Audit Notes: Facebook Abuses Its Network-Effect Advantage, Qs for Goldman, Acropolis Now

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 30, 2010 at 03:55 PM

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a timeline of "Facebook's Eroding Privacy" that everybody who uses the site ought to read.... More

Bill Moyers Signs Off

The esteemed journalist’s last Journal airs Friday night

By The Editors   Apr 30, 2010 at 01:40 PM

Tonight marks the airing of the last edition of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS stations nationwide. An online tribute page... More

WSJ Now Resembling Small-Town Weekly

Future fountains make a splash at Journal’s new New York section

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 30, 2010 at 12:45 PM

The Wall Street Journal launched its New York City section this week amidst a slew of newspaper-war headlines as Rupert... More

More Words of Wisdom from Alan Simpson

Geezers vs. Gen X-ers vs. millenials, etc, etc.

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 30, 2010 at 11:27 AM

Former Sen. Alan Simpson’s interview on Fox Sunday was a doozy. His usual outspoken, outrageous, colorful self shined through, perhaps... More

Visions of Beauty

A data-driven journalist strives to improve his ‘living images’

By Craig Silverman   Apr 30, 2010 at 10:33 AM

David McCandless worked for many years as a writer, but now he likes to call himself a data journalist and... More

Audit Notes: Goldman’s Junk Heap, Settlement?, Reuters’ Junk Heap

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 29, 2010 at 08:34 PM

The New York Times DealBook blog had an excellent post yesterday on "The Goldman E-mails, or How to Sell Junk."... More

An Attempted FOIL

NY governor’s office denies CJR’s records request

By Clint Hendler   Apr 29, 2010 at 06:59 PM

Late this afternoon I got an email from the New York governor’s office initially denying a pair of requests I... More

Raise Your Right Hand, Boss

Wall Street’s testimony, like so many of its products, doesn’t add up.

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 29, 2010 at 06:50 PM

Bloomberg gets a bigtime scoop from a former Lehman in-house lawyer who says Dick Fuld lied to Congress about how... More

So, Do Debates Really Matter?

A closer look at a WaPo post

By Greg Marx   Apr 29, 2010 at 03:08 PM

Chris Cillizza, the political blogger for The Washington Post, had an item the other day that asked an interesting question:... More

Oh goody, it’s Time for a list!

By Kathy Gilsinan   Apr 29, 2010 at 01:27 PM

The TIME 100 is the magazine’s yearly compilation of the “people who most affect our world,” as determined by people... More

Crist “Confidantes,” “Associates,” “Backers”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 29, 2010 at 12:13 PM

As Clint noted, the political world awaits Florida Governor Charlie Crist's press conference later today in St. Petersburg -- or,... More

Three way

By Clint Hendler   Apr 29, 2010 at 10:49 AM

The political world is awaiting Florida Governor Charlie Crist's press conference, slated for 5:30 today. (Why then? I'd guess to... More

NYT vs. WSJ on Goldman’s Lobbying Clout

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 29, 2010 at 09:47 AM

Is Goldman Sachs still feared and courted in the halls of power or is it "spurned"? We get two opposite... More

Audit Notes: Martin Wolf, Radical; Tom Frank and SEC Porn; Apple At It Again on Cartoons

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 28, 2010 at 07:54 PM

When somebody like Martin Wolf is forced to become the radical, you know we've got problems. His always must-read FT... More

The Goldman Hearing Coverage

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 28, 2010 at 06:24 PM

Much of the insta-commentary on the congressional hearings yesterday suggested that they were pretty much a wash for Goldman Sachs... More

Green Like Money

Earth Day coverage shows how much the environmental movement has changed

By Brett Norman   Apr 28, 2010 at 03:57 PM

Earth Day rose from a powerfully anti-corporate, grassroots movement, revved up on 1960s idealism and genuine fear inspired by books... More

Which One of These is Not Like the Others?

By Greg Marx   Apr 28, 2010 at 02:58 PM

When, in the wake of John Paul Stevens’s announced retirement from the Supreme Court, press attention started to focus on... More

Bloomberg Scoop Has Implications for Geithner, Ex-Goldman Chair

SIGTARP Barofsky says investigation into Fed coverup of AIG bailout could result in charges

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 28, 2010 at 02:46 PM

Yow! Bloomberg Markets breaks some major news today in a magazine profile of TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, who... More

Next Slide, Please

Military’s PowerPoint addiction could be a bad habit for archivists

By Clint Hendler   Apr 28, 2010 at 01:41 PM

We are, apparently, a nation whose Army marches on PowerPoint. As detailed in Elisabeth Bumiller’s Tuesday front page New York... More

Rick Foster’s Predictions

No bending of the cost curve in his crystal ball

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 28, 2010 at 01:19 PM

Richard Foster, as good an actuary as you can find, delivered the Obama folks a bit of bad news last... More

Hey, Jake Tapper: Read This!

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 28, 2010 at 11:24 AM

Some folks at ABC News might want to read (and even add to) this piece we ran last week by... More

Obama Press Office? Johnston Saw Trouble in ‘09

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 28, 2010 at 09:27 AM

Today, Politico has a long, much-Twittered-about piece detailing "why reporters are down on Obama," (for starters, named and unnamed reporters... More

Headline of the Year (So Far)

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 28, 2010 at 08:53 AM

Sometimes you just have to step back and admire the New York Post. Today is one of those days. Its... More

Audit Notes: WSJ Missed, WSJ Hit, SEC Porn

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 27, 2010 at 08:55 PM

Hedge-fund biggie David Einhorn ripped into The Wall Street Journal for that weird "Hedge Funds Pound Euro" story it... More

Greywolf, Timberwolf, Blackwolf?

