Crisis Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again

Europe’s sovereigns worsen again, currency devalutions threaten a downward spiral, and more.

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 30, 2010 at 05:58 PM

Things are getting ugly again in Europe, with multiple nations teetering toward default. Nations are beginning to play beggar-thy-neighbor with... More

Snapshots of War

WikiLeaks isn’t the first site to publish controversial material from a war zone

By Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend   Sep 30, 2010 at 05:21 PM

In April, WikiLeaks released a graphic video entitled “Collateral Murder,” which shows U.S. soldiers shooting from a helicopter on a... More

Top Gun

How the Kalashnikov conquered the world

By Judith Matloff   Sep 30, 2010 at 05:20 PM

The Gun | By C. J. Chivers | Simon & Schuster | 496 pages, $28 Oh, to imagine the world without... More

Keeping Secrets

How censorship has (and hasn’t) changed since World War II

By Peter Duffy   Sep 30, 2010 at 05:18 PM

On December 16, 1941, nine days after the Japanese bombed pearl harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt stood before the White... More

Brief Encounters

Short reviews of a history of wartime public opinion and a biography of Time publisher Henry Luce

By James Boylan   Sep 30, 2010 at 05:08 PM

Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century | Edited by Kenneth Osgood... More

Error, Folly, and Reversal

Strategic steps and missteps, from Pearl Harbor to Iraq

By Barry Strauss   Sep 30, 2010 at 05:06 PM

Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9/11, Iraq | By John W. Dower | W. W. Norton & Company | 640... More

All-Out Media War

It’s Clarín vs. the Kirchners, and journalism will be the loser

By Silvio Waisbord   Sep 30, 2010 at 05:04 PM

On June 24, a story in the Argentine daily Clarín reported a bombshell: a former ambassador, Eduardo Sadous, had privately... More

Tea Party Poopers

How the left press helped create a conservative monster

By David Weigel   Sep 30, 2010 at 05:02 PM

The Tea Party has evolved from a cable-news curiosity into a political and cultural force that decides elections and casts... More

Echo Chamber

On redundant acronyms and initialisms

By Merrill Perlman   Sep 30, 2010 at 04:59 PM

An acronym or initialism can become so familiar that we forget what it stands for and add one of its... More

Hard Numbers

Some stats and figures on the news industry

By The Editors   Sep 30, 2010 at 04:56 PM

£1 (about $1.60), the new daily fee to access to The Times of London and The Sunday Times websites 66... More

Glory Days

The unique legacy of Brooklyn College newspaper the Vanguard

By Sara Germano   Sep 30, 2010 at 04:54 PM

When campus police detained Ohio State University freshman Alex Kotran in April for taking pictures of rogue cows on campus,... More

Coffee, Tea . . . and a Scoop

A hyperlocal in the Czech Republic runs its newsroom out of a coffee shop

By Patti McCracken   Sep 30, 2010 at 04:51 PM

When the owner of a former brick-making factory in Kromeriz, Czech Republic, began storing large amounts of the plant’s leftover... More

On Reporting the Rutgers Tragedy

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 30, 2010 at 12:47 PM

This morning, here in New York, I overheard a group of (non-journalist) parents expressing surprise and some anger towards the... More

Watch the Washington Ideas Forum Online

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 30, 2010 at 12:21 PM

The Atlantic, together with The Aspen Institute, is hosting the Washington Ideas Forum today and tomorrow, billed as a series... More

Whitman’s Nanny-gate, Day Two

California’s papers take on a new media frenzy

By Joel Meares   Sep 30, 2010 at 11:47 AM

Big new media players owned the Meg Whitman housekeeper scandal that exploded on the West Coast yesterday, “rocking” and “shaking”... More

Anderson Cooper’s Latest Adventure: Daytime

By Joel Meares   Sep 30, 2010 at 11:17 AM

Media Decoder’s Brian Stelter is reporting that Roger Sterling Anderson Cooper will host a light-hearted daytime talk show starting next... More

Accountability Icelandic Style

Politicians in the dock for the financial crisis

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 30, 2010 at 10:49 AM

What's the difference between Iceland and us? Well, there's the rotten shark meat, the leaving babies outside unattended in freezing... More

You Don’t Know Jack

An epochal slap-down and the birth of modern media culture

By Ryan Grim   Sep 30, 2010 at 10:02 AM

Poisoning The Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington Scandal Culture | By Mark Feldstein | Farrar,... More

What We’ve Sown

The nation needs better coverage of the Farm Bill

By The Editors   Sep 30, 2010 at 08:00 AM

The debate over the 2012 Farm Bill is already under way. Collin Peterson, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee,... More

Tweeting a Wildfire

Social media in an emergency, and what it means for the press

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 30, 2010 at 06:00 AM

Around ten in the morning this past Labor Day, the sky above Boulder, Colorado turned a dusty orange. A fire... More

Audit Notes: The Damage Done, GOP Economics, Pittman Bests Bernanke

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 29, 2010 at 07:56 PM

Now this is a correction. The Wall Street Journal this morning (emphasis mine): Singer Neil Young was born Nov. 12,... More

Silverstein’s Farewell Note

By Joel Meares   Sep 29, 2010 at 05:22 PM

Harper’s Ken Silverstein wrote a final post on his Washington Babylon blog today—he’s leaving his position as the magazine’s Washington... More

ONA Award Finalists: Digitech Innovators

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 29, 2010 at 03:53 PM

The finalists for the 2010 Online Journalism Awards given by the Online News Association have just been announced, and we... More

Seeking a Media Critic

By Dean Starkman   Sep 29, 2010 at 03:00 PM

CJR is looking for an experienced journalist to be its Peterson Fellow, a part-time job blogging about and critiquing media... More

