Best of 2010: Trudy Lieberman

Lieberman picks her top stories from 2010

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 31, 2010 at 11:37 AM

Social Security in the Heartland series: All year the media ignored how “fixes” to Social Security pushed by political elites... More

Best of 2010: Greg Marx

Marx picks his top stories from 2010

By Greg Marx   Dec 30, 2010 at 12:03 PM

Polar Opposites: Regular readers might remember that during my time at CJR, I was something of a nag about what... More

Best of 2010: Lauren Kirchner

Kirchner picks her top stories from 2010

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 30, 2010 at 11:57 AM

This Headline May Be A Work of Art The New Museum’s exhibition “The Last Newspaper” featured collage, sculpture, and installations... More

Best of 2010: Felix Salmon

Highlights from CJR’s newest Peterson Fellow

By Dean Starkman   Dec 30, 2010 at 08:50 AM

Salvaging the FCIC: The primer offered by Republicans members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is essentially 5,400 words... More

Best of 2010: The Observatory

Curtis Brainard picks the top stories from 2010

By Curtis Brainard   Dec 29, 2010 at 01:11 PM

1. “New” Media Crucial in Aftermath of Haitian Earthquake With standard telephone, radio, and television communications disabled, “new” media platforms... More

Prudential’s Death Benefits for Soldiers: Bloomberg Gets it (Mostly) Right

CJR’s Audit Arbiter finds no merit to many of an insurer’s beefs about the financial wire’s probe

By Martha M. Hamilton   Dec 29, 2010 at 12:15 PM

The complaint came from Bob DeFillippo, chief communication officer for Prudential Financial, Inc., who fired it off the day... More

Best of 2010: Joel Meares

Meares picks his top stories from 2010

By Joel Meares   Dec 28, 2010 at 01:18 PM

1) The Biggest Fish in Albany The best part of writing this profile of Liz Benjamin—Albany blogger, TV personality, reporter... More

The WikiLeaks Equation

Secrets, free speech, and the law

By Clint Hendler   Dec 28, 2010 at 01:13 PM

Call it the Year of WikiLeaks. From April 5, when the site posted a grainy video showing the death of... More

Best of 2010: Dean Starkman

CJR’s Kingsford Capital Fellow picks his top stories of the year

By Dean Starkman   Dec 28, 2010 at 09:23 AM

The Hamster Wheel. Why running as fast as we can is getting us nowhere. The Hamster Wheel isn’t speed; it’s... More

Best of 2010: Liz Cox Barrett

Barrett picks her top stories from 2010

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 27, 2010 at 01:00 PM

Target Corp.'s "Perfect Storm." Target was but one of several Minnesota-based companies to spend corporate money on election 2010, as... More

Best of 2010: Ryan Chittum

Chittum picks his top stories from 2009 2010

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 24, 2010 at 01:20 PM

Business Journalism on Prozac: A look at an issue of Fortune finds the magazine painting a picture of the corporate... More

Climate Change 101

Trio of articles re-cover some global warming basics

By Curtis Brainard   Dec 23, 2010 at 04:45 PM

A little more than a year ago, there was a feeling among many editors and reporters that the climate-change story... More

Hawaii Four-Four

Digging deep on the president’s Christmas vacation

By Joel Meares   Dec 23, 2010 at 12:05 PM

Pity the poor political writer who must spend his or her pre-holiday hours eking out a report on the President’s... More

Weil: Accountability for Accountants

By Felix Salmon   Dec 23, 2010 at 10:57 AM

As Caleb Newquist notes, most financial reporters cover the accountancy industry "once in a lunar eclipse on the winter solstice."... More

Social Security in the Heartland: Nick Quealy-Gainer

What Social Security means to real people

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 22, 2010 at 01:25 PM

This is the ninth and final installment in a series of posts that discusses how possible changes in Social Security... More

CJR’s New Board of Overseers

A new group to help set strategy and locate resources

By The Editors   Dec 22, 2010 at 01:24 PM

The Columbia Journalism Review, which will enter its fiftieth year in 2011, has formed a Board of Overseers to help... More

And The Winner Is

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 22, 2010 at 12:56 PM

An argument for including TV news chyrons in CJR's The Lower Case feature ("headlines that editors probably wish they could... More

Reapportionment Wars

Outlets weigh in on the Census’s political implications

By Joel Meares   Dec 22, 2010 at 12:16 PM

There goes the decade. That decennial phenomenon “reapportionment” is back in the news with the U.S. Census Bureau releasing the... More

Playing Around

Ian Bogost and colleagues address the advantages and challenges of newsgames

By Alyssa Abkowitz   Dec 22, 2010 at 11:56 AM

Newsgames: Journalism at Play | By Ian Bogost, Simon Ferrari, and Bobby Schweizer | The MIT Press | 208 pages,... More

Audit Notes: The Bloomberg Way, Conflicts in Congress, Apple and Wikileakspedia

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 21, 2010 at 06:45 PM

One of the knocks on Bloomberg News is that the place is a bit, well, cultish. This quote doesn't help... More

