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Articles by Dean Starkman | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   Of Hamsters and Values

   September 27, 2010 11:13 AM

   “The Hamster Wheel,” my argument against news organizations’ cranked-up productivity requirements for reporters, generated some nice discussion, including a post by Felix Salmon over at Reuters, who pushed back against some of its main points. I would have... Continue reading

2. Cover Story

   The Hamster Wheel

   September 14, 2010 06:00 AM

   “Newsrooms have shrunk by 25% in three years.” —Project for Excellence in Journalism, “State of the News Media 2010” “A large majority (75%) of editors said their story counts . . . had either increased or remained the same during the past... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   Susanne Craig leaving WSJ for the NYT

   August 30, 2010 01:59 PM

   Susanne Craig, one of The Wall Street Journal’s star Wall Street reporters, is moving to The New York Times, a boost for the Times and the latest blow to the Journal’s coverage of that core beat. Craig told The Audit... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   ProPublica and Planet Money Find the Keys to the Kingdom

   August 27, 2010 12:21 PM

   Mark Pittman: Where is this demand coming from? How can you guys sell this issue in thirty minutes? Who the hell’s buying this stuff like that? We’re going to come to the answer that it was going off balance sheet,... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   Audit Notes: WSJ Drives BP Story, NYT is better on Wal-Mart, Insurance, Alabama, Da Bears

   August 26, 2010 07:00 PM

   —The WSJ continues its strong BP coverage, a story on which it has simply excelled. Today my old paper examines the final hours before the rig blew in April and reviews in granular detail the confusion... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Fortune With a Stellar Probe into J&J

   August 26, 2010 10:47 AM

   Now playing in Fortune, a honey of a probe into pharma icon Johnson & Johnson. Written by Mina Kimes, it is a virtual case study in the deterioration of a once-exemplary corporate culture and one of the better-reported business... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   Audit Notes: WSJ on FASB; More on Auditors; the Demand Side, etc.

   August 25, 2010 06:45 PM

   —I'd like to know more about the rushed retirement of the chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which The Wall Street Journal smartly gave some attention to this morning. The chairman, Robert Herz, leaves with two years... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   Bloggers at the Treasury

   August 25, 2010 02:32 PM

   Last week, small groups of bloggers were ushered into the Treasury Department for quasi-off-the-record meetings with Tim Geithner and other senior Treasury officials. (“Quasi-off-the-record" because the officials’ names were published, but they weren’t quoted directly.) These blogger/Treasury confabs seem to... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Pittman Suit Advances, FT’s nifty banking graphic, Shareholder Activists Gain, etc.

   August 24, 2010 06:30 PM

   —The full federal appeals court in New York refused to reconsider a lower court ruling ordering the Fed's board of governors to release records of the unprecedented $2 trillion in U.S. emergency loan programs used in 2008 to shore... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    In an SEC Filing Against Countrywide, a Press Win

    August 24, 2010 10:17 AM

    The Wall Street Journal this morning reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has now explicitly alleged what that newspaper and the now-defunct Conde Nast Portfolio magazine exposed two years ago: industry-leading Countrywide made loans on favorable terms outside... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    Audit Notes: High Priests, Feed the Meter, Correlation and Causation, Etc.

    August 23, 2010 03:10 PM

    —Chrystia Freeland ruminates on business journalism's image problem in the Times Book Review, and argues against the good-guys-vs.-bad-guys construction of the credit crisis that some commenters, including us and, apparently, Stieg Larsson's character Mikael Blomkvist, have been accused of... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    Mortgage Fraud Still Tiny

    August 23, 2010 12:34 PM

    No matter what The Wall Street Journal says. Not to make too much of this. It's the summer doldrums, after all, and the paper has some numbers to report from consultant CoreLogic, showing mortgage fraud rose 17 percent in... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    A Local Look at Small Business and Hard Money

    August 23, 2010 09:50 AM

    As some Audit readers know, we’ve started a push with the Society of American Business Editors and Writers to try to find and review noteworthy local and regional business reporting that gets lost in the news crush. Here’s a... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    Mangling “Power Problem”

    April 19, 2010 05:53 PM

    Heidi N. Moore, an ex-WSJ staffer and vocal defender of the business press, has been Twittering like mad to lambaste anyone who might question the MSM’s performance covering financial institutions before the great crash of ’08, which, of course, took... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    The WSJ’s Pulitzer Shutout is Bad for the Country

    April 13, 2010 06:14 PM

    As Alexander Cockburn theorized in a 1984 Wall Street Journal column, the Pulitzers are a kind of show business, a "self-validating ritual whereby journalists give each other prizes and then boast to the public about them." —Jack Shafer in... Continue reading

16. Review

    The Price of Admission

    March 11, 2010 06:00 AM

    Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves By Andrew Ross Sorkin | Viking | 600 pages, $32.95 “I must admit,” Sorkin wrote us this morning, “I... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    Audit D.C. Notes: Medicaid, Rest Stops, Galbraith, Etc.

    March 5, 2010 04:58 PM

    The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities previews the upcoming congressional debate over whether to extend the federal support for state Medicaid programs that was part of last year’s recovery legislation. Failure to do so would lead to deeper... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    Stiglitz, Wolf, Pearlstein, Huffington: Media & Economics Conference, April 6

    March 4, 2010 05:25 PM

    A day-long conference on Columbia University's campus will explore the problems and opportunities posed by reporting on a financial crisis during a time of transition in the media. Click here to read the... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    What’s a Toyota “Exclusive?” at This Point?

    February 24, 2010 12:00 PM

    What is an exclusive, anyway? This is more than journalism competition issue. As readers sort through the news gusher, it's getting harder than ever to figure out what the new news is. The Toyota story is a perfect illustration. The... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Audit Notes: An NYT Dud on Regulators; A Good Day for M&I; FT on AIG; HuffPo on Mortgages, etc.

    February 18, 2010 07:28 PM

    --Dean Baker is right to criticize the Times story this morning that reported on talks to set up a financial systemic-risk regulator. Like my fellow Dean, I find this passage just dreadful: The issue is one of... Continue reading

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