The SEC Slaps Citi for Concealing $43 Billion in Toxic Assets

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 30, 2010 at 07:34 PM

So Citigroup misleads investors in 2007 about tens of billions of dollars of subprime assets it would eventually take huge... More

WSJ Buries Wylys Story, Ignores GOP Angle

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 30, 2010 at 03:54 PM

The SEC is charging the billionaire Wyly brothers with a massive fraud involving $550 million in ill-gotten gains from a... More

It’s All About Us

WaPo’s Story Lab experiment fizzles

By Holly Yeager   Jul 30, 2010 at 12:52 PM

It seemed like a questionable allocation of resources when The Washington Post dispatched seven reporters to local coffeehouses one day... More

How WikiLeaks Outsourced the Burden of Verification

To the Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel

By Craig Silverman   Jul 30, 2010 at 12:15 PM

Julian Assange is upset with The New York Times for talking with the White House about WikiLeaks’s trove of Afghanistan... More

Christiane, I wrote you a song

By Joel Meares   Jul 30, 2010 at 11:59 AM

Among the many Christiane Amanpour tidbits doing the rounds in the lead-up to her debut on This Week Sunday, we... More

Sebelius Watch, Part IV

The press falls for the bait

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 30, 2010 at 10:28 AM

A few days ago, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius came forth with one more goodie from the new reform law: the... More

Audit Notes: Obama, Labor Buster; BP Board’s Blame; Google Pollution

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 29, 2010 at 08:24 PM

The Washington Post had a good story last week looking at the striking disparities between autoworkers who were on the... More

BP Defines Deviancy Down

The national press is slow off the mark on the huge oil spill in Michigan

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 29, 2010 at 07:24 PM

The national press stuffs a big story today on a massive new oil spill in the Kalamazoo River. Size, of... More

Fox Faults On FOIA

New law unclear, but not as bad as you’ve heard

By Clint Hendler   Jul 29, 2010 at 05:01 PM

Yesterday afternoon, Fox Business Network* seemed to have posted quite a scoop: Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed... More

Bringing a Big Story Home at The Omaha World-Herald

Local reporting in the age of wire copy

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 29, 2010 at 04:09 PM

Most regional papers have relied on wire copy to tell the story of the 92,000 classified military documents released by... More

Q & A: Nevada Political Journalist Jon Ralston

“People just hate Harry Reid… They would vote for Charles Manson over Harry Reid.”

By Joel Meares   Jul 29, 2010 at 03:52 PM

In a state where the major newspapers are often highly partisan, Jon Ralston has been offering Nevadans some of the... More

Karzai’s About-Face in the NYT

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 29, 2010 at 12:26 PM

On Tuesday, a New York Times front page story, “Leaks Add to Pressure on White House Over Strategy,” followed up... More

Mercury News: Lobbyists As “Shadow Legislature” in CA

A special report explains the “Sacramento version” of lawmaking

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 29, 2010 at 11:44 AM

There's the "Civics Class Version" of “How Laws Are Created," in which, in brief, a legislator has an idea for... More

Obama on The View (On Afghanistan, On Snooki)

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 29, 2010 at 11:14 AM

For anyone, like me, who happens not to right now be watching (and/or Twittering about), President Obama on The View... More

WSJ Looks at the Overdraft Bottom Feeders

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 29, 2010 at 09:59 AM

The Wall Street Journal is terrific this morning to throw the spotlight on the seedy cottage industry that feeds off... More

Audit Notes: Moody’s Market, Revolving Door, Tables Turned on Zuck

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 28, 2010 at 07:13 PM

Kevin Hall of McClatchy has a great scoop on Moody's CEO's suspiciously timed stock sales. In one case, CEO Ray... More

Yglesias and McArdle Miss on Interchange Fees

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 28, 2010 at 05:46 PM

Matt Yglesias is defending the interchange industry, which transfers money from the poor to the rich—all through hidden fees. Once... More

What We Need is a “Slow News Movement”

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 28, 2010 at 05:22 PM

Walter Shapiro over at Politics Daily considers how quickly the Shirley Sherrod hackjob spread, viruslike, from Breitbart to Fox News... More

The Story Behind the Publication of WikiLeaks’s Afghanistan Logs

From Brussels, to a bunker, to blockbusters

By Clint Hendler   Jul 28, 2010 at 02:18 PM

You wouldn’t be reading the coverage of the so-called Afghanistan logs—in The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian—if... More

Americans Only Kind of Trust the Internet

And other findings from an Annenberg study

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 28, 2010 at 02:12 PM

The Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School released their 2010 report on Friday, “Surveying the Digital Future,”... More

Apple’s Controlling Instincts Hit Time and SI

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 28, 2010 at 01:57 PM

The Wall Street Journal's approach to charging the iPad has been the smartest of any of the media. The Journal... More

Democrats are hotter than Republicans, says The Hill

By Joel Meares   Jul 28, 2010 at 01:25 PM

For those tired of creepy white-haired Australians, heat-seeking missiles, and Pakistan’s sly-S-I, The Hill today provides a deliciously People-esque distraction:... More

NYT Goes to the Numbers

Economists’ analysis brings welcome data to stimulus debate

By Holly Yeager   Jul 28, 2010 at 12:42 PM

The New York Times has a good early look at something that’s much in demand—an analysis of where the economy... More

Bubble Boys

The WikiLeaks documents put an underreported war back on the nation’s radar. It doesn’t matter that the pundits are yawning.

By Joel Meares   Jul 28, 2010 at 10:27 AM

The hardening conventional wisdom on the Afghanistan “war logs” is that they are not the Pentagon Papers. Nor are they,... More

Kudos to The New York Times

For revealing the contradictions in health and financial reform

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 28, 2010 at 10:16 AM

There’s been way, way too much follow-the-newsmaker reporting in recent weeks, with Obama’s acolytes trailing the procession to the promised... More

Audit Notes: GE Corruption, Poor Subsidizing the Rich, Takedown

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

Footnoted's Theo Francis spotlights an eye-raising settlement by GE, which essentially confessed to bribing foreign officials (in Iraq, no less)... More

Seven Top-Paid CEOs Lost Shareholders’ Money in the 2000s

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 27, 2010 at 06:24 PM

The Wall Street Journal runs the numbers on the Top 25 Highest Paid CEOs of the Decade and they are,... More

Visualizing Data, Telling a Story

Behind the scenes of The Guardian’s interactive WikiLeaks coverage

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 27, 2010 at 05:08 PM

Of the three news outlets that broke the WikiLeaks story on Sunday, The Guardian, on its Web site, incorporated the... More

WSJ’s Stimulus-Debate Story is Debatable

A page-one piece says economists question whether stimulus makes things worse but can’t find any who actually do

By Holly Yeager   Jul 27, 2010 at 03:59 PM

The Wall Street Journal goes big with a story on the debate over stimulus spending. But the piece doesn’t deliver... More

“I’m here to tell you what it’s like to be a reporter at Guantanamo.”

