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Politics

AP Readies For A Good Fight - One of These Days
December 30, 2005 05:25 PM
At this time of year, most news outlets are taking a look back at the year that was, while others are attempting to predict what will befall us in 2006. In a story out of Washington, D.C., however,... Continue reading
Behind the News

Five Great Stories You Didn’t Read in 2005
December 26, 2005 01:27 PM
Each day and every week, a great mass of print journalism is produced in this country -- something all too easy to forget when reading a mere sliver of that output in your local paper or scanning the links on... Continue reading
The Audit

Barred From Meeting, Reporter Gets Mad
December 16, 2005 05:55 PM
The New York Times has printed yet another story about itself, and the best thing we can say about it is at least there's no mention of Judith Miller. The apparent scandal this time is that a corporation has... Continue reading
The Audit

Post Gives Up, Admits Stock Market Utterly Defies Explanation
December 16, 2005 03:58 PM
It's not every day that a business columnist cooks up a suspect trend and then tells his readers repeatedly he has no idea why the trend is so. But that's exactly what the New York Post's John Crudele did yesterday... Continue reading
The Audit

A Top Speed Race to Report the Numbers - and Reuters Crashes
December 15, 2005 04:19 PM
Here's a quick, one-question pop quiz. Faced with scant details on a breaking news story, should a business reporter run with speculative numbers, or wait to get those numbers right? After the United Auto Workers tentatively agreed over... Continue reading
The Audit

The British Biz Press Digs Up Some Good Stories on Agricultural Policy
December 14, 2005 06:28 PM
This week's Economist takes a comprehensive look at the European Union's "strange fondness for agricultural subsidies," reaching the conclusion that the Continent's farmers would do just fine if the flow of government largesse were stanched a bit. With agricultural... Continue reading
The Audit

Who’s the Grinch? Microsoft or the Media?
December 10, 2005 09:00 AM
It wouldn't be Christmas without endless media stories about desperate parents scouring store shelves for the must-have but impossible-to-find toy-of-the-year. In case you haven't heard, this year's hot item is Microsoft's new Xbox 360 game console, and it appears that... Continue reading
Behind the News

Hot Celebrity Gossip That’s Only Two Weeks Old!
December 9, 2005 02:24 PM
The Los Angeles Times' print circulation struggles are no secret. But now the paper faces a threat to its circulation so dire, so menacing, the Associated Press decided it deserved an entire article: Barbra Streisand. That's... Continue reading
Behind the News

The Farmer You Keep Reading About, and the Reporters Who Love Him
December 7, 2005 02:07 PM
In a post Monday at Political Animal, Kevin Drum remarked that the Los Angeles Times had just run a story about the shortage of immigrant labor ready and willing to harvest the winter vegetable crop. He pointed to... Continue reading
Behind the News

Can’t Anybody Here Count?
December 6, 2005 12:39 PM
We've often remarked that journalists snap into brain freeze when faced with the prospect of covering a story filled with (shudder) numbers. AP television writer David Bauder proved to be Exhibit A yesterday, narrowly misreporting not one,... Continue reading
Politics

Treating Ghost Detainees As Invisible
December 2, 2005 04:38 PM
In the still-unfolding and still-murky story of the detention practices used by the U.S. government in the war on terror since 9/11, "extraordinary rendition" and more recently "black sites" are two terms that have received much attention from the media.... Continue reading
The Water Cooler

Ellen Soeteber on Leaving the Post-Dispatch, Changing a Newsroom’s Culture and Covering a “Three-Ring Circus”
November 25, 2005 09:00 AM
Ellen Soeteber, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since January 2001, surprised her newsroom earlier this month by announcing that, after working in "high-stress, all-consuming jobs for 18 straight years," it was time for her to move on. Her resignation... Continue reading
Behind the News

Bringing It All Back Home
November 24, 2005 09:12 AM
Last Friday, 60 former Knight Ridder reporters and editors released an open letter to Knight Ridder's management arguing for a change in the direction of the beleaguered company, which -- despite a 19.4 percent profit margin last year and... Continue reading
Blog Report

Ted, We Hardly Knew Ye
November 23, 2005 12:45 PM
With one final Tuesday with Morrie, Ted Koppel ended his 25-year run on "Nightline" last night, and bloggers -- whether they are mourning or saying good riddance -- have plenty to say about it. "I always say the... Continue reading
Magazine Report

Murtha’s Change of Heart, and a “Third Way” in Iraq
November 22, 2005 03:23 PM
The week after Rep. John Murtha's dramatic call to bring the troops home, the nation's major magazines feature a smattering of offerings about the Pennsylvania congressman and the larger question of Iraq. Newsweek gets things rolling with a... Continue reading
Blog Report

Press Conference Exit Strategies
November 21, 2005 12:47 PM
As President Bush wraps up a four-country, weeklong trip to Asia today, the Washington Post notes "the trip has produced no real breakthroughs of any sort. On a wide variety of issues, from trade to security to human rights,... Continue reading
Behind the News

Another Retrenching by the Times
November 17, 2005 12:47 PM
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times announced it was ending its two-year-old Outdoors section to cut costs. Editor Dean Baquet said the decision to shelve Outdoors -- which he called "one of the most inventive sections in any major... Continue reading
Politics

Bush: Forrester’s Convenient Alibi
November 15, 2005 01:25 PM
As we noted last week, gubernatorial victories by Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey led to the killing of many trees so that the press might mull over what it all means for the Big Picture, what with midterm... Continue reading
Politics

But What Does it All Mean?
November 9, 2005 06:08 PM
Earlier this week there was talk of how President Bush, in making a last-minute appearance to support Republican Jim Kilgore in the Virginia governor's race, "put his credibility on the line," as the Washington Post wrote, "and ensured that... Continue reading
Politics

Reporting Not Just What Was Said, but What Was Asked
November 8, 2005 04:56 PM
The clear take-away message of President Bush's comments in Panama yesterday on torture was his staunch defense of his administration's interrogation techniques in the war on terror -- and various news reports quoted in-depth the president's assertions that the government's... Continue reading

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