Cronyism and Executive Compensation

A Washington Post examination of how “peers” inflate CEO pay

By Ryan Chittum   Oct 4, 2011 at 02:07 PM

Companies tend to try to pay their employees as little as possible without killing morale and suffering high turnover. But... More

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

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 27, 2011 at 07:53 PM

The Wall Street Journal covers an MIT study that found the downsides of trade with China have been worse than... More

How Not to Cover Your Paper’s New Owner

The Oklahoman glosses over Philip Anschutz’s political activism

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 27, 2011 at 06:34 PM

The Oklahoman recently profiled Philip Anschutz, who bought the paper from the Gaylord family, which had owned it for 108... More

Boom Towns Amid the Bust

NPR finds “man camps” and $1,200 parking spaces in North Dakota

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 27, 2011 at 12:20 PM

This paragraph jumps out from an NPR's All Things Considered report on an oil boom town in North Dakota: Two... More

LAT On Why Solyndra Dazzled the Private and Public Sectors

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 26, 2011 at 06:23 PM

The Los Angeles Times has a really good look at the failure of Solyndra, the solar-power company that went bankrupt... More

The Morning Call’s Amazon Sweatshop Probe

An excellent investigation exposes poor conditions at a big Pennsylvania warehouse

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 23, 2011 at 07:52 PM

What's going on with labor in Pennsylvania? It was just last month that foreign students working at Hershey's for the... More

ProPublica Shines a Light on Secret Gerrymandering Money

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 23, 2011 at 01:48 PM

Every ten years, politicians get together in statehouses and redraw congressional districts to squeeze their opponents and entrench themselves in... More

ESPN Obscures Its Own Role in the Conference Realignment Mess

The network’s $300 million deal with Texas, at the heart of the news, goes almost unmentioned

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 22, 2011 at 06:34 PM

If you cover college sports for ESPN, you've got a real problem right now. The biggest story these days is... More

The Countrywide Fraud Machine

Michael Hudson tallies up dozens of allegations that executives retaliated against whistleblowers

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 22, 2011 at 12:28 PM

The Center for Public Integrity's Michael Hudson, who's done as much as any journalist—both before and after the crash—to expose... More

Audit Notes: Bloomberg Headlines, Bad Ad News, Wall Street Protests

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 21, 2011 at 06:53 PM

The Audit has a love-hate reading relationship with Bloomberg News's wacky headlines. Here are a few we've flagged over the... More

The SEC’s Madoff Mess Gets Worse

The commission’s former top lawyer faces a possible criminal conflict of interest investigation

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 20, 2011 at 07:33 PM

Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson report that the SEC's inspector general is referring the David M. Becker case to the... More

Some Context With Your David Brooks

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 20, 2011 at 02:46 PM

Obama's pitch to make the ultrarich pay as high a tax rate as their secretaries sent David Brooks into spasms... More

Audit Notes: Economic Headwinds, Refinancing, Google’s Dominance

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 19, 2011 at 07:25 PM

Crain's New York Business's Aaron Elstein takes a good look anecdotes at the headwinds New York's economy is facing from... More

The AP Puts Faces on the Poverty Numbers

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 19, 2011 at 02:59 PM

The Associated Press fans out across the country to put faces on the poverty numbers released last week. Needless to... More

Audit Notes: Scotland Yard Thugs, Reuters Raises Its Sights, An NYT Miss

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 16, 2011 at 04:18 PM

It looks like they ought to just shut Scotland Yard down and start over from scratch. The Metropolitan Police is... More

Reporting on Solyndra

Missing basic concepts about the government’s loan-guarantee program.

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 16, 2011 at 03:24 PM

Much of the press coverage of the Solyndra bankruptcy has been poor on some basic concepts at the heart of... More

Ron Suskind on Obama’s Weakness

A new book reports Geithner ignored the president on overhauling Citigroup

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 16, 2011 at 12:53 AM

It's been apparent for a good while that Obama is a weak president. But so weak that his own people... More

Audit Notes: Bloomberg’s Euphemisms, ETFs and CDOs, TechCrunch and Goldman

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 15, 2011 at 07:36 PM

It's sort of darkly amusing to read all the euphemisms in this Bloomberg News story reporting on the latest warnings... More

Framing the Jobs Plan… Er, Second Stimulus

This time Democrats get that language matters, and the press plays along

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 15, 2011 at 12:39 AM

Barack Obama proposed his second stimulus last week, pitching a $450 billion measure. Or is it a jobs plan? Let's... More

Bloomberg Versus Reuters on Obama Polls

By Ryan Chittum   Sep 14, 2011 at 05:15 PM

Correlation is not causation. That's a hard lesson to internalize for the press, which insists on slapping a narrative on... More