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 27, 2010 at 06:52 PM

Matthew Goldstein of Reuters has been sniffing around Goldman Sach's Greywolf and Timberwolf transactions since last August. Timberwolf is the... More

Skimming the Surface

Will the financial reform bill lead to more bailouts? You won’t find out in today’s NYT story

By Greg Marx   Apr 27, 2010 at 04:37 PM

The front page of today’s New York Times features an article on the state of play on financial reform that... More

Apple vs. Gizmodo

Who are you rooting for?

By The Editors   Apr 27, 2010 at 04:33 PM

There’s a lot to chew over, ethically and legally, in Gizmodo’s acquisition of something that looks an awful lot like... More

But Why Didn’t Regulators Regulate?

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 27, 2010 at 02:03 PM

Bethany McLean mostly misses with her column in The New York Times on who's really to blame in the sordid... More

What’s the Deal?

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 27, 2010 at 01:47 PM

Naughty word in the news today. Reports cbsnews.com: Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) channeled his frustrations with Goldman Sachs witnesses at... More

The Law of Conservation of Mavericks

By Greg Marx   Apr 27, 2010 at 01:19 PM

John McCain’s recent disavowal of the “maverick” brand has been a little embarrassing for the Arizona senator, because—well, because he’s... More

Covering War on the Cheap

Study finds local journalists are most at risk for killing

By Sherisse Pham   Apr 27, 2010 at 12:45 PM

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published its third annual Global Impunity Index last week, pointing fingers at countries where... More

MSNBC: “Not The President…”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 27, 2010 at 12:24 PM

Narrating a cable news live shot waiting for something to happen -- any minute now!-- isn't easy. One must remain... More

Def Com: It’s Alive

Early Coverage of Deficit Commission, from Gloomy to Doomed

By Holly Yeager   Apr 27, 2010 at 12:06 PM

The deficit commission created by President Obama holds its first meeting today, and a couple of preview pieces stand out... More

Audit Notes: WSJ Blotter, Deutsche CDOs, Wall Street Praised for Its Self Control

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 26, 2010 at 08:47 PM

The Wall Street Journal's much-anticipated New York section arrived today, but your humble Seattle Audit bureau didn't get it in... More

Apple’s Aggression Against the Press (Yep, Gizmodo Counts)

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 26, 2010 at 06:30 PM

Gawker Media's Gizmodo got hold of a lost iPhone prototype last week after paying the person who found it $5,000.... More

FT Buries the Lede on Ex-SEC Officials and Goldman

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 26, 2010 at 04:52 PM

I did a double-take this weekend while reading the Financial Times. The paper put out a story headlined "Handling of... More

Unremarked

By Clint Hendler   Apr 26, 2010 at 03:26 PM

Last Wednesday, General Jim Jones spoke before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Just after thanking his hosts for... More

Look at the Jobless Rate for the New Joads

By Holly Yeager   Apr 26, 2010 at 02:32 PM

Naked Capitalism shines some light on an aspect of the long, sad unemployment story that we don’t hear nearly enough... More

Sebelius Watch, Part II

Will Madame Secretary rule with moral suasion?

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 26, 2010 at 02:21 PM

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has emerged as the person to watch as the Obama administration scrambles to... More

Ethics for the Investigators

A new report seeks standards for nonprofit newsrooms

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 26, 2010 at 12:57 PM

Today, the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Journalism Ethics, in conjunction with the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (a nonprofit... More

Face, Meet Post

Reader ire draws changes to WaPo social media effort

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 26, 2010 at 11:55 AM

On Wednesday afternoon, visitors to The Washington Post’s Web site were greeted with a new feature on the home page.... More

Out the Wazoo

Misspellings of ‘yin and yang’ abound

By Merrill Perlman   Apr 26, 2010 at 11:14 AM

Here’s how language changes: Take a term rendered in a foreign language, let’s say “yin and yang.” Have people start... More

The Voice of the Affected

How the media are improving humanitarian aid post-Haiti

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 26, 2010 at 10:25 AM

A team of media-development experts that has been working with radio stations in earthquake-damaged Haiti to provide critical information to... More

Chris Ware Shows Fortune the Mirror on the 500

Limits to what can be said in the friendly confines of the business press

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 26, 2010 at 09:57 AM

Surely, the times call for pointed critiques of corporate America. Fortune commissioned the cartoonist Chris Ware to propose a cover... More

LAT’s Dwyre: “A Housewife Got The Real [Pat Tillman] Story”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 26, 2010 at 09:31 AM

After watching the soon-to-be-released documentary, The [Pat] Tillman Story, LA Times sports columnist Bill Dwyre felt "mortified" and "ashamed" of... More

Audit Notes: Ritholtz, Google Spies, Schumer Shies on Shilling

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 23, 2010 at 05:26 PM

Barry Ritholtz writes a superb post on the Goldman Sachs Abacus scandal. Wall Street loves complexity because it either tricks... More

WSJ Blows the Ratings-Agencies Story

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 23, 2010 at 04:26 PM

The Wall Street Journal does a terrible job today of covering the ratings-agency investigation news, which is a big deal... More

You Pick It, You Report It

The Faster Times plots a new pro-am collaboration

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 23, 2010 at 04:01 PM

The Faster Times, an online newspaper launched in July 2009 (tagline: “A new type of newspaper for a new type... More

Flight Path

Have Western journalists given Islamofascism a free ride?

By Josh Gohlke   Apr 23, 2010 at 12:19 PM

The Flight of the Intellectuals | By Paul Berman | Melville House | 220 pages, $22.95 Paul Berman spends much... More

Eruption, Interrupted

What’s the best way to correct an errant tweet?

