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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged energy

1. April 8, 2011 11:02 AM

   The Importance of Energy Reporters

   A Q&A with the NYT’s Matthew Wald about Japan’s nuclear crisis

   By Cristine Russell

   The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan has underscored the importance of specialized energy reporters. Unfortunately, there weren’t many American journalists on the beat when disaster struck on March 11. The New York Times's veteran energy and environment reporter Matthew L. Wald was one of the few, and it has shown in the paper's outstanding coverage...

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2. September 26, 2011 06:23 PM

   LAT On Why Solyndra Dazzled the Private and Public Sectors

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Los Angeles Times has a really good look at the failure of Solyndra, the solar-power company that went bankrupt earlier this month despite a $528 million Department of Energy loan two years ago. This isn't a story about the machinations of the Obama administration or an investigation into why the FBI raided the company as it was failing. It's...

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3. May 17, 2012 06:50 AM

   USA Today’s oily, gassy rainbow

   Detailed cover story a bit too rosy about ‘energy independence’

   By Curtis Brainard

   USA Today sees an oily, gassy rainbow on America’s energy horizon. “Energy independence isn’t just a pipe dream,” read a large, bold headline on Wednesday’s front. It was draped over an image of oil drums stamped “Made in USA,” laid out like bowling pins in front the US flag. The nearly 2,000-word cover story, by Tim Mullaney, described the current...

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4. October 5, 2011 05:47 PM

   Wichita Eagle Eyes Regulatory Cracks Before a Failure

   By Ryan Chittum

   Here's a solid Wichita Eagle report that shows the holes in a regulatory system—ones that could have deadly consequences. What I particularly like about Dion Lefler's story is that it is anticipatory reporting on the regulatory system—before a failure reveals holes in oversight. That's the most important kind of regulation story. A year and a half ago, a federal judge...

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5. March 9, 2012 07:58 PM

   A Dim-Bulb Story From the Washington Post

   By Ryan Chittum

   New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman's office this afternoon sent out a press release hammering the Washington Post's page-one story on the high cost of the LED light bulb that just won a government prize. Bingaman's right. First, the Post doesn't take into account the savings consumers can expect from an LED bulb over its lifetime compared to using incandescents. Second,...

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6. November 5, 2010 05:14 PM

   A Referendum on Energy Issues?

   Not so fast

   By Curtis Brainard and Cristine Russell

   There is something ironic about the post-election surge of articles about the environmental consequences of various outcomes at the polls - from the gloom and doom in Washington to brighter skies in California. Before the ballots were cast, journalists paid hardly any attention to issues like energy and climate. Now that (most) election results have been signed, sealed, and delivered,...

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7. September 13, 2011 07:46 PM

   Audit Notes: College Sports, NY AG Probing Lehman Execs, Shale Drilling

   By Ryan Chittum

   — Taylor Branch's cover story in the new Atlantic is a devastating indictment of the NCAA, a must-read for anyone interested in college athletics and the business of sports. It's a superb synthesis of the history of the NCAA, the hypocrisy of keeping athletes from getting paid while the commercialization of college sports (football and basketball, that is) runs amok,...

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8. July 6, 2012 06:50 AM

   Audit Notes: Dark Ages, Mitt and Rupert, Chesapeake’s taxes

   Stephen Moore on how "the greens" supposedly want to plunge America into darkness

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal editorial page's Stephen Moore uses the power outage in DC as a warning about what life would be like if "the greens" seize power. Environmentalists, you see, aren't just opposed to pollution and catastrophic climate effects from carbon emissions. According to Moore, they're all but opposed to electricity, however clean: Electrical power is the central nervous...

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9. February 9, 2012 11:55 PM

   Audit Notes: Energy Economy, Insider Trading, Mortgage Settlement

   By Ryan Chittum

   Here's a good Wall Street Journal page-one story on how the energy boom is driving economic activity across the U.S. The lede anecdote is smart. Russell Gold visits a manufactured-housing builder in Idaho, far from the shale boom states, to show how the effects of all the drilling are rippling out into the broader economy. Where the company profiled was...

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10. March 7, 2012 01:29 AM

    Audit Notes: Fox on Energy, Journalists and Programmers, Bloomberg

    By Ryan Chittum

    Media Matters has an amusing compilation of Fox News reactions to $4 a gallon gasoline in 2008, when George W. Bush was in office, and its reactions today, when Barack Obama is. 2008: 2012: Back then, gas prices were based on global supply and demand issues at Fox, but now you'd think Obama single-handedly fixes prices. It's incredibly dishonest to...

