An Atlantic Ghost Story

Housing crash porn with no “there” there

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 31, 2011 at 03:05 PM

The Atlantic runs a slideshow post by 24/7 Wall St.'s Douglas A. McIntyre with the click-me headline "The New American... More

The Downsides of Crowd-Funding

Wired shows potential limitations of Kickstarter, Emphas.is

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 31, 2011 at 01:15 PM

The March issue of Wired features a lengthy profile of the folks who founded Kickstarter, a site launched in 2009... More

Babel

Robert Lane Greene on why language is always, and never, in decline

By Daniel Luzer   Mar 31, 2011 at 01:09 PM

You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity | by Robert Lane Greene |... More

Times Has Giffords’ Impact on Arizona Senate Race

But we have to keep some perspective here

By Joel Meares   Mar 31, 2011 at 12:34 PM

In some ways it feels morbid to urge caution for those envisioning a swift fairytale return to politics for... More

Eighteen Peabody Awards Granted to Public Media Outlets

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 31, 2011 at 12:25 PM

The 70th Annual Peabody Awards were announced on Thursday morning, and out of thirty-nine Peabody awards given, eighteen went to... More

GE Flubs a Pushback Against The New York Times

The company can’t—or won’t—get its story straight on taxes

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 31, 2011 at 11:24 AM

General Electric went into full public-relations pushback mode after The New York Times's damaging story Friday on how it avoids... More

Audit Notes: The Dimon Dare; Bloomberg’s Bank FOIA, Hamsters Attack!

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 30, 2011 at 07:13 PM

The Financial Times reports tonight that press favorite Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, that regulation is going to kill... More

Covering “Crazy”

“Goldwater rule” overlooked in articles about Qaddafi, Sheen, and Loughner

By Curtis Brainard   Mar 30, 2011 at 12:57 PM

The media has a penchant for psychoanalysis that often gets news outlets into trouble. From killers to celebrities to dictators,... More

Times’s Solid Report on Failed Mortgage Rescue Programs

An economic calamity and its human faces

By Joel Meares   Mar 30, 2011 at 12:29 PM

A must-read A1 story in The New York Times today digs into the multi-level failings of President Obama’s foreclosure rescue... More

SIGTARP Barofsky Skewers Treasury’s TARP Defense

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 30, 2011 at 11:51 AM

Today's must-read comes from Neil Barofsky, the TARP's special inspector general, in a New York Times op-ed. He guts the... More

The Hacker, Off the Couch

Brian Boyer and the rise of “hacker-journalists”

By Bret J. Schulte   Mar 30, 2011 at 10:45 AM

Back in May 2007, Brian Boyer was just another computer guy short-circuiting from ennui sitting on a friend’s couch,... More

Audit Notes: Banks Mislead, The South and Unions, Shareholder Capitalism

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 29, 2011 at 07:58 PM

Adam Levitin of Georgetown Law and Credit Slips calls out the banking lobby for an "incredibly dishonest" attempt to mislead... More

A New Entry in the Health Care Lexicon

Beware of “centralized medical planning”

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 29, 2011 at 04:23 PM

Lawrence Hunter, a contributor on Forbes.com, took on President Obama the other day, listing a number of White House initiatives... More

Sims: White House Edition

By Joel Meares   Mar 29, 2011 at 02:07 PM

The National Journal has news graphics lovers oooing and ahhing today with an impressive interactive map of the West Wing.... More

The WSJ Is Excellent On Bad Doctors

Using a Medicare database to find outlying surgeons

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 29, 2011 at 01:41 PM

The Wall Street Journal has been mining a massive Medicare database for an investigative series on Medicare—particularly its costs and... More

Obama Leaves the Pundits Wanting More

Libya speech did little to clear up the unclear

By Joel Meares   Mar 29, 2011 at 01:08 PM

If the president had hoped last night’s speech would quash claims that the purpose and objective of our intervention... More

Suggest Some New Columnists for the Times

Who should replace Frank Rich and Bob Herbert?

By The Editors   Mar 29, 2011 at 01:05 PM

It’s beginning to feel like The Daily on The New York Times's opinion pages. First, Sunday columnist Frank Rich left... More

Last Night’s Shorty Awards #Winners

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 29, 2011 at 12:15 PM

On Monday night, The Times Center in New York hosted the third annual Shorty Awards, a very silly ceremony “honoring... More

When Corporate Policies Trump Online Rights

U.S. technology companies can no longer be neutral

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 29, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Last winter, Amazon Web Services received some negative attention after it dropped WikiLeaks materials from its servers, and WikiLeaks associates... More

Darts & Laurels

The Portland Press Herald blurred an important line with its donation of ads during an election

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 29, 2011 at 09:00 AM

The importance of a daily newspaper’s role in local politics is undeniable. Ideally, it reports the issues impartially, then makes... More

NYT Follows Walmart’s Weird OSHA Fight

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 28, 2011 at 02:40 PM

The New York Times reported this weekend that a judge upheld $7,000 fine OSHA levied against Walmart for the trampling... More

The Government’s Shutting Down (Maybe)

But what does that mean?