By Clint Hendler   Jul 27, 2010 at 03:29 PM

McClatchy is offering a very worth reading commentary, adapted from a speech recently given by The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg... More

Finding Stories in the WikiLeaks Material

How should local and regional outlets cover the WikiLeaks material?

By The Editors   Jul 27, 2010 at 01:16 PM

A few weeks ago, WikiLeaks targeted three news outlets for a massive data dump of classified incident reports from the... More

For CNN: The “What Glenn Beck Said” Show

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 27, 2010 at 12:22 PM

Nancy Franklin On Television in the current New Yorker: Everyone, it seems, is a media hound and a media watchdog... More

Reuters Gets a Wall Street Take on Warren

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 27, 2010 at 10:52 AM

What would it sound like on Wall Street if we got a regulator like, say, Elizabeth Warren, who is resolutely... More

The Summer of Alvin Greene?

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 27, 2010 at 10:03 AM

"People who write about Alvin Greene are going to get clicked on," [Democratic operative Wyeth] Ruthven explains to Politico's Jonathan... More

Darts and Laurels

The diamond thief’s tale sounded too good to be true. Turns out it was.

By Alexandra Fenwick   Jul 27, 2010 at 08:00 AM

On Valentine’s Day weekend in 2003, a gang of Italian thieves, led by a man named Leonardo Notarbartolo, broke into... More

Audit Notes: Angelides; Goldman Sachs; Broke, Fat, and Stoned

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 26, 2010 at 08:31 PM

In non-polo news, the Financial Times scooped this morning that the Financial Crisis Inquiry (aka Angelides) Commission is threatening to... More

Looking the Other Way on Wall Street

NYT’s Morgenson reports that Wall Street knew that bundled loans didn’t meet standards

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 26, 2010 at 05:54 PM

Gretchen Morgenson had an excellent column in yesterday's Times that gets at one of the core issues if criminal cases... More

On Tax-Cut Politics, WSJ Adds to the Confusion

By Holly Yeager   Jul 26, 2010 at 05:50 PM

The Wall Street Journal takes its turn at the tax-cuts-as-election-issue story. But in trying to explain the politics that are... More

WaPo, Time, and Others Play Catch-up on WikiLeaks

What to do when you don’t get the exclusive

By Joel Meares   Jul 26, 2010 at 05:49 PM

Whereas The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel had a four week heads-up on the 91,000-document WikiLeaks... More

For Giving

How to know when ‘for’ needs an ‘e’

By Merrill Perlman   Jul 26, 2010 at 04:00 PM

A golfer who hits a ball into the vicinity of others is beholden to yell “Fore!” to warn them to... More

The Assange Leaks

What’s new about the WikiLeaks data?

By Joshua Foust   Jul 26, 2010 at 03:18 PM

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has compared his organization’s latest leak of almost 92,000 U.S. military documents relating to... More

Gaining Readers’ Confidence In the WikiLeaks Dump

Part II: Verification

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 26, 2010 at 03:03 PM

My previous post addressed the challenges that The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel must have faced in... More

Be Joy Behar (What Would You Ask Obama?)

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 26, 2010 at 02:26 PM

A "non-traditional news show” is how the White House describes ABC's The View, in explaining to the New York Times's... More

Blog Reax to WikiLeaks’s Leak (Afghan War’s Pentagon Papers?)

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 26, 2010 at 01:48 PM

Once you’ve finished reading the 90,000-plus mostly classified Afghanistan-related U.S. military documents brought to you by WikiLeaks, you can read... More

How Three News Outlets Handled the WikiLeaks Dump

Part I: online presentation

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 26, 2010 at 01:43 PM

It’s hard to overstate the colossal challenge of digesting, verifying, and then presenting 92,000 classified documents. When WikiLeaks handed over... More

Same Docs, Different Stories

The three outlets gifted by WikiLeaks take three different approaches

By Joel Meares   Jul 26, 2010 at 12:46 PM

On Sunday, three news outlets published the results of their investigations into 91,731 classified U.S. military documents that they had... More

“The Word Was Polo; The Man, Ralph Lauren”

Place those special sections, gleefully, in the recycle pile unread

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 26, 2010 at 11:43 AM

One of the dirty little secrets of the newspaper business is that you should almost never bother to read a... More

British Tabloid Strikes Gossip Gold Online

An argument for isolating print and Web newsrooms

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 26, 2010 at 11:21 AM

In a time when many American news organizations are trying to consolidate their print and Web operations, The Daily Mail... More

It’s Still Unclear Why Cassano Got Off the Hook

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 23, 2010 at 06:16 PM

The Wall Street Journal's leder this morning explores why the government dropped its criminal fraud investigation of AIG's Joseph Cassano,... More

The Un-federated Tea Party Caucus

WaPo’s roundup of new caucus is funny, but misses a key point

By Joel Meares   Jul 23, 2010 at 04:43 PM

When news broke last week that The National Tea Party Federation had expelled the Tea Party Express for not scolding... More

Chronicle Gives “Climategate” Probes Their Due

Even wary journalists find little evidence of whitewash

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 23, 2010 at 03:23 PM

I've complained twice in the last month that the press is not giving recent climate-change news its due. Today, I... More

Climate Bill Blowout

It’s a big deal. Where’s the print coverage?