By Craig Silverman   Apr 23, 2010 at 11:29 AM

Just after noon eastern on Monday, the @Breaking News Twitter account, which has close to 1.7 million followers and is... More

The Times Forgets Its Own Goldman Reporting

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 23, 2010 at 10:42 AM

One key part of Goldman Sachs's defense in the Abacus scandal is that it lost a pile of money on... More

A Teaser So Nice They Used It Twice

By Greg Marx   Apr 23, 2010 at 10:31 AM

Score one for the awards-are-meaningless crowd: the good folks at the American Society of Magazine Editors, having already decided that... More

All Together Now: Ayva-Fiat-Yogurt-Merkel!

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 23, 2010 at 10:12 AM

It's been about a week since that Icelandic volcano whateveritscalled has been busy shutting down European airspace and bringing us... More

To Inspire and Explain

With NASA’s future uncertain, press must weigh science versus exploration

By Brett Norman   Apr 23, 2010 at 07:30 AM

[Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series examining recent coverage of President Obama’s plans for the future... More

Audit Notes: Michael Lewis, Sebastian Mallaby, Bill Black

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 22, 2010 at 06:05 PM

Michael Lewis explains very clearly to the too-clever-by-half folks over at Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) why what they did... More

An Oversteeped Tea Party?

The movement may be overhyped, but it’s still a legitimate story

By Greg Marx   Apr 22, 2010 at 04:06 PM

Of the various criticisms that get levied against Politico, one of the most common is that it inflates stories that... More

Reuters’s Beefed-Up Enterprise Reporting Is Paying Off

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 22, 2010 at 02:07 PM

Reuters and Murray Waas are at it again with another great health-care investigation. It shows how WellPoint, the second-largest health... More

WSJ’s Good Idea on Abacus Needed More Context

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 22, 2010 at 11:41 AM

I like that The Wall Street Journal zeroes in on the specific homeowners at the core of the Abacus bet.... More

Economic Indicator: Tonal Shift in Spam Email!

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 22, 2010 at 11:39 AM

Need more reassurance than Tim Geithner declaring the economy is "getting stronger, faster," as he did just this morning on... More

Audit Notes: Yes, There Was a Housing Bubble; Magnetar; Facebook

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 21, 2010 at 10:58 PM

Dean Baker bizarrely dismisses the role Wall Street chicanery had in inflating the bubble: It Was the Housing Bubble: Not... More

The Future? We Hope Not

NYT’s Politico profile paints a scary picture

By Holly Yeager   Apr 21, 2010 at 04:32 PM

The New York Times magazine profile of Mike Allen, the force-of-nature Politico reporter, has been much anticipated—at least in the... More

D.C.’s “Most Popular Friend:” Mark Halperin Mike Allen

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 21, 2010 at 12:48 PM

You can now read, at nytimes.com, Mark Leibovich's how's-he-do-it? profile of Politico's Mike Allen and Allen's Very Important Morning Email... More

A Compulsion To Know

CJR’s 2000 profile of Mike Allen

By Brent Cunningham   Apr 21, 2010 at 10:58 AM

On the occasion of Mark Leibovich's New York Times Magazine profile of Politico's Mike Allen, CJR is happy to offer... More

Goldman’s Forked Tongue

NYT and WSJ blow up a bank defense on the Paulson-Abacus deal

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 21, 2010 at 09:43 AM

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal punctured one of Goldman Sach's self-defenses in the Abacus scandal: That it lost $90 million... More

The Midnight Ride of George Pataki

Who’s behind the ex-gov’s health repeal crusade?

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 21, 2010 at 08:48 AM

The latest health care news is the formation of a group called Revere America whose mission, it seems, is to... More

Bloomberg’s One-Source Wonders

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 21, 2010 at 04:27 AM

Take a TV interviewee, type up what they say, and print a one-source story. That's a bad recipe for journalism.... More

Spaceballs

Fox News article about NASA’s future stokes Cold War fears with false experts

By Brett Norman   Apr 21, 2010 at 01:55 AM

[Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series examining recent coverage of President Obama’s plans for the future... More

“Something Doesn’t Have to Be Illegal to Be Wrong”

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 20, 2010 at 09:04 PM

Today I saw three major financial commentators make the point or something thereabouts that Wall Street's doesn't have to break... More

Audit Notes: Goldman Dig, Fox Biz Strikes, Super-Senior Slip-up

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 20, 2010 at 08:52 PM

Matthew Goldstein of Reuters digs out some interesting information on the Goldman scandal. He names Gail Kreitwoman as one of... More

WSJ’s (Soon CNBC’s) Kelly Advances the Goldman Story

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 20, 2010 at 06:52 PM

Boy, losing Kate Kelly is a big blow to The Wall Street Journal. She's had a hand in a disproportionate... More

Understanding the Unaffiliateds

What does the uptick in independent voters really mean?

By Greg Marx   Apr 20, 2010 at 04:47 PM

With the midterm elections looming on the horizon, stories about voter frustration are all the rage. Today, USA Today takes... More

Checking In On “This Week’s” Fact Checking

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 20, 2010 at 03:50 PM

It’s been about three weeks since ABC’s “This Week” host, Jake Tapper, took up NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen on... More

Pleading with a fifth

By Clint Hendler   Apr 20, 2010 at 02:25 PM

And now for a payment-for-access story from another era of journalism: Let Ralph Morse, then a photographer for Life, tell... More

It’s Not About You, NYT

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 20, 2010 at 01:03 PM

The kicker to the New York Times's obit yesterday for the renowned "narcissism expert," James F. Masterson: Dr. Masterson became... More

Apple’s Speech Policies Should Still Worry the Press

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 20, 2010 at 12:19 PM

Apple has asked Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist Mark Fiore to "resubmit" his iPhone/iPad application for approval, with Steve Jobs saying it... More

Gizmodo’s iPhone story and Checkbook Journalism

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 20, 2010 at 11:36 AM

Today we learn that not one but two media companies with some of the most top-secret-hush-hush internal practices out there,... More

TOTES HuffPo

By Clint Hendler   Apr 20, 2010 at 11:21 AM

Yesterday saw the premier of "HuffPost Hill" a new email blast from the Huffington Post that promises to be, according... More

A King in the White House?

