Best of 2010: Lauren Kirchner

Kirchner picks her top stories from 2010

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 30, 2010 at 11:57 AM

This Headline May Be A Work of Art The New Museum’s exhibition “The Last Newspaper” featured collage, sculpture, and installations... More

FCC Passes Net Neutrality Policy (Sort Of)

And the press plays all the angles

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 21, 2010 at 06:00 PM

The Federal Communications Commission voted three to two on Tuesday afternoon to approve a new set of rules governing the... More

A Grim Update on “The Grim Sleeper”

The search for victims continues with the help of the press

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 20, 2010 at 01:55 PM

The Darts & Laurels feature in our November/December issue recognized the excellent work that L.A. Weekly staff writer Christine Pelisek... More

Columbia J-School Speaks Out Against WikiLeaks Prosecution

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 14, 2010 at 02:30 PM

In a letter to President Obama and Attorney General Holder, nineteen twenty faculty members of the Columbia University Graduate School... More

Are Online Attacks Civil Disobedience?

And other questions from the PDF symposium on WikiLeaks and Internet freedom

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 13, 2010 at 02:15 PM

This past Saturday, Personal Democracy Forum hosted a symposium about Internet freedom issues raised by WikiLeaks. (Videos of the gathering... More

Beware the Twitter Echo Chamber

Pew study shows the limits of the Twitter-verse

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 10, 2010 at 04:00 PM

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report on Thursday, the result of their study of Twitter demographics.... More

Pakistani Newspapers Fake WikiLeaks “Scoops”

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 10, 2010 at 11:55 AM

The Guardian reported on Thursday that four major newspapers in Pakistan were publishing stories highly critical of the Indian government,... More

Public Media: “More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive”

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 9, 2010 at 02:25 PM

The Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program jointly released a policy paper on Wednesday with recommendations... More

Global Post’s Anti-Hamster Wheel Scheme

A Q&A with executive editor Charles Sennott

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 9, 2010 at 12:30 PM

Global Post, an international news service for an American audience, with seventy correspondents in fifty countries, is forming a nonprofit... More

MinnPost Wants to Create “the World’s Longest Byline”

How The Intelligencer blog does crowdsourcing, fifteen minutes at a time

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 8, 2010 at 03:15 PM

ProPublica’s Recovery Tracker, a database of stimulus funds broken down by state and county, makes it easy for anyone with... More

You, Too, Can Own a Piece of The Onion

“America’s Finest News Source” is now franchising out its printing biz

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 7, 2010 at 01:00 PM

After twenty-two years, The Onion has decided to both get out of the print business and double down on print... More

Why Amazon Caved, and What It Means for the Rest of Us

A Q&A with Ethan Zuckerman

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 3, 2010 at 10:20 AM

Amazon Web Services dropped WikiLeaks material from its servers on Tuesday, a move that is widely assumed to be a... More

Rumor-mongering Is Wrong…Except When I Do It

Does NPR’s Ken Rudin see the irony here?

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:05 AM

As Governor Paterson was embroiled in one scandal after the other this past February, Ken Rudin, the political director for... More

“Sorry About the Inadvertent Promotion”

Chris Smith’s error in NY Mag piece predicts the future

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:05 AM

In January, Chris Smith wrote a feature for New York Magazine on the “essential, if appealing, weirdness” of David Paterson.... More

Nicholas Confessore: Greatest Journalist Who Ever Lived?

Making up quotes is fun and easy

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:05 AM

Here’s a silly one for you. New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore wrote to Paterson press secretary Marissa Shorenstein in... More

Need Some Help Climbing Out of That Mess?

NY Mag’s Chris Smith’s witty e-mail misfire

By Lauren Kirchner   Dec 1, 2010 at 10:03 AM

On March 1, New York Magazine reporter Chris Smith accidentally sent an e-mail to Paterson press secretary Marissa Shorenstein with... More

Number Cruncher

A new biography vindicates a forgotten innovator

By Lauren Kirchner   Nov 24, 2010 at 09:54 AM

The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer | By Jane Smiley | Doubleday |... More

The Daily for iPad is On Its Way

Rupert Murdoch skips the web, goes straight for the store

By Lauren Kirchner   Nov 22, 2010 at 02:30 PM

Women’s Wear Daily broke the news last week that NewsCorp’s iPad “newspaper,” the Daily, will launch next month in a... More

The Washington Independent Will Close Down

By Lauren Kirchner   Nov 17, 2010 at 02:58 PM

A post on The Washington Independent announced today that the three-year-old online startup will be shutting down as of December... More

Steal This Heat Map!

Easy, free program to turn spreadsheets into maps

By Lauren Kirchner   Nov 17, 2010 at 02:30 PM

In the vein of CJR’s “data visualization for beginners” posts, here’s another free and easy tool available for journalists who... More