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Articles by Dean Starkman | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   As the Hamster Wheel Turns

   February 18, 2010 08:38 AM

   In a piece on growing discontent on The Associated Press’s business desk, Gawker reported that the desk has a deal with an Internet client that is speeding up already brutal productivity goals. The contract: …obliges the business... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Koblin Continues on Kouwe; Old Reformers; A good, quick WSJ probe; Charlie Moves Over, etc.

   February 17, 2010 06:40 PM

   -John Koblin continues to turn in strong work for the Observer on the Times Bizday plagiarism story, this time with an interview with Zachery Kouwe who talks about why he did it. Like all career car-wreck stories, you... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   Threading the “News Analysis” Needle

   February 17, 2010 08:44 AM

   The lines between news and news analysis, and news analysis and opinion, are necessarily fuzzy. Most people would agree about the basic differences, but there’s going to be a lot of gray area. It’s basically a spectrum: hard facts... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Audit Notes: NYO on an NYT Plagiarism Problem; Three Good Ones in the WSJ; plus Wolf

   February 16, 2010 07:16 PM

   --John Koblin at the Observer broke an important story about apparent plagiarism involving Times business staffer Zachery Kouwes. A Times's editor's note says the matter goes beyond the alleged plagiarism from a WSJ Madoff story and is not... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   A Polk for Pittman

   February 16, 2010 04:41 PM

   Long Island University announced the winners of the 2009 Polk Awards this morning, and we at The Audit want to take special note of Bloomberg News’s National Reporting win for work that, in the words of the Polk committee,... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Bloomberg on the Financial Protection Agency; FT’s Volcker Get; Norris Gets Almost There; Greece as Bear Stearns, etc.

   February 12, 2010 06:30 PM

   --Bloomberg does a good job tracking the dimming prospects of a consumer finance protection agency, yet another indication, as far as I'm concerned, that the boiler-room culture that overran the lending business before the crash hasn't gotten the... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   The Times’s Last Goldman Story Mostly Held Up Fine

   February 12, 2010 12:47 PM

   Yesterday, I said Goldman had a minor but valid point in spokesman Lucas van Praag's unusual public response to last Sunday’s Times piece on the Goldman/AIG collateral fracas that preceded the insurer's great collapse. For those new... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   A Good Counterintuitive Piece on an Ex-Goldmanite

   February 12, 2010 10:12 AM

   There are a lot of reasons to like this Bloomberg profile of Gary Gensler. First, it's into the weeds of the financial regulatory system, in this case the CFTC, which Gensler heads, and the legislative sausage-making surrounding it. <a... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Bloomberg Day

   February 11, 2010 06:34 PM

   It’s all-Bloomberg, all-day here on Audit Notes™ --Nobody can manipulate the data ocean in a Bloomberg machine like Bloomberg News, and on that score, I like this piece, which adds up all the cash on corporate balance sheets... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    The Times, Goldman and the SocGen Problem

    February 11, 2010 11:20 AM

    The NYT’s Sunday story on the AIG-Goldman collateral fight didn’t break any major news, but it certainly added some useful details to the record and, for the most part, has held up well against the unusual public response... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    All Eyes On NHTSA

    February 10, 2010 10:48 AM

    The business press continues to turn in devastating reporting on Toyota’s problems and the parallel failures of its main regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. As with all government system-failures, there are useful lessons for the press. But... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    New Financial Sheriff in Town, Part III

    February 9, 2010 11:35 AM

    The Times continues the business-press tradition of hailing new regulators as saviors from the previous bad regulators. "S.E.C. Enforcers Focus on Avoiding Madoff Repeat" The problem is, as we've said, that we usually hear about the... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    The Wall Street End Game

    February 8, 2010 10:56 AM

    Barry Ritholtz sees no new news in yesterday’s Times piece recreating the AIG/Goldman talks, which forced the insurer to hand over collateral, pushed it toward the edge of insolvency, and revealed the yawning size of its exposure to... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Wessel on Press Failure; Cohan On a Bailout Mystery Pair; NYT on Student Loans, etc.

    February 5, 2010 06:28 PM

    --David Wessel, the WSJ's economics editor, displayed admirable candor to a roomful of his financial press colleagues, I thought, in talking about the press's performance before the crash. "I can't find one check on the financial system that... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    The Journal Reveals Yet Another Mortgage Bug

    February 4, 2010 10:49 AM

    This is just a good story by Carrick Mollenkamp in the Journal this morning, showing one more trapdoor in the mortgage products sold during the bad old days. Mortgage-Index Quirks Prove Costly That’s putting it mildly. Apparently, adjustable... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    Audit Notes: WSJ v. Pay-to-Play; NIM(Budget)BY; Limousine Liberal, etc.

    February 3, 2010 06:03 PM

    --Pay-to-play is a scourge of local and state government, and the Journal does a good job ferreting it out this morning in the area of securities-fraud lawyers and their campaign giving to the officials who run public pension funds.... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    Toyota No Longer Attacking the L.A. Times

    February 3, 2010 02:05 PM

    The business press has done well documenting Toyota’s spiraling problems, including this morning’s news that U.S. regulators are accusing the carmaker of dragging its feet on fixing defective gas pedals. The Journal, for example, provides a good overview of Toyota’s... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Reuters Withdraws; Leaving Las Vegas; Reregulation, etc.

    February 2, 2010 07:02 PM

    --Talking Points Memo had a nice catch of Reuters pulling a story headlined "Backdoor taxes to hit middle class" after the White House pointed out "errors of fact." Reuters straightforwardly explains why here. -- The Las Vegas... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    Volcker Pushed Back

    February 2, 2010 10:40 AM

    When Wall Street doesn’t like something, one thing is certain: the public will hear about it. The pushback on the Volcker rule, which would ban proprietary trading at deposit-taking financial institutions and limit bank size, has been fast, furious, voluminous,... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Times Nicked; Defining Populism; Special Dividends; Intrepid Blogger, etc.

    February 1, 2010 06:24 PM

    --NYTPicker, an anonymous site devoting to giving the Times a hard time, has an interesting item that says the paper overlooked a felony conviction in a lengthy profile Saturday about a small-business lender. Making sure subjects... Continue reading

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