Behind the News
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May 22, 2012 03:00 PM
When Big Data is Bad Data
The press and standardized testing numbers: a cautionary tale
Disks of never-before-released data from the Department of Education landed with a befuddling thud in New York City’s newsrooms at the end of February. The swarm of spreadsheets had promised to provide a single ranking of 18,000 teachers (by name!) from zero to 99 based on students’ standardized test scores.
A bonanza for education reporters, right? Time to celebrate?...
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May 22, 2012 01:53 PM
The Ford Foundation’s unprecedented grant to The Los Angeles Times
And what for-profit/ nonprofit partnerships mean in the age of Sam Zell
On Thursday, Los Angeles Times editor Davan Maharaj announced that his paper, once a profit engine for multi-billion dollar corporate owners and still one of the most powerful news organizations in the country, will receive a $1 million grant from the Ford Foundation, and thus join the growing ranks of journalism outlets funded in part by major... Continue reading -
May 22, 2012 10:52 AM
Stories I’d like to see
Drachma redux, Hoffa’s killers, besting JPMorgan
In his weekly “Stories I’d Like to See” column, journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill spotlights topics that, in his opinion, have received insufficient media attention. This article was originally published on Reuters.com.
1. Printing drachmas?
What actually will happen if Greece leaves the euro zone and goes back to its own currency? How would that work? Is there...
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May 19, 2012 07:45 AM
Murdoch may sell his British papers
The British press asserts the embattled mogul may ditch the papers under phone hacking scrutiny
News International, the UK outpost of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, might be preparing to sell off or isolate its scandal-struck newspaper titles, according to a report from rival newspaper The Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph broke the story for its Saturday morning edition, drawing a line between the speculation and the ongoing woes the Murdoch company is suffering as...
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May 18, 2012 03:15 PM
The future of media is social
It's also shared, viral, and free from banner ads
The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU hosted I Want Media’s fifth annual “Future of Media” forum on Friday afternoon. Speakers included Adweek executive editor James Cooper, BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti, Jezebel editor in chief Jessica Coen, Reuters social media guru Anthony De Rosa, Thrillist co-founder Ben Lerer, Activate’s Michael Wolf, and Greg Clayman, the publisher of The...
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May 17, 2012 01:15 PM
Why China ejected Melissa Chan
Sending a message to the foreign press
Is this the kind of reporting that got Al Jazeera correspondent Melissa Chan expelled from China last week? The foreign ministry did not give an official reason for the first expulsion of a journalist in 15 years, except to say that “the media concerned know in their heart what they did wrong."
Chan's probe into...
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May 17, 2012 11:15 AM
‘This is my paper. This is my town’
One year after a devastating tornado, The Joplin Globe feels stronger
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Jack Kaminsky lives with his mother now. He is 63 years old, broad shouldered, with silver hair and a silver beard. He's the circulation director of The Joplin Globe, and he and his wife survived the tornado that blew apart their city last May 22 by diving into their basement and listening to “everything fall apart.”... -
May 15, 2012 08:41 AM
Stories I’d like to see
Press-dinner proceeds, cat-and-mouse China reporting, testing the testers
In his weekly “Stories I’d Like to See” column, journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill spotlights topics that, in his opinion, have received insufficient media attention. This article was originally published on Reuters.com.
1. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner: How much for charity?
Two Sundays ago, Tom Brokaw used an appearance on Meet the Press to attack...
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May 8, 2012 12:11 PM
Stories I’d like to see
Homeland loses focus, ditching the filibuster, unions that own big business
In his weekly “Stories I’d Like to See” column, journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill spotlights topics that, in his opinion, have received insufficient media attention. This article was originally published on Reuters.com.
1. Protecting the Homeland….in New Zealand
Is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano completely on the sidelines? And has she not gotten the memo about limiting government...
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May 3, 2012 06:00 AM
Collateral damage: news organizations, free speech, and the Internet
This is the text of this year's Hearst New Media Lecture, given April 19 at the Columbia Journalism School
How many more years will need to pass before we can stop calling digitally networked media “new”?
After all, this year’s graduating class of students—and most of their generation—have spent their entire news-consuming and producing lives in a digitally networked environment.
This digitally networked environment has not only transformed how professional journalists do their jobs—or how news organizations package and...
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May 3, 2012 06:00 AM
3 things big media can do to save independent journalism
This is adapted from Rebecca MacKinnon's 2012 Hearst New Media Lecture, given at Columbia's J-school on April 19
By advocating Internet access that is open, interconnected, and neutral—which is not what's happening now—Rebecca MacKinnon argues that big media companies will be helping preserve conditions where a diverse media contingent can thrive. Specific points:
1. As app-based dissemination and social media supplant the Web, what’s good for the big media companies is not necessarily good for free speech and...
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May 2, 2012 03:18 PM
Fewer journo arrests at latest OWS push
But some reporters at the nationwide May 1 Occupy protests were targeted by protestors
Journalists covering the May 1 Occupy demonstrations across the country encountered some police obstruction, including a few arrests, and an uptick in cases of demonstrators confronting journalists.
According to Josh Stearns, of the advocacy organization Free Press, who has been intensively tracking arrests and harassment of journalists covering demonstrations nationwide, May Day marked a slight improvement in police...
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May 2, 2012 06:30 AM
The Bo scandal: how we got that story
Thanks to the Web, you can follow the money online—even in China
The scandal surrounding the recently purged Chinese Communist Party official Bo Xilai has all the elements of Shakespearean drama: the precipitous fall of a powerful man, a mysterious murder that involves the man’s glamorous wife, and dark secrets that come to light as the plot unfolds.
The scandal is the most serious to hit China in years,...
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May 1, 2012 10:34 AM
Stories I’d like to see
Military movers, insuring a pitcher’s arm, and lobbyists against federal travel caps
1. The $5 billion moving bill:
Reports last week that the US had agreed with Japan to transfer 9,000 of its 19,000 troops out of Okinawa stated matter of factly that the move will cost $8.6 billion - that’s billion, or $955,000 per service member. Even with Japan paying $3.1 billion of the bill, that leaves the US...
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