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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged politico

1. June 13, 2011 03:46 PM

   A Broken Lede

   The government isn’t “broke.” Reporters should stop saying it is.

   By Greg Marx

   The Associated Press has an important story today about the fairly horrifying condition of many state budgets. On its site, Politico has a rewrite of the AP story. That’s a good thing: the fiscal retrenchment that’s going to result from steep state deficits seems likely to be a big, bad deal for the economy over the next couple years, and...

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2. May 23, 2011 03:55 PM

   A Great Catch by Ben Smith

   Belly-aching about the presidential field is nothing new

   By Greg Marx

   The announcement by Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana, that he won’t run for president in 2012 seems likely to spark the latest round of commentary about the supposed shallowness of the GOP field. But a sharp post from Politico’s Ben Smith offers a useful corrective to that narrative. Smith unearths from the archives of The New York Times...

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3. July 6, 2011 09:17 AM

   A kingmaker for the invisible primary

   By Greg Marx

   Yesterday, we published an interview I conducted with Hans Noel, co-author of the 2008 book The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform. The core argument of the book is that the “invisible primary” should be understood not simply—and perhaps not even principally—as a competition between candidates, but rather as an attempt by party leaders to coalesce behind a...

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4. April 23, 2012 03:17 PM

   A picture is worth a thousand memes

   Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Matt Wuerker responds to Farhad Manjoo

   By Matt Wuerker

   Farhad Manjoo thinks political cartoons are stale, stupid, and unfunny—or so he argued in Slate last week, saying that, instead of honoring cartoons, the Pulitzer committee should consider including “biting infographics, hilarious image macros, irresistible Tumblrs … clever Web comics, and even poignant listicles.” But political cartoons are neither homogeneous nor passé. They come in every shape and medium and...

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5. October 12, 2012 03:57 AM

   A Web survey isn’t a poll, CNBC

   The network's tweet creates a misleading media narrative on the veep debate

   By Ryan Chittum

   Whoever was running the CNBC Twitter feed last night didn't know the difference between a scientific poll and a Web poll: [POLL RESULTS] Who do you think won the VP Debate? Paul Ryan: 56%, Joe Biden: 36%, Neither: 8%. #CNBC2012— CNBC (@CNBC) October 12, 2012 As I'm writing this, that misinformation has been retweeted 4,838 times, favorited 405. Eh, it's...

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6. September 12, 2012 07:30 PM

   Aggregation aggravation

   Politico's Maggie Haberman has a pretty liberal view of how much to quote when aggregating. Should she be more conservative?

   By Sara Morrison

   How much aggregation is too much? It's been years since aggregator extraordinaire Huffington Post entered the online media fray, and we still haven't come up with a standard answer. Aggregation doesn’t have its own AP Stylebook, but I do think that reputable publications have gotten beyond the point where blog posts consist of a sentence or two of original content...

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7. June 10, 2011 03:39 PM

   AT&T Buys Nonprofit Support for its Anticompetitive Merger

   Politico and the Washington Post follow the money

   By Ryan Chittum

   It ought to raise eyebrows when groups like the NAACP, GLAAD, and the nation's largest teachers union lobby to approve a cellphone company merger. Fortunately it does at Politico, which has a good story looking at how AT&T's monopoly bid is getting public support from nonprofits that have nothing to do with telecom. Well, that last bit's not quite right....

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8. January 28, 2011 06:06 PM

   Audit Notes: Politico’s Goldman PR, ProPublica Vindicated, Mark to Myth

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Huffington Post's Peter S. Goodman points to a bizarre report in Politico this morning: Much was made of a brief item in the FCIC report (pg. 378) alleging that Goldman Sachs took $2.9 billion for its own account from a bailed-out AIG. Goldman has long contended that around $14 billion it received from AIG went to clients and counterparties,...

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9. January 12, 2012 08:01 PM

   Audit Notes: Romney’s Black Box, Banker Probe, Laffer Curveball

   By Ryan Chittum

   Politico makes a good point about how reporters are having something of a hard time assessing Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital: So far, the definitive and comprehensive answers to these questions have proven elusive to even the country’s best journalists because of the very private nature of private equity. The greatest privacy-destroying force known to man — an American...

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10. March 1, 2011 07:47 PM

    Audit Notes: Unnamed Source No-No, “Grassroots” Wisconsin, Kinsley

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Washington Post gives us a case study today in how not to use anonymous sources. It reports that the SIGTARP, the TARP bailout program's special inspector general, is quitting. That's significant news because Neil Barofsky has been an aggressive watchdog of the Geithner Treasury and has been (justifiably) scathing in its criticisms of its actions. So what does the...