FCC Passes Net Neutrality Policy (Sort Of)

And the press plays all the angles

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 21, 2010 at 06:00 PM

The Federal Communications Commission voted three to two on Tuesday afternoon to approve a new set of rules governing the... More

More On Outside Interests Inside Sacramento

Mercury News updates “sponsored bills” investigation

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 21, 2010 at 03:17 PM

The San Jose Mercury News's Karen de Sá has filed an update to her excellent series on "sponsored bills" in... More

The U.N. Climate Caravan

Author of report criticizing coverage of Copenhagen summit reflects on Cancun meeting

By Richelle Seton-Rogers   Dec 21, 2010 at 01:14 PM

CANCÚN, MEXICO—There is no doubt that the United Nations climate-change negotiations here, which concluded just over a week ago, were... More

Assange’s Testy Q&A with the BBC

By Joel Meares   Dec 21, 2010 at 12:59 PM

BBC 4 radio host John Humphrys this morning scored the first broadcast interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange since his... More

An Excellent WSJ Piece on Federal Regulators’ Inaction

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 21, 2010 at 10:52 AM

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent follow to its scoop yesterday that New York is planning to sue Ernst... More

Pip Pip Cheerio, “Awful” Newspapers

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 21, 2010 at 10:13 AM

Kevin Connolly, who has covered the USA for the BBC for the past three years, has written a Farewell, America... More

Social Security in Perspective, Part III

A conversation with William Greider

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 21, 2010 at 09:11 AM

Proposals to change the Social Security system have taken shape, and could foreshadow long-lasting effects on the program. Many of... More

Audit Notes: Nocera on Wallison, The Corporate Court, Wall Street Pay

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 20, 2010 at 05:21 PM

Joe Nocera weighed in Saturday on the ridiculous document released by the Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Here... More

The WSJ Gives a Madoff the Soft Touch

Access and a celebrity-journalism-style puff piece

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 20, 2010 at 02:24 PM

This looks for all the world like a publicist-driven story in The Wall Street Journal story on how Andrew Madoff... More

Copy Cat

Marcus Boon turns the culture of copying on its head

By Jane Kim   Dec 20, 2010 at 02:16 PM

In Praise of Copying | By Marcus Boon | Harvard University Press | 304 pages, $25.95 In the mythology section... More

A Grim Update on “The Grim Sleeper”

The search for victims continues with the help of the press

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 20, 2010 at 01:55 PM

The Darts & Laurels feature in our November/December issue recognized the excellent work that L.A. Weekly staff writer Christine Pelisek... More

Ghosts of Christmas Past, Future, and a Parallel Universe

Weird and wacky weigh-ins on Obama’s job so far

By Joel Meares   Dec 20, 2010 at 01:52 PM

As the surprisingly active lame duck session draws to a close and the president’s third year in office draws... More

Just One of Those Things

Choosing between singular and plural

By Merrill Perlman   Dec 20, 2010 at 01:29 PM

Be the hit of your holiday party! Amaze your friends! Impress your family! Be one of those people who uses... More

Social Security Under Attack

What the press had to say

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 20, 2010 at 12:34 PM

When the president signed the tax bill Friday, a year’s worth of efforts aimed at modifying Social Security came to... More

The Journal Digs Into Medtronic’s Payments to Surgeons

By Felix Salmon   Dec 20, 2010 at 11:52 AM

The WSJ puts a lot of time and effort into its leders—those long, exhaustively-reported front-page exclusives about topics which might... More

Audit Notes: Inequality in NYC, Reuters on Dumb Money, Ireland

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 17, 2010 at 06:05 PM

Yves Smith, in a "Banana Republic Watch," points to a report (PDF) from the Fiscal Policy Institute that finds inequality... More

Covering the Republicans’ Crisis Commission Document

Bethany McLean shows why he said-she said reporting doesn’t cut it

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 17, 2010 at 03:14 PM

The four Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released their own report Wednesday on the causes of the financial... More

Regret the Error’s Year in Review

The top quotes and takeaways from a year’s worth of columns

By Craig Silverman   Dec 17, 2010 at 11:34 AM

Close to fifty columns later, 2010 is coming to an end for Regret the Error. I spent this week looking... More

Audit Notes: Deal Scoops; Gasparino on the Economy, Bloomberg Editorials

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 16, 2010 at 08:10 PM

Deal journalism isn't our bag here, but this New York Observer story is worth noting all the same. It's interesting... More

WSJ Parrots Governor Christie on Jobs

But missing context undermines the governor’s—and the paper’s—story

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 16, 2010 at 05:51 PM

The idea, I suppose, of The Wall Street Journal's Greater New York section was to bring a little Journal touch... More

What We Should Have Known All Along about Health Reform

Much handwringing about health care what-ifs

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 16, 2010 at 01:53 PM

This week’s coverage of the Virginia court decision declaring health reform’s individual mandate unconstitutional was surprisingly thorough and contextual. What... More

