 06:38 PM

The American Newsroom photograph in our January/February 2009 issue is of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazettereporter seated at a desk that groans... More

Target-Rich Environment

By Holly Yeager   Feb 2, 2010 at 02:34 PM

We’re all for flood-the-zone coverage of the budget, so a tip of The Audit’s green eyeshade to The Wall Street... More

This Is CNN

Is there still a market for a cable news station that tries not to take sides?

By The Editors   Feb 2, 2010 at 01:52 PM

CNN, the granddaddy of cable news, has won accolades for its coverage of the unfolding disaster in Haiti. Working with... More

Working at Home in Pajamas Sounds A Lot Like Being Laid Off

By Alexandra Fenwick   Feb 2, 2010 at 12:18 PM

After reporting on the phenomenon of start-ups as virtual workplaces, telecommuting, the rise of the four-day work-week and other cost... More

Volcker Pushed Back

By Dean Starkman   Feb 2, 2010 at 10:40 AM

When Wall Street doesn’t like something, one thing is certain: the public will hear about it. The pushback on the... More

Everyone Eats …

But that doesn’t make you a restaurant critic

By Robert Sietsema   Feb 2, 2010 at 08:00 AM

When I arrived in New York City fresh out of graduate school in 1977, the city’s food scene couldn’t have... More

Audit Notes: Times Nicked; Defining Populism; Special Dividends; Intrepid Blogger, etc.

By Dean Starkman   Feb 1, 2010 at 06:24 PM

--NYTPicker, an anonymous site devoting to giving the Times a hard time, has an interesting item that says the paper... More

Natural Selection

The dilemma of choices

By Merrill Perlman   Feb 1, 2010 at 04:00 PM

These are tough times, and politicians have to make hard choices about how to spend the smaller amounts of money... More

Ironic Hed of the Day

By Megan Garber   Feb 1, 2010 at 01:36 PM

From The New York Times, without further comment: More

On Paulson’s Sole-Source Account in the WSJ’s News Pages

By Dean Starkman   Feb 1, 2010 at 01:24 PM

On page 350 of Too Big To Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin reports on how Hank Paulson reacted that fateful Sunday,... More

NYT’s AIG Story Puts Spotlight on State Insurance Regulation

By Dean Starkman   Feb 1, 2010 at 10:49 AM

The anachronism that is state-based insurance regulation has basically gotten a pass in the financial crisis—what with all the problems... More

Reality Check at the NewsHour

Obama nationalizing health care? Hardly

By Trudy Lieberman   Feb 1, 2010 at 10:19 AM

Republicans may have succeeded in stalling health care reform, at least for now. But that doesn’t mean the press should... More