Campaign Desk

Winning the Morning, Missing the Point

Politico buries the lede in its big Obama story

By Greg Marx   Jul 15, 2010 at 02:39 PM

Politico bigwigs John Harris and Jim VandeHei have a big thinkpiece out this morning headlined, “Why Obama Loses by Winning.”... More

Goodbye Girl Power, Hello Cat Fighting

LA Times piece substitutes one female pol storyline for another

By Joel Meares   Jul 15, 2010 at 12:34 PM

Sunday’s Los Angeles Times story on the history of tensions between California’s leading ladies, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, seems... More

An Oddly Weightless Times Profile

But was it a beat sweetener?

By Joel Meares   Jul 15, 2010 at 11:50 AM

Slate’s Press Box blogger Jack Shafer took a hacksaw to the Times’s Saturday profile of National Security Council chief... More

Most Politico Sentence In Politico Piece

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 15, 2010 at 10:49 AM

It's hard to choose just one. But, here's my vote for The Most Politico (Half-)Sentence in the Politico piece today,... More

See Alabama Run

Catch up on coverage of today’s Alabama primary runoffs

By Joel Meares   Jul 13, 2010 at 12:47 PM

Voters of both political persuasions decide several primary runoffs today in the Yellowhammer State. There’s a bunch of interesting tussles... More

End of the Line for the 99ers

WaPo highlights the longtime jobless

By Holly Yeager   Jul 13, 2010 at 12:44 PM

The Washington Post does a good job highlighting a detail that usually gets glossed over in coverage of the unemployment... More

A Fresh Take on Health Care

Does reform solve the ER problem?

By Trudy Lieberman   Jul 13, 2010 at 10:58 AM

It all sounded so simple in the years leading up to health reform. The politicians, from the president on down,... More

NYT Wonders About Whitman’s “Business Decision”

By Liz Cox Barrett   Jul 12, 2010 at 03:12 PM

The New York Times's Michael Luo reports that, in 2008, California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman invested some $1 million... More

PolitiFact, Pedantry, and Rolling Heads

Pols’ complaints about fact-checking site miss the mark

By Joel Meares   Jul 12, 2010 at 02:03 PM

PolitiFact, the fact-checking Web site created by the St. Petersburg Times—whose dispute with Arianna Huffington we noted last week—has been... More

Steele Trap

The press knew what the RNC chief was saying, but internecine warfare is a better story

By Joel Meares   Jul 9, 2010 at 04:20 PM

Michael Steele had a rough holiday weekend. The right’s media heavies called for the RNC chairman’s resignation, GOP senators kicked... More

Viva Las Vegas

The Las Vegas Sun reporter keeping candidates in check

By Joel Meares   Jul 9, 2010 at 04:17 PM

The president visited Sin City yesterday to bolster support for hot midterm target Harry Reid, drawing our attention to coverage... More

The Rich Are Different, Still

The NYT follows the Journal to the wealthy default story

By Holly Yeager   Jul 9, 2010 at 12:30 PM

The New York Times caught my eye with a front-page story on how the housing crisis is hitting the upper... More

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda at Politico

Reporters reach to tie Obama administration to Blagojevich business

By Joel Meares   Jul 9, 2010 at 10:48 AM

Assuming perhaps that we’d all been missing the sight of Lego-haired former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich—or at least missing out... More

Picturing Kagan’s Future

By Joel Meares   Jul 8, 2010 at 04:57 PM

We lamented the glut of coverage of the Kagan hearings in an earlier posting, so it may seem a tad... More

Truth Be Told

Huffington’s post on PolitiFact misses the mark

By Joel Meares   Jul 8, 2010 at 02:40 PM

Arianna Huffington used her holiday Monday to belatedly attack the St. Petersburg Times’s PolitiFact Web site for its unfavorable... More