A Boehner Column to Make You Cry

Evidence-free piece suggests Speaker an alcoholic

By Joel Meares   Dec 16, 2010 at 01:06 PM

A pointy, oversized dart to Politics Daily columnist Matt Lewis’s head-scratchingly bad piece, “John Boehner's Crying: Is He Drinking Too... More

A Midsummer Donation Spike, With Context

Reports from recent campaign finance reports

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 16, 2010 at 10:34 AM

There is much that can not be found in publicly available federal campaign finance reports: the identities of all the... More

When Regulators Shrink, Press Responsibilities Rise

Republicans signal intent to return to the status quo ante

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 16, 2010 at 10:09 AM

The quasi re-regulation of finance is less than two years old, but it's already facing the rollback from leadership in... More

Salvage the Financial Crisis Commission With a Document Dump

By Felix Salmon   Dec 16, 2010 at 09:38 AM

Keith Hennessey, one of the four Republican commissioners on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, has helpfully provided a copy of... More

On Givhan

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 15, 2010 at 05:08 PM

For some fifteen years, Robin Givhan has served as fashion critic for the Washington Post which, Stephen Colbert once observed,... More

Pearlstein Takes On Google’s Threat to Competition

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 15, 2010 at 04:19 PM

The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein takes up the Google monopoly case today with an excellent column in The Washington Post.... More

Social Security in the Heartland: Jim Dobbs

What Social Security means to real people

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 15, 2010 at 02:39 PM

This is the eighth in a series of posts that discuss how possible changes in Social Security will affect the... More

Australian Press Unites For Assange

Letter to PM could prove persuasive

By Joel Meares   Dec 15, 2010 at 01:13 PM

As his lawyer alleges a grand jury in Virginia is working up charges to file against him, Julian Assange has... More

The WSJ Is Needlessly Skeptical of GM’s Deleveraging

By Felix Salmon   Dec 15, 2010 at 12:27 PM

Sharon Terlep's story on GM trying to pay down its debt is a great indicator of how the leverage-is-good meme... More

Most of the Press Misses Foreclosure Scandal News (UPDATED)

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 15, 2010 at 11:53 AM

Iowa's attorney general said yesterday that he will bring criminal charges over the foreclosure scandal. But most of the press... More

CJR’s New Board of Overseers

A new group to help set strategy and locate resources

By The Editors   Dec 15, 2010 at 09:29 AM

The Columbia Journalism Review, which will enter its fiftieth year in 2011, has formed a Board of Overseers to help... More

Audit Notes: Fallows on Orszag, The Atlantic in the Black, Google

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 14, 2010 at 11:51 PM

Obama cabinet official Peter Orszag took a spin through the revolving door and ended up in a million-dollar sinecure at... More

So You Want to be a Journalist

By Joel Meares   Dec 14, 2010 at 03:08 PM

Poor guy, all he wants to do is work for The New York Times. (With thanks to "BrooklynLee" at xtranormal.) More

Columbia J-School Speaks Out Against WikiLeaks Prosecution

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 14, 2010 at 02:30 PM

In a letter to President Obama and Attorney General Holder, nineteen twenty faculty members of the Columbia University Graduate School... More

Health Care Wrap-Up

What the papers are saying about the Virginia decision

By Joel Meares   Dec 14, 2010 at 12:34 PM

Federal judge Henry E. Hudson of Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday that the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that most Americans obtain... More

“Uncertainty” Trotted Out in the Journal

Business code for “we may not get our way”

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 14, 2010 at 11:12 AM

If there's one thing our titans of industry can't stand, it's uncertainty. We've seen that excuse trotted out over and... More

Holiday Reading List

Recommend a book for a journalist this season

By The Editors   Dec 14, 2010 at 11:02 AM

This holiday season, there’s nothing better you can give your favorite overworked journalist than a good book, with a note... More

Fair Game Director Doug Liman Responds to Judith Miller

“She’s got it wrong.”

By Doug Liman   Dec 14, 2010 at 10:50 AM

Editor’s note: Last Thursday, Judith Miller penned a column for The Wall Street Journal in which she accused the new... More

We Are Not Alone: News Startup Community-Building

Launch Pad: Portland, Oregon

By Michael Andersen and Barry Johnson   Dec 14, 2010 at 09:33 AM

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

Audit Notes: Risky Business, Two Economies, Google and Monopoly

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 13, 2010 at 08:17 PM

The New York Times is good to keep an eye on signs of a return of risky lending. Today it... More

Bloomberg Poll: Stick It to Wall Street

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 13, 2010 at 07:04 PM

Bloomberg News got some stunning numbers polling Americans on whether big bonuses should be banned at Wall Street's bailout recipients,... More

Remember When No Meant No

The Bloomberg-denies-running story industry

By Joel Meares   Dec 13, 2010 at 04:57 PM

We get it media: you want New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run for president. We can’t blame you.... More

Show Him the Money!

