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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged The Washington Post

1. April 13, 2012 08:42 AM

   NYT Gives a (Very Reluctant) Kudos to Al Jazeera

   By Ron Howell

   And the award for coverage of the Haitian cholera epidemic goes to . . . No, not The New York Times, nor The Washington Post, nor even the Miami Herald. No it goes to Al Jazeera, the news organization that found the cause of the epidemic and told the world about it.* Al Jazeera, the Arab world’s version of our...

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2. March 17, 2011 01:41 PM

   WaPo’s New Opinion Tabs Miss the Mark

   A flawed way to quantify ideological diversity

   By Ben Adler

   The Washington Post, as part of its ongoing web redesign, unveiled an addition to its online opinions section on Monday. Now there are tabs for left-leaning columnists and right-leaning columnists; you can even subscribe to ideologically segregated RSS feeds. The change drew jeers from wags such as Gawker's Hamilton Nolan, who complained that the tabs will allow a reader to...

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3. May 25, 2011 12:54 PM

   A Beat Memo on Medicare

   Is the Ryan plan really so novel?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Perhaps no other health issue is as important to so many Americans now and in the future as Medicare. In this ongoing series, “Covering Medicare,” we will follow the reportage and offer Medicare beat memos from time to time. A few weeks ago, Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post gave her readers a short Medicare history lesson. She harkened back...

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4. March 15, 2011 11:39 AM

   A Glimpse into WaPo’s Editing Practices

   By Joel Meares

   Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan reports that earlier today The Washington Post published a story online by The Courier-Journal’s Laura Ungar that was a little unfinished. In fact, the story appeared to be a first draft with editor’s notes included in big, scary ALL-CAPS. The story—about how a lack of health insurance and/or unawareness can lead to too-late detections of cervical cancer—has...

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5. January 4, 2012 12:46 PM

   A Good Payroll Tax Piece from the Post

   Finally, some balance from WaPo

   By Trudy Lieberman

   At last The Washington Post, which shaped much of the media coverage of the defcit and entitlement discussion last year, has produced a very good story about Social Security. This one offers another take on the Democrats’ drive to extend the payroll tax for the next two months. The message of Jia Lynn Yang’s piece: cutting payroll tax contributions to...

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6. October 3, 2011 12:38 PM

   Bad Omens for Health Care

   Mixed coverage of the latest premium hikes

   By Trudy Lieberman

   The big news in health care last week was, of course, that average annual premiums for family coverage through employers reached an all-time high of $15,037, a nine percent increase from last year. While the major media outlets were scrambling to make sense out of such a steep rise, I was walking the streets of Lincoln, Nebraska, hearing from people...

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7. May 31, 2011 04:08 PM

   Covering the Cain Campaign

   Herman Cain's probably not a serious candidate. That doesn't mean the press shouldn't cover him.

   By Greg Marx

   If you headed out early for the Memorial Day weekend, you probably missed an interesting bit of blogosphere back-and-forth about how seriously to take Herman Cain’s run for the White House—and, more broadly, about how the press should cover presidential campaigns. Cain, for people who haven’t heard of him—which means most people—is an African-American pizza chain CEO-turned-conservative talk show host...

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8. July 26, 2011 02:42 PM

   Covering the Chained CPI

   Let me count the ways it can be done

   By Trudy Lieberman

   There are five ways to cover the Chained CPI, a proposed new method for determining the cost-of-living (COLA) adjustments that Social Security beneficiaries and others will be eligible to receive: (1) You can avoid covering the issue at all because it’s too complicated and too esoteric—the approach taken by many of the country’s news outlets. (2) You can offer a...

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9. June 13, 2011 02:17 PM

   Hawkery—and Hackery—from Hiatt

   Post column misleads on health care reform

   By Greg Marx

   In his latest column, which chides President Obama for choosing “easier politics over harder truths” when dealing with America’s fiscal challenges, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt provides a near-perfect example of inside-the-Beltway deficit hawkery run amok. Which, as a columnist, is his prerogative. If Hiatt thinks that the “most vexing challenge facing the country” is “how not to...

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10. April 13, 2011 07:11 AM

    Health Care in the Real World

    A lesson for the fuzzy-headed bureaucrats—and for the press

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Steve Luxenberg, an associate editor at The Washington Post, gives a different twist on covering high-deductible health plans, that new genre of health insurance that we hope journos--and their editors--will see fit to report on from time to time. Last week Campaign Desk singled out some interesting political reporting on these policies, including a good piece from WBUR, which told...

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11. March 29, 2012 03:06 PM

    Health Reform and the Supreme Court: Day Three

    The press reads the tea leaves

    By Trudy Lieberman

    As the Supreme Court ended oral arguments on the Affordable Care Act, addressing whether the law can stand alone without the individual mandate, the press coverage was dominated by speculation. Justices speculated about the questions put before them, and the media speculated on the likely outcome if the mandate doesn’t survive. The Washington Post summed it up this way: Before...

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12. April 18, 2012 11:55 AM

    How the Media Has Shaped the Social Security Debate

    The press plays a dubious role

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Shortly after the 2010 midterm elections, Washington Post budget correspondent Lori Montgomery reported that, while a debate raged around major budgetary changes and the wisdom of cutting Social Security, a “surprisingly broad consensus is forming around the actions required to stabilize borrowing and ease fears of a European-style debt crisis in the United States.” A consensus among whom, we...

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13. April 23, 2012 02:18 PM

    Loneliness at the Foreign ‘Bureau’

    News organizations exaggerate the size of their overseas newsrooms

    By Justin D. Martin

    The Washington Post has 16 foreign “bureaus,” and 12 of them consist of just a single reporter, according to the newspaper’s website. The four remaining bureaus all consist of two journalists. Is the Post using the word bureau a bit loosely? One Post reporter, Sudarsan Raghavan in Nairobi, is listed as the paper’s “bureau chief in Africa.” Raghavan is the...

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14. November 14, 2012 04:23 PM

    Marcus the unlucky

    Good fortune followed by bad, and again

    By Mike Hoyt

    Scott Sherman, in "A Rocket's Trajectory," his fine profile of Marcus Brauchli in the September/October 2010 issue of CJR, noted that the man is ambitious but unlucky. Good luck is followed by misfortune, which is followed by good luck, and then again, bad. He started in the basement of Dow Jones, and, twenty-three years later, clawed his way to the...

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15. April 27, 2012 02:17 PM

    Report Card on Social Security Trust Fund Coverage

    An F for the headlines; a C- for the stories

    By Trudy Lieberman

    This week, Social Security trustees issued their annual report on the program’s financial health. The news was expected: Social Security will be able to pay full benefits to Americans currently receiving benefits and those new to the system for the next 21 years—until 2033. After that, if there are no new revenues added (an unlikely proposition), recipients will still receive...

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16. August 9, 2011 01:39 PM

    Would a Populist Washington Post Be Popular?

    Ombudsman’s stirring plan relies on readers who may not be there.

    By Greg Marx

    In his latest column, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton offers a paradigmatic version of the earnest media critic’s exhortation. Being an earnest media critic myself, I’m inclined to cheer him on. At the same time, it’s important to note the blind spots that lie at the heart of his vision—about how reporting can be paid for, and about who the...

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