Social Security in the Heartland: Laurie Cooper

What Social Security means to real people

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 29, 2010 at 12:38 PM

Before the year ends, the president’s deficit commission will bring forth a plan for cutting the deficit. While commission co-chairs... More

Why Candidate Jasper P. Huxteroo is Smiling

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 29, 2010 at 12:06 PM

For, perhaps, some lunch hour laughs: Mark Fiore's SlateV.com video cartoon, "Cash-ocracy in America," in which he explores,"how are new... More

This Gold “Record” Keeps Skipping

The Journal and others fail to account for thirty years of inflation

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 29, 2010 at 11:53 AM

The Wall Street Journal goes page one with a misleading story about gold, splashing this headline across four columns atop... More

I Am (I Am, I Am) Super PAC

Making sense of campaign finance coverage may require super powers

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 29, 2010 at 10:59 AM

Faster than a 527! More powerful than a political action committee! Able to influence elections with unlimited spending! It’s….. super... More

The Lawrence O’Donnell Twilight Zone

By Joel Meares   Sep 29, 2010 at 10:57 AM

In what might be one of the strangest cable interviews of this year (okay, perhaps just this week), Levi Johnston... More

Audit Notes: Illegal Immigrant Costs, E-books, Curmudgeons

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 28, 2010 at 06:47 PM

(UPDATE: I misread this WSJ post. The Rand analyst was actually talking about all immigration, legal and illegal. The Journal... More

Politico on the D.C. Cash Dash/Money Grab/Money Rush

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 28, 2010 at 02:38 PM

Today, Politico reports on the "blizzard" of fundraisers in Washington, DC of late-- in its tabulation, “more than 400 fundraisers... More

Media Critic In Chief

Obama on FOX and objectivity

By Zachary Roth   Sep 28, 2010 at 01:56 PM

President Obama used his interview with Rolling Stone to open a new offensive in the White House's verbal war with... More

Woulda Coulda Shoulda

Where have your career bloopers led you?

By The Editors   Sep 28, 2010 at 01:25 PM

Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, posted a fascinating account of how he “got bitten by... More

Access As Distortion Field

Facebook author spins for the company in the Washington Post

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 28, 2010 at 12:23 PM

Fortune's David Kirkpatrick, author of a new book on Facebook, an excerpt of which I criticized a while back for... More

Red Alert At The Guardian

By Joel Meares   Sep 28, 2010 at 12:00 PM

The Guardian has been a leader in creating informative, dynamic, and useful online interactives—their timeline of IED attacks in Afghanistan... More

Like a Rolling Stone…

Jann Wenner asks the president about that McChrystal profile

By Joel Meares   Sep 28, 2010 at 11:46 AM

The magazine that got General McChrystal fired comes at us next month with another Obama cover, this one bearing a... More

The Nixon Papers You Haven’t Seen

Historians challenge perpetual grand jury secrecy

By Clint Hendler   Sep 28, 2010 at 09:51 AM

The Public Citizen Litigation Group, the legal arm of the Ralph Nader-founded watchdog organization, is spearheading a court challenge filed... More

Money, Volunteers, Money, Patch, and Money

(What community news site owners worry about)

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 28, 2010 at 08:00 AM

Last week, some of the busiest people in journalism pried themselves away from their laptops, stood up from their kitchen... More

Launch Pad: Remapping Debate

Trying to keep eyes on the prize

By Craig Gurian   Sep 28, 2010 at 07:00 AM

CJR’s new “Launch Pad” feature invites new media publishers to blog about their experiences on the news frontier. All of... More

What Is Russia Today?

The Kremlin’s propaganda outlet has an identity crisis

By Julia Ioffe   Sep 28, 2010 at 06:00 AM

On Election Day 2008, two African-American men in black fatigues and berets stood outside a polling station in a predominantly... More

Audit Notes: Why No Charges?, ABC on Collections, SEC Whiff

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 27, 2010 at 08:17 PM

I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure I can argue against this statement, by law prof Peter J. Helling, who... More

A Scalpel We Can Believe In

Obama’s antitrust regime and the proposed Comcast/NBC merger

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 27, 2010 at 06:32 PM

If you want to poke another hole in the idea that the Obama administration is "anti-business" take a look at... More

Selling Short

When words are truncated, spellings differ

By Merrill Perlman   Sep 27, 2010 at 03:03 PM

By now, just about everyone knows what an “app” is, and knows it’s short for “application.” The verb form of... More

NYT Examines Most “Active” Among “Shadowy Army” of Nonprofits

But can’t tell us where Americans for Job Security gets its cash

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 27, 2010 at 12:36 PM

On Friday, the New York Times’s Mike McIntire provided a detailed look at Americans for Job Security, one among, as... More

Unmet Promises in Times Front Page Story

Putting readers to work on negative ads

By Joel Meares   Sep 27, 2010 at 12:07 PM

Last Friday we sang the praises of the Times magazine’s story on the Connecticut Senate race; today, alas, a... More

A Critical Witness in the Wall Street Sausage Factory

Banks used Clayton’s quality-assurance info to make more money, investors be damned

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 27, 2010 at 11:52 AM

Chalk this one up to things I'm not smart enough to understand: Why isn't this pure-D fraud and why hasn't... More

Guardian Quashes Alien Ambassador Story

By Joel Meares   Sep 27, 2010 at 11:36 AM

What a difference an e-mail makes. The world got a little overexcited this weekend when it was reported that the... More

Of Hamsters and Values

Reply to Felix Salmon

By Dean Starkman   Sep 27, 2010 at 11:13 AM

“The Hamster Wheel,” my argument against news organizations’ cranked-up productivity requirements for reporters, generated some nice discussion, including a post... More

Distrust and Health Reform

The public smells a rat

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 27, 2010 at 08:00 AM

A fine piece last Wednesday by Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown dissects what political prognosticators from Bill Clinton to Obama pollster... More

Audit Notes: Free Trade Fallout, China’s Peg, Bailout Failure

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 24, 2010 at 06:49 PM

The Financial Times's Washington bureau chief Edward Luce—who if you ask me, is one of the sharpest Washington observers around... More

D’Souza Again; This Time in the Chronicle

Why is the mainstream press giving this guy such a prominent platform?