Reporter Joydeep Gupta asks tough questions at the Cancún climate conference

By Laura Paskus   Dec 13, 2010 at 02:44 PM

CANCÚN, MEXICO—Joydeep Gupta wants to know where the money is, and he's going to keep asking everyone he can that... More

Are Online Attacks Civil Disobedience?

And other questions from the PDF symposium on WikiLeaks and Internet freedom

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 13, 2010 at 02:15 PM

This past Saturday, Personal Democracy Forum hosted a symposium about Internet freedom issues raised by WikiLeaks. (Videos of the gathering... More

Unopen to Failure

Openness and transparency will help news sites survive

By Justin D. Martin   Dec 13, 2010 at 01:03 PM

CAIRO—Isolation begets trouble. Myanmar and North Korea are isolated failures. Unvisited shut-ins die earlier than those with frequent human contact.... More

Spellbound

Different spellings, different words

By Merrill Perlman   Dec 13, 2010 at 12:15 PM

Much has been written about the dangers of using spelling checkers without brain in gear. Spelling checkers won’t tell you... More

Google’s Search Dominance Comes In Handy for Its Other Businesses

The Wall Street Journal looks at a key competitive issue on the Web.

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 13, 2010 at 11:46 AM

Google has a near-monopoly on search in the U.S. It uses that dominant position to boost its other businesses at... More

Other Views of Social Security

The MSM gives some equal time

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

Campaign Desk has been hard of late on some MSM outlets that have presented lopsided views of the Social Security... More

The NYT’s Story Takes On the Derivatives Cartel

By Felix Salmon   Dec 13, 2010 at 02:33 AM

Back in September, the Chicago Fed hosted a symposium on OTC derivatives clearing. (Bear with me, don't fall asleep just... More

BusinessWeek Takes Road Already Traveled For Larry Fink Profile

By Felix Salmon   Dec 11, 2010 at 09:22 AM

Paul Kedrosky loves playing around with word clouds, and generated this one from the new Bloomberg Businessweek profile of Larry... More

Audit Notes: Herald-Tribune Investigation, Drumbeat, Nothing for the 99ers

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 10, 2010 at 07:01 PM

Down in Florida, State Farm has exited its coastal hurricane-insurance business, saying it couldn't afford it anymore. But thanks to... More

Beware the Twitter Echo Chamber

Pew study shows the limits of the Twitter-verse

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 10, 2010 at 04:00 PM

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report on Thursday, the result of their study of Twitter demographics.... More

Goldman Exec’s “Rough Language” on Manipulating the Market

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 10, 2010 at 12:22 PM

Senator Carl Levin released emails yesterday showing a Goldman Sachs executive exhorting his traders to engineer a short-squeeze The Wall... More

NYT Finds a Mortgage-Mod Program That Works

By Felix Salmon   Dec 10, 2010 at 12:15 PM

David Bornstein has a great post about ESOP, an Ohio non-profit which acts as a middleman between homeowners and lenders,... More

Pakistani Newspapers Fake WikiLeaks “Scoops”

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 10, 2010 at 11:55 AM

The Guardian reported on Thursday that four major newspapers in Pakistan were publishing stories highly critical of the Indian government,... More

RTE’s Error of the Year

And other highlights from the year in corrections, retractions, and apologia

By Craig Silverman   Dec 10, 2010 at 09:50 AM

It’s been a very stressful couple of weeks. Every year at this time, I publish the Year in Media Errors... More

Frank Luntz Rides Again

The wordsmith and the public option

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 10, 2010 at 07:42 AM

Word came Thursday that, last year, Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon had directed his staff to avoid using... More

Jobless Benefits Extension Will Reduce Unemployment, Not Increase It

Contra a WSJ columnist, the stimulative impact outweighs any negatives

By Felix Salmon   Dec 9, 2010 at 08:32 PM

Last week, when I wrote my post on how to boost employment, the list started off unambiguously: The first—and this... More

Audit Notes: Don’t Buy Our Bonds!, Rail FAIL, Orszag to Citigroup

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 9, 2010 at 08:19 PM

New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch went off the reservation in a speech today, Bloomberg reports. First, he criticizes state... More

Public Media: “More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive”

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 9, 2010 at 02:25 PM

The Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program jointly released a policy paper on Wednesday with recommendations... More

Global Post’s Anti-Hamster Wheel Scheme

A Q&A with executive editor Charles Sennott

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 9, 2010 at 12:30 PM

Global Post, an international news service for an American audience, with seventy correspondents in fifty countries, is forming a nonprofit... More

A “Public Option” By Any Other Name…

Fox e-mails reveal top-down slant

By Joel Meares   Dec 9, 2010 at 12:05 PM

‘Tis the season to be leaking. Media Matters is reporting today that it has acquired e-mails sent by Fox News... More

The Obama Administration’s Financial-Fraud Stunt Backfires

The press shows the feds’ numbers are phony and asks where the whales are.

