Author Archive
Articles by James Boylan | Email the Author
Brief encounters
Short reviews of Cotton Tenants, Media Capital, and Death Zones and Darling Spies
By James Boylan Jul 1, 2013 at 12:00 AM
Cotton Tenants: Three Families | By James Agee and Walker Evans, Edited by John Summers, Preface by Adam Haslett |... More
Brief encounters
Short reviews of Fighting for the Press and America 1933
By James Boylan May 1, 2013 at 12:00 AM
Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles | By James C. Goodale |... More
Brief encounters
Short reviews of After Visiting Friends, The Art of Controversy, and Tupelo Man
By James Boylan Mar 1, 2013 at 12:00 AM
After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story | By Michael Hainey | Scribner | 306 pages | $26 Robert C. Hainey... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of A Journalist’s Diplomatic Mission and The Noir Forties
By James Boylan Jan 2, 2013 at 12:00 AM
A Journalist's Diplomatic Mission: Ray Stannard Baker's World War I Diary | Edited with an introduction by John Maxwell Hamilton... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of Out of the News, The Way the World Works: Essays, and The Stammering Century
By James Boylan Nov 1, 2012 at 12:00 AM
Out of the News: Former Journalists Discuss a Profession in Crisis | By Celia Viggo Wexler | McFarland & Company... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of Anonymous in Their Own Names and At the Fights
By James Boylan Sep 26, 2012 at 11:18 AM
Anonymous in Their Own Names: Doris E. Fleischman, Ruth Hale, and Jane Grant | By Susan Henry | Vanderbilt University... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of Out on Assignment and Famous Long Ago
By James Boylan Aug 14, 2012 at 10:49 AM
Out on Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of Modern Public Space | By Alice Fahs | University of North... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of Hitlerland and Yazoo
By James Boylan May 28, 2012 at 06:50 AM
Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power | By Andrew Nagorski | Simon & Schuster | 385 pages,... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of Ghost of the Ozarks, News for All the People and After the Fall
By James Boylan Apr 9, 2012 at 06:00 AM
Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South | By Brooks Blevins | University of Illinois Press... More
Brief Encounters
Reviewing anthologies on food in wartime reporting and the best of Wolcott Gibbs
By James Boylan Feb 1, 2012 at 06:00 AM
Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Stories of Food During Wartime by the World’s Leading Correspondents Edited by Matt McAllester |... More
Birmingham: newspapers in a crisis
‘The papers appear to be almost as segregated as the city itself’
By James Boylan Nov 18, 2011 at 04:51 PM
In our Summer 1963 issue, James Boylan, CJR’s founding editor, examined how local newspapers covered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s... More
Pulitzer’s Magazine?
Our founder reflects on CJR’s roots
By James Boylan Nov 9, 2011 at 09:00 AM
Here is the best and here is the worst story of the day. . . . Here is the wrong of the day; here... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of books on newspaper publishers
By James Boylan Aug 27, 2011 at 05:04 PM
The Magnificent Medills: The McCormick-Patterson Dynasty: America’s Royal Family of Journalism During a Century of Turbulent Splendor By Megan McKinney... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of books on journalists William L. Shirer and E.J. Edwards, plus the documentary Page One
By James Boylan Jul 5, 2011 at 07:38 PM
The Long Night: William L. Shirer and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Steve Wick | Palgrave... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of new books about war correspondents Roi Ottley and Byron Darnton
By James Boylan May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM
Roi Ottley’s World War II: The Lost Diary of an African American Journalist | Edited with an introduction by Mark... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of a new history of NPR, Denys Wortman’s cartoons, and Laurie Hertzel’s memoir
By James Boylan Feb 23, 2011 at 04:38 PM
This Is NPR: The First Forty Years by Cokie Roberts and others | Chronicle Books | 271 pages, $29.95 This... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of books on Garry Wills and the decline of The New York Times
By James Boylan Jan 8, 2011 at 07:08 PM
Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer | By Garry Wills | Viking | 195 pages, $25.95 This is a... More
Al Balk, 1969—1973
CJR’s second editor
By James Boylan Dec 2, 2010 at 04:19 PM
Alfred Balk, the second editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, died in November at the age of eighty. Al, like... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of books about copyright law, political scandals, and Gay Talese’s sports writing
By James Boylan Dec 1, 2010 at 04:33 PM
Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership | By Lewis Hyde | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 306 pages, $26... More
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of a history of wartime public opinion and a biography of Time publisher Henry Luce
By James Boylan Sep 30, 2010 at 05:08 PM
Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century | Edited by Kenneth Osgood... More
Woman’s work - The twisted reality of an Italian freelancer in Syria
Sourcing Trayvon Martin ‘photos’ from stormfront - Not a good idea, Business Insider
Elizabeth Warren, the antidote to CNBC - The senator schools the talking heads on bank regulation
Art Laffer + PR blitz = press failure - The media types up the retail lobby’s propaganda
Reuters’s global warming about-face - A survey shows the newswire ran 50 percent fewer stories on climate change after hiring a “skeptic”
Barack Obama: ‘those old times aren’t coming back’
“It used to be there were local newspapers everywhere. If you wanted to be a journalist, you could really make a good living working for your hometown paper”
The Guardian’s editor opens up on Reddit
Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, answered questions in an Ask Me Anything
The (almost) lost speech of Justice Anthony Kennedy
How his insightful remarks about the Constitution inadvertently make the case for a Supreme Court “media pool”
Fox News sues TVEyes for copyright infringement
Says subscription service sells access to its content without permission nor compensation
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
ACEsTooHigh.com – Reporting on the science, education, and policy surrounding childhood trauma
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
