Author Archive
Articles by James Boylan | Email the Author
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
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of a classic novel about journalism and a biography of a pioneering female reporter
By James Boylan Jul 6, 2010 at 12:27 PM
A Modern Instance | By William Dean Howells | J. R. Osgood and Company | 514 pages, available online for free... More
#Realtalk: This isn’t another ‘golden age’ for print - But it is one for media
Social media in smaller markets - How three social media managers deal with smaller markets and more local coverage.
A rally for laid-off Sun-Times photogs - A protest Thursday morning drew about 150 picketers to the newspaper’s headquarters
Reporting, or illegal hacking - Scripps reporters are accused of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Exchange Watch: California Dreaming - Low healthcare premiums on the West Coast were trumpeted as a big, good-news Obamacare story. But: “Compared to what?”
Things have always been getting worse
Yes, women’s magazines can do serious journalism
In fact, we’ve been doing it for a while
The people who run the American security apparatus are in the overwhelming majority diligent people with a deep concern for civil liberties. But their job is to find creative ways to collect information. And they work within an institution that, because of its secrecy, is fundamentally inimical to democracy and to a free society
Fast Company is hacking the newsroom
Here’s why
Rachel Maddow’s tribute to Michael Hastings
“Michael was angry … he was angry about things that weren’t right in the world. He was angry with war and with loss, and that drove his reporting.”
CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
Uptown Messenger – Hyperlocal news for a neighborhood in New Orleans
Who Owns What
The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