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 9, 2010 at 10:20 AM

Boy, the Obama administration's slapdash PR effort to show it's cracking down on financial fraud sure looks to be failing—and... More

Audit Notes: Where Are the Coppers?, Obama and FDR, WSJ

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 8, 2010 at 08:41 PM

Is that the sound of a drumbeat coming out of Andrew Ross Sorkin's DealBook? Sorkin wrote a great piece yesterday... More

Comforting the Afflicted

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 8, 2010 at 04:12 PM

From a New York Times piece today about "high-end junk-food purveyors that have popped up around Capitol Hill recently:" Very... More

The New York Times Demonizes the Bond Market

By Felix Salmon   Dec 8, 2010 at 03:22 PM

Did you know there's a fight to the death going on in Europe? The NYT covers it today, under the... More

MinnPost Wants to Create “the World’s Longest Byline”

How The Intelligencer blog does crowdsourcing, fifteen minutes at a time

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 8, 2010 at 03:15 PM

ProPublica’s Recovery Tracker, a database of stimulus funds broken down by state and county, makes it easy for anyone with... More

The NYT Shows Why Cuomo’s After Rattner

Emails show ex-private-equity investor and car czar misled investigators early in the probe

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 8, 2010 at 02:33 PM

The New York Times fronts an excellent story on the Steven Rattner scandal this morning. If you wondered why Andrew... More

Bogus Trend Nomination: Bai’s Murmurs

New York Times’s empty primary challenge story

By Joel Meares   Dec 8, 2010 at 12:21 PM

Slate media critic Jack Shafer, among others, has made a game of spotting bogus trend stories in the press. Generally... More

Social Security in the Heartland: Jude Love

What Social Security means to real people

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 8, 2010 at 11:57 AM

This is the seventh in a series of posts that discuss how possible changes in Social Security will affect the... More

Assange in Australia

What his homeland press is saying

By Joel Meares   Dec 8, 2010 at 10:07 AM

As WikiLeaks founder and frontman Julian Assange waits in custody, the press in his home country is going into WikiLeaks... More

Andrew Ross Sorkin: Fraud Triggered the Financial Crisis

A more important statement than you might think from the NYT’s Wall Street guy

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 8, 2010 at 09:19 AM

There was a tough column in The New York Times yesterday on how the feds' are going after the minnows... More

Slate Takes on Amazon’s Unfair Advantage

The retailer manipulates nexus law to give customers tax breaks competitors can’t offer

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 8, 2010 at 02:01 AM

Slate's Farhad Manjoo wrote last month about how online retailers like Amazon get a huge unfair advantage over their bricks... More

The Right Place for Scientific Debate?

Scientists snub media as controversy over arsenic-eating microbes rolls on

By Curtis Brainard   Dec 7, 2010 at 05:07 PM

First there was the wild speculation about the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Then came widespread, sometimes misguided, coverage of the... More

Conservative Pundit Jennifer Rubin Joins the Mainstream Media

But is The Washington Post ready for her style of commentary?

By Ali Gharib   Dec 7, 2010 at 03:23 PM

Two weeks ago, The Washington Post announced that it had hired Jennifer Rubin, the prolific and pugnacious Commentary writer, to... More

The Sweet Smell of Failure (Or Success) At a News Startup

Launch pad: Portland, Oregon

By Michael Andersen and Barry Johnson   Dec 7, 2010 at 02:28 PM

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

Hacks and Heroes

Who’s missing from Salon’s “biggest media hacks” list?

By The Editors   Dec 7, 2010 at 01:01 PM

Salon published its “War Room Hack Thirty” the day before Thanksgiving. The list features Salon's “least favorite political commentators, newspaper... More

You, Too, Can Own a Piece of The Onion

“America’s Finest News Source” is now franchising out its printing biz

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 7, 2010 at 01:00 PM

After twenty-two years, The Onion has decided to both get out of the print business and double down on print... More

The $100 hamster wheel

By Felix Salmon   Dec 7, 2010 at 10:26 AM

Back on October 1, the Fed put out a short, bland press release announcing "a delay in the issue date... More

Halperin’s Shaky Premises

Obama may need luck, but these claims need some backing

By Joel Meares   Dec 7, 2010 at 10:18 AM

Anyone who’s read Game Change knows that Time’s Mark Halperin isn’t exactly averse to big assertions backed by little evidence... More

NYT, Jamie Dimon, and Too Big to Fail

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 6, 2010 at 07:22 PM

Felix Salmon already dissected Roger Lowenstein's, as he called it, "credulous" New York Times Mag profile of press favorite Jamie... More

Can Rolling Stone Claim Blankenship’s Scalp?

