On the Job
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November 1, 2012 12:00 AM
Esprit de corpse
What it's like to be embedded—on a movie set
With an explosion of light, the screaming starts. . . . This place is wrecked—an entire ballroom flopped on its head. In the middle of the floor (which used to be the ceiling), crushed chandeliers slump like twin crystal wedding cakes left in the sun too long. Playing cards, balloons, dishes, and chairs litter the tiered space; broken glass and broken bodies are...
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September 5, 2012 12:00 AM
Murder Inc.
A crime-news website tells the story of every DC homicide
Laura Norton Amico spent the summer trying to find a newsroom in Washington, DC, to take over Homicide Watch, the crime-news site that she and her husband, Chris, built from inchoate idea to startup sensation. Two years of long days had taken a toll, and Amico needed to catch her breath. She was starting a Nieman fellowship at Harvard...
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August 13, 2012 10:44 AM
Boy on the bus
Kid reporters hit the campaign trail
Z ach Dalzell is 13 and covering his first presidential campaign. You might think that his observations on the political process would be wide-eyed and credulous. You would be wrong.
Here’s what he had to say about his exchange with Rick Perry, pictured with Zach here, following an event in Charleston, SC—Zach’s hometown—in January: “He came off as a...
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May 8, 2012 12:10 AM
An unflinching witness
Long Island native Marie Colvin spent her career chronicling the horrors of war and oppression, from Sri Lanka to Syria. She wanted the world to see what she saw.
Marie Colvin, who was killed in Syria on February 22, represents a great deal that is excellent about the type of journalism to which she lost her life. We both were foreign correspondents for The Sunday Times of London for many years. Inevitably, that meant covering those wars that were among the biggest stories of our time. Our friendship...
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July 1, 2010 05:53 PM
A World of Trouble
Who’s a journalist? In today’s war zones, the answer matters.
In November 2008, the Pakistani army launched its first major offensive against militants in the tribal areas of the country. I was working as a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor and had arrived in the border town of Peshawar from Islamabad, prepared to enter the war zone with a military unit as an embedded journalist. It was not an...
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January 27, 2009 09:30 AM
The Wikinews Ace
Why Shimon Peres sat down with David Shankbone
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...
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The Audit Business
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- NBC News sets good example for Medicare reporting People perspective leads to clear explanation of impact of proposed changes
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