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 24, 2010 at 04:15 PM

Dinesh D'Souza is at it again. This time he's taken his the-president-is-evil book-touting act on the road—to San Francisco, of... More

To Read This Weekend

The Times’s Matt Bai’s Excellent Connecticut Piece

By Joel Meares   Sep 24, 2010 at 03:40 PM

One of the problems with an election cycle like the current one, in which so many local races are fascinating... More

Journalism in Jeopardy

By Joel Meares   Sep 24, 2010 at 12:08 PM

Last night’s Jeopardy has some journalists buzzing today: along with two of the more usual suspects we see on the... More

Q&A: Mike Liebhold, Principal Technologist at The Institute For the Future

On augmented reality glasses and the future of location-based publishing

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 24, 2010 at 11:16 AM

The Institute for the Future is a forty-two year old nonprofit research group based in Palo Alto, California, dedicated to... More

Slate Shuts the Window

A long-overdue corrections policy revision

By Craig Silverman   Sep 24, 2010 at 10:59 AM

Not long after Slate launched in 1996, editor Michael Kinsley was faced with the challenge of figuring out how to... More

Reporting the Economy in Orange County

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 24, 2010 at 09:53 AM

Take a look at some of the things the Orange County Register is doing with its economic reporting. Here's a... More

Audit Notes: Forbes Dissent, MBS Fight, Incestuous CDOs

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 23, 2010 at 07:49 PM

I ripped Forbes last week for putting Dinesh D'Souza's pile of awfulness on the front page of its magazine (and... More

Toronto Sun: Sorry About That Nazi Thing

By Joel Meares   Sep 23, 2010 at 04:52 PM

As apologies go, this was a doozy. The Toronto Sun published a retraction and apology last Saturday after its columnist... More

Goldman Loves This WSJ Headline

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 23, 2010 at 12:55 PM

Felix Salmon is all over The Wall Street Journal this morning for splashing this story across four columns atop page... More

What To Do with the “Pledge to America”?

“Front it!” says the media

By Joel Meares   Sep 23, 2010 at 12:33 PM

Today’s morning papers were full of reports on the “Pledge to America,” the long-awaited sequel to 1994’s Congress-winning smash, the... More

Tracking the Tea Parties

Good work from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 23, 2010 at 11:56 AM

Thumbs up to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for a bright, engaging piece about the Tea Party movement in Wisconsin. The... More

Q&A: This Week Host Christiane Amanpour

The move to Sunday morning, her critics, and reporting in a new age

By Joel Meares   Sep 23, 2010 at 11:00 AM

Christiane Amanpour has been sitting at the newly refurbished This Week desk for nearly two months now. While some reviewers... More

See It Now!

Video journalism is dying. Long live video journalism.

By Jill Drew   Sep 23, 2010 at 06:00 AM

As the video begins, no announcer welcomes you, no headline scrolls across the computer screen. There is no need for... More

The FT Goes Yachting. Meanwhile…

Rolling in the luxury ads for those special sections.

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 22, 2010 at 07:40 PM

There is no denying that 2009 was an annus horribilis for the yacht industry, or that the first half of... More

Going Rogue Again: “Obama’s Wars” Preview a Distraction

All eyes on the publicity machine

By Joel Meares   Sep 22, 2010 at 05:56 PM

Bob Woodward’s latest book, Obama’s Wars, has had the kind of publicity-filled day most authors can only dream of: send... More

NJSpotlight.com, Trenton’s State House Startup

The newcomer to press row fills a policy niche

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 22, 2010 at 05:15 PM

When reporters pass each other in the echoey maze-like tunnels below the legislative hearing rooms of the New Jersey State... More

Arrington and the Journal on Venture Capital

WSJ reports investors say prices are frothy. TechCrunch reports a VC cabal colluding to fix that.

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 22, 2010 at 03:33 PM

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that venture-capital investors are bidding up the values of Internet startups to... More

The Observer on the Roots of Wall Street’s Obama Rage

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 22, 2010 at 12:51 PM

Max Abelson has a fun story in The New York Observer on the roots of Obama rage on Wall Street.... More

Kurtz Stays Silent on Peretz

Washington Post media critic avoids controversy, again

By Zachary Roth   Sep 22, 2010 at 11:50 AM

Earlier this summer, when Helen Thomas said Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and return to Germany, among... More

Steal This Google Map!

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 22, 2010 at 11:42 AM

My colleague Joel Meares has written a lot lately about various news sites’ makeovers for the midterm election season, from... More

WSJ, NYT on the Bug-Eating Foodies of Brooklyn

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 22, 2010 at 10:44 AM

Which paper had the better headline for its Bug-eating: Not just for hungry people in faraway places anymore? story: The... More

Audit Notes: WSJ Editorial Misleads, That Flack, Respawning

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 21, 2010 at 06:11 PM

The Wall Street Journal editorial page—surprise, surprise!—posts a misleading piece on the anemic recovery (emphasis mine): White House economists and... More

Inside Gibbs’s Twitter Psyche

By Joel Meares   Sep 21, 2010 at 05:07 PM

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs found his Twitter account going “haywire” earlier today after the social networking system was... More

NYT on the ABC’s of 501(c)s

Why these groups are “popping up like mushrooms” this election season

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 21, 2010 at 03:14 PM

Quick: what’s the difference between a 527 group and a 501(c)(5)? What can a 501(c)4 group do that a 501(c)3... More

WSJ Misses on Stimulus Red Tape

The spending was supposed to be phased in all along. The real question is why.