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 20, 2010 at 11:01 AM

"Is Larry King's CNN Reign Nearing Its End?" wonders Tom Shales in today's Washington Post, noting that Larry King Live's... More

Great National Reporters Thinking Alike

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 20, 2010 at 10:30 AM

Via Twitter, CNN political producer Peter Hamby shares these nuggets about a conference call this morning with reporters, Marco Rubio... More

Bartlett on Shallow Think Tanks—and How the Press Jumps in Them

By Holly Yeager   Apr 20, 2010 at 09:26 AM

Think tanks are in Washington’s DNA. But despite their outsized role in our politics and policy debates, the press rarely... More

Audit Notes: SEC and Stanford, Goldman and Wells, Murdoch’s Personal Feuds

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 19, 2010 at 08:33 PM

You've got to love this SEC investigation. I mean, of the SEC, not by it. Talking Points Memo revisits an... More

Mangling “Power Problem”

By Dean Starkman   Apr 19, 2010 at 05:53 PM

Heidi N. Moore, an ex-WSJ staffer and vocal defender of the business press, has been Twittering like mad to lambaste... More

Springtime for Investigations as the SEC Acts

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 19, 2010 at 03:18 PM

It looks from the newspapers this morning like the dam has finally broken on prosecuting the crisis scandals. The New... More

Ex-Sited

An AP style change shakes things up

By Merrill Perlman   Apr 19, 2010 at 02:59 PM

The Associated Press shook up the world last week. The World Wide Web, that is. The AP, whose stylebook is... More

Will Collaborative Climate Coverage Work?

Mother Jones and six other outlets step into the unknown

By Thomas K. Zellers   Apr 19, 2010 at 02:52 PM

With the Senate poised for an “uphill push” to pass climate and energy legislation, and numerous surveys saying that Americans’... More

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…

Four CJR writers are named finalists for media coverage awards

By The Editors   Apr 19, 2010 at 02:12 PM

We’re delighted today to bring you some more happy news about Columbia Journalism Review: four of our writers are among... More

Robot Journalism and the Future of Digital Media

More on Columbia’s new dual degree in journalism and computer science

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 19, 2010 at 02:02 PM

Starting in 2011, Columbia University will be offering a new combined degree between the journalism school and engineering school, which... More

Merrill Goozner on Tom Friedman

Why health care costs so much

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 19, 2010 at 12:58 PM

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman waded into the weeds of health care costs yesterday with a column about a... More

An Error, an Oversight, and an Overreaction

A closer look at the Domenech/CBS/White House imbroglio

By Greg Marx   Apr 19, 2010 at 10:10 AM

Is there anything left to say about the Domenech-Kagan affair? Howard Kurtz’s story in last Friday’s Washington Post describing the... More

Audit Notes: Goldman, Goldman, Goldman (What Else?)

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 16, 2010 at 05:30 PM

Marian Wang of ProPublica has a sharp follow-up to the blockbuster news that the SEC is charging Goldman Sachs with... More

Angelides, The Audit, and Unfair Lending

An ex-regulator’s testimony to the commission needs examining

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 16, 2010 at 04:40 PM

Comptroller of The Audit Dean Starkman spent three months last year poring over nearly a decade of financial-press archives to... More

Sebelius Watch

Does the administration want to make seniors wait longer for Medicare?

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 16, 2010 at 01:30 PM

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has emerged as the person to watch as the Obama administration scrambles to... More

Goldman Sachs Fraud Charges Are a Business-Press Win

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 16, 2010 at 12:13 PM

The New York Times's Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson score a major scoop this morning with news that the SEC... More

USA Today Blurs an Important Mortgage Line

By Holly Yeager   Apr 16, 2010 at 12:11 PM

Looking for more good economic news? I see USA Today is ready to declare that the worst of the foreclosure... More

Accuracy and the Average Person

Corrections aren’t just for journalists anymore

By Craig Silverman   Apr 16, 2010 at 11:01 AM

Jeff Jarvis recently wrote a nice post detailing how everyone is now a content creator. Sure, not everyone writes lengthy... More

No We Scan’t

By Clint Hendler   Apr 16, 2010 at 10:50 AM

Carl Malamud, the always serious but never boring man behind Public.Resource.Org, a California non-profit which has made countless pages of... More

Sebelius Watch Archive

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 16, 2010 at 08:00 AM

Below, you will find links to every entry in Trudy Lieberman’s “Sebelius Watch” series, in descending order. 09/14/10: Sebelius Watch,... More

Audit Notes: First FOIA Bank Run?, Demand a Second Opinion, Doctor

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 15, 2010 at 06:58 PM

The big banks are continuing to fight Bloomberg's Freedom of Information lawsuit against the Fed, which would force it to... More

It’s Time for the Press to Push Back Against Apple

Yank iPad apps unless Apple cedes complete control over the right to publish

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 15, 2010 at 05:21 PM

The Nieman Journalism Lab's Laura McGann has a disturbing report that ought to perk up every news organization that sees... More

Dare Not Know His Name

By Clint Hendler   Apr 15, 2010 at 01:24 PM

Today an indictment was revealed in a Maryland federal court charging Thomas A. Drake, a former official with the National... More

Bad News for Ben Nelson?