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 23, 2010 at 03:00 PM

Following Senator Harry Reid’s decision to pull the plug on climate legislation Thursday, news sites lit up with lit up... More

Daniel Schorr, 1916-2010

By Clint Hendler   Jul 23, 2010 at 02:31 PM

Daniel Schorr, the legendary CBS newsman who reinvented himself as an analyst and commentator for CNN and NPR, died this... More

NYT’s Rangel Work Gets Results on the Hill

But rest of the press tries not to notice

By Holly Yeager   Jul 23, 2010 at 12:43 PM

A House ethics panel’s ruling that Charlie Rangel violated congressional rules is big news all around today, as it should... More

If a Correction Falls in the Woods…

Slate’s pot-kettle-black takedown of Politico

By Clint Hendler   Jul 23, 2010 at 12:17 PM

On Tuesday, Slate published an analysis spotlighting twelve Politico articles in a recent three week period where notable revisions, overwhelmingly... More

A Front-and-Center Corrections Policy

TBD.com launches its policy before launching site

By Craig Silverman   Jul 23, 2010 at 11:15 AM

Prior to publishing the first and, as it would turn out, only edition of his 1690 newspaper, Publick Occurrences, Both... More

Q & A: ABC News’s Paul Slavin

The ABC News Digital senior vice-president talks about his new, spherical iPad app

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 23, 2010 at 10:55 AM

Earlier this week, ABC News released a new iPad app: a reader for the Web site’s content. The app is... More

Paying Attention to Social Security

Two takes from the MSM

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 23, 2010 at 10:35 AM

Slowly, ever so slowly, the mainstream media is discovering the Social Security story. So it’s worth noting two pieces in... More

Audit Notes: Pretty-Penny Paywall, Booty, Fair Trade

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 22, 2010 at 10:21 PM

The New York Times says it is spending more than $7 million every three months to develop its paywall. (CEO... More

Bright Spots For the Times in Digital Revenue

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 22, 2010 at 07:29 PM

The New York Times reported (relatively) good second-quarter numbers today—especially in digital ads, up 20 percent in its division—and Jeff... More

WaPo’s Chamber Piece Misses a Few Notes

The paper reports the lobby group is “losing,” but doesn’t hear the ringing of cash registers

By Holly Yeager   Jul 22, 2010 at 03:58 PM

The Washington Post looks at the recent record of the Chamber of Commerce and puts a lot in the loss... More

Guilt of an Expatriate Journalist

American writer wrestles with free speech inequity and what to do about it

By Justin D. Martin   Jul 22, 2010 at 03:01 PM

CAIRO—When I arrived in the Middle East five years ago to freelance and polish my Arabic, I soon realized that... More

WSJ’s Good Coverage of Warren and the CFPB

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 22, 2010 at 02:22 PM

The Wall Street Journal's leder today on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shows the paper in fine form. If you... More

What’s Secret in ‘Top Secret America?’

The Washington Post didn’t really tell us anything new

By Joshua Foust   Jul 22, 2010 at 10:34 AM

Editor's note: At the time this article was published, Joshua Foust was employed by Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor. Here’s... More

Calling a Spade a Spade or a Fox a Fox

The Times minces no words on the Sherrod story

By Joel Meares   Jul 22, 2010 at 10:25 AM

We wrote yesterday that we were mostly disappointed with the print coverage of the Shirley Sherrod story from the Times,... More

The Rise of Private News

A niche model can make a lot of money. What are the costs?

By Chrystia Freeland   Jul 22, 2010 at 08:00 AM

Anyone who has spent time in a newsroom lately is familiar with the conversation—generally conducted in the “hushed tone you... More

CNBC’s Dennis Kneale Goes Native

Cultivating powerful sources at the expense of telling the story

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 21, 2010 at 09:19 PM

We may have ourselves a new poster boy of Access Journalism. Say hello to CNBC's Dennis Kneale, protector of the... More

Audit Notes: Fannie/Freddie Already, Obama on Finreg, WaMu’s Valukas?

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 21, 2010 at 08:20 PM

Next time you hear someone spouting the line that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Community Reinvestment Act were the... More

After the Storm

How the Sherrod story came up in print

By Joel Meares   Jul 21, 2010 at 05:09 PM

If you were anything like us yesterday, your computer screens were tabbed up with reports and opinions on Georgia USDA... More

“Top Secret” Co-Author under Fire, for Some Reason

Politico fans the flames of lackluster Arkin “controversy”

By Mark Greenbaum   Jul 21, 2010 at 04:46 PM

Earlier this week, Politico took a look at “Top Secret America,” the three-part series running in The Washington Post this... More

“Freemiums” and “Ambience”: the Future of Mobile Content?

A paidContent conference recap

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 21, 2010 at 04:13 PM

PaidContent hosted a conference in New York on Tuesday entitled “paidContent Mobile: Leveraging the Smartphone Boom.” Software developers, media honchos,... More

How do you know what a poll number is worth?

After survey scandals, transparency’s the buzz word

By Clint Hendler   Jul 21, 2010 at 12:41 PM

In late June, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, the publisher of DailyKos, published a study on his site that he said pointed... More

NYT Reports on Gitmo Press Access Dispute

By Greg Marx   Jul 21, 2010 at 12:39 PM

Jeremy Peters of The New York Times reports today on an ongoing struggle between press outlets and the Pentagon: After... More

The Other Liz

Liz Fowler and the WellPoint connection

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 21, 2010 at 11:44 AM

The press has been abuzz lately about the possible appointment of Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren to head the Federal... More

Surprise! Ratings Firms Nailed By Financial Reform

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 21, 2010 at 09:55 AM

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that part of the bond market has shut down because credit raters like... More

The Economy and Politics, One More Time

Do we need to worry about journalists overstating the economy’s role?

By Greg Marx   Jul 21, 2010 at 08:30 AM

For awhile now I’ve been trying to get more journalists to acknowledge that the economy is a powerful driver of... More

Audit Notes: Not-So-Sharp Claws, Eighty Cents, A+!

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 20, 2010 at 08:10 PM

Charlie Gasparino scoops that pay czar Ken Feinberg is going to try to claw back some 2008 banker bonuses later... More

Stephen Schneider: Climate Communicator

Remembering an esteemed scientist’s contributions to the media over three decades

By Cristine Russell   Jul 20, 2010 at 05:48 PM

Stephen Schneider was not an American household name. But within the ranks of science journalists and scientists, this Stanford University... More

Politico’s Memory Hole Grows Deeper

By Clint Hendler   Jul 20, 2010 at 04:48 PM

Over at Slate, Jeremy Singer-Vine has just published the results of a three-week study on how often Politico modifies major... More

Et Tu, WaPo?