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 21, 2010 at 01:32 PM

The Wall Street Journal's A1 story today on how bureacratic red tape has slowed the stimulus has a pretty big... More

Tales from the Hamster Wheel

Tell us yours (or share examples of the Wheel has wrought)

By The Editors   Sep 21, 2010 at 01:19 PM

That plump rodent on the cover of the current CJR spinning his wheel as fast as his burdened little feet... More

Old Dog With New Tricks

PBS NewsHour launches new politics site

By Joel Meares   Sep 21, 2010 at 12:38 PM

There’s been a lot of activity over at PBS NewsHour this past year. First came the jazzy makeover that saw... More

Bias at the Times Book Review?

It’s not that simple

By Stefan Beck   Sep 21, 2010 at 12:35 PM

Slate.com’s DoubleX blog has revealed that The New York Times reviews more fiction by men than by women. The New... More

Un-towards

Tacking ‘s’ on to some directional words

By Merrill Perlman   Sep 21, 2010 at 12:19 PM

“The electorate seems to be moving towards the right,” one media site said after a conservative candidate won a recent... More

Darts and Laurels

A Lincoln Journal Star series digs through the paper’s archives and finds treasure

By Alexandra Fenwick   Sep 21, 2010 at 11:53 AM

In an effort to fill the Monday edition, traditionally a thin news day everywhere, city editor Peter Salter has tried... More

Launch Pad Archive

An archive of CJR’s “Launch Pad” columns

By The Editors   Sep 21, 2010 at 11:38 AM

Bethlehem Shoals, The Classical 12/16/11: Two weeks after launch, new worries take hold. I have a confession to make: up... More

They Don’t, They Don’t Speak for Us

By Dylan DePice   Sep 21, 2010 at 11:01 AM

It was a big deal when Radiohead self-released their album In Rainbows online, in 2007, for the price of whatever-you-want.... More

Launch Pad: Remapping Debate

Three weeks until the site goes live

By Craig Gurian   Sep 21, 2010 at 09:22 AM

CJR’s new “Launch Pad” feature invites new media publishers to blog about their experiences on the news frontier. All of... More

Audit Notes: That’s Rich, Krugman; Munger; Dancing Around Income Inequality

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 20, 2010 at 07:19 PM

Instaputz points out some real lack of self-awareness in Paul Krugman's column today attacking the rage of the rich: You... More

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s Slim Bloom Profile

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 20, 2010 at 06:29 PM

I'm a fan of the new BusinessWeek, which was already the best of the three major financial magazines—though that's not... More

Tiles, the Issues Wheel, and the Ask America Van

Yahoo News’s hyper-interactive new midterm election site

By Joel Meares   Sep 20, 2010 at 03:12 PM

Yahoo News’s recently launched “Ask America” site has an intro that comes at you like a Pixar rendering of Obama’s... More

The Recession May Be Over, But the Jobs Crisis Isn’t

The Times and Journal with good angles on unemployment

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 20, 2010 at 12:45 PM

There's some good reporting on the nation's unemployment crisis on A1 of the major papers today. We always like to... More

Times Misfires With Ad Story, True Or Not

Front page story focuses on political maybes

By Joel Meares   Sep 20, 2010 at 12:12 PM

You’ve probably read about the to-and-fro between the White House and the Times over today’s cover story, headlined “Obama Advisers... More

Q&A: White House E-mail Lawyer Anne Weismann

CREW issues its final report on a fading scandal

By Clint Hendler   Sep 20, 2010 at 11:52 AM

In April 2007, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told the world that the White House had failed to... More

El Diario de Juarez: “We Do Not Want More Deaths”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 20, 2010 at 10:05 AM

Per the AP: The biggest newspaper in Mexico's most violent city will restrict drug war coverage after the killing of... More

Whatever Happened to NewsTilt?

A co-founder of the short-lived start-up reflects on failure

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 20, 2010 at 09:59 AM

In August, I wrote about FailFaire, a recurring event in the nonprofit industry that revisited projectsa gone wrong in order... More

Audit Notes: Forbes Compares Obama to Lenin, Racist BS, Some Sanity

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 17, 2010 at 09:39 PM

How did that kooky, insidious, false Dinesh D'Souza piece end up on the cover of Forbes? Take a look at... More

Public Service Journalism at Its Very Best

A Seattle Times investigation uncovers profiteering and abuse in Washington’s elder-care system

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 17, 2010 at 04:50 PM

Up here in Seattle, we've been blessed with some incredible newspaper reporting this week. The kind that makes you glad... More

The WSJ Is Good on Middle-Class Incomes

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 17, 2010 at 10:54 AM

I got on The Wall Street Journal the other day for, among other things, ignoring income stagnation and inequality in... More

How to Lose Your Gut

The journalist’s guide to gutless online verification

By Craig Silverman   Sep 17, 2010 at 09:04 AM

Dean Miller has spent years getting journalists to lose their gut. “Your gut is the most dangerous thing you have,”... More

Checking In on Kachingle

Why haven’t any big news sites signed up?