The Cornhusker Kickback still grates on Nebraskans

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 15, 2010 at 12:03 PM

A few days ago, I found myself a visitor in Lincoln, Nebraska, a city where I cut my teeth as... More

Missing the Mortgage-Mod Story

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 15, 2010 at 11:23 AM

Still think The Huffington Post is just an aggregator of lefty opinion and tabloid fluff? Okay, it's still that, but... More

Chthonic, Guttate, and Tennis, To Name a Few

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 15, 2010 at 11:17 AM

What are "Words That David Foster Wallace Circled in His American Heritage Dictionary," Alex? Slate publishes a complete list of... More

Mind Games

Can neuroscience explain the crisis in news?

By Todd Gitlin   Apr 15, 2010 at 10:42 AM

What Is Happening to News: The Information Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism | By Jack Fuller | University of... More

What Networks Didn’t Mention About WV Mining Disaster

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 15, 2010 at 09:50 AM

Andrew Tyndall noticed something about the nightly newscasts' (ABC, CBS, NBC) coverage of the recent disaster at Upper Big Branch... More

The Chicago Tribune Walks

Newly unsealed evidence says the paper was never extorted

By Clint Hendler   Apr 14, 2010 at 06:42 PM

High above the summit of Chicago’s Tribune Tower, the clouds are clearing and the light is shining through. A just-revealed... More

Audit Notes: Say What, CME?; Magnetar Wrong; A Monster, All Right

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 14, 2010 at 06:10 PM

Felix Salmon examines the newly released unredacted version of the Valukas Report and finds what he calls a scandal in... More

Audit D.C. Notes: The Post Explains Competing Stern Narratives; NYT on the Revolting Revolving Door, John Kay on the Failures of Economics

By Holly Yeager   Apr 14, 2010 at 04:35 PM

Since Politico’s Ben Smith reported Andy Stern’s planned exit from SEIU on Monday, there have been competing narratives applied to... More

Maternal Mortality Mix-Up

Press turns out disjointed coverage of politics, data

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 14, 2010 at 04:07 PM

A slew of news articles this week have focused on two recent reports about the number of women who die... More

All About Bob: A Beat Sweetener

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 14, 2010 at 03:45 PM

You may know Robert F. ("Bob") Bauer as Gregory Craig’s successor as White House counsel. But, really, who is Bob... More

How 60 Minutes Missed on Chevron

A piece on the oil giant and the rainforest last year relies too much on innuendo

By Martha M. Hamilton   Apr 14, 2010 at 01:08 PM

"Play CBS Video." The arrow is superimposed on an image of old, rusting oil barrels emblazoned with Texaco's name. "Chevron... More

License to Kill, Part II

Waiting for coverage of the al-Awlaki standard

By Greg Marx   Apr 14, 2010 at 11:15 AM

On April 6, government officials let it be known that the CIA, like the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, has... More

A Look at CJR’s Past Coverage of Monday’s Pulitzer Prize Winners

Sometimes we totally call it. Sometimes, not so much.

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 14, 2010 at 11:14 AM

If calling the Pulitzer Prize winners were like picking a Sweet 16 bracket for March Madness, CJR didn’t exactly win... More

Chittum, CJR Tweet Fleet Caught Napping

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 14, 2010 at 09:51 AM

New York Times business editor Larry Ingrassia and TalkingBizNews's Chris Roush take me to the woodshed this morning for an... More

Audit Notes: Lehman Inquiries Spike, Salmon on Blogging, Derivatives

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 13, 2010 at 06:37 PM

Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business News reports that investigators are now zooming in on three areas of Lehman's accounting, including... More

The WSJ’s Pulitzer Shutout is Bad for the Country

By Dean Starkman   Apr 13, 2010 at 06:14 PM

As Alexander Cockburn theorized in a 1984 Wall Street Journal column, the Pulitzers are a kind of show business, a... More

Krugman Throws Stone at Sorkin from His Glass House

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 13, 2010 at 03:15 PM

It's New York Times columnist vs. New York Times columnist. Paul Krugman hammers his colleague Andrew Ross Sorkin for getting... More

WaPo, with Optimistic-but-Anonymous Officials, Spins Deficit Story Forward

By Holly Yeager   Apr 13, 2010 at 03:05 PM

The Washington Post’s page-one story about the federal deficit is generating a lot of buzz, as it should. It’s got... More

Bumper Music Gunfire

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 13, 2010 at 01:58 PM

From the AP: As many as a dozen Mogadishu-based radio stations stopped playing music on Tuesday after the insurgent group... More

The Never-Ending Story

Inside Huffington Post’s 11,000-word piece on progressive Democrats

By Greg Marx   Apr 13, 2010 at 01:52 PM

Media critics like to wonder whether there’s a place on the Web for long-form narrative journalism. But evidence that such... More

What Crisis?

Pulitzers pass over financial reporting

By The Editors   Apr 13, 2010 at 01:24 PM

If you had to pick a single story that has shaped our recent times, it would be the financial crisis... More

Science, Environment, & the 2010 Pulitzers

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 13, 2010 at 11:24 AM

A tip o’ the hat to these science, environment, and health related Pulitzer winners: Public Service – The Bristol Herald... More

Hearts and Minds in Marja

If the Marja offensive was a performance as much as anything else, then where was the skepticism from the media?