By Joel Meares   Mar 28, 2011 at 02:24 PM

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that the White House and Democrats in Congress have come up with about... More

A Shout Out to the Times’s Thomas Kaplan

For a truthful tale about medical malpractice reform

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 28, 2011 at 02:10 PM

The New York Times’s man in Albany, Thomas Kaplan, is on the malpractice case—that is, the state legislature’s efforts to... More

Taking Dictator-tion

Not-so-subtle clues

By Merrill Perlman   Mar 28, 2011 at 01:10 PM

Kevin Adams wondered whether journalists are buying in to U.S. foreign policy terminology, subliminally or not. “I’ve noticed that NPR... More

WSJ Unmasks Perfidious Goldman

By Felix Salmon   Mar 28, 2011 at 11:36 AM

The WSJ has a great article today about that most fickle and capricious of creatures, the Goldman Sachs investment... More

Audit Notes: Mortgage Industry Conflicts of Interest Edition

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 25, 2011 at 05:11 PM

American Banker has a smart story on "How Not to Make a Mortgage Servicing Settlement," taking a look at the... More

The Real Problem with Fox News

A case study

By Ben Adler   Mar 25, 2011 at 04:35 PM

On Thursday night, Fox News anchor Bret Baier was Jon Stewart’s guest on The Daily Show. The two men went... More

NYT Is Superb On General Electric’s Tax Avoidance

Plus, David Kocieniewski continues his Charlie Rangel exposés

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 25, 2011 at 02:14 PM

(UPDATE: See my follow-up post on GE's poor PR response to the Times's story) The New York Times unloads a... More

Libya and the Arab Street

What do ordinary Arabs think? Let’s ask them

By Michael Massing   Mar 25, 2011 at 01:17 PM

On Wednesday, I went to hear Ayman Mohyeldin, the Cairo correspondent for Al Jazeera English, speak at the office of... More

Governor’s Inbox Puts Deputy Prosecutor Out (Updated)

Walker’s e-mails give Wisconsin watchdog a story

By Joel Meares   Mar 25, 2011 at 12:49 PM

A young Indiana deputy prosecutor has resigned after an interesting journalistic project sprung from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s release of... More

Misinformation Clouds Much Japan Coverage

International media’s output enters the “Journalistic Hall of Shame”

By Craig Silverman   Mar 25, 2011 at 11:59 AM

Andrew Woolner’s Yokohama residence was left without power shortly after the recent major earthquake struck Japan. But his laptop and... More

BBC + PBS = YES

Why I’ll watch the new World News America

By Ann Cooper   Mar 25, 2011 at 10:04 AM

While we wait for Comcast and Time Warner cable to conquer their Al Jazeera phobia, let me suggest an alternative... More

Audit Notes: Sunday Papers, Weymouth’s Payday, Ayn Rand

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 24, 2011 at 08:15 PM

Ken Doctor has some interesting thoughts at the Nieman Journalism Lab on why The New York Times's paywall pricing steers... More

Better to Be Skeptical Than Sanguine About Soaring Tech Valuations (UPDATED)

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 24, 2011 at 05:42 PM

Henry Blodget's Business Insider runs a column today from a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist arguing that there's no new... More

Steve Inskeep Stands Up for NPR

Challenges notion that network is “liberal” in WSJ

By Joel Meares   Mar 24, 2011 at 03:47 PM

The NPR board may have buckled under the pressure of James O’Keefe’s faux scandal, but weeks after the Schillers... More

Harsh Justice for a Wall Street Thief

A thief who stole from Wall Street, of course

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 24, 2011 at 03:25 PM

David Weidner has an excellent column on the unfortunate case of Sergey Aleynikov, better known as the guy who stole... More

Instapaper and Readability Come Out of Their Shells

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 24, 2011 at 01:15 PM

The New York Times’s Gadgetwise blog notes today that the online reading services Readability and Instapaper are both undergoing curious... More

CJR Holds a Town Hall at NYU

Students know little about the health law

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 24, 2011 at 01:00 PM

It is birthday week for the Affordable Care Act, the official name of the health reform law passed a year... More

Members Only

Two cheers for high-cost subscription journalism

By The Editors   Mar 24, 2011 at 10:10 AM

Washington beckons as a land of opportunity for journalists today, at least in the realm of high-cost subscription news. We’re... More

Audit Notes: Ma Bell II—Duopoly Edition

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 23, 2011 at 11:51 PM

The Financial Times's John Gapper has an excellent column on why the AT&T's proposed deal for T-Mobile should be shot... More

Some Questions on the Debit-Reform Story

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 23, 2011 at 07:38 PM

It strikes me that this Wall Street Journal story on the banks' "strange bedfellows" opposing debit-card rules probably should have... More

We Love the Eighties

David Sirota traces the outsized influence of the “Me Decade”

By Jessica Loudis   Mar 23, 2011 at 12:50 PM

Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything |... More

News for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

The Washington Times and the foreign newswire that wasn’t

By Ethan Wilensky-Lanford   Mar 23, 2011 at 12:37 PM

When an outfit calling itself the Central Asia Newswire announced it had set up shop in Astana, Kazakhstan last... More

Arab Spring: A Guardian Interactive Timeline

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 23, 2011 at 11:15 AM

On Tuesday, The Guardian posted an excellent infographic, ”The path of protest,” which promises to make the popular uprisings sweeping... More

Detecting Fake Photos with Digital Forensics

A Q&A with Hany Farid on photo forensics

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 23, 2011 at 10:36 AM

As photography has gone digital, it has become ever easier to manipulate images with Photoshop and other technology. Digital photographs... More

