Author Archive
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Politics
Grappling With Conflagration in the Middle East
July 18, 2006 12:47 PMA fire burns on the cover of this week's issue of The Weekly Standard -- one of many fireballs to flare up this week on newsstands across the country. In the foreground, a soldier stands between the reader and the... Continue reading
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Politics
Presidential Potty Mouth Has Bloggers Atwitter
July 17, 2006 12:38 PMEarlier today at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, President George W. Bush was caught (dramatic pause) swearing. "U.S. President George W. Bush expressed his frustration over the situation in the Middle East by using an expletive... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Priscilla Long on Unconventional Writing Forms for Journalists
July 15, 2006 02:10 PMPriscilla Long (photo by Michael Cain) Priscilla Long is a Seattle-based writer of poetry, essays, fiction, and history. Last spring, she became the long-shot winner of this year's National Magazine... Continue reading
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Politics
Leaping and Bounding … Inch by Inch
July 14, 2006 05:45 PMThis past week former New York City mayor Rudolf Giuliani toured the country, lending his support to various Republican politicians and kicking up endless speculation about his presidential aspirations. At every stop, the Associated Press was there to chronicle the... Continue reading
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Behind the News
HBO’s Real Sports Shows the Way
July 13, 2006 01:49 PMIn its current cover story, entitled "The New Greening of America," Newsweek hones in on a variety of conservation issues, including the environmental record of President George W. Bush. On its Web site, Newsweek teases the article with a... Continue reading
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Politics
Wag That Tail, Fido; It’s July
July 10, 2006 06:30 PMWe all know that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but it turns out you also can't get him to drop his old tricks. Especially, when the dog in question is the White House's Office of Management and... Continue reading
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The Audit
BusinessWeek Makes Us Laugh; Laughter is Good
July 6, 2006 04:51 PMWhen speaking in the abstract, it's pretty easy for business gurus to pay homage to failure. Just start with a familiar quotation ("Learning starts with failure," or "When at first you don't succeed ..."), toss in a few bromides about... Continue reading
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The Audit
Media Blow More Hot Air Into Options Scandal
July 6, 2006 10:29 AMIn a recent post, we lamented the increasingly hysterical coverage of a supposed "scandal" involving dozens of corporations that might have issued backdated options to their presumably crooked executives. With growing numbers of "suspicious" companies targeted by the media,... Continue reading
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The Audit
Will the Media Blow Off a Whistleblower?
June 27, 2006 04:09 PMOn Friday the New York Times broke a front-page story about possible insider trading at one of the country's largest hedge funds, Pequot Capital Management. "The SEC declined to confirm or deny that it was investigating Pequot,... Continue reading
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The Audit
The Media’s Pernicious Corporate Effects
June 23, 2006 03:00 PMIn its current issue, Fast Company magazine has a story about the first Starbucks to open in Dublin -- an event that columnist Keith H. Hammonds suggests will force existing Irish baristas to reconsider their business models, or face... Continue reading
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The Audit
Where’s the Thief? The ‘Options Scandal’ is a Dud
June 21, 2006 05:30 PMRemember that era long ago when the term "options" wasn't yet a dirty word? Yeah, neither do we. These days, you can hardly pick up a business section without seeing a provocative headline using some combination of the words "options"... Continue reading
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The Audit
BusinessWeek Online Pursues Sleep-Aid Market
June 20, 2006 04:40 PMWithin the world of television sitcoms, the dreaded family slideshow has long served as a reliable punch line -- a sort of domestic shorthand for boredom-inducing self-indulgence. (Think of Selma and Patty inflicting slide-show torture on Bart et al. on... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Bloggers Pounce on the New Netscape
June 15, 2006 01:29 PMFor anyone tracking the continued devaluation of "news anchors" in American public life, this morning marks a milestone of sorts -- or is it a millstone? Today, AOL launched a preview of its newly reconfigured version of... Continue reading
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The Audit
Rich Guy Hires Own Investigative Reporter
June 14, 2006 12:50 PMEarlier this week, with his team battling in its first ever trip to the NBA finals, Mark Cuban, new media billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, skipped out on the Tenth Annual Webby awards celebration. Which is not... Continue reading
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Behind the News
From the Monster of Iraq to the Monster of Florence
June 13, 2006 02:46 PMThis week Abu Musab al-Zarqawi gazes out from American newsstands, where his image appears on the cover of Newsweek under the headline "After Zarqawi" and on the cover of Time under a large, red "X." <br... Continue reading
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Politics
Bloggers Bask in Afterglow of … Themselves
June 12, 2006 01:37 PM"Amazing ... unique ... magical .... ruling the earth .... freak show .... crushingly boring." Those were just a few of the adjectives inspired when 1,000 or so liberal bloggers gathered together in the same building in the... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Bad News Bears Bear - Good News!
June 8, 2006 03:51 PMIt's long been a mantra of the Rightwingery that the media is pathologically reluctant to report on any good news coming out of Iraq. Well, last night while most of us were sleeping there came a piece of... Continue reading
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Politics
Reporters Tire of Bad Political Reporting
June 7, 2006 12:42 PMThe 2006 election season is already kicking into cranium-grinding gear. But before things get too messy, a group of media observers recently asked a collection of seasoned journalists to put aside the minutiae of political reporting for a moment... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Journalism Goes to Hell
June 6, 2006 02:00 PMFor people who take the Bible literally, today's date, 6/6/06, may be a scary one, rife with anxiety over a passage from the Book of Revelation warning of 666, the so-called "number of the beast." But for journalists across the... Continue reading
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Behind the News
NBC, Williams Mum on Lawsuit by Armless Soldier
June 2, 2006 04:29 PMIn the fall of 2003, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams visited the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he reported on a number of injured U.S. soldiers, including Sgt. Peter Damon, who lost both his arms in... Continue reading
Desks
The Audit Business
- Reuters’s OKC gusher Its outstanding Chesapeake Energy investigation turns toward the gas driller SandRidge
- Audit Notes: insider trading versus CDO fraud, 401(k)s, lead and crime Rough treatment for inside-trading suspects contrasts with CDO probes
The Observatory Science
- Environment coverage TBD The Times says it’s committed, but only time will tell
- Call in the math club Science reporters can help ward off a “Big Data bubble”
United States Project Politics & Policy
- The Frank Luntz script for Congressional Republicans A guide to phrases journos should look for (and scrutinize)
- Hey readers: They’re bluffing! (maybe) The need to put political bargaining positions in context
Behind the News The Media
- German bill would charge for aggregation The potential law would provide content creators with a portion of the profits search engines make by aggregating them
- Gun permit data wasn’t maximized The choice that faced the Journal News was not simply whether to map gun permit holders’ addresses, but how
Blog
The Kicker last updated: Wed 12:13 PM
- Pass the #popcorn
- Should Center Square Journal shut down?
- Must-reads of the week
- WaPo: Got agency?
- On building trust
The Future of Media
News Startups Guide last updated: Mon 3:27 PM
- ACEsTooHigh.com Reporting on the science, education, and policy surrounding childhood trauma
- ACEsConnection.com A niche social network for professionals working in science, education, and policy related to childhood trauma