By Jack Mirkinson   Apr 13, 2010 at 10:40 AM

About two months ago, thousands of NATO and Afghan troops rolled into Marja, a town in Afghanistan's troubled Helmand province,... More

Finishing The Treatment

The New Republic ends its health care blog

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 13, 2010 at 10:34 AM

Campaign Desk was sorry to see Jonathan Cohn’s last post on The New Republic’s health reform blog, The Treatment. Cohn... More

A Quote Unfit to Print

By Clint Hendler   Apr 13, 2010 at 10:10 AM

This quote--in an interesting for its own sake New York Times article on a new generation of clean incinerator power... More

More Shades of Enron in NYT’s Lehman Scoop

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 13, 2010 at 09:38 AM

Lehman Brothers is smelling an awful lot like Enron these days. The New York Times splashes a scoop by Louise... More

Cover Your Access

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 13, 2010 at 09:31 AM

The Washington Post today has a front-page piece about White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, speculating that Gibbs might --... More

Audit Notes: Median American Family, Bank Hole, A Wolff in Wolf’s Clothing

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 12, 2010 at 06:34 PM

Listen up, business press: Zero Hedge runs a great guest post by Graham Summers looking at why Average Joe and... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Salon Asks Where the Women Are; WaPo on the American Dream, Revised; AP on “Years of Protocol”

By Holly Yeager   Apr 12, 2010 at 06:06 PM

Salon has a smart follow-up to a Politico piece we noted last week about a new generation of pundits. While... More

Columnists Call the Turn, Wonder Why the Rest of Us Don’t

By Holly Yeager   Apr 12, 2010 at 02:26 PM

There’s a new view taking hold in the commentariat: the U.S. economy is in much better shape, but the public—and... More

Live from New York: It’s Pulitzer Day

By The Editors   Apr 12, 2010 at 01:55 PM

This year's Pulitzer Prizes will be announced just after three this afternoon. CJR will be live tweeting the event, and... More

Beset by Acrimony

Words that no one uses outside journalism

By Merrill Perlman   Apr 12, 2010 at 01:44 PM

Time for a rant. Journalists seem to love certain words that no one actually uses in normal conversations. Have you... More

The Devil in the Details, Part VIII

What’s really in store for seniors on Medicare?

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 12, 2010 at 01:40 PM

Health reform is now the law of the land, and the 2,000 or so pages of the legislation contain lots... More

Old-Fashioned WSJ Leder Spotted in the Wild

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 12, 2010 at 01:04 PM

The Wall Street Journal goes back to its roots with an excellent old-fashioned leder this morning. It's a well-told tale... More

On Fox News, Introspection…

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 12, 2010 at 12:43 PM

...by chyron? More

Evidence of Things Not Seen

Georgia House Bill 1332 and the crime-scene censorship debate

By Spencer Bailey   Apr 12, 2010 at 12:30 PM

Last month, lawmakers in Georgia swiftly approved House Bill 1332—called the “Meredith Emerson Privacy Act.” The bill aims to limit... More

A Rosy Future for Cancer Vaccines?

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette thinks so

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 12, 2010 at 12:01 PM

There’s a trope in medicine that doctors only have three ways of dealing with cancer: cutting (surgery), burning (radiation), and... More

Good Sports?

TMZ Sports: ESPN’s newest competition, or athlete upskirt shots?

By Clare O'Connor   Apr 12, 2010 at 11:47 AM

When TMZ executive producer Harvey Levin announced plans last December to launch a sports offshoot of the notorious gossip site,... More

“Experiment and Fail Quickly”…

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 12, 2010 at 09:42 AM

... is "our mantra this year," says one newspaper news executive, according to a new PEJ survey of newspaper and... More

ProPublica Humdinger on a Diabolical CDO Scheme

Investigation shows in detail how hedge-fund Magnetar gamed the system and kept the bubble going

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 9, 2010 at 06:51 PM

Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica have a fantastic investigation out today of Magnetar, a short-selling hedge fund that... More

Meet the Supreme Court Front-Runners

The media speculate on the identity of John Paul Stevens’s successor

By Greg Marx   Apr 9, 2010 at 04:49 PM

Now that Justice John Paul Stevens has gone and announced his upcoming retirement from the Supreme Court, we know what... More

“And now, more than 4,000 posts later…”

More tales from the journalism hamster wheel

By Holly Yeager   Apr 9, 2010 at 01:02 PM

A funny thing is happening right now on Michael Calderone’s Politico blog: nothing. That’s because Calderone, prolific chronicler of the... More

Extra! Extra! Clean Fingers!

By Katia Bachko   Apr 9, 2010 at 11:53 AM

A strong indication that publishers are stumped by the iPad: This morning in Times Square, a horde of Wall Street... More

Inside the World’s Largest Fact Checking Operation

A conversation with two staffers at Der Spiegel

By Craig Silverman   Apr 9, 2010 at 11:47 AM

Late last month, I had an experience unlike any other in my professional life. For two days, I was surrounded... More

Newsprint on Film, a Retrospective (Death Knell)

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 9, 2010 at 11:36 AM

New York City's Film Forum theater is hosting a four week film series of newspaper-themed movies, featuring "the faded world... More

Lampooning Arab Leaders

By Justin Peters   Apr 9, 2010 at 11:30 AM

Occasional CJR contributor Justin Martin has a good piece today at GlobalPost calling for Arab nations to relax their laws... More

WSJ Story Shows Repo 105 Was Just the Beginning

An excellent investigation uncovers Wall Street hiding its true debt levels

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 9, 2010 at 10:27 AM

This is what you call a great piece of enterprise reporting. The Wall Street Journal this morning has a major... More

From Newspaper to Wallpaper

By Katia Bachko   Apr 9, 2010 at 10:24 AM

In the movies, a wall covered in newspapers typically signals a serial killer or obsessive stalker. But, thanks to designer... More

The “Full” WikiLeaks video

By Clint Hendler   Apr 9, 2010 at 09:56 AM

Gawker has a post up noting that 20 minutes of footage are missing from the 39-minute version of the WikiLeaks-released... More