Four Times Journalists Recall Captivity in Libya

By Joel Meares   Mar 23, 2011 at 10:23 AM

There is much to shock and rattle you in today’s first-hand account from the New York Times journalists captured—and now... More

WSJ: Federal Regulator Bares Fangs At Wall Street

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 23, 2011 at 06:11 AM

The Wall Street Journal has a reports this morning that federal regulators are playing smashmouth with Wall Street over their... More

Audit Notes: The Fed and Labor, Revolving Door Watch, Bank Dividends

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 22, 2011 at 08:24 PM

Mike Konczal, aka Rortybomb, has a very interesting post asking questions about the impact of Federal Reserve policies have had... More

WaPo and Times Go Softly, Softly with Barbour

Similar profiles tell similar tales

By Joel Meares   Mar 22, 2011 at 02:59 PM

Pity poor Tim Pawlenty. The day after the former Minnesota governor made a shallow splash announcing his presidential exploratory... More

More on Second Liens

By Felix Salmon   Mar 22, 2011 at 02:46 PM

I had a long conversation with Jesse Eisinger on the subject of second liens and the proposed mortgage settlement... More

Quaking in California

Articles about the “big one” short on science

By Curtis Brainard   Mar 22, 2011 at 02:15 PM

The 9.0 earthquake that struck Japan on March 11 not only sent a tsunami barreling across the Pacific, but also... More

James Madison on the Muslim Brotherhood

Democracy must tolerate extreme speech and advocacy

By Justin D. Martin   Mar 22, 2011 at 01:55 PM

CAIRO—James Madison would probably welcome Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. One of the most extraordinary features of democracy is that it tolerates... More

Tom Friedman Declares War

A bum rap for the elderly

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 22, 2011 at 01:46 PM

Tom Friedman was his usual glib self in Sunday’s New York Times, arguing that the two political parties “would rather... More

AT&T’s Cellphone Industry Rollup Gets Second-Day Scrutiny

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 22, 2011 at 01:28 PM

The business press continues to be skeptical in its second-day coverage of AT&T's $39 billion deal for T-Mobile. That's a... More

“We Followed in the Bubble”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Mar 22, 2011 at 01:27 PM

My daily newspaper went to Brazil with President Obama and all I got (well, not all) was this "quick video... More

Twitter Turns Five

How has Twitter changed your media diet?

By The Editors   Mar 22, 2011 at 12:34 PM

This week, Twitter turns five. Care for a slice of fail-whale shaped birthday cake, anyone? For its users, Twitter has... More

LynNell Hancock on the Problem with Teacher Scores: A CJR Podcast

By The Editors   Mar 22, 2011 at 10:55 AM

In the cover story of CJR’s March/April issue, “Tested: Covering schools in the age of micro-measurement,” LynNell Hancock writes, “The... More

Pawlenty Just Announced: Quick, Say Something

By Joel Meares   Mar 22, 2011 at 10:51 AM

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty yesterday announced that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee, making him the first... More

The Cancer Report

Journalists who wrote on—and through—their disease

By Joel Meares   Mar 22, 2011 at 06:00 AM

Followers of Leroy Sievers’s “My Cancer” blog knew its expected end approached when Sievers published an entry titled “The... More

Good Consolidation Coverage for a Change on AT&T Deal

The business press is skeptical of creating a duopoly in cell phone service

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 21, 2011 at 07:41 PM

Fortune's Seth Weintraub pulls a four-year-old Stephen Colbert clip that's as good a place as any to kick off a... More

Juan Williams’ Weak Call to Defund NPR

Ex-employee’s latest attack proves toothless

By Joel Meares   Mar 21, 2011 at 04:43 PM

In a disingenuous column published in The Hill today, onetime NPR news analyst Juan Williams argues that his former employer... More

Narrative Found

This Land Press closes investment deal; will become Oklahoma’s first (or at least strongest) new media company

By Michael Meyer   Mar 21, 2011 at 03:15 PM

Earlier this month, This Land Press published the latest installment in its ongoing coverage of Bradley Manning, the army private... More

In Style

AP makes more changes

By Merrill Perlman   Mar 21, 2011 at 01:28 PM

Last Monday, you could have written an “e-mail” to your friend in “Calcutta,” checked for a response on your “smart... More

War Is A Worry, Not Just the Liberal Ones

A look at Ross Douthat’s take on Libya

By Joel Meares   Mar 21, 2011 at 12:36 PM

Two heavy hitters from the left and right are struggling with the weekend’s (aerial) incursion into Libya. Both the Times’s... More

Supremes Rule for Bloomberg Over the Banks

A big press win as Mark Pittman’s lawsuit pries bailout records from the Federal Reserve

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 21, 2011 at 11:45 AM

Chalk one up for the people's right to know over the bank arm of the government's right to spend our... More

Bloomberg Keeps Its Documents to Itself

By Felix Salmon   Mar 18, 2011 at 04:33 PM

Caleb Newquist has a great post up at Going Concern showing how important it is for news organizations to publish... More

A Sports Myth Grows in Brooklyn

New basketball arena won’t occupy the site the Dodgers sought

By Norman Oder   Mar 18, 2011 at 01:37 PM

Journalists who write about the new basketball arena rising in Brooklyn, scheduled to house the basketball Nets in 2012, frequently... More

