Author Archive
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The Kicker
Not the ‘Obama’s Overexposed’ Story Again…
October 14, 2009 01:35 PMMy memory of the media world isn’t long enough to know whether respected print organizations were publishing “analyses” like this AP story before the rise of cable news provided a model of endless, empty... Continue reading
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Campaign Desk
Which Is It, NYT?
October 14, 2009 11:28 AMThe other day, Kevin Drum noted how confusing it can be for readers when two different papers report substantially different versions of the same story. But how about when the disagreement occurs within the news pages of the... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Two Takes on a ‘Tent City’ in Tampa
October 14, 2009 09:32 AMDuring my year in journalism school, I took an elective class in land use law—zoning, planning, variances, that sort of thing. One of the major themes of the class was that there isn’t much law in land use law; for... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Hire That Commenter as a Copy-Editor!
October 12, 2009 07:36 PMWhile The Washington Post’s Saturday editorial is far from the most tendentious thing written on the already-tired topic of Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, James Fallows makes a good point: it is peculiar that... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Strong Reporting on DNA Waivers from the Post
October 12, 2009 05:28 PMLike Jonathan Adler, I was unaware of a policy that requires some federal defendants to waive their rights to DNA testing as a condition of plea-bargains until I read Jerry Markon’s story in Sunday’s Washington Post.... Continue reading
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The Kicker
There’s the Special-Interest Lobbying We Were Waiting For
October 12, 2009 10:08 AMA David Herszenhorn “Prescriptions” piece in today’s New York Times (which, oddly, I can’t find online) has some interesting things to say about how cost control, or “bending the curve,” has become largely forgotten in the health care debate. One... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Journalism, Liberalism, Elitism
October 9, 2009 05:09 PMI’m not going to jump directly into the fray of responses to my former professor Tom Edsall’s CJR piece about the liberal leanings of journalists, but I did want to focus on this passage:... Continue reading
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Campaign Desk
Europe Reacts to Obama’s Nobel
October 9, 2009 01:36 PMThe Nobel Committee’s decision to award a rather, er, premature Peace Prize to Barack Obama has been greeted with skepticism on the left and scorn on the right. But this decision was, by all appearances, motivated... Continue reading
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The Kicker
A Nation Turns Its Eyes to… Sarah Palin’s Facebook Page
October 9, 2009 10:44 AMIt seemed peculiar the other day when Politico’s Ben Smith devoted a post on his widely-read blog to Sarah Palin’s stance on Afghanistan, as delivered through a Facebook message. Palin’s not exactly known for her foreign-policy acumen, after... Continue reading
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Campaign Desk
Czar Talk
October 7, 2009 03:40 PMCriticism of some political journalism as “stenography” is sometimes misplaced—part of reporting really is writing down the things that people have to say. But, of course, there’s judgment involved in knowing which things and which people. It’s a choice that,... Continue reading
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The Kicker
More Thoughts on McCaughey
October 7, 2009 03:20 PMFor those interested in the Betsy McCaughey saga, Andrew Sullivan has a blog post up today, titled “McCaughey and Me,” that reflects on his role in editing McCaughey’s 1994 attack on the Clinton health care proposal. His conclusion:... Continue reading
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Campaign Desk
Target Practice
October 7, 2009 11:21 AMFormer New York lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey has been much in the news the last few days, and she’s been wearing a great big target on her back. On Monday, The New Republic published its profile of McCaughey,... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Fact-checking Saturday Night Live
October 6, 2009 03:48 PMAt Politico, Michael Calderone has some fun at the expense of CNN, which took the time to fact-check this week’s opening SNL skit chiding President Obama. “Perhaps it's worth retroactively fact-checking if Gerald Ford actually fell... Continue reading
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The Kicker
A Vote for ‘Muddling Through’
October 6, 2009 01:11 PMIt’s a few days old at this point, but readers interested in the Afghanistan policy debate will want to check out this Marc Lynch post at his Foreign Policy blog. Lynch has interesting things to say about how... Continue reading
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Campaign Desk
President, Know Thyself
October 6, 2009 10:54 AMThere are lots of ways of thinking about foreign policy: not just political labels of recent vintage like “neoconservatism” and “liberal interventionist,” but bona fide, academy-approved approaches like world-systems theory, functionalism, and rationalism. The Wikipedia page for international... Continue reading
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The Kicker
More on Coverage of the Great Recession
October 5, 2009 05:36 PMCJR’s Ali Fenwick this afternoon flagged the new Pew study on coverage of the economic crisis, which noted that newspapers did more local reporting, more enterprise reporting, and gave voice to more diverse sources than other sectors. So... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Leaving Afghanistan Is Not on the Table
October 5, 2009 05:12 PMSpencer Ackerman makes a good catch on the “Good Morning America” interview with Peter Galbraith I linked to earlier: I also notice that the chyron used by Diane Sawyer in this clip is “Surge Or Leave?”... Continue reading
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Campaign Desk
The Times’s Ten-Step Program
October 5, 2009 04:36 PMThe New York Times’s roundtable op-ed on Afghanistan yesterday doesn’t break any new ground, and it won’t carry the same weight as Peter Galbraith’s WaPo op-ed. But the Times piece is useful as a sort of... Continue reading
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The Kicker
More Media Time for Afghanistan
October 5, 2009 01:57 PMThe public debate over the situation in Afghanistan, which had already been fairly robust, may get a little wilder after Peter Galbraith’s scathing op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post. The piece, by the recently-fired United Nations deputy for the... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Measuring the Effect of Obama’s Health Care Speech
October 5, 2009 10:25 AMAt his blog, Brendan Nyhan takes a look at whether Obama’s big health care speech of a month ago shifted public opinion on health care. His conclusion: There was a small bounce in support for health care reform... Continue reading
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