The Post’s weightless weigh-in on the Black Panthers coverage

By Joel Meares   Jul 20, 2010 at 04:35 PM

Looks like Fox News’s Megyn Kelly got what she wanted: everybody’s talking about the DOJ’s dismissal of charges against the... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Smoked Out, Debate On, Happy Enough?

By Holly Yeager   Jul 20, 2010 at 03:58 PM

Stateline.org digs into something I’ve often wondered about but rarely seen reported: the way Americans’ decrease in smoking is hitting... More

A Story in Screen Shots: Cable News Covers Lohan

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 20, 2010 at 02:51 PM

A chronological summary, in screen shots, of the cable news coverage of Lindsay Lohan reporting to the Beverly Hills Municipal... More

Weekly Reader

Do you still read alt-weekly newspapers?

By The Editors   Jul 20, 2010 at 02:50 PM

On Monday, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies announced the winners of the 2010 AltWeekly Awards, honoring excellence in reporting, commentary,... More

Megabanks on Steroids

The Journal examines how the too big just keep getting bigger

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 20, 2010 at 10:58 AM

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent page-one story this morning on how giant banks are getting bigger and throttling... More

Social Security in Perspective

A conversation with Ted Marmor

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 20, 2010 at 10:15 AM

To hear the media tell it, you’d think most Americans agree that this country must drastically reform its Social Security... More

Georgia On Your Mind

Some down south reading in the lead-up to the Peach State primaries

By Joel Meares   Jul 20, 2010 at 07:30 AM

Georgians head to the polls tomorrow for senate, gubernatorial, and house primaries. Most eyes will be on the Republican primary... More

American Soldiers

Think you know them? Sebastian Junger suggests you have no idea.

By Tom Bissell   Jul 20, 2010 at 06:00 AM

War | By Sebastian Junger | Twelve | 304 pages, $26.99 At one point in War, Sebastian Junger is nearly... More

Audit Notes: GPOs, Broadcom Injustice, The Upside of BP

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 19, 2010 at 09:17 PM

Mariah Blake has a must-read investigation in The Washington Monthly on the for-profit group purchasing organizations that dominate the medical... More

Bloomberg’s Obama Bull

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 19, 2010 at 07:48 PM

Bloomberg's back on the "Obama's Bull Market" stuff. Remember when it was "Obama's Bear Market"—six weeks into his presidency, and... More

Obits for Schneider Roll In

Reporters pay respect to climate scientist and “mediarologist”

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 19, 2010 at 05:00 PM

The obituaries for Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider, who suffered a fatal heart attack early Monday morning, are beginning... More

Knight-Batten Innovation Award Winners Announced

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 19, 2010 at 04:52 PM

The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism were announced on the J-Lab site on Monday. The $10,000 grand prize goes... More

FT: Wall Street Opacity Survives

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 19, 2010 at 04:21 PM

The Financial Times looks at how complexity and opacity plays into Wall Street's hands at the potential expense of its... More

The Young and The Burned Out

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 19, 2010 at 03:53 PM

The "state of the media business these days," writes the New York Times's Jeremy W. Peters, is "frantic and fatigued."... More

Two Shall Be as One

The gospel of merging words

By Merrill Perlman   Jul 19, 2010 at 03:52 PM

In the beginning, there were two words. And people went forth and used the words separately or together as needed.... More

Keeping It Simple

Journos take note: The economy drives politics

By Greg Marx   Jul 19, 2010 at 03:28 PM

At Media Matters, Eric Boehlert has a good catch this morning: Sunday’s New York Times op-ed roundtable on how... More

Mind the Gap

Politico looks at how Washington elites see the economy

By Holly Yeager   Jul 19, 2010 at 02:02 PM

Politico has the smart idea to compare how the American public sees the economy and what “Washington’s governing class” thinks.... More

Oil spill, climate coverage drive growth at Mother Jones

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 19, 2010 at 12:24 PM

Science and environment coverage, often marginalized in daily newspapers and news magazines, has helped drive exceptional growth at Mother Jones... More

It’s Morning in “Top Secret America”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 19, 2010 at 12:19 PM

The Washington Post rolls out its significant "Top Secret America" project today, a public records-based investigation of America's post-9/11 national... More

The Trials of Covering Gitmo’s Justice

Despite restrictions, foreign media follow the story at detention center

By Betwa Sharma   Jul 19, 2010 at 12:18 PM

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA – Christoph Von Marschall was waiting for a hearing to begin at a military courtroom in Guantanamo... More

Pachauri Revises IPCC Media Plan

Chairman apologies to scientists for previous letter

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 19, 2010 at 11:58 AM

Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has sent a letter to the 831 lead authors... More

Hot Zone

A portrait of Pakistan’s volatile frontier

By Kathy Gilsinan   Jul 19, 2010 at 11:43 AM

The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier | By Imtiaz Gul | Viking | 320 pages, $26.95 Lawless. The word... More

Audit Notes: Kanjorski?, Top 1 Percent, Geithner vs. Warren

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 16, 2010 at 06:34 PM

Simon Johnson has been beating the drum a bit on something called the Kanjorksi Amendment that made its way into... More

All Eyes On Gaga

What the popstar reveals about some lazy fashion reporting

By Joel Meares   Jul 16, 2010 at 04:30 PM

Okay, did that get your attention? Good. It was meant to. Now, hate to break it to you, but this... More

New Magazines and Books to Launch on iPad

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 16, 2010 at 04:24 PM

Although I am loath to give Richard Branson any more publicity than he already gets, I was intrigued to read... More

Saying Something New

Two reporters on the challenges of writing a fresh political profile

By Joel Meares   Jul 16, 2010 at 02:42 PM

Midterms are on the horizon—though you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d hit the shore—and reporters are stalking, scrutinizing, and sometimes... More

“Two Stories” of Gulf Seafood

News reports tread the line between confidence and caution

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 16, 2010 at 11:40 AM

BP has apparently stopped the flow of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since the... More

Canadian Media in Crisis

Reporters and citizens struggle with aftermath of G20 Summit

By Craig Silverman   Jul 16, 2010 at 11:33 AM

Though it seemed to register barely a ripple outside of the host country, the G20 Summit held three weeks ago... More

Service Journalism

By Clint Hendler   Jul 16, 2010 at 10:59 AM

The Springfield Illinois State Journal-Register has clipped some of the most salacious (in this context, that's a synonym for "fun")... More