Excluded Voices: Health Care Costs

An interview with Dr. Robert Berenson of the Urban Institute

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 18, 2011 at 11:31 AM

During the health reform debate, we periodically presented Q and A interviews with health care experts whose voices were scarce.... More

“Information Wants to Be Free”; The NYT Does Not

Paywall reactions and misunderstandings

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 17, 2011 at 05:40 PM

The New York Times has announced that its metered paywall will go into effect on March 28, costing readers $15... More

Glenn Beck Puts Japan in Context

By Dylan DePice   Mar 17, 2011 at 05:25 PM

“Hello America. There is a lot of evil in the world.” Yesterday, after admonishing President Obama for celebrating women’s history,... More

ProPublica and NYT Are Confusing On Second Liens (UPDATED)

By Felix Salmon   Mar 17, 2011 at 05:11 PM

Jesse Eisinger has a conspiracy theory about the way that second liens are treated in the proposed mortgage settlement: The... More

Bill to Defund NPR Passes House Vote

White House needs to come out stronger

By Joel Meares   Mar 17, 2011 at 04:49 PM

It’s been a busy twenty-four hours on the “defund NPR” beat. Yesterday, the House Rules Committee convened an emergency... More

Pew’s Spin Through the Online Midterm News Cycle

Survey shows where we got our 2010 campaign news

By Joel Meares   Mar 17, 2011 at 02:08 PM

Reading through comment streams during last year’s midterms, one often had to ask: Where are people getting their “information”... More

WaPo’s New Opinion Tabs Miss the Mark

A flawed way to quantify ideological diversity

By Ben Adler   Mar 17, 2011 at 01:41 PM

The Washington Post, as part of its ongoing web redesign, unveiled an addition to its online opinions section on Monday.... More

The Newspaper Guild Calls for HuffPo Boycott

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 17, 2011 at 01:35 PM

The Newspaper Guild of America, which represents 26,000 media workers across the country, has called for a strike of unpaid... More

NYT Whitewashes its Japan Error

By Clint Hendler   Mar 17, 2011 at 01:11 PM

If you’re having trouble tracking the twists and turns as Japanese workers struggle at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, you’re... More

The New York Times Paywall Looks Good

Leaky enough to preserve traffic and ads, but strong enough to add incremental revenue

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 17, 2011 at 12:32 PM

The New York Times paywall is here, and it's about time. Don't ask me why it took so long and... More

NYT Announces Paywall Details, In Effect March 28

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 17, 2011 at 11:50 AM

After months of speculation and anticipation from all sides of the industry, The New York Times revealed Thursday morning the... More

Unpacking Rory Reid’s 91 PACs Maneuver

How political reporter Jon Ralston got the story

By Liz Cox Barrett   Mar 17, 2011 at 11:30 AM

If this isn't illegal, it should be. This has been the "almost universal" reaction, says veteran Nevada political reporter Jon... More

The Journal Shines a Light on Modern Debtors’ Prisons

The paper finds creditors, including folks like AIG, getting thousands thrown in jail

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 17, 2011 at 11:30 AM

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent story today reporting on the country's modern-day debtors' prisons, which I'd thought were... More

Bardach Takes the Stand, Begrudgingly

By Clint Hendler   Mar 17, 2011 at 10:25 AM

Yesterday Ann Louise Bardach, a veteran Cuba reporter, was compelled to testify in the messy federal trial of Luis Posada,... More

Hiding the Real Africa

Why NGOs prefer bad news

By Karen Rothmyer   Mar 17, 2011 at 09:45 AM

And now for some good news out of Africa. Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and... More

The Libor Lag

Why are investigators only now looking into things that happened three and four years ago?

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 16, 2011 at 07:12 PM

The business papers all report news that the Department of Justice, SEC, and Commodities Futures Trading Commission (and apparently other... More

The Internet’s Least Helpful Webpages

How content farms do Japan

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 16, 2011 at 04:55 PM

Taking to Google with your questions about the fast-breaking situation in Japan can lead down some pretty strange paths—paths to... More

Another Take on NPR’s “Liberal Bias”

Its reporting on Social Security is anything but

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 16, 2011 at 04:48 PM

It was easy to understand why a story yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered appeared to favor the Republican position... More

WikiLeaks Cables Used to Dig on Japan Quake

By Joel Meares   Mar 16, 2011 at 04:32 PM

An interesting development on the media front of the Japan quake-tsunami-nuclear disaster: some British newspapers are using WikiLeaks’s U.S.... More

A Brief History of “Save Darfur”

The Darfur lobby was historic. But was it effective?

By Andrew Stobo Sniderman   Mar 16, 2011 at 02:56 PM

Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide | by Rebecca Hamilton | Palgrave MacMillan | 272... More

Crisis Juggling in Japan

Reporters struggle to balance quake, tsunami, nuclear coverage

By Curtis Brainard   Mar 16, 2011 at 02:00 PM

The triple disaster. The triple whammy. Both terms are now common in media accounts of the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear-plant disaster that has... More

Japan’s Quake and Political Fallout

Notes on nuclear renaissance

By Joel Meares   Mar 16, 2011 at 01:01 PM

The ongoing struggle to bring four reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station under control has understandably shaken the... More

Should News Paywalls Demand Less in Poorer Countries?