By Felix Salmon   Dec 6, 2010 at 04:59 PM

Can Rolling Stone claim another scalp? Six months after ending the career of Stanley McChrystal, Rolling Stone published Jeff Goodell's... More

Michael Kinsley Takes Issue with an Audit Criticism

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 6, 2010 at 04:42 PM

Michael Kinsley writes to say I missed the point of his column asking "Are we poorer than we used to... More

The Muzzling of the FDA

How government press officers stole our freedom

By Jim Dickinson   Dec 6, 2010 at 03:50 PM

It is 1978. I have just been refused admission to a Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association section meeting that is to... More

“Publication isn’t necessarily a short hop to the full truth.”

Times Public Editor on Iran-North Korea missile story

By Joel Meares   Dec 6, 2010 at 01:24 PM

Last week we noted FAIR and The Washington Post’s reporting on a New York Times WikiCables story suggesting Iran had... More

USA Today’s Mixed-Up Message

What exactly did the deficit commission do?

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 6, 2010 at 01:09 PM

On Friday, USA Today reported that the president’s fiscal commission “approved a plan today to cut federal deficits by $3.9... More

Crain’s Calls Out the Bank of New York

By Felix Salmon   Dec 6, 2010 at 12:55 PM

With Peter Eavis having left the WSJ, who will join Jonathan Weil and David Reilly in taking on the job... More

Grainy Picture

‘Granularity’ and other business jargon

By Merrill Perlman   Dec 6, 2010 at 12:47 PM

For a number of years, some attendees of jargon-heavy business meetings have played “Buzzword Bingo”: Someone prints out cards with... More

A Crayola Peach-Colored Speaker

The New Yorker’s Boehner profile

By Joel Meares   Dec 6, 2010 at 12:10 PM

The New Yorker lands today with an 8,739-word look at Speaker-elect John Boehner and the challenges he faces in setting... More

Journalists Need to Do the Math

Numbers still make many watchdogs whimper

By Justin D. Martin   Dec 6, 2010 at 11:29 AM

CAIRO—I tell my students that in addition to English they should learn two more languages: an in-demand foreign tongue, and... More

Coalition to Protect Workplace Lollygaggers

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 6, 2010 at 11:12 AM

Need a Monday morning study break? Try out the Political Action Committee (PAC) Name Generator, created by the Sunlight Foundation... More

A Credulous NYT Piece on Dimon

By Felix Salmon   Dec 6, 2010 at 08:31 AM

I'm not a huge fan of Roger Lowenstein's NYT Magazine piece on Jamie Dimon, which comes complete with a positively... More

The Second-Day Fed Bailouts Coverage

From good to okay to non-existent

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 3, 2010 at 07:31 PM

And just like that, the Federal Reserve bailout story disappears from the pages of The Wall Street Journal. There's not... More

Hear CJR on WNYC

By The Editors   Dec 3, 2010 at 02:45 PM

CJR’s Clint Hendler was on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show Friday morning discussing the recent release of The Paterson E-Mails.... More

Times Does a Wiki Rewrite

Take two on the maligned missile story

By Joel Meares   Dec 3, 2010 at 01:55 PM

Yesterday we pointed to reporting by FAIR and The Washington Post that brought into question a New York Times report... More

A Life Less Ordinary

After speculation about aliens, arsenic-eating microbe stirs wide coverage

By Curtis Brainard   Dec 3, 2010 at 01:23 PM

A bacterium trained to substitute arsenic for phosphorus—one of six elements considered essential for life—in some of its basic cellular... More

Business Insider and Financial Press Sensationalism

Henry Blodget & Co. stroke the id of the Internet

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 3, 2010 at 12:37 PM

What business press readers always lacked but never really needed was a tabloid sensationalist to hype up mundane markets and... More

In Julian’s Words

Highlights from Assange’s post-leak Q&As

By Joel Meares   Dec 3, 2010 at 11:37 AM

Nobody knows where Julian Assange is, but several people have managed to find him. Since the embassy cables began... More

The NYT and the Urgency of the Unemployment Crisis

By Felix Salmon   Dec 3, 2010 at 11:02 AM

The unemployment rate has long been called Obama's Katrina, but at this point it's clear that it's much worse than... More

Why Amazon Caved, and What It Means for the Rest of Us

A Q&A with Ethan Zuckerman

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 3, 2010 at 10:20 AM

Amazon Web Services dropped WikiLeaks material from its servers on Tuesday, a move that is widely assumed to be a... More

Q&A: Blur Author Tom Rosenstiel

On verification and critical thinking in the new, open journalistic era

By Craig Silverman   Dec 3, 2010 at 09:59 AM

In their 2001 book, The Elements of Journalism Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach list ten fundamental principles (“elements”) that make... More

Disclose This

The press should treat big tech companies like Big Pharma

By Emily Brill   Dec 3, 2010 at 06:00 AM

On August 9, Google and Verizon announced an alliance in which Google, the champion of the free, open Internet, would... More

Audit Notes: Too Big to Fail Edition

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 3, 2010 at 12:36 AM

Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig has a must-read op-ed in The New York Times on why too big to... More

Inured to “Trillions”

Take a step back on the Federal Reserve bailout story

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 2, 2010 at 07:19 PM

The Federal Reserve is forced by Congress to reveal who it secretly bailed out with trillions of dollars in loans.... More

Reporting Anonymous Tweets

Don’t do it.