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 17, 2010 at 08:30 AM

Early in 2009, the micropayment service Kachingle received a lot of attention when a piece in Editor and Publisher suggested... More

Book It

Travelers will be most responsible for the death of paper books

By Justin D. Martin   Sep 17, 2010 at 08:22 AM

CAIRO—If my sense is correct, e-readers will soon replace printed books as the dominant form of literary distribution. There are... More

Audit Notes: Marketplace Filleted, Window Dressing, Scotland Yard

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 16, 2010 at 07:31 PM

Jay Rosen just takes the fillet knife to public radio's "Marketplace Morning Report." The problem with this report is that... More

Q&A: Hawaii Political Reporter Dan Boylan

“It’s the most chaotic election we’ve ever had.”

By Joel Meares   Sep 16, 2010 at 04:16 PM

Professor and political reporter Dan Boylan recently retired from teaching history at the University of Hawaii—West Oahu campus; but there’s... More

Dinesh D’Souza Digs Himself in Deeper

Some more criticism of Forbes’s disastrous Obama cover story

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 16, 2010 at 01:48 PM

Dinesh D'Souza has responded to my, uh, criticism of his smear piece that, shamefully, made the cover of Forbes with... More

Not Dead Yet

Inside The Washington Post’s struggle to save itself

By David Gura   Sep 16, 2010 at 12:24 PM

Morning Miracle: Inside The Washington Post | By Dave Kindred | Doubleday | 288 pages, $26.95 Back in the 1970s,... More

The Elizabeth Warren End-Around

Some questions on what Obama’s conflict avoidance means

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 16, 2010 at 11:17 AM

Well, surprise, surprise. President Obama ducks another fight by naming consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren as "special adviser" to set up... More

“Nice Ascot”: CNN Analyst’s New Fashion Line

By Joel Meares   Sep 16, 2010 at 10:49 AM

Journalist, CNN talking head, and now runaway-ready clothes hanger Roland Martin has teamed with a company named Verse 9 Neckwear... More

“This is Our Beat”

Breaking news and the big picture in Audubon’s special report on the oil spill

By Curtis Brainard   Sep 16, 2010 at 10:15 AM

Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon sank and oil began erupting into the Gulf of Mexico in late April, the 105-year-old... More

“This Woolly Primary Season”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 16, 2010 at 09:10 AM

That's the New York Times's description of our times, in a profile today of Delaware Republican primary winner Christine O'Donnell,... More

CJR Holds a Town Meeting

Not everyone knows about health reform

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 16, 2010 at 09:06 AM

A year ago last August, I visited the college town of Columbia, Missouri, and did man-on-the-street interviews with small business... More

A Rocket’s Trajectory

Marcus Brauchli at The Washington Post

By Scott Sherman   Sep 16, 2010 at 06:00 AM

For more than thirty years, Keith Richburg has been a classy and distinguished presence at The Washington Post. Richburg served... More

Audit Notes: Murdoch’s Undoing?, FT Scoop, WSJ Nut Cracks

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 15, 2010 at 09:37 PM

Slate's Jack Shafer calls the News Corporation hacking scandal "Murdoch's Watergate" and says it "will undo the media mogul." I... More

The Mercury News’s Thinly Sourced Apple Scooplet

Some skepticism is in order

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 15, 2010 at 04:23 PM

I've criticized press coverage of Apple quite a bit. But I have to acknowledge something: The company's NSA-like secrecy makes... More

O’Donnell Wins, GOP Loses, But Where Are The Voters?

A post-primary day wrap-up

By Joel Meares   Sep 15, 2010 at 12:48 PM

It’s the morning after the last major round of primaries and a new political star is born in “dissident,” “little-known... More

WSJ’s Welfare State Story Lacks Context

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 15, 2010 at 12:33 PM

The Wall Street Journal has a poorly done front-page story this morning trying to make the case that the U.S.... More

Washington Post: Fenty Defeats Gray!

By Justin Peters   Sep 15, 2010 at 11:44 AM

Yesterday, city council president Vincent Gray defeated abrasive incumbent Adrian Fenty in D.C.'s Democratic mayoral primary. (Gray is all but... More

Audit Notes: Sorkin, Stone, and Schwarzman; WSJ Mag; Bloomberg on the VA

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 14, 2010 at 07:29 PM

Andrew Ross Sorkin has a fun column in The New York Times this morning: An interview with Oliver Stone about... More

Journalists, “Media Professionals” Gave Over $469,900 To Political Candidates

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 14, 2010 at 04:24 PM

An analysis of FEC filings by the Center for Responsive Politics found that 235 people who "identified themselves on government... More

Freeland Tells Obama to Lay Off Big Business

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 14, 2010 at 01:39 PM

Reuters global editor at large Chrystia Freeland had an unfortunate column a few days ago in the Washington Post telling... More

Target Corp.’s “Perfect Storm”

A political contribution spawns weeks of headlines (and a flash mob)

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 14, 2010 at 01:05 PM

The big news for Target Corp. this summer might have been the unveiling, after a “decade of wooing, of its... More

Starkman on the Hamster Wheel

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 14, 2010 at 11:55 AM

Audit Chief Dean Starkman has the cover piece in the new issue of CJR looking at what he calls "The... More

Q&A: Covering the IPCC

Perlman award-winner Pallava Bagla talks about courage and tough questions

By Curtis Brainard   Sep 14, 2010 at 10:45 AM

[Editor’s Note: The American Geophysical Union recently awarded this year’s David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism to Indian... More

Primary Grades

How can the midterm coverage improve between now and November?

By The Editors   Sep 14, 2010 at 10:08 AM

Today, September 14, is Super Tuesday, of a sort, with primary elections occuring in seven states and Washington, D.C. Today... More

A Rate Increase for James Windus

Where is the New York media?