The case for variable pricing

By Justin D. Martin   Mar 16, 2011 at 12:40 PM

CAIRO—Consumers have made peace with the fact that some things cost more in certain places. A cup of black coffee... More

Gingrich’s Disingenuous Journal Op-Ed

Misleading on Obama, the Bush tax cuts, and the economy

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 16, 2011 at 05:33 AM

Newt Gingrich is no doubt a smart man. So he surely knows better than to write what he and his... More

Audit Notes: Two Economies, Red-Handed Raj, Life at SXSW

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 15, 2011 at 08:30 PM

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post comments on a new study out from an NYU prof that shows how globalization... More

Native News from Nippon

A sampling of English-language Japanese news outlets online

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 15, 2011 at 06:15 PM

When disaster strikes in one part of the world, the rest of the world struggles to get as close as... More

O’Keefe Teaches Media A Lesson (Again)

Edited NPR video shows why we need to slow down

By Joel Meares   Mar 15, 2011 at 03:19 PM

How quickly things seem to fall apart when James O’Keefe is the person who put them together. O’Keefe’s incriminating ACORN... More

Shameless Japan “Coverage” from MSNBC, CBS

By Liz Cox Barrett   Mar 15, 2011 at 03:06 PM

A dart to MSNBC and its new hire, Martin Bashir, who used the monologue part of his eponymous cable news... More

Disaster in Japan

And thoughts on its national health system

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 15, 2011 at 02:56 PM

Images of the devastation in northeastern Japan reminded me of the time I rode the Shinkansen—the bullet train that raced... More

As the Revolving Door Turns

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 15, 2011 at 02:44 PM

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the head of the Federal Housing Administration, David H. Stevens, will become CEO... More

Brooke Kroeger on James O’Keefe and Undercover Reporting: A CJR Podcast

By The Editors   Mar 15, 2011 at 01:55 PM

Is James O’Keefe a “journalist”? Does it matter? Do the political goals of an undercover reporter—or activist—affect the value of... More

Does NPR Have a Liberal Bias?

And, if so, how would we measure it?

By The Editors   Mar 15, 2011 at 12:45 PM

At the root of the hubbub over the conservative activist sting on a pair of NPR fundraisers and NPR CEO... More

Political Aftershocks

Reactions to a disaster abroad, at home

By Joel Meares   Mar 15, 2011 at 11:56 AM

The news cycle being what it is, it’s not surprising that we’ve taken to navel-gazing just days after the Japanese... More

A Glimpse into WaPo’s Editing Practices

By Joel Meares   Mar 15, 2011 at 11:39 AM

Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan reports that earlier today The Washington Post published a story online by The Courier-Journal’s Laura Ungar that... More

Not for Laughs

A pathbreaking look at the dark comic genius behind “Skippy”

By David Hajdu   Mar 15, 2011 at 06:00 AM

“All cartoonists are geniuses,” wrote John Updike in his introduction to a collection of cartoons by Arnold Roth, a... More

Audit Notes: When a Loss Isn’t a Loss, Lehman, WSJ on Nukes

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 15, 2011 at 01:01 AM

You're going to hear a lot about all the "losses" insurers are going to be taking on the catastrophe in... More

Breakingviews Misses on the Fed’s Debit Card Rules

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 14, 2011 at 07:20 PM

The banking lobby is pushing back bigtime against the Federal Reserve rules that would force it to stop gouging consumers... More

False Tidals

Not-quite words for natural disasters

By Merrill Perlman   Mar 14, 2011 at 04:53 PM

Disasters bring out the best in journalism and journalists, and the cataclysmic events in Japan are no different. But in... More

A Down Under View On Public Broadcasting

CJR talks NPR and more with Jonathan Holmes, host of Australian TV’s Media Watch

By Joel Meares   Mar 14, 2011 at 04:53 PM

Last week saw NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resign after the organization’s chief fundraiser was caught in a hidden-video sting... More

Somebody still believes in magazines…

By Joel Meares   Mar 14, 2011 at 04:43 PM

An interesting development on the growing terror-and-glossy-mags beat today: al-Fajer Media is reportedly distributing Al-Qaeda’s first women’s mag, Al-Shamikha (“majestic... More

Walking Out on 60 Minutes: A Time-Honored Tradition

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 14, 2011 at 03:30 PM

This past weekend, 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon was interviewing “Curve Ball,” the notorious Iraq defector whose fabrications about his... More

Watchdogs Eye the AG’s Foreclosure Fraud Settlement

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 14, 2011 at 02:41 PM

Gretchen Morgenson yesterday criticized the states attorneys general for their proposed foreclosure fraud settlement, writing that it's a slapdash rush... More

Ukrainian Teens Shoot in Crimea

By Joel Meares   Mar 14, 2011 at 09:33 AM

An interesting exhibition opened at New York’s Paley Center last Thursday; those interested in photography and experiments in the field... More

“The News Industry Is No Longer In Control Of Its Destiny”

And other findings of the Pew State of the Media Report

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 14, 2011 at 01:07 AM

Today the Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism released its annual “State of the Media” report, and it’s a... More

Audit Notes: Lehman’s Green Monster, Sands Storm, Amazon Taxes

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 11, 2011 at 07:55 PM

Bloomberg's Christine Harper Richard and Bob Ivry circle back to the Fenway deal Lehman Brothers made with Hudson Castle that... More

UPDATED: Beck’s Blaze Comes To NPR’s Defense (Sort Of)

By Joel Meares   Mar 11, 2011 at 05:15 PM

I spoke on a media roundtable today on a San Francisco public radio station about the NPR/Schiller(s) controversy. Before we... More

Does Charlie Sheen Write the Captions for ABC News?

