Feature
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July 02, 2009 08:00 AM
Groundhog Day
Why this year’s health-care debate sounds like the one in 1993
Last fall, soon after Barack Obama was elected president, Sheila Burke was waiting to discuss Obama’s campaign promises, via Webcast, with students specializing in health reporting at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism. Burke, a health-policy expert who now teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School, laid a spreadsheet on the table and whispered to another guest. “See,”...
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May 25, 2009 05:00 PM
Identity Crisis
The Wall Street Journal steers away from what made it great
In December 2008, a year after* Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. purchased The Wall Street Journal, the paper had a holiday “party.” Each news department was escorted separately, in turn, into a brightly lit conference room. A large horseshoe-shaped conference table took up most of the space, leaving little room to stand. Amenities were sparse. “They spent maybe $30 on the...
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May 24, 2009 08:00 AM
Waiting for CNBC
A tragicomedy in one long act
“But eight point one percent. . . . Uh, that’s what you said, right, Zandi?”
“I said eight. I said eight. Eight point one is worse than I expected.”
“I mean, this is bad, right?”
“There’s nothing redeeming about it. . . . There’s nothing good about it. . . . I don’t see anything redeeming about it at all. . .”
“So why are the futures higher? Any idea why the futures are...
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May 23, 2009 08:00 AM
A Matter of Trust
One story from Gaza and what it says about the coverage of Israel
On Thursday morning, March 19, Israelis woke to find a story on the front pages of two leading daily newspapers that either rattled their self-image as citizens of a decent, ethical, Jewish state—or gave aid and comfort to the state’s enemies, depending on your point of view. The story was about a group of combat soldiers who, at a gathering...
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May 22, 2009 11:40 AM
A Vision in the Desert
The National tries to lift journalism in Abu Dhabi
It’s 11 a.m. in mid-June and ten section editors have crowded around the table at the center of The National’s newsroom on the ground floor of a nondescript office building in Abu Dhabi for the morning lineup meeting. The hushed newsroom is sleek and informal. Reporters don’t sit in cubicles but at long rectangular tables, in front of flat-screen monitors....
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May 21, 2009 08:00 AM
The Smell of Paradise
Under pressure in Gaza: a reporter's notebook
First Day
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It is 10:40 on a sunny and warm Saturday morning, and time for my walk through Gaza. I take a break from people’s chattering and from traffic noise and listen to my iPod. The streets are crowded, as they always are on the first day of the week. Despite the embargo, students, salesmen,... -
May 20, 2009 08:00 AM
Covering Gaza from Israel
What Israelis wanted to know about the war
During the first week of Israel’s winter military operation in Gaza, a broadcaster for ChanNel 2, which has the highest rating of Israel’s three television stations, sparked a small firestorm by expressing what was perceived as excessive sympathy for the enemy. Summarizing a report during the evening news, anchorwoman Yonit Levy said, “It’s hard to convince the world that the...
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May 19, 2009 03:42 PM
Crash Course
How to cover a car wreck
The fatal car crash is, unfortunately, an all-too-familiar staple of local journalism. Each of us can summon a grim collage of tragedy: the flashing lights; the fluttering yellow tape on the roadside; the “starburst” windshield; the phrase “he was too young,” or “our thoughts and prayers are with the family.”
There is no denying this can make for arresting and...
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May 18, 2009 08:00 AM
Heresy on the Right
A handful of new Web sites try to rewire conservative media
Electoral defeat tends to spawn bouts of ideological tinkering—when the Democrats lost the presidential election in 2004, a clutch of books soon emerged, bristling with prescriptions for the ailing left. Last year’s resounding losses for the GOP, from John McCain to dog-catcher, will no doubt produce a similar outpouring of what-now books. For some on the right, though, the revolution...
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May 06, 2009 08:00 AM
The List
What the business press did (and didn't do) while the financial crisis was brewing
Welcome to the List, a comprehensive catalog of relevant stories produced by major business-news outlets on the lending industry and Wall Street during the run-up to the mortgage crisis.
Compiled by the staff of The Audit, the business-press section of the Columbia Journalism Review, the List is intended as...
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March 24, 2009 05:55 PM
Old Hands, New Voice
How NGOs learned to do news
NEW YORK, 2014—Back in 2009, the future of international reporting looked bleak indeed. Several big U.S. newspapers had shut down their foreign bureaus altogether. The American TV networks had basically shrunk their international presence to London. Covering the Iraq war had nearly bankrupted foreign-news budgets, and by then, the American public had lost interest in the Iraq war. Or indeed...
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March 23, 2009 06:07 PM
Unchaining the Monitor
How an early Web-first strategy worked out
BOSTON, 2014—In October 2008, The Christian Science Monitor announced it was shifting to a “Web-first, multiplatform strategy.” The bulk of our international reporting resources, we said, would be devoted to our Web site, CSMonitor.com, on a 24/7 basis, and print would go from daily to weekly. Smaller newspapers had made similar changes, but the Monitor, while not a giant among...
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March 22, 2009 08:30 AM
So Cool
How an economic weather map changed the climate
Washington , D.C., 2014—The economic weather map, which started out as a gimmick, changed everything. It showed us how the old stuff—good stories told by professional reporters—could live happily alongside all the new: user-generated content, data mash-ups, discussion forums, Twitter feeds, and all that.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back on September 6, 2008, NPR launched Planet Money, a...
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March 21, 2009 08:00 AM
The New Niche
How tax incentives and technology came to the rescue
Washington, D.C., 2014—By 2009, we were at an impasse. The news business—newspapers in particular—was collapsing, and there was no obvious way to reconstitute it as a business that was capable of providing serious public-interest journalism. Paradoxically, though, the collapse of newspapers as a viable business didn’t reflect a collapse in the public desire for quality news.
We can rightly...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Amplifying the Drumbeat on the “Overdraft Protection” Racket The issue picks up momentum in the financial press
- Journal: Wall Street Pay Could Set Records
The Observatory Science
- Some Optimism for the Future of Science Journalism And especially for international collaboration
- NSF “Underwriting” Coverage… And other controversies from the World Conference of Science Journalists
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- More PitneyGate Fallout? Press focused on who asked questions at Obama town hall
- The Economy Today: School’s Out With Money Tight, Classes Are Slashed