Wednesday, June 19, 2013. Last Update: Wed 2:50 PM EST

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Articles by Dean Starkman | Email the Author

The Trouble With Insurance Reporting

The business press accepts insurance industry assumptions that are utterly bogus—and, yes, it matters a lot.

You know me as The Audit, a mild-mannered, bespectacled, some would say underachieving critic and interpreter of the business press—just... More

The End of Dow Jones

Covering Your Own Downfall

What must it be like to write your own obituary? What must it be like to read it? Reading the... More

Mergers: They’re What’s for Dinner

For the business press, the more mergers and acquisitions, the better. Too bad most of them don’t work out.

Is it just The Audit, or does anyone else feel that business stories about mergers and acquisitions sound like they... More

Dang, That’s Good

With many moving parts, the WSJ’s options series took serious stones to publish

Sometimes The Audit can only drop its monocle, place the riding crop under its arm, and bring its heels together... More

W.W.T.A.D.

What Would The Audit Do, if given $125 million to reinvent business reporting from scratch? Quelque chose comme Conde Nast Portfolio? Peut-être.

What Would The Audit Do? If somehow The Great One were to raise $125 million for a new magazine and... More

Capitalism At Risk; Needs More From Journal’s Third Front

Money & Investing is Getting Some Help. It needs it.

Um, excuse me; there may have been a misunderstanding. See, when I took the job of running CJR’s The Audit,... More

Missing Michael Hastings

One of the great reporters of his generation died Tuesday at 33. The stories he wrote, and the ones he didn’t live to write

Michael Hastings: my friend and his enemies

Hastings was fearless and shook things up - especially with his McChrystal expose. The haters in the media couldn’t forgive him

Snowden versus the dragons

Journalism is about finding flaws and magnifying them, and surely someone who would spill massive loads of state secrets must contain a few broken parts, right?

Call it the Politico rhetorical crutch

The inside-the-beltway publication’s go-to phrase

Rachel Maddow’s tribute to Michael Hastings

“Michael was angry … he was angry about things that weren’t right in the world. He was angry with war and with loss, and that drove his reporting.”

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