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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author
Audit Notes: Amazon watch, the Capitalist Tool, WSJ and Pinochet
NYT finds the dominant bookseller reining in the discounts in some areas
By Ryan Chittum Jul 8, 2013 at 06:50 AM
Amazon has long employed predatory pricing to establish market dominance. And in Monopoly 101, cornering a market allows you to... More
Rupert Murdoch knew about his papers’ bribes culture
An explosive secret tape from CEO’s crisis chat with arrested Sun journalists
By Ryan Chittum Jul 3, 2013 at 05:24 PM
At long last we now have indisputable evidence that Rupert Murdoch knew about the culture of criminality at his newspapers:... More
Crank lands positive BizWeek profile
The magazine lets David Stockman off easy
By Ryan Chittum Jul 3, 2013 at 06:50 AM
David Stockman is the former Reagan budget director and private-equity executive who paid $7.2 million in 2007 to make some... More
ProPublica probes the temp agencies
A lopsided power equation encourages abuses
By Ryan Chittum Jul 2, 2013 at 06:50 AM
Deep in its investigation of the temp industry, ProPublica prints this 1971 ad for "Kelly girls": Here's the text: Never... More
Audit Notes: Boston Globe bids, WSJ flops at BuzzFeed, News Corp.
A 94 percent fall in value over twenty years
By Ryan Chittum Jun 28, 2013 at 12:41 PM
Bloomberg News gets some details on The New York Times's impending sale of The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram &... More
Oxford on paying for news online
Young people are far more likely to pony up than older readers
By Ryan Chittum Jun 28, 2013 at 06:50 AM
Oxford's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism put out a digital-news survey recently that's well worth your time. It... More
Audit Notes: HuffPost terrible on Hastings, Fox touts, Advance PR
Terrible news judgment adds fuel to conspiracy theories about the journalist’s death
By Ryan Chittum Jun 26, 2013 at 06:50 AM
The Huffington Post publishes a deeply irresponsible story on the death of the journalist Michael Hastings with this headline: Was... More
The IRS scandal unwinds
And Peggy Noonan pushes crazy conspiracy theories in the WSJ
By Ryan Chittum Jun 25, 2013 at 06:50 AM
The IRS Tea Party "scandal" has taken a couple of body blows in the last week. First, it emerged that... More
The newspaper plunge slows
But paywall strategies and new business are still not enough to offset print ad declines
By Ryan Chittum Jun 24, 2013 at 06:50 AM
The newspaper industry found an extra $6 billion in its couch cushions last year. That's not new revenue, unfortunately—just newly... More
Tocqueville and regulation
Niall Ferguson pines for the laissez-faire days of a relatively primitive society
By Ryan Chittum Jun 21, 2013 at 11:00 AM
Dean Baker slices up Niall Ferguson's latest op-ed in The Wall Street Journal—this one about how over-regulated the U.S. supposedly... More
The ax falls at The Oregonian (UPDATED)
The decline of what was one of the better regional newspapers
By Ryan Chittum Jun 21, 2013 at 06:50 AM
Not that long ago, The Oregonian was one of the better news organizations in the country. In 2008, Editor &... More
Audit Notes: Fox tout, Newhouses’ interior decorators, stocks and flows
MarketWatch outs a corporate cousin’s contributor as a shill
By Ryan Chittum Jun 20, 2013 at 06:50 AM
MarketWatch's Charles Jaffe busts a contributor to corporate cousin Fox Business for taking big bucks to tout penny stocks. Jaffe... More
The Advance Publications name game
The old Newhouse Pledge and the company’s corporate shuffle
By Ryan Chittum Jun 19, 2013 at 06:50 AM
The Oregonian is about to get Newhouse'd. As the billionaires' Advance Publications has rolled out its newspaper-liquidation plan across the... More
Audit Notes: Goldman dissembles, Corporate taxes, Silicon Valley
Bloomberg View shreds the bank’s too-big-to-fail apology
By Ryan Chittum May 31, 2013 at 11:00 AM
Goldman Sachs issued a report recently claiming to debunk the fact that too-big-to-fail banks like itself get implicit taxpayer subsidies... More
No, it’s not another housing bubble
Hysteria in pockets of the press over a long-awaited recovery
By Ryan Chittum May 30, 2013 at 11:00 AM
The top story in all the major papers on Wednesday was news that home prices jumped 11 percent in the... More
Fortune goes long on Amazon and taxes
How the retailer manipulated a broken government system to get an unfair advantage
By Ryan Chittum May 24, 2013 at 06:50 AM
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
Audit Notes: The IRS story in context, Silicon Valley oligarchs
Necessary context from ProPublica and the NYT on the overblown scandal
By Ryan Chittum May 23, 2013 at 06:50 AM
The bulk of the IRS scandal press coverage has been seriously devoid of the kind of context that tells readers... More
Bloggers for hire on a penny-stock pump and dump
The Motley Fool digs into a brazen and successful scheme to manipulate share prices
By Ryan Chittum May 22, 2013 at 06:50 AM
The Motley Fool's Brian Richards posts a fascinating look inside the pump and dump world of penny-stock promoters, reporting how... More
OKC’s TV news excels in another disaster
Life-saving information before the tornado, essential reporting afterward
By Ryan Chittum May 21, 2013 at 06:50 AM
In Oklahoma, particularly in the springtime, dangerous weather is a part of life. And so are the local TV news... More
Audit Notes: WSJ on the IRS, countering Kinsley, Cramer gets an ‘F’
The paper mishandles news on the Tea Party targeting story
By Ryan Chittum May 20, 2013 at 06:50 AM
Rupert Murdoch must have loved his Wall Street Journal front page on Saturday. Editors splashed this headline across the top... 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.



















