http://www.cjr.org/ en Copyright 2009 Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:10:35 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Steven Kurutz These are brutal times for the newspaper industry. Widespread buyouts, shuttered bureaus, diminished ambitions—in many cases, not even the physical size of the paper has been spared. May I suggest a balm for newsprint devotees? Watch some old episodes of Lou Grant, the late-seventies TV series about life at a newspaper, which has never been released on DVD but is... http://www.cjr.org/short_takes/glory_days.php http://www.cjr.org/short_takes/glory_days.php Short Takes Thu, 29 Jan 2009 09:00:00 -0500 Katia Bachko Dart to the Cleveland Plain Dealer for failing to stick by its story. Last October, investigative reporter Bob Paynter, at the urging of Editor-in-Chief Susan Goldberg, produced “Justice Blinded: Race, Drugs and Our Legal System,” a series of articles that, through rigorous quantitative and qualitative analyses, illustrated that in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, blacks arrested on first-time, drug-related violations “were 66... http://www.cjr.org/darts_and_laurels/dart_to_the_plain_dealer_1.php http://www.cjr.org/darts_and_laurels/dart_to_the_plain_dealer_1.php Darts and Laurels Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:45:00 -0500 David Hajdu I saw the future through a two-way mirror in November 1990. I had just started a new job as a senior editor at Entertainment Weekly, a magazine then less than a year old, and I was sitting in a darkened room with nine or ten other members of the staff, watching a focus group. Page by page, an amiable, den-motherly... http://www.cjr.org/essay/condition_critical.php http://www.cjr.org/essay/condition_critical.php Essay Thu, 29 Jan 2009 08:30:00 -0500 Jane Kim After two harried years on the trail, an endless stream of hotel rooms, fast food bolted on the fly, the same speeches day after day after day, journalists finally had time to curl up with a good book—or several good books. We asked a few campaign reporters what they chose to unwind with: Candy Crowley (CNN): You Are Not a... http://www.cjr.org/short_takes/entitled_time_1.php http://www.cjr.org/short_takes/entitled_time_1.php Short Takes Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:56:01 -0500 Mariah Blake In many ways, CleanSkies.tv, an online outfit offering “energy and environmental news, information, discussion, and commentary,” resembles other TV news operations. It has offices in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Oklahoma City, a multimillion-dollar budget, and twenty-five journalists on staff, some of them big-name television personalities. Clean Skies Sunday, for instance, is hosted by former CBS Morning News anchor Susan McGinnis... http://www.cjr.org/short_takes/cloudy_skies_1.php http://www.cjr.org/short_takes/cloudy_skies_1.php Short Takes Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:36:38 -0500 Ralph Frammolino In October, community activists from around India gathered at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library in New Delhi to celebrate the third anniversary of the country’s Right to Information Act and assess the progress made under the landmark law. One speaker told how the law had produced a measure of belated justice after the 2002 riots between Hindus and Muslims... http://www.cjr.org/feature/opening_india_1.php http://www.cjr.org/feature/opening_india_1.php Feature Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:23:25 -0500 Adam Rose One morning in December 2007, a law-school dropout named David Shankbone sat on a couch in Shimon Peres’s office in Jerusalem. He’d been invited into the Israeli president’s inner sanctum for an exclusive interview with the elder statesman. Peres reclined on a velvet chair next to Shankbone, nibbling cookies while he talked in his soporific baritone about the future of... http://www.cjr.org/on_the_job/the_wikinews_ace.php http://www.cjr.org/on_the_job/the_wikinews_ace.php On the Job Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:30:00 -0500 Wendell Jamieson True Crime: An American Anthology Harold Schechter, editor The Library of America 788 pages, $40 The teenage girl gave birth in a Delaware hotel room; she and her boyfriend would later claim that the infant was stillborn. But the coroner said the baby suffered blunt trauma to the head. This was 1996. The young mother and father,... http://www.cjr.org/review/the_devil_made_them_do_it.php http://www.cjr.org/review/the_devil_made_them_do_it.php Review Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:00:00 -0500 Georgina Gustin This past fall, I drove from St. Louis to Osage County, in central Missouri, to meet a hog farmer named Russ Kremer. As I pulled into the driveway of the white farmhouse where he was raised, Kremer ambled out in his rubber boots, offering me a hearty handshake. We got into his silver Chevy truck, a circa-1992 model caked with... http://www.cjr.org/essay/dig_in_1.php http://www.cjr.org/essay/dig_in_1.php Essay Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:30:00 -0500 Merrill Perlman Now that Barack Obama is president, one columnist wanted to know, weren’t the late-night comedians, who had taken so many potshots at George Bush, “now soft-peddling ridicule of their golden boy?” That’s a hard sell, because the correct phrase is “soft-pedaling.” There is, though, a kind of twisted logic that could lead one to believe that “soft-peddle” is correct. To... http://www.cjr.org/language_corner/pedal_pushers.php http://www.cjr.org/language_corner/pedal_pushers.php Language Corner Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:03:06 -0500 Martha M. Hamilton One day in June 2005, my colleague Nell Henderson and I hiked over to the Bond Market Association to get ourselves educated on collateralized debt obligations and related products. I was editing The Washington Post’s Wall Street coverage, and Nell was covering the Federal Reserve, and we both had a feeling this might be a corner of the market in... http://www.cjr.org/feature/what_we_learned_in_the_meltdow.php http://www.cjr.org/feature/what_we_learned_in_the_meltdow.php Feature Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:30:00 -0500 Michael Schudson & Danielle Haas For a profession that lives by the cynical adage, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out,” journalism has been surprisingly lax in verifying one of its central claims—that it keeps government honest. But is it true? Two economists, who went looking for proof, found little hard evidence—good or bad—of the effects of the press on democracy. So... http://www.cjr.org/the_research_report/feet_to_the_fire.php http://www.cjr.org/the_research_report/feet_to_the_fire.php The Research Report Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:00:00 -0500 David Nasaw The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch By Michael Wolff Broadway 446 pages, $29.95 Michael Wolff’s prose style is sui generis. Unique. Which we know. Sort of. His prose is so hard-edged he uses Fuck You as an adjective. He breaks every rule, and with gusto. With sentences that consist of one-word... http://www.cjr.org/review/here_comes_the_bogeyman_1.php http://www.cjr.org/review/here_comes_the_bogeyman_1.php Review Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:30:00 -0500 Douglas McCollam First, allow me to confess my sins. For the last eleven years, I have made my living practicing the dark art of journalism, and while perhaps not a full-fledged member of that nefarious institution known as the msm, my byline has on occasion been spotted on the pages of such well-known offenders as The New York Times, The Washington Post,... http://www.cjr.org/essay/in_the_tank.php http://www.cjr.org/essay/in_the_tank.php Essay Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:00:00 -0500 James Boylan All the Art That’s Fit to Print (And Some That Wasn’t): Inside The New York Times Op-Ed Page By Jerelle Kraus Columbia University Press 260 pages, $34.95 On September 21, 1970, The New York Times unveiled a new kind of page called the “op-ed,” displacing the obituaries that had long been printed opposite the editorials. This novel forum was open... http://www.cjr.org/review/brief_encounters_10.php http://www.cjr.org/review/brief_encounters_10.php Review Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:49:13 -0500