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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   ProPublica Has Questions for the SEC on Its Citi Settlement

   October 21, 2011 01:30 PM

   I really like how ProPublica covers the SEC's $285 million settlement with Citigroup this week. The commission nicked Citi for selling CDOs it created to bet against—without telling the purchasers what it was doing. ProPublica reports the news, of... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Paying for Newspapers Edition

   October 20, 2011 10:26 PM

   I may have spoken too soon when I said to expect The New York Times's paid subscription growth rate to continue to decline this quarter. Poynter's Jeff Sonderman reports that Newsstand, the long-awaited feature in Apple's newly released operating... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   NYT Paywall to Other Papers: “Copy Me!”

   October 20, 2011 02:53 PM

   If The New York Times spun off its digital edition, it would be the tenth biggest paper in the country by circulation, with more paying readers than the Chicago Sun-Times and just behind the Chicago Tribune in circ. With... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Occupy Wall Street, Democrats, and Campaign Finance

   October 20, 2011 12:28 AM

   This Politico story on Occupy Wall Street's influence on the Democrats' campaign donors is awfully interesting: After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a recent email urging supporters to sign a petition backing the wave of Occupy Wall Street... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   Bloomberg Eyes Bank of America’s Derivatives Move

   October 19, 2011 12:46 PM

   Bloomberg News reports that Bank of America (with Federal Reserve approval) put Merrill Lynch credit-default swaps into BofA's deposit-holding arm after a credit downgrade caused counterparties to demand it put up billions more in collateral. Got that? Probably not,... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Homeless Shelters 4 AT&T-Verizon Duopoly

   October 17, 2011 03:17 PM

   In June, Politico and the Washington Post ran stories showing how, in exchange for Ma Bell's cash, nonprofits like NAACP and GLAAD turned into unlikely telecom lobbyists for AT&T's bid for T-Mobile, which would give it a... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   HuffPost Finds the Pain in Goldman’s For-Profit Education Firm

   October 14, 2011 06:46 PM

   It's not hard to imagine that letting boiler rooms push poor folks into taking out impossible-to-shed federal loans is a really bad idea, particularly when it's to pay big bucks to attend your crappy for-profit "college." The Huffington Post's Chris... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   Audit Notes: Economic Policy Edition

   October 13, 2011 07:17 PM

   Ezra Klein, in his long story (which you should read) on why and how Obama's economic policy failed (I should add, at least failed to get the economy out of the much. It did prevent a much worse crisis),... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   WSJ Backs Up The Guardian on European Scandal

   October 13, 2011 11:10 AM

   Last night, Dow Jones slammed The Guardian's report on wrongdoing at The Wall Street Journal Europe, calling it "replete with untruths and malign interpretations" and claiming that someone The Guardian called a whistleblower wasn't one because "that... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    Wall Street Journal Europe Sourcing Was Unusual

    October 12, 2011 06:35 PM

    We now know, thanks to reporting in the both The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal itself, that Andrew Langloff, recently resigned publisher of The Wall Street Journal Europe pressured Journal reporters to write about a company... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    The Guardian Unearths a Wall Street Journal Scandal

    October 12, 2011 06:19 PM

    Read this Wall Street Journal story from this morning on the resignation of its European edition's publisher. What the Journal reports is bad enough: That the publisher, Andrew Langhoff, "personally pressured two reporters into writing articles featuring" a... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    The China Bubble

    October 11, 2011 01:30 PM

    We've all heard about the crisis in Europe, how it's weighing on the economy, and how a collapse there could make the 2008 crisis look tame in comparison. But a few eye-catching press reports have been raising serious questions about... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    The Shorter-Form Journal

    October 10, 2011 09:40 PM

    Story length in journalism by itself doesn’t mean much. We read too many news stories that are just too damned long. But, on the other hand, without going long, it’s hard to achieve greatness. It sure makes harder to tell... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Overdraft Ethics, CNN’s Wall Street Apologist, U.S. Gas Boom

    October 7, 2011 08:06 PM

    American Banker's Jeff Horwitz finds some emails that offer an interesting look into how banks make unethical decisions to gouge their customers. These are from Union Bank, which like lots of banks, artificially reordered checking account transactions to make... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    A Weak Case for the Middle Class Embracing Globalization

    October 7, 2011 02:47 PM

    Reuters’s David Rohde writes about Bowling Green, Kentucky, and how it’s doing well by embracing globalization. But it’s a pretty weak argument. First, the dumb-question-as-headline thing, which is a pet peeve: Can Confucius save America’s middle class? No,... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    Bailing Out the Bailed Out From TARP (Updated)

    October 6, 2011 02:28 PM

    The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece of reporting today on a Treasury program ostensibly meant to boost small businesses, but which instead has become a backdoor way for banks to get out of TARP. Here's the gist:... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    Audit Notes: Steve Jobs

    October 6, 2011 02:08 AM

    Here's Wired's striking homepage reporting the death of Steve Jobs: Scroll down and you get gray text with obituary comments from various luminaries. It's gorgeous—more like a magazine cover than the jumble of text and... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    Wichita Eagle Eyes Regulatory Cracks Before a Failure

    October 5, 2011 05:47 PM

    Here's a solid Wichita Eagle report that shows the holes in a regulatory system—ones that could have deadly consequences. What I particularly like about Dion Lefler's story is that it is anticipatory reporting on the regulatory system—before a failure... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    Cronyism and Executive Compensation

    October 4, 2011 02:07 PM

    Companies tend to try to pay their employees as little as possible without killing morale and suffering high turnover. But when those employees are executives (and execs are in shareholders' employ as much as the lowliest prole is) the idea... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Audit Notes: The Costs of Trade, WSJ Op-Ed Page, Frontier Days

    September 27, 2011 07:53 PM

    The Wall Street Journal covers an MIT study that found the downsides of trade with China have been worse than previously known (amongst economists, that is. Workers have long understood this): A pattern emerged, with areas where factories were... Continue reading

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