High times for the ABC World News

By Michael Antonoff   Mar 11, 2011 at 05:13 PM

A recent episode of the `Made in America' series on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer included a segment in... More

Risk Reporting 101

What journalists should know about hazards and exposure

By David Ropeik   Mar 11, 2011 at 04:12 PM

During my years as a daily TV journalist in Boston, I covered a seemingly endless string of risks: from the... More

Relax! IRS Rules Are “Lax”

WaPo has good news for anonymous political donors

By Liz Cox Barrett   Mar 11, 2011 at 04:09 PM

Are you a 501(c)(4) group that spent millions of anonymous dollars on attack ads during the midterm elections (or, perhaps,... More

A Zombie Lie Is Born

CNBC’s false welfare-state story spreads far and wide

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 11, 2011 at 12:21 PM

Two days ago I fisked a false report from CNBC that said more than a third of all wages and... More

Imagining a Digital Public Library of America

A Q&A with Berkman Center fellow Maura Marx

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 11, 2011 at 11:20 AM

For at least a decade, librarians, technologists, and academics have been discussing an idea that seems as inevitable as it... More

New O’Keefe Recording Shows NPR Suggesting Anonymous Donation

By Joel Meares   Mar 10, 2011 at 06:30 PM

James O’Keefe continues to stick it to NPR with a second tape—this time audio—released featuring a telephone conversation between senior... More

Keeping an Eye on Hospital Safety, Part II

A shout-out to the Columbia Tribune

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 10, 2011 at 04:14 PM

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

The WSJ Flags an Accounting Trick on Private Pensions

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 10, 2011 at 03:25 PM

The Wall Street Journal had an excellent story yesterday on how major companies are playing around with their pension accounting... More

Stingers From Our Past

James O’Keefe’s predecessors, their stings, and their ethics

By Joel Meares   Mar 10, 2011 at 02:33 PM

With James O’Keefe’s latest video sting taking two scalps at NPR this week, we thought it timely to revisit some... More

Remembering David Broder

1929-2011

By Thomas Edsall   Mar 10, 2011 at 11:53 AM

Four people were key to the rise of The Washington Post as the premier site for political journalism in the... More

Unnecessary Secrets

Opening government, from Ellsberg to Manning

By Sanford J. Ungar   Mar 10, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Back in 1999—simpler times, perhaps—there was a little-noticed brouhaha in federal court over an effort to get several secret... More

Audit Notes: More Murdoch, Hiltzik on the Social Security Trust Fund

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 9, 2011 at 07:45 PM

A couple of weeks ago, Allan Sloan wrote about Rupert Murdoch is using $673 million of his shareholders' money to... More

NPR Flubs Response to Schiller Controversy

Another “scandal,” another rash reaction

By Joel Meares   Mar 9, 2011 at 05:48 PM

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller has resigned following the controversial release of a video showing an NPR fundraiser describing the Tea... More

Corporate Cousins

A walk down memory lane with the Murdoch media

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 9, 2011 at 05:08 PM

Daniel Gross brings up the fact that it's been two years since Michael Boskin's editorial in The Wall Street Journal... More

Las Vegas Sun Shines Light on Nevada Health Care

Multimedia investigation of hospital injuries wins 2011 Goldsmith Prize

By Cristine Russell   Mar 9, 2011 at 04:30 PM

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—“Where do you go for great health care in Las Vegas?” Answer: “The airport.” That local joke set Las... More

Improving News, Improving Community

“Write for Arkansas” funds reporters in small newsrooms for two years

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 9, 2011 at 04:25 PM

On the future-of-news beat, it’s easy to see which projects and innovations get the most attention. From automation to augmented-reality,... More

Vivian Schiller Resigns from NPR

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 9, 2011 at 10:54 AM

Yesterday, CJR’s Joel Meares wrote about the latest in a long string of NPR dust-ups: a “sting” by conservative activist... More

Conflating Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 9, 2011 at 10:38 AM

Meanwhile, while we're pointing out games journalists play and the question of whether Social Security is welfare, WaPo's Robert J.... More

CNBC Misleads on “Welfare State” Dominance

Bad math overstates government payouts

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 9, 2011 at 10:20 AM

(UPDATE: See my follow-up post here: A Zombie Lie Is Born: CNBC’s false welfare-state story spreads far and wide.) There... More

CJR Rewind: NPR Amps Up

Can Vivian Schiller build a journalism juggernaut?