Audit Notes: FHLB Bomb, Subprime Fraud, Gannett Is Cheap

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 8, 2010 at 06:16 PM

Bloomberg's Jon Weil has the Lede of the Day, writing about a "trillion-dollar time bomb": The Federal Home Loan Banks... More

License to Kill

Some background—and some questions—on the Anwar al-Awlaki authorization

By Greg Marx   Apr 8, 2010 at 03:37 PM

The recent news that the Obama administration has authorized the CIA to kill the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki raised... More

Politico’s Interesting Take on Down-and-Sort-of-Out Rubin

By Holly Yeager   Apr 8, 2010 at 03:26 PM

Politico takes a look today at Robert Rubin, declaring him “decidedly out of favor in the nation’s capital.” There’s no... More

Head Case

The artful eccentricity of St. Clair McKelway

By Abigail Deutsch   Apr 8, 2010 at 03:01 PM

Reporting at Wit’s End: Tales from The New Yorker | By St. Clair McKelway | Bloomsbury | 619 pages, $18... More

Fortune FAIL: One-Source Story on Credit-Card Reform

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 8, 2010 at 02:31 PM

Ah, the one-source story. Nasty habit of Bloomberg and the Financial Times—and now Fortune. The magazine interviews Wall Street analyst... More

“Too vital to ignore,” perhaps?

By Clint Hendler   Apr 8, 2010 at 12:42 PM

Forget about Confederate history--it's STD awareness month! And fittingly, here's an excerpt from a press release that just landed in... More

“Dumbest Tiger Woods Stories” Number 11!

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 8, 2010 at 10:19 AM

Yes, Salon's "10 Dumbest Tiger Woods Stories" list could no doubt be four times as long, but I'll limit myself... More

“Surreptitious Reporting”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 8, 2010 at 09:43 AM

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof reports from Zimbabwe (where's the "know-it-all's bias"?): In a week of surreptitious reporting here... More

Audit Notes: Waxman Whacks Wolff, Salon Whacks Wolff, Brooks Just Wack

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 7, 2010 at 08:43 PM

Finally, somebody gets up the nerve to slap a cease-and-desist on Michael Wolff's parasitic Newser. Sharon Waxman and he have... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Newsweek Lets Simpson Speak for Himself; American Banker Connects Politics and Policy, The Hill on the Obvious, Etc.

By Holly Yeager   Apr 7, 2010 at 04:07 PM

The bipartisan commission on the national debt established by President Obama is set to start working in a few weeks,... More

Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan on the Dole

How the bank puts politicians and taxpayers over a barrel

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 7, 2010 at 01:05 PM

The Wall Street Journal's front-page story on Jamie Dimon's efforts to prevent regulatory reform sent me off on a tangent... More

Journalism vs. the UN Security Council: Round 1?

By Armin Rosen   Apr 7, 2010 at 12:30 PM

There are currently thirty-eight active armed conflicts in the world. But when Japanese UN ambassador and Security Council president Yukio... More

The White House vs. the Associated Press

Is talking to the insurance industry off limits?

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 7, 2010 at 12:25 PM

Linda Douglass, who works at the White House Office of Health Reform, smacked the AP last week for its “so-called... More

Know-It-All’s Bias

By Liz Cox Barrett   Apr 7, 2010 at 09:32 AM

Over at The Atlantic, Lane Wallace ("author, pilot, and entrepreneur" ) describes how she came to realize that sometimes reporters... More

Miscast Model

Sure, Jon Stewart’s brilliant. That doesn’t mean CNN should imitate him.

By Greg Marx   Apr 7, 2010 at 09:20 AM

As the steady stream of proposals for how to “fix” CNN continues apace in the wake of last week’s dismal... More

Calling Katrina

New Orleans Times-Picayune’s 2005 hurricane coverage included in NYU’s “Top 10 Works of the Decade”

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 6, 2010 at 04:07 PM

The New Orleans Times-Picayune’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina from August to December 2005 has been named one of the top... More

Audit D.C. Notes: National Journal Uncovers Who Makes What on K Street; WaPo on What We Think About Homeownership, NYT on What to Expect, Etc.

By Holly Yeager   Apr 6, 2010 at 04:02 PM

What do they make? It’s what everyone wants to know, especially when it comes to the small world of K... More

Breaking News from the Luncheon Keynoter

The future of news is (brighter than you think; contingent on government subsidies; in Mark Zuckerberg’s hands)

By Steve Daley   Apr 6, 2010 at 01:11 PM

First of all, I’d like to thank (Tucker Carlson; Arianna Huffington; that tweedy-looking professor over there) for the opportunity to... More

Local Paper Leads Way on Mine Disaster Coverage

By Greg Marx   Apr 6, 2010 at 12:24 PM

With much of the national media’s focus turned to West Virginia today in the wake of yet another mine disaster,... More

Bollinger and Lemann, Unplugged, on ‘Uninhibited, Robust and Wide-Open’

By Alexandra Fenwick   Apr 6, 2010 at 12:24 PM

Columbia Journalism School dean and a distant overseer of CJR, Nicholas Lemann, interviewed Columbia University President and First Amendment scholar,... More

Grove’s Death Knell for White House Press Corps Skips a Beat

By Holly Yeager   Apr 6, 2010 at 11:49 AM

The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove tries to declare the death of the White House press corps. And he makes a... More

Compensation Complaints

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 6, 2010 at 10:28 AM

The Wall Street Journal reports that Wall Street pay hit a record (asterisk attached) last year at $140 billion. That's... More

Backwards Steps by the WSJ and NYT on iPad

The papers cripple everyday Web features in their apps for a walled-in environment

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 5, 2010 at 04:11 PM

I compared the design and content of the Times and Wall Street Journal on the iPad earlier. Now let's take... More

Gaga for Technology

Can the media ease their addiction to the new new thing?

