Campaign Desk

Shotgun!

A look at the race for the briefing room front seat

By Joel Meares   Aug 2, 2010 at 03:19 PM

In what might be the White House equivalent of a student government election, the James S. Brady Briefing Room was... More

Missouri Senate Race: Three Things You Oughta Know

Barack Obama, the Tea Party, and the all-important southwest

By Kathy Gilsinan   Aug 2, 2010 at 12:03 PM

On Tuesday, August 3, Missouri will hold its U.S. Senate primaries. In November, the victors will face off to fill... More

How WikiLeaks Outsourced the Burden of Verification

To the Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel

By Craig Silverman   Jul 30, 2010 at 12:15 PM

Julian Assange is upset with The New York Times for talking with the White House about WikiLeaks’s trove of Afghanistan... More

Sebelius Watch, Part IV

The press falls for the bait

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 30, 2010 at 10:28 AM

A few days ago, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius came forth with one more goodie from the new reform law: the... More

Fox Faults On FOIA

New law unclear, but not as bad as you’ve heard

By Clint Hendler   Jul 29, 2010 at 05:01 PM

Yesterday afternoon, Fox Business Network* seemed to have posted quite a scoop: Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed... More

Bringing a Big Story Home at The Omaha World-Herald

Local reporting in the age of wire copy

By Lauren Kirchner   Jul 29, 2010 at 04:09 PM

Most regional papers have relied on wire copy to tell the story of the 92,000 classified military documents released by... More

Q & A: Nevada Political Journalist Jon Ralston

“People just hate Harry Reid… They would vote for Charles Manson over Harry Reid.”

By Joel Meares   Jul 29, 2010 at 03:52 PM

In a state where the major newspapers are often highly partisan, Jon Ralston has been offering Nevadans some of the... More

Mercury News: Lobbyists As “Shadow Legislature” in CA

A special report explains the “Sacramento version” of lawmaking

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 29, 2010 at 11:44 AM

There's the "Civics Class Version" of “How Laws Are Created," in which, in brief, a legislator has an idea for... More

The Story Behind the Publication of WikiLeaks’s Afghanistan Logs

From Brussels, to a bunker, to blockbusters

By Clint Hendler   Jul 28, 2010 at 02:18 PM

You wouldn’t be reading the coverage of the so-called Afghanistan logs—in The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian—if... More

Democrats are hotter than Republicans, says The Hill

By Joel Meares   Jul 28, 2010 at 01:25 PM

For those tired of creepy white-haired Australians, heat-seeking missiles, and Pakistan’s sly-S-I, The Hill today provides a deliciously People-esque distraction:... More

NYT Goes to the Numbers

Economists’ analysis brings welcome data to stimulus debate

By Holly Yeager   Jul 28, 2010 at 12:42 PM

The New York Times has a good early look at something that’s much in demand—an analysis of where the economy... More

Bubble Boys

The WikiLeaks documents put an underreported war back on the nation’s radar. It doesn’t matter that the pundits are yawning.

By Joel Meares   Jul 28, 2010 at 10:27 AM

The hardening conventional wisdom on the Afghanistan “war logs” is that they are not the Pentagon Papers. Nor are they,... More

Kudos to The New York Times

For revealing the contradictions in health and financial reform

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 28, 2010 at 10:16 AM

There’s been way, way too much follow-the-newsmaker reporting in recent weeks, with Obama’s acolytes trailing the procession to the promised... More

WSJ’s Stimulus-Debate Story is Debatable

A page-one piece says economists question whether stimulus makes things worse but can’t find any who actually do

By Holly Yeager   Jul 27, 2010 at 03:59 PM

The Wall Street Journal goes big with a story on the debate over stimulus spending. But the piece doesn’t deliver... More

The Summer of Alvin Greene?

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 27, 2010 at 10:03 AM

"People who write about Alvin Greene are going to get clicked on," [Democratic operative Wyeth] Ruthven explains to Politico's Jonathan... More