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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

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Fortune goes long on Amazon and taxes

How the retailer manipulated a broken government system to get an unfair advantage

I've been following the Amazon tax-avoidance story for years now, and I haven't seen it better-told than it is on... More

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Audit Notes: The IRS story in context, Silicon Valley oligarchs

Necessary context from ProPublica and the NYT on the overblown scandal

The bulk of the IRS scandal press coverage has been seriously devoid of the kind of context that tells readers... More

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Bloggers for hire on a penny-stock pump and dump

The Motley Fool digs into a brazen and successful scheme to manipulate share prices

The Motley Fool's Brian Richards posts a fascinating look inside the pump and dump world of penny-stock promoters, reporting how... More

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OKC’s TV news excels in another disaster

Life-saving information before the tornado, essential reporting afterward

In Oklahoma, particularly in the springtime, dangerous weather is a part of life. And so are the local TV news... More

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Audit Notes: WSJ on the IRS, countering Kinsley, Cramer gets an ‘F’

The paper mishandles news on the Tea Party targeting story

Rupert Murdoch must have loved his Wall Street Journal front page on Saturday. Editors splashed this headline across the top... More

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Peggy Noonan loses it on the IRS story

The Journal columnist draws an evidence-free connection to the White House

We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. That's Peggy Noonan today in The Wall Street... More

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The other IRS target: the press

The nonprofit news experience undermines the Tea Party targeting outrage

Conservatives are howling about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups applying for nonprofit tax exemptions. Well, welcome to our world.... More

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Audit Notes: Student loan profits, paywall incentives, postal banking

The Huffington Post on a government bonanza

The Huffington Post's Shahien Nasiripour comes up with a great angle on news that the Education Department expects to make... More

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The Bloomberg terminal scandal

Not nearly in the Murdoch hacking league, but it requires a cultural shift

The Bloomberg terminal-snooping story is a serious ethics problem, but I've read some awfully hysterical takes on it in the... More

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Audit Notes: Bloomberg apologizes, Snow Fall re-imagined, Carr on Advance

Winkler admits reporters should never have had access to customer data

Bloomberg News has gotten a big black eye for snooping on its customers, and Editor-In-Chief Matt Winkler apologizes in a... More

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Audit Notes: Bloomberg snoops, Alan Abelson, Niall in denial

And the New York Post scoops

The New York Post reports that Goldman Sachs complained to Bloomberg that its reporters were spying on it via the... More

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The WSJ editorial page hits rock bottom

And that’s saying something

I'm still trying to reattach my jaw after reading this op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal today. It's shameful... More

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Audit Notes: Farm labor fight, government debt, dumb-question headlines

Americans sue to get farm jobs from Mexican guest workers

The New York Times is good to go page one with a story on a fascinating lawsuit in Georgia that... More

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The Advocate raids the Picayune

Major defections from the New Orleans paper intensify a newspaper war

I wrote this last week about the South Louisiana newspaper war: "It will also not have a hard time poaching... More

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Business Insider goes native

All but erasing the line between editorial and marketing

Here's a Business Insider vertical called the "Future of Business." Let's hope it's not the future of news. The problems... More

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The corrupt City culture behind the Libor scandal

The Wall Street Journal’s excellent investigation digs up the dirt

In the real word, big conspiracies are hard to maintain. People talk. Disagreements develop. Word tends to get out. But... More

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Covering somebody who’s suing you

The WSJ sticks it to Sheldon Adelson by keeping a reporter on the beat

Francine McKenna asked a good question on Twitter the other day about Wall Street Journal coverage of Sheldon Adelson's Las... More

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An ink-stained stretch

Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?

Rob Curley, one of the more prominent digital journalists of the last decade, had just about had it with... More

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The Advocate vs. the Times-Picayune

A New Orleans businessman fires up the newspaper war with the Newhouses

The Louisiana newspaper war just got a lot more interesting. It's been a poorly kept secret in New Orleans media... More

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Audit Notes: Awful on Bangladesh, the Kochtopus, US day care

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias gets it very wrong on workers and safety standards

They were still pulling the hundreds of dead bodies out of the collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh when Slate's Matthew... More

Google X

Inside Google’s secret lab

A tweetable feast

We might deplore the practice, but posting pictures of our food online is a way to bring everyone to the table

How the ‘World’s 50 Best’ list changed the way elite restaurants do business

“Every time the restaurant switched up its format, it got plenty of accompanying media coverage that let judges know they needed to return to see what was going on”

This is water

David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon commencement speech as a short film

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