By Susan Moran   Apr 5, 2010 at 03:41 PM

CAMBRIDGE, Ma.—As journalists, we're often caught in a cycle of “hype and disappointment,” said Bryan Walsh, national environment writer for... More

Portion Control

The many variations of ‘proportion’

By Merrill Perlman   Apr 5, 2010 at 02:31 PM

How do I “proportion” thee? Let me count the ways: • “Checks dated by April 30 will receive a special,... More

IPad Review: New York Times vs. Wall Street Journal

In a promising start, the Times looks a lot better, but the Journal is full-featured

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 5, 2010 at 01:55 PM

First of all, let me say that the iPad is indeed a Big Deal. All those journalism-future discussions you've had... More

Getting Foxy on Currencies

By Holly Yeager   Apr 5, 2010 at 01:39 PM

The Treasury Department’s announcement that it’s delaying a much-anticipated decision on whether China manipulates its currency got lots of coverage—and... More

The Best-Covered News Story, Ever?

Does The New Republic live on Mars?

By Trudy Lieberman   Apr 5, 2010 at 12:10 PM

Last week, The New Republic turned over its health care blog “The Treatment” to an odd commenter on media coverage—University... More

WSJ Looks Past the Census Noise

By Holly Yeager   Apr 5, 2010 at 11:44 AM

The Wall Street Journal finds an interesting angle on the census, looking beyond the rhetoric of conservative activists who’ve been... More

The Pentagon Papers: A CJR Panel

Video of the recent panel discussion hosted by CJR

By The Editors   Apr 5, 2010 at 10:48 AM

The New York Times first printed stories based on the Pentagon’s detailed secret history of the war in Vietnam on... More

WikiLeaks Releases Video Showing Death of Reuters Staff

By Clint Hendler   Apr 5, 2010 at 10:37 AM

This morning at an event at the National Press Club, WikiLeaks screened a video depicting a missile strike on a... More

Coming Out as a Journalist in Iraq

By Greg Marx   Apr 4, 2010 at 06:00 PM

Rod Nordland has an interesting Week in Review piece in Sunday's NYT exploring the surprising results in the Iraq elections... More

Audit Notes: Fed Foe of Big Banks, Executive Pay, Credit Tricks

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 2, 2010 at 07:31 PM

The Huffington Post's Shahien Nasiripour interviews Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig, a fierce opponent of too big to fail,... More

Krugman’s Too Big to Fail Straw Man

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 2, 2010 at 05:34 PM

Paul Krugman has a poorly argued column today setting up straw men to argue his case for regulation. This is... More

Party Power

Hillary wouldn’t have pushed for health care? Don’t believe it

By Greg Marx   Apr 2, 2010 at 04:19 PM

Via Kevin Drum, Bruce Bartlett has an essay at Forbes.com today that comes to a peculiar conclusion (emphasis added): I... More

Got Science Reporters?

New USC health news service stirs debate because it doesn’t

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 2, 2010 at 03:30 PM

On the last Friday in March, the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism announced the staff... More

SEC and You Shall Not Find

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 2, 2010 at 02:43 PM

What is the SEC good for? That's what Bloomberg's Jon Weil asks. Good question. Why did it take a court-appointed... More

‘The Tragedy Is That Elmer Only Wanted Dramatic Roles’

By Greg Marx   Apr 2, 2010 at 08:00 AM

After David Mills, the former journalist and Emmy-winning screenwriter, died earlier this week, HBO distributed a lengthy obituary penned by... More

(Almost) All-Ivy Audit Notes: The Corporation, Repo 105, Complexity Trap

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 1, 2010 at 05:47 PM

Justin Fox of the Harvard Business Review has the most interesting read of the day, an interview with historian Brian... More

Thin Ice

The man behind WikiLeaks has some allegations

By Clint Hendler   Apr 1, 2010 at 04:38 PM

It was certainly alarming when Julian Assange, a board member for the secret document sharing site WikiLeaks, alleged in a... More

The Man and the Machine, On a Cover Near You

By Greg Marx   Apr 1, 2010 at 03:47 PM

With today being Official iPad Review Day, might as well take a moment to see how the newsweeklies are positioning... More

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

ProPublica launches a new reporting tool

By Greg Marx   Apr 1, 2010 at 02:49 PM

The folks at ProPublica have been covering the troubles with the federal government’s home loan modification program for awhile, and... More

Congress Not Popular in ‘08, Either

By Greg Marx   Apr 1, 2010 at 09:42 AM

In his column today in The Washington Post, David Broder laments the sunken state of Capitol Hill. Despite the passage... More

Dot Earth Moves to NYT Opinion Section

Revkin: “I will say what I think, in ways I could not before”

By Curtis Brainard   Apr 1, 2010 at 06:00 AM

After two-and-a-half years and 940 posts as a news blog, Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth site will be moving to the... More

Reuters’ Imaginary WSJ/NYT Price War

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 1, 2010 at 05:31 AM

Reuters gets a story on the upcoming Wall Street Journal/New York Times Battle for New York all wrong. And PaidContent... More

Google Is Not a Heroic Defender of Privacy

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 1, 2010 at 04:16 AM

The New York Times reports that a coalition, including companies like Google, is trying to push tougher privacy laws for... More

Audit Notes: NYTPad, Perp Walks, Warren’s War

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 1, 2010 at 01:28 AM

What will a newspaper look like on the iPad? Here's a blurry sneak peek of screenshots of The New York... More