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 2, 2010 at 05:20 PM

I've written before about how press standards tend to go wobbly when it comes to Apple gossip. Here's a prime... More

What Was That?

By Joel Meares   Dec 2, 2010 at 04:35 PM

Minutes ago the Times posted what seemed like a Julian Assange video on its T style blog—one that was protected... More

Al Balk, 1969—1973

CJR’s second editor

By James Boylan   Dec 2, 2010 at 04:19 PM

Alfred Balk, the second editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, died in November at the age of eighty. Al, like... More

Times Missile Story Missing a Half

Raises questions about using the WikiLeaks cables

By Joel Meares   Dec 2, 2010 at 03:36 PM

The New York Times has come under some fire for overplaying the role of Iran in the Iraq war in... More

The Ongoing Burmese “Information Challenge”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 2, 2010 at 12:40 PM

Over at PBS MediaShift, Simon Roughneen has a fascinating report on the ongoing difficulties of "getting the news out of... More

Bernanke’s Stimulus Call Finally Makes The WSJ

Two weeks later.

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 2, 2010 at 11:46 AM

A couple of weeks ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke issued a public call for Congress and the president to... More

DADT Hearings Live Video

Watch feed as senators question Mullen, Gates

By Joel Meares   Dec 2, 2010 at 11:22 AM

The Senate Armed Services Committee is currently holding a hearing into the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, questioning Defense Secretary... More

NPR Plays Ebenezer Scrooge

Another lopsided Social Security story

By Trudy Lieberman   Dec 2, 2010 at 10:21 AM

It was really hard to tell whether NPR’s Morning Edition segment yesterday—part of the program’s “Ghosts of Debts Past, Present... More

WikiLeaks A Blunt Weapon, But We Should Use It

A defense of the organization under new attack

By Joel Meares   Dec 2, 2010 at 10:20 AM

Many of the charges behind the “hang Julian Assange” meme doing the rounds since WikiLeaks’s third “megaleak” on Sunday hinge... More

Audit Notes: The Federal Reserve’s Trillion-Dollar Bailout Document Dump

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 1, 2010 at 08:42 PM

The Federal Reserve today released a trove of information, much of which was sought by Bloomberg's Mark Pittman lawsuit, on... More

Public Help Sought in Shooting of Neighborhood Cat

Headlines that editors probably wish they could take back

By The Editors   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:50 PM

Efforts Meant to Help Workers Batter South Africa’s Poor —The New York Times 9/26/10 Christine O’Donnell’s Masturbation Stance —ABCnews.com 9/16/10 More

In ACORN’s Shadow

A new analysis of the community-organizing group’s history shows the media was less than fair

By Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:45 PM

Remember ACORN, the community-organizing group that got caught in the electoral crossfire between one-time community organizer Barack Obama and a... More

A Matter of Trust

Blur, a new book by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, is about how contemporary journalism can stay trustworthy

By Carolyn Kellogg   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:41 PM

Blur: How to Know What’s True In the Age of Information Overload | By Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel |... More

Home and Away

A review of A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping From Two Sides, by David Rohde and his wife

By Julia M. Klein   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:37 PM

A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping From Two Sides | By David Rohde and Kristen Mulvihill | Viking |... More

Brief Encounters

Short reviews of books about copyright law, political scandals, and Gay Talese’s sports writing

By James Boylan   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:33 PM

Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership | By Lewis Hyde | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 306 pages, $26... More

History as Soundbites

A televised vision of the twentieth century

By Robert L. O'Connell   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:29 PM

We Were There: An Eyewitness History of the Twentieth Century | Edited by Robert Fox | Overlook Press | 391... More

The Devil’s Football

H. L. Mencken airs his unexpurgated Prejudices

By Bill Marx   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:26 PM

As we all know, serious criticism of the arts is leaving the pages of mainstream newspapers and magazines. Shrinking under... More

Hard Numbers

Some stats and figures on the news industry

By The Editors   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:20 PM

47 percent of Internet users ages fifty to sixty-four used social networking between April 2009 and May 2010—up from 25... More

A Matter of Taste

On “gourmet,” “gourmand,” and loving food

By Merrill Perlman   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:17 PM

When a word takes on unwanted connotations, people seeking a replacement often settle on something close, thinking, perhaps, that the... More

Lost Links

The frustrations of archiving and saving clips in the digital age

By Christina Bellantoni   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:07 PM

I thought I was doing the responsible thing buying Christinabellantoni.com, having a friend build it out with snazzy graphics, and... More

Notes from Online Readers

CJR.org readers weigh in on journalism career mistakes and the shrinking Sacramento press corps

By The Editors   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:02 PM

In CJR's September 28 news meeting, “Woulda Coulda Shoulda,” we asked our readers, Have you made any pivotal career mistakes... More

Letters to the Editor

Readers weigh in on our September/October cover story “The Hamster Wheel”