By Jill Drew   Mar 9, 2011 at 10:20 AM

This story originally ran in the March/April 2010 issue of CJR. If I were writing this story for All Things... More

The Times Ups the Ante on the SEC’s Madoff Mess

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 9, 2011 at 01:00 AM

The New York Times has a great scoop this morning advancing the ball on the SEC's entanglement with Bernie Madoff.... More

City Pages Goes Behind the Scenes of Standardized Testing

Essay-scoring process found to be arbitrary and corruptible

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 8, 2011 at 04:45 PM

The cover story for CJR’s March/April issue—“Tested,” by LynNell Hancock—explores the nationwide effort to “reform” education, and what happens when... More

New Scandal: Approach With Caution (UPDATED)

NPR, Schiller, O’Keefe, and the benefits of a breather

By Joel Meares   Mar 8, 2011 at 03:39 PM

NPR took another hit today with the release of a video from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas showing NPR Foundation... More

A Letter From a Pressman in Tripoli

By Joel Meares   Mar 8, 2011 at 03:18 PM

From Tripoli, The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont has a thoughtful report on what conditions are like on the ground for foreign... More

Deal Myopia in the WSJ and NYT on Hard Drive Merger

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 8, 2011 at 02:52 PM

Here's a good example of how poorly the business press covers acquisitions that could hurt competition. The Wall Street Journal... More

Newsweek’s Redesign Gets Two Thumbs Down

Is the harsh reaction from media critics warranted?

By The Editors   Mar 8, 2011 at 02:09 PM

The newly redesigned Newsweek launched yesterday, and as soon as the first images appeared online, the issue quickly became a... More

Romney on the Stump

Health care’s not my baby, he says

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 8, 2011 at 02:04 PM

Mitt Romney has come out swinging against the health care plan he helped create, tackling the issue head on during... More

The NYT Tilts Toward the Banks on Debit Interchange Fees

By Felix Salmon   Mar 8, 2011 at 12:02 PM

Edward Wyatt has a big piece in The New York Times on the banks' last-ditch attempts to weaken the rules... More

Microbes and the Media

Burned in the past, journalists wary of astrobiology hype

By Curtis Brainard   Mar 8, 2011 at 10:58 AM

Claims about extraterrestrial life are once again making headlines. Unlike a December incident involving an assertion about the discovery of... More

Editor & Publisher Shines Another Light On Mexico

By Joel Meares   Mar 8, 2011 at 10:50 AM

Editor & Publisher has posted the latest in a spate of articles outlining the difficulties faced by Mexican and American... More

Tested

Covering schools in the age of micro-measurement

By LynNell Hancock   Mar 8, 2011 at 06:00 AM

Eleven New York City education reporters were huddling on e-mail last October 20, musing over ways to collectively pry... More

Audit Notes: Journalists Subpoenaed, Private Pension Woes, Galleon

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 7, 2011 at 11:53 PM

Matthew Goldstein of Reuters reports that several business journalists are caught up in the crossfire between Fairfax Financial and hedge... More

Institutional Grants On the Rise; Crowdfunding, Not So Much

And other findings from a new Knight Foundation survey

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 7, 2011 at 04:50 PM

Here at CJR, The News Frontier Database is our ongoing project to track and gather online news startups throughout the... More

The WSJ Overreaches On Wisconsin Democrats Story

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 7, 2011 at 02:24 PM

The Wall Street Journal went A1 with a big scoop this morning that "Democrats to End Union Standoff" in Wisconsin.... More

Women’s Suffixes

Making some nouns more feminine

By Merrill Perlman   Mar 7, 2011 at 01:11 PM

If you die in some states and your son is appointed to handle your estate, he is the “executor.” If... More

The New Newsweek, She Has Arrived

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 7, 2011 at 12:45 PM

The newly redesigned Newsweek hits the newsstands today, and The Society of Publication Designers has a first look at several... More

The Doctors vs. the Lawyers

Whose side is the Times on?

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 7, 2011 at 10:46 AM

The New York Times came forth last week with an intriguing political story—but a puzzling piece of journalism. The story... More

Audit Notes: Fox on the Overpaid, Winkler Smiles, FT Ads

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 4, 2011 at 06:33 PM

The Fox News propaganda machine has been ramped up to portray $700 a week teachers and other government employees as... More

Wall Street Running Out the Clock on Crash Charges (UPDATED)

Prosecutors finally focus on CDOs as the statute of limitations is running out

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 4, 2011 at 06:17 PM

The housing bubble popped five years ago. The securitization market went haywire four years ago, shortly after the derivatives market... More

How Do You Define “Quality” Content?

A discussion at paidContent 2011

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 4, 2011 at 04:00 PM

Perhaps it was the early hour—maybe the panelists hadn’t had their morning coffee yet—but the mood seemed subdued at the... More

N.C. Newspaper CEO Takes It Outside

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 4, 2011 at 03:00 PM

From the Lake Norman Citizen out of Huntersville, North Carolina comes a gleeful item about the Citizen’s competition: “Herald Weekly... More

Why Some People Steal Content

Outside U.S., digital piracy not just easy, but often necessary

By Justin D. Martin   Mar 4, 2011 at 02:06 PM

PHILADELPHIA—Before a business trip to the U.S., I wanted a copy of the film Veronica Guerin, a journalistic biopic starring... More

Baby Boomers and the Labor Force

The aging of the population lowers the percentage of people working

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 4, 2011 at 01:52 PM

James Pethokoukis of Reuters looks at the job numbers out this morning, which showed headline unemployment dropping to 8.9 percent,... More

“Hyperlocal” is So 2010

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 4, 2011 at 01:20 PM

When TBD announced massive layoffs last week, critics took the opportunity to declare that “hyperlocal” journalism would never pay. Meanwhile,... More

Lean, Mean Campaign Money Machine

Crossroads groups tell WSJ, world what they aim to spend on election 2012

By Liz Cox Barrett   Mar 4, 2011 at 11:50 AM

The paper that is home to a weekly column by Karl Rove got first dibs Tuesday on the announcement of... More

Then Why Aren’t Rachel Maddow’s Guests Going On Strike?