Press Pushes for Greater Access at Gitmo

In wake of reporter bans, news outlets team up, take case to Pentagon

By Greg Marx   Jul 16, 2010 at 10:55 AM

The latest dispute over press access to the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay has been mostly settled, for the moment.... More

The Sun Chronicle Puts its Comments Behind a Paywall

But it’s not about the money

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 16, 2010 at 10:40 AM

Thanks to this Guardian blog for identifying a new twist in the development of online news paywalls. The Sun Chronicle,... More

That Word Does Not Mean What You Think It Means

By Greg Marx   Jul 16, 2010 at 10:38 AM

Sheryl Gay Stolberg has a “news analysis” in today’s New York Times that takes up the same subject as that... More

The Goldman Settlement Coverage is Mostly On-Target

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 16, 2010 at 09:39 AM

The press does a pretty good job of handling the SEC's settlement with Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder). It seems... More

Audit Notes: The SEC Lets Goldman Off Easy

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 15, 2010 at 07:25 PM

So Goldman Sachs (an Audit funder) gets off the hook with a $550 million fine and with no apology. But... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Sweetheart Deals, Tax Talk, Commission Coverage

By Holly Yeager   Jul 15, 2010 at 04:54 PM

The Wall Street Journal does well by staying on top of the controversial Countrywide lending program that provided sweet deals... More

What They Don’t Know

The press has work to do on the deficit debate

By Holly Yeager   Jul 15, 2010 at 03:25 PM

With all the buzz about cutting the deficit, the press should be all over the job of explaining how much... More

Winning the Morning, Missing the Point

Politico buries the lede in its big Obama story

By Greg Marx   Jul 15, 2010 at 02:39 PM

Politico bigwigs John Harris and Jim VandeHei have a big thinkpiece out this morning headlined, “Why Obama Loses by Winning.”... More

“Hi, welcome to this esteemed mainstream media institution.”

By Joel Meares   Jul 15, 2010 at 02:34 PM

If you haven't seen this video, "Working for the MSM: Day One," produced using the xtranormal text-to-movie Web site, do... More

WSJ on the Lookout for Poor Lending

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 15, 2010 at 02:10 PM

The Wall Street Journal has its ear to the ground for signs of bubble-era lending, and it's come up with... More

Goodbye Girl Power, Hello Cat Fighting

LA Times piece substitutes one female pol storyline for another

By Joel Meares   Jul 15, 2010 at 12:34 PM

Sunday’s Los Angeles Times story on the history of tensions between California’s leading ladies, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, seems... More

An Oddly Weightless Times Profile

But was it a beat sweetener?

By Joel Meares   Jul 15, 2010 at 11:50 AM

Slate’s Press Box blogger Jack Shafer took a hacksaw to the Times’s Saturday profile of National Security Council chief... More

Don’t Get Your Printing Advice From a Printer Manufacturer

And other tips for small-run publications

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 15, 2010 at 11:33 AM

A blogger on ZDNet wrote last week about changes in inkjet printing technology that could make offset printing obsolete. The... More

BBC for Us!

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 15, 2010 at 11:19 AM

BBC is today launching an original U.S. news Web site! (When Jay Rosen met with BBC execs, he tweets, he... More

Most Politico Sentence In Politico Piece

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 15, 2010 at 10:49 AM

It's hard to choose just one. But, here's my vote for The Most Politico (Half-)Sentence in the Politico piece today,... More

Some Spice in the Pundit Pool

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 15, 2010 at 09:58 AM

Yesterday, George Stephanopoulos's offerings on Good Morning America looked, sounded, and smelled a lot like his offerings on This Week... More

Justice for John Conroy

John Conroy spent years exposing police torture in Chicago. Now the alleged leader is on trial, and the reporter is laid off.

By Don Terry   Jul 15, 2010 at 08:00 AM

If life were fair and the gods of journalism just, I would be able to report to you that... More

Audit Notes: Bloomberg Misses, Indiviglio Hits, Shadow Banking

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 14, 2010 at 07:23 PM

Bloomberg puts a strangely positive spin on a Goldman Sachs story, and Felix Salmon calls them out on it. Here's... More

WSJ Tries to Tie Farmers to Bank Reform, Fails

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 14, 2010 at 06:30 PM

The Wall Street Journal blows it big time with a hyped-up page-one story on how the financial-reform bill would affect... More

In Afghanistan: “Yes, That Was Your Son”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 14, 2010 at 04:41 PM

Eight U.S. soldiers were killed in three attacks in southern Afghanistan over the past 24 hours, per the LA Times.... More

Inside BP’s Media Blockade

Contractor who obstructed WDSU reporter’s access to beach cleanup decides to talk

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 14, 2010 at 03:00 PM

A former BP contractor who blocked a New Orleans TV news reporter from talking to cleanup crews working on a... More

What it’s Like to Be The Wall Street Journal’s Friend

Taking the Journal’s Foursquare layer for a test ride

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 14, 2010 at 02:42 PM

The Wall Street Journal is getting a bit of press about its partnership with Foursquare. For the uninitiated, Foursquare is... More

CNN’s Got Talent?

An surprise choice for Larry King’s chair may have unsurprising results

By Joel Meares   Jul 14, 2010 at 01:43 PM

Our first reaction to news that America’s Got Talent judge Piers Morgan will probably take Larry King’s chair at CNN?... More

Breaking BP News*

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 14, 2010 at 09:37 AM

Bristol Palin is engaged, again, to Levi Johnston, according to US Weekly's cover story (and picked up, oh, here and... More

Anatomy of a Zombie Lie

The AP and the “charging $12.50 to quote five words” meme

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 13, 2010 at 07:14 PM

As I wrote last week, bloggers have repeatedly pumped the story that the AP charges us to quote its stories.... More

Sorkin Types Up Hank Paulson’s Historical Revisionism

The ex-Treasury secretary, Wall Street CEO until mid-2006, gets a free ride

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 13, 2010 at 02:20 PM

Andrew Ross Sorkin lets Hank Paulson spin away this morning in a column about the former Treasury Secretary's thoughts on... More

The Migration to Mobile E-Reading

What would it take for you to buy news on the iPad or Kindle?