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 14, 2010 at 09:40 AM

James Windus, a New York City personal trainer, got a nasty letter a few weeks ago from his insurance carrier,... More

Sebelius Watch, Part V

The war of words with insurers continues

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 14, 2010 at 09:34 AM

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

The Hamster Wheel

Why running as fast as we can is getting us nowhere

By Dean Starkman   Sep 14, 2010 at 06:00 AM

“Newsrooms have shrunk by 25% in three years.” —Project for Excellence in Journalism, “State of the News Media 2010” “A... More

Primary Day: A Reporter’s Eye View

Meet the journalists covering today’s big races

By Joel Meares   Sep 14, 2010 at 06:00 AM

It’s a mini “Super Tuesday” for the nation’s top half today with midterm primaries being held in seven northern states:... More

Audit Notes: D’Souza and Forbes Edition

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 13, 2010 at 05:16 PM

CNBC's Dennis Kneale takes issue with my description of Dinesh D'Souza's Forbes cover story on "How Obama Thinks" as "the... More

Forbes’ Shameful Piece on Obama as the “Other”

The worst kind of smear journalism by Dinesh D’Souza

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 13, 2010 at 01:05 PM

So it's come to this: Forbes cover story on "How Obama Thinks" is a gross piece of innuendo—a fact-twisting, error-laden... More

O’Donnell: Seismic Quake Or Y2K Fizzer

Delaware’s not so calm before tomorrow’s primary storm

By Joel Meares   Sep 13, 2010 at 12:12 PM

There are seven primaries being held in the north tomorrow. But in the national eye there may as well just... More

Sic Transitive Gloria

‘For,’ ‘from,’ and ‘on’ go bye-bye

By Merrill Perlman   Sep 13, 2010 at 11:35 AM

When a journalism professor gave students the sentence “He snapped to attention only when a tourist asked directions,” a number... More

Q&A: New Hampshire’s James Pindell, political editor of WMUR.com

“I’m a political dork who went to college in Des Moines because of the Iowa caucuses.”

By Joel Meares   Sep 13, 2010 at 11:18 AM

Political junkie James Pindell joined New Hampshire’s Hearst-owned TV station WMUR last Tuesday as its first official online political editor.... More

Audit Notes: HAMPered, FHA Criminals, Student Loan Racket

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 10, 2010 at 06:07 PM

David Lazarus of the Los Angeles Times finds a couple booted out of their home by Wells Fargo, which had... More

Q&A: Rhode Island Political Analyst Scott Mackay

“Patrick Kennedy could have won but it would have been a brutal race.”

By Joel Meares   Sep 10, 2010 at 03:42 PM

After twenty-five years at The Providence Journal, Rhode Island reporter Scott Mackay moved to the state’s NPR affiliate, WRNI, in... More

Eschew the Scientific Sound Bite

A response to the oil plume paradox

By Richard Camilli   Sep 10, 2010 at 01:12 PM

As the lead author on a recent paper published in Science Express, describing subsurface plumes from the Deepwater Horizon disaster,... More

The Slow SEC

Six months after Valukas, the Journal reports it’s zeroing in on Repo 105

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 10, 2010 at 01:04 PM

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the SEC is focusing on Lehman Brothers' $50 billion Repo 105 accounting trick... More

Not Happy Sharron

Nevada journalist scorned by Angle on debate

By Joel Meares   Sep 10, 2010 at 12:53 PM

The tussle between Sharron "earned media" Angle and the press continues. At 3.19 p.m. yesterday, Nevada journalist Jon Ralston received... More

The Times’s Latest Interactive on the WTC

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 10, 2010 at 12:07 PM

If you visited the New York Times home page earlier this morning, you couldn’t miss the interactive feature “Reviving Ground... More

The Worldwide Leader in Corrections Policy

It’s ESPN

By Craig Silverman   Sep 10, 2010 at 11:37 AM

Guess which media company this person works for: We have six domestic networks, a major magazine, a heavily trafficked website... More

The Bear Up There

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 10, 2010 at 11:31 AM

How about a break from all that bearish financial news? My pal Josh sends me this link and says, "it’s... More

Another Curious Omission

The Fiscal Times and Social Security

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 10, 2010 at 10:09 AM

Edmund Andrews, a senior writer for The Fiscal Times, has given us an interesting story about the 800-pound gorilla of... More

Audit Notes: Out-of-State Campaign Dough, Expensive Bonds, Apple

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 9, 2010 at 07:40 PM

California Watch reports that big out-of-state polluters, including Koch Industries, are pouring millions of dollars into the campaign to overturn... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Football Facts, Jobs Jam, Gauging Fairness

By Holly Yeager   Sep 9, 2010 at 06:05 PM

Just in time for the start of the NFL season, the Center for American Progress Action Fund is out with... More

AP: Media Voice of Reason?

By Joel Meares   Sep 9, 2010 at 05:47 PM

Last month, the AP ran a “fact check” on the “Ground Zero Mosque” story and cautioned its reporters against the... More

Bloomberg Scoop: Rubin and Prince Knew

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 9, 2010 at 01:53 PM

Bloomberg gets a nice scoop that Robert Rubin and Chuck Prince knew about Citigroup's subprime losses while the company's CFO... More

ProPublica Welcomes All Nerds

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 9, 2010 at 12:40 PM

ProPublica has just launched what they call their “Nerd Blog” to highlight their latest developments in news applications. (“So what... More

“Mike, You Ignorant Slut.”