Arianna Huffington and Tim Armstrong respond to critics

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 4, 2011 at 08:40 AM

Arianna Huffington and Tim Armstrong are still celebrating the merger deal between HuffPo and AOL—a deal that they hinted will... More

The Crystal Ball For Chris Dodd Revisited

A trip through the revolving door, but not to Wall Street

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 3, 2011 at 06:56 PM

Newly retired Democratic Senator Chris Dodd has now announced what he'll be doing for a post-Senate career: lobbying for Hollywood.... More

Churnalism Exposed

A new website identifies press release copy in the news

By Martin Moore   Mar 3, 2011 at 02:05 PM

The Media Standards Trust (U.K.) has just launched a website—churnalism.com—that lets people compare press releases with published news articles in... More

“Frack”-tious Reactions

Skirmishes follow recent coverage of shale-gas drilling

By Curtis Brainard   Mar 3, 2011 at 01:45 PM

The former head of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection is not happy with The New York Times’s Ian Urbina and... More

CNBC Pushes the Financial-Terrorism Nonsense

“Really good information” on why “outside forces may have” caused the 2008 Crash

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 3, 2011 at 01:02 PM

I took the hammer to The Washington Times the other day for a dumb story on a report that says... More

A Big Omission at NBC

Whatever happened to Social Security?

By Trudy Lieberman   Mar 3, 2011 at 12:48 PM

NBC Nightly News took on retirement income the other day and found most Americans’s savings will come up short. The... More

CJR Column Mentions The Simpsons

A second look at SEO

By Karen Stabiner   Mar 3, 2011 at 06:00 AM

In the beginning was the word—and the headline writer, who worshipped at the church of the active verb alongside... More

Audit Notes: Criminal Query, Ritholtz on McKinsey; Obama’s Jobs Panel

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 2, 2011 at 07:47 PM

— The Financial Times reports that the SEC is investigating whether Las Vegas Sands bribed foreign officials. The headline: Sands... More

SI/CBS College Football Investigation Lacks Context

Their stats on player arrests aren’t so eye-opening after all

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 2, 2011 at 05:40 PM

Sports Illustrated and CBS News are out with a big investigation into crime in college football. They looked at the... More

The Rumor Mill: AOL’s Politics Daily

By Lauren Kirchner   Mar 2, 2011 at 03:35 PM

When the news of AOL’s impending acquisition of The Huffington Post first broke, many wondered what it might mean for... More

Egypt’s Revolution through My Students’ Eyes

Arab reporters bear witness to Mubarak’s fall

By Lawrence Pintak   Mar 2, 2011 at 12:13 PM

“I was attacked today when I tried to protect some foreigners.” The Facebook message arrived in my inbox early afternoon... More

The Flack Who Shared Too Much

When can a news organization expect silence?

By Clint Hendler   Mar 2, 2011 at 07:30 AM

All it was missing was the siren. Late Monday night, Politico broke the news that a congressman’s spokesman may have... More

Audit Notes: Unnamed Source No-No, “Grassroots” Wisconsin, Kinsley

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 1, 2011 at 07:47 PM

The Washington Post gives us a case study today in how not to use anonymous sources. It reports that the... More

USA Today’s Ham-fisted Public Workers Story

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 1, 2011 at 05:47 PM

USA Today runs a poor story this morning that says its analysis finds that government workers make more in total... More

The NYT’s Incomplete Article on State Pension Plans

By Felix Salmon   Mar 1, 2011 at 03:13 PM

Steven Greenhouse has a long article in today's NYT about an attempt by the states to deal with their "strained"... More

Frank Rich Leaves the Times After Three Decades

Is his move part of an exodus from legacy media to the web?

By The Editors   Mar 1, 2011 at 02:00 PM

Veteran Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz raised a ruckus last fall when he made the move to Tina Brown’s The... More

Write It All Down!

Why news entrepreneurs should keep a “startup journal”

By Josh Kalven   Mar 1, 2011 at 01:06 PM

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

Now It’s Blame-the-Terrorists For the Crash of ‘08

By Ryan Chittum   Mar 1, 2011 at 12:40 PM

We've had the blame-the-borrowers campaign a la Rantin' Rick Santelli. We've seen the blame-the-gubmint campaign a la Peter Wallison. Now... More

How a Defense Contract Is Won

NYT’s Boeing report left out the lobbying

By Liz Cox Barrett   Mar 1, 2011 at 12:24 PM

You're a giant aerospace company pursuing a defense contract potentially worth $100 billion: so, what's your lobbying budget for that?... More

Has ‘Climate’ Become a Dirty Word?

Despite audience fatigue, interest remains stronger than ever in the most vulnerable countries

By James Fahn   Mar 1, 2011 at 10:45 AM

When President Obama gave his State of the Union address in January, there seemed to be more commentary among environmentalists... More

Sunrise on the Nile

Egypt’s news media enter a new era

By Stephen Franklin   Mar 1, 2011 at 10:00 AM

As Egyptians tried to shake loose nearly thirty years of darkness, the Egyptian press stumbled toward the sunlight, too. The... More