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11. March 23, 2012 07:35 PM

    Audit Notes: N.J., Paragon of Clean Government; Algae Fuel, Fees, The Rich (UPDATED)

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg's Jonathan Weil just guts a Center for Public Integrity report card on state corruption. It found that New Jersey was the least corrupt state in the country—a result that should have flagged to CPI that something had gone awry with their survey. That flagged it for Weil, at least, who looked into the methodology CPI employed: For example, O’Dea...

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12. October 7, 2011 08:06 PM

    Audit Notes: Overdraft Ethics, CNN’s Wall Street Apologist, U.S. Gas Boom

    By Ryan Chittum

    American Banker's Jeff Horwitz finds some emails that offer an interesting look into how banks make unethical decisions to gouge their customers. These are from Union Bank, which like lots of banks, artificially reordered checking account transactions to make bigger transactions clear first. That makes it more likely that the customer will rack up multiple overdrafts. There was pushback amongst...

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13. March 6, 2012 12:58 AM

    Audit Notes: Rocket Internet, Gas Taxes, The Price of Health Care

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a good story on a German company that makes its living ripping off American websites and taking them overseas before the Americans can get there. Rocket Internet, owned by three German brothers, has copied eBay, Zappos.com, Groupon, and Facebook, and more—sometimes down to the font and the style of furniture displayed on the homepage. The proprietors are...

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14. February 4, 2011 12:13 PM

    Bloomberg Examines Louisiana’s Laissez-Faire Oil Regulators

    Spills go unpenalized 99 percent of the time and the state's fines are a joke

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg has an excellent investigation into Louisiana's oil regulators, finding that the state fines oil companies for oil spill less than 1 percent of the time over the last five years. Unfortunately, I can't find the story on the Web. It appears to be terminal-only, at least for now. So no link for you! Hope you can afford that $20,000...

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15. September 27, 2011 12:20 PM

    Boom Towns Amid the Bust

    NPR finds "man camps" and $1,200 parking spaces in North Dakota

    By Ryan Chittum

    This paragraph jumps out from an NPR's All Things Considered report on an oil boom town in North Dakota: Two years ago, America was importing about two thirds of its oil. Today, according to the Energy Information Administration, it imports less than half. And by 2017, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts the US could be poised to pass Saudi Arabia...

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16. August 21, 2012 03:00 PM

    Candidates clam up on climate

    Reporters call out Obama and Romney’s silence

    By Curtis Brainard

    Nary a word has been spoken about climate change on the presidential campaign trail, and it’s a silence that some journalists find deafening. In the last few weeks, a variety of reporters have called out the candidates for utterly ignoring the issue. The Associated Press’s Steven R. Hurst, for instance, reminded readers that just four months ago, Barack Obama told...

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17. June 21, 2011 02:15 PM

    Climate Questions for the GOP

    What to ask candidates so clearly unconcerned?

    By Curtis Brainard

    During last week’s Republican presidential primary debate in New Hampshire, CNN’s John King, who served as moderator, asked questions about jobs and taxes, but not climate change. CJR reader and helpful heckler Jeff Huggins pointed out the omission in a recent comment. Indeed, the word “climate” never came up, but the candidates created their own opportunities to take pot shots...

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18. October 23, 2012 11:00 AM

    Debunking the ‘war on coal,’ take two

    The AP gets it right the second time around

    By Curtis Brainard

    If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Such was The Associated Press’s approach this month to explaining the so-called ‘war on coal’ that conservative spin doctors have been peddling throughout the presidential campaign. An October 15 article by Donna Cassata failed miserably, recycling the narrative that environmental regulations under the Obama administration are the reason for recent turmoil...

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19. October 4, 2012 04:00 PM

    No debate about environment

    Hopes for questions about climate, public lands fall flat

    By Curtis Brainard

    The presidential candidates didn’t talk about the environment during their first debate on Wednesday. Nobody really expected them to; they just hoped that they would. Leading up to the encounter, San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, InsideClimate News, and other outlets highlighted a 160,000-signature petition that nine environmental groups, including the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club, sent...

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20. November 8, 2012 03:00 PM

    Obama and the environment

    Media react to the election with speculation, some insights

    By Curtis Brainard

    Journalists didn’t leave energy and the environment out of post-election speculation about what President Obama’s second term might look like. A lot of the commentary was a recitation of the ups and downs of Obama’s record during the first four years—from tightening vehicle fuel-efficiency standards to dropping a plan to reduce smog—and prognosticating about what the next four years could...

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