Politico’s new opinion writers should feel right at home

By Joel Meares   Sep 9, 2010 at 11:42 AM

The Times announced today that former Florida congressman Morning Joe Scarborough will join Politico as one of the website’s first... More

You Can’t Do That Online

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 9, 2010 at 10:53 AM

A piece in The New York Times Home & Garden section got a little bit meta on Wednesday. Anne Raver... More

What It Was Like

Dispatches told why kids from Ohio came back so ‘eerily old’

By Connie Schultz   Sep 9, 2010 at 08:00 AM

In the fall of 1978, I was racing through Kent State University’s campus bookstore when a thin book, propped in... More

Q&A: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Political Reporters

By Joel Meares   Sep 8, 2010 at 05:25 PM

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won the Pulitzer for local reporting in April for the second time in three years. It’s... More

The News Corp. Coverup

Memory-impaired execs, payments to key figures, and Keystone Kops

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 8, 2010 at 04:00 PM

News Corp.'s behavior in the UK hacking scandal has all the hallmarks of a coverup. We've got the scapegoat (Clive... More

Boy, Look Who National Journal’s Been Hiring

So far only 20% of high-profile hires are women; not good

By Holly Yeager   Sep 8, 2010 at 01:58 PM

The National Journal Group has been generating a lot of buzz lately with big-name hires like Major Garrett, Matt Cooper,... More

The Case For The Confusing Headline

By Joel Meares   Sep 8, 2010 at 12:30 PM

The Baltimore Sun reports today that a front page headline featuring the word “limn” drew some rather confounded feedback from... More

A “9/11 Widow” on the Press & Park51

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 8, 2010 at 12:22 PM

Back in May, when the words "Ground Zero mosque" began making headlines, CNN wanted to know: "As a family member... More

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Travel writing and my geographic inferiority complex

By Steve Daley   Sep 8, 2010 at 11:35 AM

Paris is a puzzle. San Francisco is an affront. The west of Ireland is a slap in the face. The... More

All Eyes on the Horse Race

Ease up on the poll-craziness

By Joel Meares   Sep 8, 2010 at 11:31 AM

In the September/October edition of the Columbia Journalism Review we awarded a laurel to the Lincoln Journal-Star for its Epilogue... More

A Different Angle on Sports Subsidies

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 8, 2010 at 11:20 AM

The New York Times fronts an excellent story this morning that ought to put another nail in the coffin of... More

Some Curious Omissions

The New Yorker and Social Security

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 8, 2010 at 09:51 AM

A recent New Yorker piece tells us a lot about the behind-the-scenes politics and ideology driving much of the public... More

Audit Notes: News Corp. Scandal, HSBC Hire, Dodd-Frank Repo

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 7, 2010 at 08:18 PM

The News of the World scandal, back in the spotlight thanks to The New York Times Magazine, continues to grow.... More

NYT Pushes BP’s PR Line on Its Ability to Pay

The massively profitable company’s poverty claim hits A1 of the Times—unchecked

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 7, 2010 at 06:23 PM

I defended The New York Times this morning. Let me lay into it a little bit this afternoon. On Friday,... More

Parker Spitzer (Awkward Already)

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 7, 2010 at 04:28 PM

CNN.com today posted this promo in which Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer pretend to argue over the name of their... More

AP: Election 2010 is “Bursting With Money”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 7, 2010 at 03:56 PM

The AP today lays out evidence that "politics, for all its focus on the gloomy economy, is a recession-proof industry,"... More

Sham Candidate Story Misses a Key Voice

Where’s the real Green Party?

By Joel Meares   Sep 7, 2010 at 03:34 PM

Fascinating story from the Times’s Marc Lacey on sham candidates running for the Green Party in Tempe, Arizona. Sham candidates,... More

Congress and “Corporate-Financed Philanthropy”

How politicians (and companies) do well by doing good

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 7, 2010 at 01:23 PM

In yesterday's New York Times, Eric Lipton described how some members of Congress are able to “run something akin to... More

Reflections of an Iraqi Journalist

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 7, 2010 at 01:03 PM

Here's Faris al-Qaisi, a 47-year-old Iraqi cameraman for AP Television News, reflecting on "what it has been like to live... More

Michael Wolff’s High Cynicism

An atrocious column about The New York Times’s News Corp. hacking scandal investigation.

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 7, 2010 at 12:37 PM

The Times drops this amazing story last week digging into how a Rupert Murdoch tabloid illegally hacked telephones, including those... More

Six News Videos To See

Links to the high-quality videos mentioned in Jill Drew’s feature “See It Now!”

By The Editors   Sep 7, 2010 at 11:33 AM

In The Moment: President Obama’s inauguration by The Washington Post Killer Blue: Baptized by Fire, U.S. Soldiers in Iraq (Part... More

Sourpusses and the Summit

Journalists discarded Obama’s Mideast peace summit before it began

By Justin D. Martin   Sep 7, 2010 at 11:31 AM

CAIRO—If by the end of 2011 a meaningful agreement is reached between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, there... More

Been There

Learning to dodge clichés

By Merrill Perlman   Sep 7, 2010 at 11:12 AM

Hurricane Earl was a monster, a Category 4 storm. Along the East Coast from North Carolina to New England, news... More

Traffic Jam

We’ll never agree about online audience size

By Lucas Graves   Sep 7, 2010 at 07:48 AM

Miami has deep ties to the Caribbean. So when a devastating earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, The Miami Herald... More

Audit D.C. Notes: Revisiting Bai on Blumenauer, Cato Purge, Labor Day Lesson

By Holly Yeager   Sep 3, 2010 at 05:14 PM

Last week I grumbled about a New York Times portrait of Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) written by Matt Bai. There... More

Federal Judge Says Website Not Liable For Comments

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 3, 2010 at 01:23 PM

From Online Media Daily, a small item about a libel case dismissed by a Southern District court U.S. District Court... More

A Fortune Look at Arizona’s Private Prisons

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 3, 2010 at 12:03 PM

A tip of the hat to this Fortune story from a couple of weeks back highlighting the prison-industrial complex in... More

Wise Up

A tale of two Twitters

By Craig Silverman   Sep 3, 2010 at 11:18 AM

Mike Wise wasn’t. Earlier this week, the Washington Post sports columnist decided to tweet a fabricated claim that Pittsburgh Steelers... More

What Really Happened in Takhar?