By The Editors   Jul 13, 2010 at 01:17 PM

The cover story of our current issue argues that mobile reading devices like the iPad, Amazon Kindle, and Sony Reader... More

See Alabama Run

Catch up on coverage of today’s Alabama primary runoffs

By Joel Meares   Jul 13, 2010 at 12:47 PM

Voters of both political persuasions decide several primary runoffs today in the Yellowhammer State. There’s a bunch of interesting tussles... More

End of the Line for the 99ers

WaPo highlights the longtime jobless

By Holly Yeager   Jul 13, 2010 at 12:44 PM

The Washington Post does a good job highlighting a detail that usually gets glossed over in coverage of the unemployment... More

On Hyperlocals, Hyper-hiring, and Hype

MainStreetConnect has big plans for the future

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 13, 2010 at 12:05 PM

Carll Tucker, founder of hyperlocal news organization MainStreetConnect, was profiled on Wednesday on Journalism.co.uk, and his claims about the company’s... More

Sir Anderson Cooper?

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 13, 2010 at 11:46 AM

Yesterday marked six months since a magnitude-7 earthquake struck Haiti. The AP's Jonathan M. Katz, the only full-time American news... More

A Fresh Take on Health Care

Does reform solve the ER problem?

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 13, 2010 at 10:58 AM

It all sounded so simple in the years leading up to health reform. The politicians, from the president on down,... More

Presto, Chango!

The magic of a deceptive word

By Merrill Perlman   Jul 13, 2010 at 10:21 AM

Many legislators are resorting to interesting budget tricks to try to pay for everything they want without necessarily having the... More

I’ll Have the Climate Coverage, Please

Kurtz wants some; so does the Times, though it doesn’t deliver

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 13, 2010 at 10:09 AM

On Sunday night, CNN’s Howard Kurtz seconded CJR’s call for more coverage of the series of inquiries and investigations rebutting... More

A Second Chance

How mobile devices can absolve journalism of its original sin: giving away online content

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 13, 2010 at 06:00 AM

1 Talk to people who are into mobile reading devices like the Kindle and the iPad, and a scene from... More

Audit Notes: Radical Wolf, BofA Repo, Radical Douthat

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 12, 2010 at 07:28 PM

Martin Wolf says we're not thinking big enough about the real estate crisis. And he's thinking Big indeed, saying that... More

Mediaphobia at the IPCC

Letter steers scientists away from the press, despite recent calls for transparency

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 12, 2010 at 03:44 PM

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seems to have caught a touch of mediaphobia from last year’s largely debunked controversies... More

BusinessWeek on BP’s Economic Devastation of the Gulf

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 12, 2010 at 03:41 PM

If it's hard to get your head around an environmental disaster on the scale of BP's Gulf oil spill, it's... More

This Paywall is Sorry for Your Loss

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 12, 2010 at 03:22 PM

Poynter’s Bill Mitchell reports on the first online news site to go public with “Press+,” the metered paywall system by... More

NYT Wonders About Whitman’s “Business Decision”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 12, 2010 at 03:12 PM

The New York Times's Michael Luo reports that, in 2008, California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman invested some $1 million... More

Mika’s Grumpy, Meta Morning

By Joel Meares   Jul 12, 2010 at 03:01 PM

Morning Joe host Mika Brzesinski channeled the Greek chorus this morning as she juggled MSNBC’s morning madness without usual desk... More

Counting on a World Cup Memory Hole

By Clint Hendler   Jul 12, 2010 at 02:14 PM

I’ve been enjoying the call-it-like-he-sees-it World Cup commentary of Ken Silverstein, Harper’s Washington editor. Silverstein, who once worked as a... More

PolitiFact, Pedantry, and Rolling Heads

Pols’ complaints about fact-checking site miss the mark

By Joel Meares   Jul 12, 2010 at 02:03 PM

PolitiFact, the fact-checking Web site created by the St. Petersburg Times—whose dispute with Arianna Huffington we noted last week—has been... More

“Driv[ing] Toward the News of the Day”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 12, 2010 at 09:47 AM

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz again profiles the man half of a man-woman morning news duo --"unfailingly polite" Bill Hemmer,... More

Audit Notes: The Rich and the Ruthless, Twin Otter, Luskin

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 9, 2010 at 07:48 PM

Holly Yeager dinged The New York Times earlier today for its story on how the rich are defaulting on their... More

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, Encapsulated

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 9, 2010 at 06:52 PM

Here's just about all you need to know (or quite a bit, anyway) about the Wall Street Journal editorial page,... More

E-readers: Quick with Apps, Slow for Brains

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 9, 2010 at 05:15 PM

A new study by Web usability researcher Jakob Nielsen, meant to compare reading comprehension across various media has found that... More

Steele Trap

The press knew what the RNC chief was saying, but internecine warfare is a better story

By Joel Meares   Jul 9, 2010 at 04:20 PM

Michael Steele had a rough holiday weekend. The right’s media heavies called for the RNC chairman’s resignation, GOP senators kicked... More

Viva Las Vegas

The Las Vegas Sun reporter keeping candidates in check

By Joel Meares   Jul 9, 2010 at 04:17 PM

The president visited Sin City yesterday to bolster support for hot midterm target Harry Reid, drawing our attention to coverage... More

The Rich Are Different, Still

The NYT follows the Journal to the wealthy default story

By Holly Yeager   Jul 9, 2010 at 12:30 PM

The New York Times caught my eye with a front-page story on how the housing crisis is hitting the upper... More

Regret the Error’s Summer Reading List

Beach reading for the corrections hound

By Craig Silverman   Jul 9, 2010 at 11:27 AM

This is the time of year when people and publications offer their picks of the best books for summer reading.... More

A New Direction for Patch?

