Author Archive
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Second Read
The Ordinary Jungle
July 8, 2010 08:00 AMIn April 1925, a fifty-seven-year-old British explorer named Percy Harrison Fawcett trooped into the Brazilian jungle for the last time. Fawcett had spent much of his adult life under mosquito netting there, and he had become convinced that the... Continue reading
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Behind the News
E-Reader History
June 10, 2010 04:59 PM -
Feature
Stayin’ Alive
May 20, 2010 05:00 AMChristopher R. Weingarten reviews records on Twitter under the name “1000TimesYes.” In January, he decided to make a full set of his 2009 tweet-reviews, neatly typed out on cards, available for purchase. Potential buyers had many options.... Continue reading
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The Kicker
A Few Good Book Reviews
May 19, 2010 12:11 PMThe Washington Monthly just published its spring books issue, and it's a good one. Disclaimers abound here: I used to work at the Monthly, I have friends who work there now, and I have a review in the... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
TSSF Footnotes
May 6, 2010 02:53 PMIntroduction 4. Media commentator Alan Mutter addressed this in a post, “Non-profits can’t possibly save the news,” Reflections of a Newsosaur, March 30, 2010, http://bit.ly/dMp86C. He calculated the news media would need an endowment of $88 billion to produce... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Schudson on The Fate of Journalism
May 5, 2010 11:07 AMCJR contributing editor Scott Sherman has a thoughtful interview with Michael Schudson up at The Common Review. Schudson, as you undoubtedly know, teaches at Columbia; with Leonard Downie, Jr., he is the co-author of a recent report titled... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Lampooning Arab Leaders
April 9, 2010 11:30 AMOccasional CJR contributor Justin Martin has a good piece today at GlobalPost calling for Arab nations to relax their laws restricting harsh press critiques of those countries' leaders. Here's Martin: A blogger from Alexandria is serving a four-year... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Cornell and Kentucky: A Study in Contrasts
March 24, 2010 11:39 AMThis Thursday night, the Cornell Big Red will play the Kentucky Wildcats in a men's NCAA basketball tournament matchup that has captured the imaginations of sportswriters across the country. In the words of ESPN's Skip Bayless, "Cornell, Kentucky... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Trust Falls
March 4, 2010 05:44 PMIn November of 2009, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch decided to show his readers who was boss. After a commenter persisted in posting “a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy” on a “Talk of... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Trust Falls: Further Reading
March 4, 2010 05:35 PMImaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village, by Richard Barbrook, examines the political ideology of the Internet, from its inception to its many potential futures, both past and present. Curious and occasionally grandiose (from its promotional <a href=http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/book/... Continue reading
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The Kicker
How Will the End of Print Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?
March 4, 2010 03:44 PMCount on my old friends at the Onion News Network to ask the really tough questions: How Will... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Isis, Oh, Isis
February 5, 2010 06:32 PMEarlier this week, Max Blumenthal, a journalist who has written for The Nation and other outlets, wrote a piece for Salon detailing James O’Keefe’s history with issues of race. For an article that will appear in CJR next... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Man About Town
October 27, 2009 01:31 PMKery Murakami, reluctant news entrepreneur, is the founder of the Seattle PostGlobe, a nonprofit Web startup that provides reported news for the Seattle area. He is also the site’s primary reporter, editor, art director, accountant, copy chief, IT... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Reality Bites
September 30, 2009 09:48 AMThe Washington Post yesterday announced its "America's Next Great Pundit" contest, in which ten amateur columnists will compete for a tentative and poorly-paid thirteen-week slot on the Post's op-ed page. The reality-TV-style contest is the latest in a... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Something to Talk About
September 8, 2009 10:31 AM“The irony is that in all its various guises—commerce, research, and surfing—the Web is already so much a part of our lives that familiarity has clouded our perception of the Web itself. To understand the Web in the broadest and... Continue reading
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The News Frontier
Something to Talk About: Further Reading
September 8, 2009 10:30 AMInventing the Internet, by Janet Abbate. A solidly researched, no-nonsense look at the Internet's early days. The Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota has a fantastic oral history database of interviews with dozens of computing... Continue reading
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The Kicker
You Should See His Classical Music Reviews…
August 10, 2009 02:00 PMFrom the Bizarrely Incongruous Ledes Department, here's how Washington Post reporter Steve Yanda leads his recap of yesterday's Nationals/Diamondbacks game (h/t Steve Daley): In the coda of the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, composer Johann Sebastian Bach... Continue reading
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The Kicker
Buggin’ Out in Baltimore
July 17, 2009 12:46 PMI have a longstanding fascination with mattresses, bedbugs, night terrors, and other such factors that can confer or deny a good night's sleep. This might be why I liked Edward Ericson Jr.'s recent Baltimore City Paper <a href=http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=18307... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Burger Meister
July 9, 2009 01:47 PMKevin Pang reviews cheeseburgers for the Chicago Tribune—in print, online, and as the creator and host of a video program called, aptly, The Cheeseburger Show. In the process of pursuing his beat, he has become adept at assessing... Continue reading
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Behind the News
Life and Death
May 21, 2009 03:57 PMKrishna Andavolu is the managing editor of Obit (www.obit-mag.com), an online magazine intended for those interested in obituaries, epitaphs, elegies, postludes, retrospectives, grave rubbings, widow’s weeds, and other such memorabilia of expiration. Part eulogistic clearinghouse, part cultural review,... Continue reading
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The Audit Business
- Audit Notes: pyramid people, Disney and ABC, no USA Today paywall Roddy Boyd digs into a diet-shake pyramid scheme
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- Dull news from Doha UN climate summit a ho-hum affair for the press
- Highway to the danger zone Following Sandy, HuffPo and NYT dig into the folly of coastal development
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- NBC News sets good example for Medicare reporting People perspective leads to clear explanation of impact of proposed changes
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The Kicker last updated: Fri 3:00 PM
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The Future of Media
News Startups Guide last updated: Thu 10:24 AM
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