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

By Dean Starkman   Feb 5, 2010 at 06:28 PM

--David Wessel, the WSJ's economics editor, displayed admirable candor to a roomful of his financial press colleagues, I thought, in... More

The Journal Reveals Yet Another Mortgage Bug

By Dean Starkman   Feb 4, 2010 at 10:49 AM

This is just a good story by Carrick Mollenkamp in the Journal this morning, showing one more trapdoor in the... More

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

By Dean Starkman   Feb 3, 2010 at 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... More

Toyota No Longer Attacking the L.A. Times

By Dean Starkman   Feb 3, 2010 at 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... More

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

By Dean Starkman   Feb 2, 2010 at 07:02 PM

--Talking Points Memo had a nice catch of Reuters pulling a story headlined "Backdoor taxes to hit middle class" after... More

Volcker Pushed Back

By Dean Starkman   Feb 2, 2010 at 10:40 AM

When Wall Street doesn’t like something, one thing is certain: the public will hear about it. The pushback on the... More

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

By Dean Starkman   Feb 1, 2010 at 06:24 PM

--NYTPicker, an anonymous site devoting to giving the Times a hard time, has an interesting item that says the paper... More

On Paulson’s Sole-Source Account in the WSJ’s News Pages

By Dean Starkman   Feb 1, 2010 at 01:24 PM

On page 350 of Too Big To Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin reports on how Hank Paulson reacted that fateful Sunday,... More

NYT’s AIG Story Puts Spotlight on State Insurance Regulation

By Dean Starkman   Feb 1, 2010 at 10:49 AM

The anachronism that is state-based insurance regulation has basically gotten a pass in the financial crisis—what with all the problems... More

Best of 2009: Dean Starkman

Starkman picks his top stories from 2009

By Dean Starkman   Dec 29, 2009 at 08:00 AM

Note to Audit Readers: The Audit will be taking off its green eyeshade and pince nez during a holiday break... More

NYT’s Creativity On the Unemployment Story

By Dean Starkman   Dec 15, 2009 at 05:56 PM

The Times deserves a little something extra in its pay envelope for this morning's unemployment package: a story based on... More

Everybody’s Got an Angle

WSJ’s Thomson on NYT’s Carr

By Dean Starkman   Dec 14, 2009 at 05:42 PM

It’s probably an understatement to say that we at The Audit weren’t nuts about the prospect of News Corp. buying... More

“He Could See Over”

A pal remembers Mark Pittman

By Dean Starkman   Dec 7, 2009 at 01:09 PM

This is a eulogy for Mark Pittman, a Loeb-award-winning Bloomberg reporter who died on Thanksgiving, given by his friend and... More

Hertz Drops a Libel Suit

By Dean Starkman   Dec 1, 2009 at 12:41 PM

A tip of The Audit’s green eyeshade to Aaron Elstein and Crain’s New York, which seems to have gotten some... More

The Pittman Way

A financial reporter who combined data and attitude

By Dean Starkman   Nov 30, 2009 at 02:53 PM

Q: Tell me how your cops background plays into what you’re doing now. A: You end up with a big... More

A Too-Narrow Lens

By Dean Starkman   Nov 24, 2009 at 03:04 PM

Zach Carter hits on something interesting about shareholder democracy in The Nation this week (disclosure-longer-than-this-post: I wrote a piece for... More

What’s a News Brief Worth?

By Dean Starkman   Nov 20, 2009 at 09:08 AM

The Journal Inquirer, of Manchester, Conn., which over the summer forced its larger rival, the Hartford Courant, to admit to... More

WSJ Scoops on AIG

By Dean Starkman   Nov 11, 2009 at 08:19 AM

The WSJ scores a nice scoop this morning with word that the relatively new head of AIG wants to quit... More

Trivial Pursuit at ProPublica

By Dean Starkman   Nov 6, 2009 at 09:32 AM

There is a journalistic school of thought emerging, I fear, that holds that because you went to the trouble of... More

Regulation: Cool, At Last

By Dean Starkman   Nov 5, 2009 at 12:15 PM

We appreciate the bizpress’s newfound attention to Washington political fights over regulatory and economic policy, and we’re not afraid to... More