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 9, 2010 at 10:55 AM

Patch.com, AOL’s golden child, is still expanding quickly, working hard to spend its parent company’s 50 million investment this year.... More

The Plain Dealer on the LeBron Betrayal

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 9, 2010 at 10:50 AM

Sportswriter Mike Vaccaro gets it exactly right on the amazing front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer today: Newspapers can... More

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda at Politico

Reporters reach to tie Obama administration to Blagojevich business

By Joel Meares   Jul 9, 2010 at 10:48 AM

Assuming perhaps that we’d all been missing the sight of Lego-haired former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich—or at least missing out... More

Meet the AP’s New Oil Spill Editor

A Q&A with Steve Gutkin

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 9, 2010 at 10:40 AM

At the end of June, the Associated Press announced that it had named an oil spill editor, Steve Gutkin, to... More

(Ex) Titans of Industry Against Free Trade Fundamentalism

Intel founder Andy Grove calls for a serious re-examination of our trade and industrial policies

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 9, 2010 at 10:26 AM

Former Intel chief Andy Grove has an extremely important piece in Bloomberg BusinessWeek this week on how Silicon Valley and... More

Audit Notes: Extend and Pretend, Low Paid U.S. Autoworkers, BP

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 8, 2010 at 06:41 PM

The Wall Street Journal has a very good page-one story on commercial real estate (my old group there) and how... More

Picturing Kagan’s Future

By Joel Meares   Jul 8, 2010 at 04:57 PM

We lamented the glut of coverage of the Kagan hearings in an earlier posting, so it may seem a tad... More

Shameful Obstinacy at The Sunday Times

Paper finally retracts Amazongate, aggressive-blondes articles

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 8, 2010 at 04:00 PM

On Wednesday, I argued that the mounting rebuttal of the recent controversies related to the so-called “Climategate” e-mails and alleged... More

Business Journalism on Prozac

A look at an issue of Fortune

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 8, 2010 at 02:44 PM

Fortune is the happy-go-luckiest magazine in business these days. Which means it's way out of step with the times. Why,... More

Truth Be Told

Huffington’s post on PolitiFact misses the mark

By Joel Meares   Jul 8, 2010 at 02:40 PM

Arianna Huffington used her holiday Monday to belatedly attack the St. Petersburg Times’s PolitiFact Web site for its unfavorable... More

CNN’s Gutless Firing

By Clint Hendler   Jul 8, 2010 at 12:46 PM

I’m really disturbed by CNN’s decision to fire Octavia Nasr, a senior editor for Middle East affairs at the network,... More

“Supreme Court Nomination Hearings Are Funny Things”

Enough already about Elena Kagan’s sense of humor

By Joel Meares   Jul 8, 2010 at 12:36 PM

Almost a year ago to the day, my colleague Greg Marx wrote on the peculiar relationship reporters have with Supreme... More

Can This Headline Save the News?

The perils of the bait-and-switch headline

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 8, 2010 at 10:56 AM

Headlines have always tended to the hysterical, and ledes have always had to be snappy. In the online era, with... More

Who Will Tell the People?

Social Security is the third rail for the MSM

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 8, 2010 at 10:01 AM

Ohio congressman John Boehner’s recent interview in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review touched on all the red hot stones—health care, BP, Afghanistan,... More

Uproar at ScienceBlogs.com

Protesting Pepsi’s new nutrition blog, writers defect from respected site

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 8, 2010 at 08:00 AM

At least two well-respected science journalists and a handful of scientists have canceled their blogs at the popular and heretofore... More

The Ordinary Jungle

A not-so-awed explorer who was unafraid to say so

By Justin Peters   Jul 8, 2010 at 08:00 AM

In April 1925, a fifty-seven-year-old British explorer named Percy Harrison Fawcett trooped into the Brazilian jungle for the last time.... More

Audit Notes: Study Hall, BP’s Skimpy Skimmers, “Resource Extraction”

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 8, 2010 at 01:06 AM

How wimpy is the financial-reform legislation? CNNMoney.com's Jennifer Liberto writes that Congress is passing the buck to regulators to do... More

Wanted: Climate Front-Pager

Reviews vindicating scientists get strong blog coverage, but more high-profile stories are needed

By Curtis Brainard   Jul 7, 2010 at 04:30 PM

Over the last two days, two reports have, respectively, reaffirmed the integrity of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on... More

The Passing of Dr. Robert Butler

And what he meant for journalists and journalism

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 7, 2010 at 12:34 PM

I always thought Bob Butler would live forever. After all, he was Mr. Live A Long Life, and preached the... More

Lohan Sentenced To… OMG, Her Fingernail!?!

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 7, 2010 at 11:41 AM

Yesterday, the actress Lindsay Lohan was sentenced to 90 days in jail for probation violations (from a DUI conviction). Over... More

Chris Welles on Reporting

Why I would rather report—at fifty—than edit at any age

By Chris Welles   Jul 7, 2010 at 10:53 AM

On June 19, longtime BusinessWeek reporter Chris Welles died of Alzheimer's disease at age seventy-two. In the Jan/Feb 1988 issue... More

Cohan’s Messy Goldman Apology

Faulty logic on too big to fail

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 7, 2010 at 10:48 AM

William D. Cohan has a complete jumble of a piece over at The New York Times's Opinionator site. Cohan writes... More

“Being Media Savvy Requires More Than Just Attention-Grabbing”?

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 7, 2010 at 10:37 AM

Does it? From Mark Leibovich's profile of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), "Darrell Issa Emerges as Obama's Annoyer-in-Chief" in today's New... More

It’s About Idiosyncrasy, Not Ideology

Learning to live with opinions at the Post

By Holly Yeager   Jul 7, 2010 at 09:05 AM

Plenty has been written about Dave Weigel’s departure from The Washington Post. But Andrew Alexander, the Post ombudsman, made a... More

Audit Notes: Change Deferred, Bailout Blues, Reporting on BP

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 6, 2010 at 09:03 PM

Barry Ritholtz with some good thoughts on what the bailouts hath wrought: Most people still do not understand what was... More

Woot Raises a Zombie Lie From the Dead (Again)

The AP does not charge bloggers to quote its stories

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 6, 2010 at 08:23 PM

The left blogosphere has a useful concept called "zombie lies"—information that's false and been debunked but continues to pop up... More

Circling Back on the Orszag Story

By Holly Yeager   Jul 6, 2010 at 12:49 PM

When Peter Orszag said he was leaving his job as OMB chief a couple of weeks ago, the reporting about... More

Philadelphia Story

A study in the City of Brotherly Love suggests what’s been lost, and what can be gained

By Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend   Jul 6, 2010 at 12:36 PM

Everybody knows that newspapers have been cutting jobs, cutting services, cutting corners. It is not so widely acknowledged that these... More

Brief Encounters

Short reviews of a classic novel about journalism and a biography of a pioneering female reporter

By James Boylan   Jul 6, 2010 at 12:27 PM

A Modern Instance | By William Dean Howells | J. R. Osgood and Company | 514 pages, available online for free... More

Oil Spill Touches Texas (“What’s Going Where?”)

