Feature
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May 14, 2012 06:50 AM
Postage due
The USPS is running out of money. Where does that leave magazines?
Early on a February morning, in a glass-walled conference room high up in the Hearst Tower in Manhattan, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe spoke in a careful, reassuring tone. “We can do this; I know that we can do this,” he told the audience, which included representatives from magazine-industry heavyweights like Condé Nast, Hearst, and Time Inc. “Hang in there...
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May 7, 2012 07:00 AM
Encryption is your friend
Four easy ways to protect yourself and your sources
• Depending on whether you use Windows, Mac, or Linux, there is a variety of built-in or free software for encrypting your hard drive. The Electronic Freedom Foundation offers a great tutorial on the subject, so visit its website and set aside an evening when your computer can finish the encryption uninterrupted overnight.
• Encryption only works if you have...
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May 7, 2012 07:00 AM
Beyond encryption
Hold the phone! And other security strategies…
Encrypted messaging is just one of many techniques that journalists should be deploying in the digital age. I asked Christopher Soghoian, a security expert, what he would recommend as top defenses for journalists and their sources. Besides using disk encryption on your laptop (see this sidebar), he replied, in an e-mail that I’ve edited slightly, mainly...
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May 7, 2012 07:00 AM
Meanwhile, in the land of the free…
In the US, you can still say almost anything, but someone just may be listening in
In December 2010, the major payment systems used to buy goods and services online decided that Wikileaks was no longer an acceptable customer. Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal summarily cut off service, putting Wikileaks into deep financial trouble and further marginalizing an organization that had become an object of fear and loathing inside the US government and other...
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May 4, 2012 06:00 AM
Censory overload
How a reluctant journalist used his software skills to aid the Arab Spring
January 26, 2011, was just another cold winter day in Sweden, where I attend graduate school. I returned to my office from a coffee break to dozens of e-mails saying that the websites of Facebook and Twitter had been blocked in Egypt, apparently in response to massive demonstrations the day before in Tahrir Square, calling for the...
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May 3, 2012 10:05 AM
The reporter who saw it coming
Mike Hudson thought he was merely exposing injustice, but he also was unearthing the roots of a global financial meltdown
Mike Hudson began reporting on the subprime mortgage business in the early 1990s when it was still a marginal, if ethically challenged, business. His work on the “poverty industry” (pawnshops, rent-to-own operators, check-cashing operations) led him to what were then known as “second-lien” mortgages. From his street-level perspective, he could see the abuses and asymmetries of the market...
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May 3, 2012 09:56 AM
The spy who came in from the code
How a filmmaker accidentally gave up his sources to Syrian spooks
Last fall, “Kardokh,” a 25-year-old dissident and computer expert in the Syrian capital of Damascus, met with British journalist and filmmaker Sean McAllister. (Kardokh is his online pseudonym, used at his request.) McAllister, who’s made award-winning films in conflict zones like Yemen and Iraq, explained that he was shooting a documentary for Britain’s Channel 4 about underground activists in...
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May 2, 2012 06:00 AM
Sino the times
Can China’s billions buy media credibility?
Locals call it da kucha, or “big boxer shorts,” because of its shape. China Central Television’s future headquarters in Beijing is 54 stories, twin towers of glass and steel connected by an angular wedge at the top. Overlooking the Central Business District, it stands out in a city whose architecture is a mix of imperial grandeur, gray communist-era buildings,...
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May 1, 2012 06:00 AM
Muscovy pluck
How long can Ekho Moskvy radio get away with pooh-poohing Putin?
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, there is no more persistent reproach to his autocratic rule than the country’s oldest independent radio station, Ekho Moskvy. A ripe case in point came during the run-up to the March election, in which Putin was vying for his third term as president. Just days before the vote, Channel One, the...
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March 29, 2012 06:00 AM
The American Newsroom
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March 26, 2012 06:00 AM
Married, With Websites
Leaving newsrooms behind, journalist couples from Maine to Alaska are setting up their own shops—online
In romantic relationships, it’s often the small courtesies that express love best: doing the dishes, picking up the kids, making the coffee, passing the remote. When you’re a couple running a news outlet together, such small kindnesses can take unique forms. For John Christie and Naomi Schalit, it’s the order of their names on the stories that they write...
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March 19, 2012 06:00 AM
Money Talks
If you cover Wall Street, should you take Wall Street speaking fees?
Gillian Tett, the US managing editor of the London-based Financial Times, is “sharp” and “glamorous,” according to a 2010 profile by The Daily Beast. She may even be “the most powerful woman in newspapers,” the Beast said, as the FT “intends to become a status symbol of American business.” Tett is also a star...
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March 12, 2012 06:00 AM
A Brief History of Hyperlocals
Smells like town spirit
This article ran in CJR's March/April 2012 edition as a sidebar to Sean Roach's cover story on the Patch hyperlocal news network.
Lawrence, Kansas, led the way: The Lawrence Journal-World was one of the first US daily newspapers to go online in 1995, and that site was joined in 2002 by Lawrence.com, largely user-generated.
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March 12, 2012 06:00 AM
Tim Armstrong Still Believes
The AOL CEO tells why he's still betting on Patch
This article ran in CJR's March/April 2012 edition as a sidebar to Sean Roach's cover story on the Patch hyperlocal news network.
It is rare to find a big-company CEO as invested in a single corporate initiative as Tim Armstrong is in Patch. Then again, Patch was literally his idea. He cofounded it with Jon Brod (currently EVP of...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Audit notes: Buffett on newspapers, Times-Picayune, SEC lets Lehman go A vow to invest in newspapers and protect them from interference
- Audit notes: No more daily in New Orleans, McClatchy, private equity The NYT reports the Times-Picayune will print two or three times a week
The Observatory Science
- Reparative journalism Reporter sinks a controversial paper on “ex-gay” therapy
- The western frontier KQED Quest, Pacific Standard keep their eyes on the other coast
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Herald’s Caputo dives deep on diverging polls Do other news organizations undermine their credibility when they don’t do the same?
- Many stations don’t factcheck super PAC ads: survey Conference highlights difference in attitudes between industry, watchdog groups
Behind the News The Media
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The Kicker last updated: Thu 11:20 AM
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- What Warren Buffett sees in local newspapers