By The Editors   Dec 1, 2010 at 04:00 PM

Hamster Food for Thought Great article (“Hamster Wheel” by Dean Starkman, CJR, September/October). “The Wheel” entirely devalues the profession of... More

Editor’s Note

Congratulations to our CJR editors for their book deals and promotions

By Mike Hoyt   Dec 1, 2010 at 03:56 PM

In the future, I am asking everyone on CJR’s staff to hide their light under a bushel. Otherwise, people may... More

WikiLeaks Coverage, Day Three

A roundup of major outlets’ continued coverage of the State Department cables story

By CJR Staff   Dec 1, 2010 at 02:00 PM

The New York Times Day three of the Times cables coverage focuses on Pakistan—firstly with a long report by Jane... More

The Overdraft Racket Continues

But reports differ on how many consumers have opted in to the fees

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 1, 2010 at 01:32 PM

Back when the Federal Reserve adopted rules forcing banks to make customers opt in to overdraft "protection," it looked like... More

Close Encounters of the Media Kind

NASA press release leads to wild speculation about alien discovery

By Curtis Brainard   Dec 1, 2010 at 12:42 PM

Over the last two days, bloggers at a few of the country’s top news outlets have engaged in wild and... More

Dealing with the Times

Governor’s aides parry with their inquisitors

By Clint Hendler   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:41 AM

While the hundreds of e-mails show the governor’s press staffers fencing with reporters from many major news organizations, no set... More

The Times asked if Paterson was caught in “compromising positions”

E-mails reveal early question about women who were “not his wife”

By Clint Hendler   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:13 AM

On January 24, 2010, Danny Hakim, a New York Times reporter who was in frequent contact with Governor David Paterson’s... More

One Night at the AP

Conflicting e-mails from capitol editor offer window into a newsroom conflict

By Clint Hendler   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:13 AM

It was one of the weirdest weeks Albany has ever experienced—and for New York’s scandal ridden, incestuous capital, that’s saying... More

The Paterson E-mails

Flacking and reporting, through the rumors

By Clint Hendler   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:07 AM

In March 2010, CJR filed two Freedom of Information Law requests seeking e-mails between journalists and Governor Paterson’s two most... More

Rumor-mongering Is Wrong…Except When I Do It

Does NPR’s Ken Rudin see the irony here?

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:05 AM

As Governor Paterson was embroiled in one scandal after the other this past February, Ken Rudin, the political director for... More

“Sorry About the Inadvertent Promotion”

Chris Smith’s error in NY Mag piece predicts the future

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:05 AM

In January, Chris Smith wrote a feature for New York Magazine on the “essential, if appealing, weirdness” of David Paterson.... More

Governor Spotted With Four Women

None-too-pleased reporter forced to watch The View

By Joel Meares   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:05 AM

Governor Paterson paid a visit to “the ladies of The View” this January and at least one member of the... More

Nicholas Confessore: Greatest Journalist Who Ever Lived?

Making up quotes is fun and easy

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:05 AM

Here’s a silly one for you. New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore wrote to Paterson press secretary Marissa Shorenstein in... More

Need Some Help Climbing Out of That Mess?

NY Mag’s Chris Smith’s witty e-mail misfire

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:03 AM

On March 1, New York Magazine reporter Chris Smith accidentally sent an e-mail to Paterson press secretary Marissa Shorenstein with... More

So You Want to Talk to the Governor?

The word “promise” comes up

By Liz Cox Barrett   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:03 AM

It's February, maybe March, of 2010. You're a political reporter frantically seeking face or phone time with Governor David Paterson... More

A Lecture for the New Media Set

Kauffmann on John Koblin’s Tweet and “journalistic integrity”

By Joel Meares   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:02 AM

I’m going to guess that Paterson communications director Peter Kauffmann is more your leisurely Sunday Times reader than your short-is-best... More

WTF! Where’s My Callback?

There’s time for a laugh in Albany

By Joel Meares   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:02 AM

Anyone who spends their time at a computer knows the joy of the witty e-mail exchange. And Albany's press bubble... More

“I will separate his head from his body”

Communications director wants to plug leak with machete

By Joel Meares   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM

It seems Governor Paterson’s communications director Peter Kauffmann has a bit of the Rahm Emanuel in him, if this e-mail... More

How To Leak A Political Scoop

It starts with an e-mail…

By Joel Meares   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM

How exactly do inside sources leak information to political reporters? Let Paterson communications director Peter Kauffmann show you. It all... More

“Not Putting This In An Email”

She must have known

By Joel Meares   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:00 AM

Perhaps Albany reporter Elizabeth Benjamin had an inkling that Governor Paterson’s communications director Peter Kauffmann’s e-mails would one day go... More

Audit Notes: Others on the Business Press

By Ryan Chittum   Dec 1, 2010 at 12:19 AM

If you haven't read John Cassidy's piece in The New Yorker asking "What Good Is Wall Street?", get to it.... More