Who you trust for news on Afghanistan depends on your politics

By Joshua Foust   Sep 3, 2010 at 10:58 AM

There was an air strike this week in Takhar, a province wedged between Badakhshan and Baghlan in northeastern Afghanistan. The... More

Murdoch Could Learn a Thing or Two from WSJ.com

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 3, 2010 at 10:15 AM

Chris Roush has a brief interview posted with Alan Murray, who heads up The Wall Street Journal's digital operations, including... More

Q & A: Longshot co-founder Alexis Madrigal

“An event that is also a magazine…a magazine made out of Internet.”

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 3, 2010 at 08:00 AM

This past May, a group of California writers and designers hunkered down one weekend in the Mother Jones office for... More

Audit Notes: The Swells at CNBC, Quote Stuffing, Austerity for Thee

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 2, 2010 at 08:32 PM

Barry Ritholtz lays into CNBC this morning for one of those decidedly numbskulled views of the world so many of... More

A Swedish Shield, Unraised

How much protection can WikiLeaks offer?

By Clint Hendler   Sep 2, 2010 at 04:40 PM

Julian Assange, the public face of the secret-sharing site WikiLeaks, has recently been spending a lot of time in Sweden.... More

Barron’s Investigates the Shady Reverse-Merger Business

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 2, 2010 at 04:23 PM

A hearty Audit huzzah to Barron's and reporters Bill Alpert and Leslie P. Norton for a superb investigation into Chinese... More

Keeping an Eye on Hospital Safety

A Laurel to the Las Vegas Sun

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 2, 2010 at 03:52 PM

Slowly the public is coming to realize that hospitals are not always safe places. When the Institute of Medicine published... More

Hospital Safety Series

An archive of Trudy Lieberman’s recurring series on hospital safety

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 2, 2010 at 03:36 PM

Here are the links to every entry in Trudy Lieberman's "Keeping an Eye on Hospital Safety" series, presented in descending... More

Covering the Self-Serving Fuld Testimony

Several misses and one hit

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 2, 2010 at 12:43 PM

The coverage of Dick Fuld's appearance before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is somewhat uneven this morning. The Wall Street... More

Q & A: Politico’s Maggie Haberman

“One of the best things that has happened for Charlie Rangel is that his biggest enemy is the New York Post.”

By Joel Meares   Sep 2, 2010 at 12:20 PM

Maggie Haberman covered New York politics for over a decade at the New York Post, with a three-and-a-half-year stint at... More

NYT Advances Oval Office Gets New Rug, Chairs Story

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 2, 2010 at 11:51 AM

The New York Times today publishes its third piece on the recent "subtle redo" of the Oval Office. There was,... More

“Data Is the New Soil”

David McCandless’ TED talk on visualizing data

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 2, 2010 at 08:00 AM

Journalist and designer David McCandless gave an inspiring TED talk last month, just posted online last week. In it, he... More

Audit Notes: Direct Democracy, Obama’s Caution as Achilles Heel, Japan

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 1, 2010 at 06:05 PM

Up here in Seattle, The Stranger is doing a good job keeping an eye on how industry is flooding the... More

Opening Shot

An introduction to our annual books issue

By The Editors   Sep 1, 2010 at 05:16 PM

"The president didn’t send me over here to seek a graceful exit.” So said General David Petraeus in one of... More

On Palin (“Off The Record?”)

By Liz Cox Barrett   Sep 1, 2010 at 04:58 PM

Some excerpts from Michael Joseph Gross's, er, unflattering Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin -- a piece that brought Politico's... More

A Times Must-Read on the News Corp. Hacking Scandal

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 1, 2010 at 04:05 PM

The New York Times Magazine is out with a riveting story on the corruption at News Corporation's News International division.... More

NYT Internal Memo Addresses Anonymous Sourcing

By Lauren Kirchner   Sep 1, 2010 at 02:18 PM

A memo went out to New York Times staffers on Wednesday, reminding them of the hazards of anonymous sourcing. The... More

The Fixer

A Q&A with the man in demand among Western journalists in Pakistan

By Shahan Mufti   Sep 1, 2010 at 02:17 PM

Through three decades of war in neighboring Afghanistan, Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai has been the ultimate fixer, the man foreign... More

New Job, Less Pay

The NYT looks at wages in the recovery

By Holly Yeager   Sep 1, 2010 at 02:14 PM

The New York Times does good work today, looking at an issue that hasn’t received enough attention: “the quality of... More

Iraq’s Alternate Endings

The papers on Obama’s Iraq address

By Joel Meares   Sep 1, 2010 at 11:45 AM

According to the White House, last might marked the end of the Iraq War and the fulfilment of a promise... More

The Press in the Reality Distortion Field

Gossip, rumor, rank speculation—all on the table if it’s an Apple product

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 1, 2010 at 11:15 AM

It's Apple day. Which means it's time for the press to forget completely about its normal standards and wade neck-deep... More

Social Security in the Heartland: Ronald Eaker

What Social Security means to real people

By Trudy Lieberman   Sep 1, 2010 at 10:07 AM

Before the year ends, the president’s deficit commission will bring forth a plan for cutting the deficit. While commission co-chairs... More