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11. June 3, 2011 08:56 AM

    Bachmann and Pawlenty: Where’s the Policy in this Grudge Match?

    Politico misses an opportunity

    By Joel Meares

    My colleague Greg Marx on Thursday gave something of a laurel to the Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Weisman for a report on former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty’s record in that post. Marx writes that “in directing attention toward the policy record of a credible candidate, the article makes a welcome contribution to the early campaign coverage.” Politico has missed an...

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12. November 24, 2010 03:09 PM

    Big Wheel Keep on Turnin’

    Hamster for the holidays from the NYT, WSJ, and Politico

    By Ryan Chittum

    Audit boss Dean Starkman wrote a CJR cover story a couple of months ago called "The Hamster Wheel," decrying journalistic "motion for motion’s sake... news panic, a lack of discipline, an inability to say no." Haven't read it yet? It's some 3,500 words. Put down your crackberry, stop live-tweeting the 11th season premier of Dancing With the Stars, and give...

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13. March 22, 2012 04:16 PM

    Birthday Coverage for the Affordable Care Act

    The two faces of health reform

    By Trudy Lieberman

    The health reform law celebrates its two-year anniversary tomorrow. There are myriad ways to report on the Affordable Care Act and its sure-to-be-tumultuous future. Two stories showed up this week that illustrate two sides of health reform. The AP, which reaches zillions of ordinary people, reported—not surprisingly—on how the law has helped ordinary people. Politico, which reaches the Beltway types,...

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14. February 3, 2011 03:38 PM

    Covering a “Koch-Fueled” Weekend in CA

    Reports from the clandestine conservative confab

    By Liz Cox Barrett

    Charles and David Koch, the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, hosted a semi-annual, invitation-only conference for conservative political donors, strategists, and lawmakers at a resort near Palm Springs, Calif. this past weekend, as previewed back in October by The New York Times. The conference was closed to the press, the guest list was confidential, and participants were reportedly asked not...

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15. December 23, 2010 12:05 PM

    Hawaii Four-Four

    Digging deep on the president’s Christmas vacation

    By Joel Meares

    Pity the poor political writer who must spend his or her pre-holiday hours eking out a report on the President’s yearly Christmas vacation. (Pity more the writer who must report on those reports.) There is no story here. None. “Man goes to Hawaii” is more sitcom episode than headline. And yet, try they will—those hungry-for-whatever outlets that simply must find...

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16. July 20, 2012 06:50 AM

    In Joe Willams’s firing, questions of race

    Would the former Politico reporter have been dismissed for his comments if he were white?

    By Jennifer Vanasco

    In America, talk about race is complex and fraught with danger. It is easy for people of good will to stumble when discussing it - and then trip a landmine. One recent explosion seems to have led to the firing, in late June, of respected Politico reporter Joe Williams. You may have heard the story. Williams, a White House correspondent...

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17. October 18, 2012 11:30 AM

    Laurels to Politico and National Journal

    For exposing the shady side of the campaign-industrial complex

    By Greg Marx

    Back in April, an excellent column by Walter Shapiro here at CJR urged reporters on the money-in-politics beat to display some “skepticism about the self-interested role of political insiders and campaign consultants in ballyhooing the merits of unlimited campaign spending”—both to maintain some perspective about how much that spending does to decide elections and to uphold “the rights of...

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18. October 18, 2011 10:34 AM

    Link-Phobia and Plagiarism

    By Felix Salmon

    Jack Shafer has an unforgiving take on l’affaire Kendra Marr: The plagiarist defrauds readers by leading them to believe that he has come by the facts of his story first-hand-that he vouches for the accuracy of the facts and interpretations under his byline. But this is not the case. Generally, the plagiarist doesn’t know whether the copy he’s lifted has...

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19. June 12, 2012 04:59 PM

    Listen: CJR staffer on Politico and media criticism

    "I understand why a[n] ... outlet like Politico would focus primarily on the political implications, but I don’t think that represents real media criticism”

    By Kira Goldenberg

    In his very first piece for CJR last week, intern Peter Sterne criticized Politico’s story that alleged a pro-Obama bias in election coverage of the president and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. This week, Sterne went on the radio to discuss it. He was a guest on Monday on The Morning Briefing with Tim Farley on the Sirius Satellite Radio channel...

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20. December 6, 2010 04:42 PM

    Michael Kinsley Takes Issue with an Audit Criticism

    By Ryan Chittum

    Michael Kinsley writes to say I missed the point of his column asking "Are we poorer than we used to be?" Kinsley left a comment on my post, but I want to make sure it doesn't slip through the cracks. Here's his response in full: Ryan [Chittum] [correcting a misspelling of my name] writes that I "flub the numbers and...

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