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 6, 2010 at 11:59 AM

A milestone of sorts in the BP oil spill story, as reported by the AP: More than two months after... More

After the Storm

What happens to the journalists who get pushed out of their newsrooms?

By Lisa Anderson   Jul 6, 2010 at 11:56 AM

As of early June, Paper Cuts, a blog that keeps track of announced buyouts and layoffs at newspapers, counted a... More

The ‘-ize’ Have It

A popular suffix gets even more so

By Merrill Perlman   Jul 6, 2010 at 11:38 AM

News organizations are in a quandary. They’re trying to “incentivize” readers, “monetize” the publication’s content, and “prioritize” their resources. It’s... More

Lone Star Trailblazer Video

A look inside the Texas Tribune

By Jake Batsell   Jul 6, 2010 at 10:00 AM

The Texas Tribune launched last year with deep pockets and Texas-sized ambitions. In the July/August issue of CJR, Jake Batsell,... More

ProPublica and Frontline with a Save on BP

Another giant toxic emission from the oil giant goes undernoticed until now

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 6, 2010 at 08:27 AM

That one almost slipped through the cracks. A month ago, the Galveston Daily News's T.J. Aulds broke a big story... More

Lone Star Trailblazer

Will the Texas Tribune transform Texas journalism?

By Jake Batsell   Jul 6, 2010 at 08:00 AM

Click here to watch an interview with Texas Tribune chairman John Thornton and editor Evan Smith. A week after the... More

Audit Notes: Maiden Lane, AIG Off Easy, Spitzer

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 2, 2010 at 05:27 PM

Bloomberg reports that Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke didn't tell Congress the whole truth when they testified about the Bear... More

Bold Move

Gannett makes a surprising venture into the online world

By Janet Paskin   Jul 2, 2010 at 03:18 PM

Last Fall, a new, city-mag-style Web site quietly planted its flag in the crowded San Francisco blogosphere. There was no... More

Is the End Nigh?

A libel reform campaign makes great strides in Great Britain

By Clint Hendler   Jul 2, 2010 at 02:55 PM

Journalists have been whinging about England’s libel laws—which notoriously place the burden of proof on defendants, lack a strong defense... More

Shield Abuse

A bogus argument stretches a good law to the breaking point

By The Editors   Jul 2, 2010 at 02:50 PM

We like shield laws. They encourage the flow of information by allowing reporters to promise anonymity to sources, without fear... More

Influence Game

NYT’s Podesta profile lets lobbyist define the terms

By Holly Yeager   Jul 2, 2010 at 02:37 PM

The New York Times has the very good idea to profile Tony Podesta, whose Washington lobbying group has made a... More

Google’s Monopoly Money

The onus ought to be on the search giant to justify why it should be allowed to acquire businesses

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 2, 2010 at 11:39 AM

The question ought to be why should a $140 billion monopoly be able to snap up a smaller competitor, not... More

Radical Transparency at Daily Kos

Blog owns up to inaccurate polling

By Craig Silverman   Jul 2, 2010 at 10:53 AM

In 2007, Wired published an issue that focused on the emergence of “radical transparency” in business. “Get Naked and Rule... More

One of these things is not like the others

By Clint Hendler   Jul 2, 2010 at 10:51 AM

This Morning’s Politico Playbook carries some interesting details about suitors for Newsweek. Worth a look, if that’s your bag. But... More

Yellow Card for South African Media

Papers have offered little critical coverage of the World Cup and its ramifications

By Maura R. O'Connor   Jul 2, 2010 at 09:55 AM

In terms of its emotional, psychological, and spiritual impact on South Africans, the World Cup has been repeatedly compared in... More

Audit Notes: Up the Chain at BP, Bank Blinkers, Goldman’s Board

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 1, 2010 at 08:54 PM

It's been clear from The Wall Street Journal's earlier reporting, and that of other publications, that BP cut all kinds... More

Mom, Apple Pie, and… Credit-Default Swaps?

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 1, 2010 at 07:28 PM

Daniel Indiviglio says Main Street might be forced to pony up a trillion dollars of collateral on derivatives because of... More

A World of Trouble

Who’s a journalist? In today’s war zones, the answer matters.

By Shahan Mufti   Jul 1, 2010 at 05:53 PM

In November 2008, the Pakistani army launched its first major offensive against militants in the tribal areas of the country.... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Journal Overreach, Overjoyed in Auckland, the New Blue Collar

By Holly Yeager   Jul 1, 2010 at 04:43 PM

Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings might not have produced the drama that some had hoped for. But that hardly justifies the... More

Get Out of Her Hair

Sadly, NPR profile focuses on Fiorina’s coiffure rather than climate gaffe

By Sam Kornell   Jul 1, 2010 at 03:42 PM

Earlier this week, NPR profiled California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina. The former Hewlett Packard CEO unexpectedly won the state’s Republican... More

Up and Down on the Bayou

A snapshot of The Times-Picayune five years after Katrina

By Douglas McCollam   Jul 1, 2010 at 01:01 PM

In the spring of 2006, about seven months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and a swath of the Gulf... More

Around the Bend

A new book charts Commentary’s slide into irrelevance

By Ethan Porter   Jul 1, 2010 at 12:41 PM

Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left Into the Neoconservative Right | By Benjamin Balint | PublicAffairs... More

A McChrystal Chill? Don’t Bet On It

The military needs the press, and smart soldiers (still) understand that

By Paul McLeary   Jul 1, 2010 at 10:53 AM

As we walked in to the tactical operations center (TOC) of the small combat outpost in Tarmiyah, Iraq, U.S. Army... More

NPR, HOAs, and Nonjudicial Foreclosures

By Ryan Chittum   Jul 1, 2010 at 10:04 AM

The Dallas Morning News and NPR report that homeowners associations are foreclosing on members for missing their monthly dues, noting... More

Legal Aid

Yale’s Jack Balkin and Nabiha Syed discuss a new effort to protect press freedoms

By Rachael Scarborough King   Jul 1, 2010 at 08:00 AM

The need for press freedom and government transparency is as urgent today as ever, but the newsrooms that long defended... More

Message Control

Is Obama’s White House tighter than Bush’s?

By Clint Hendler   Jul 1, 2010 at 08:00 AM

On March 4, President Obama sat behind his stout oak desk, flanked by beaming lawmakers, and, wielding a pen for... More