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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged the atlantic

1. November 23, 2011 11:39 AM

   A Columnist Recants, but the WSJ Edit Page Won’t Hear it

   The paper runs a flawed column and declines to publish the retraction

   By Ryan Chittum

   A year and a half ago, George Mason University economics professor Daniel B. Klein wrote a column about his finding that liberals scored much worse on a test about basic economics than libertarians and conservatives. The Wall Street Journal trumpeted it with this sneering headline: Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions...

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2. August 17, 2012 03:43 PM

   A laurel to The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta

   For calling on reporters to repeat the truth as often as needed, and showing how to do it

   By Greg Marx

   This week’s laurel goes to Garance Franke-Ruta of The Atlantic, whose astute web piece “What to Do With Political Lies,” offered some simple, useful advice for how journalists can better respond to misleading and unsubstantiated attacks on the campaign trail. Franke-Ruta starts with the premise—shared by The New Republic’s Alec MacGillis, whose frustrated post about inadequate coverage of some...

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3. March 31, 2011 03:05 PM

   An Atlantic Ghost Story

   Housing crash porn with no "there" there

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Atlantic runs a slideshow post by 24/7 Wall St.'s Douglas A. McIntyre with the click-me headline "The New American Ghost Towns"—a red flag that this piece may be oversold. Here's the lede: There are several counties in America, each with more than 10,000 homes, which have vacancy rates above 55%. The rate is above 60% in several. Hmmm. Sixty...

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4. April 19, 2012 12:00 AM

   Audit Notes: Bank Run, Silicon Valley Small-ball, Anti-Free

   By Ryan Chittum

   Michael Lewis, who says he sympathizes with the Occupy Wall Street movement, interviews himself on what he would do if he were its leader: But if I were in charge I would probably reorganize the movement around a single, achievable goal: a financial boycott of the six “ too big to fail ” Wall Street firms: Bank of America, Citigroup,...

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5. February 3, 2012 12:29 AM

   Audit Notes: CDO Charges, Facebook’s Board, Deficits

   By Ryan Chittum

   Sure enough, the Justice Department charged former Credit Suisse CDO executive Kareem Serageldin with fraud for allegedly artificially inflating CDO values. Two of his underlings pleaded guilty and say Serageldin orchestrated the scheme. The NYT: The government’s case against the former Credit Suisse traders depicts a brazen scheme to artificially increase the price of bonds on their books to create...

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6. 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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7. May 4, 2012 02:21 AM

   Audit notes: Dollar dictator, the SEC’s small fry, Americans go Swiss

   The Federal Reserve doesn't answer solely to Ben Bernanke

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Atlantic's Matthew O'Brien, whom you should really be reading, raises an important point lost in all the discussion about Ben Bernanke and whether he's doing enough to combat unemployment. Last Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, Paul Krugman showed how Chairman Bernanke's actions have been far less vigorous than Professor Bernanke would have advised. But the Fed Chairman...

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8. December 14, 2010 11:51 PM

   Audit Notes: Fallows on Orszag, The Atlantic in the Black, Google

   By Ryan Chittum

   Obama cabinet official Peter Orszag took a spin through the revolving door and ended up in a million-dollar sinecure at Citigroup, which is still part owned by the government. James Fallows has the best take on that, calling it "damaging and shocking": Shocking, in the structural rather than personal corruption that it illustrates. I believe Orszag (whom I do not...

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9. October 26, 2011 06:36 PM

   Audit Notes: More on Inequality, Les Hinton’s Memory

   By Ryan Chittum

   The inequality I talked about earlier today has been caused on a couple of levels. While the market income of the top 1 percent has exploded, it has also paid lower tax rates on that windfall. James Kwak posts this Tax Policy Center chart, which shows how the Bush tax cuts changed after-tax incomes dramatically at the tippy top and...

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10. May 8, 2012 12:55 AM

    Audit notes: News Corp.’s board, Lehman’s hubris, Awards and Slideshows

    David Carr eyes Rupert Murdoch's crony-filled board of directors

    By Ryan Chittum

    David Carr takes a look at the News Corporation board of directors, which is as stacked with the CEO's cronies as any board out there—and that's saying something: Like many media companies (including the one I work for), News Corporation has a two-tiered stock setup that gives the family control of the voting shares. The current board includes family members...

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11. August 14, 2012 01:56 AM

    Audit Notes: Romney’s Ryan taxes, FDR or Ayn Rand, Morton Mintz

    The Atlantic on what would be Mitt's "Path to Prosperity"

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Atlantic's Matthew O'Brien has the best snap financial analysis of Mitt Romney's pick of Paul Ryan as a running mate, reporting that "Under Paul Ryan's plan, Mitt Romney wouldn't pay any taxes for the next ten years -- or any of the years after that." Well, maybe not quite nothing. In 2010 -- the only year we have seen...

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12. April 21, 2011 10:46 PM

    Big Companies and Jobs, Then and Now

    By Ryan Chittum

    New York's Andre Tartar has a intriguing post on the biggest American corporations and how much their employment levels have changed over the last half a century. His conclusion: It’s a stark illustration of a hard truth: Being a top American business no longer necessarily means employing lots of American workers. The Atlantic's Derek Thompson riffs on that: Fifty years...

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13. May 10, 2012 12:58 AM

    Clearly, Quartz wants to help elites go optimize themselves

    The Atlantic’s new business site enters a crowded field catering to the 0.1 percent

    By Ryan Chittum

    The Atlantic's big new business-journalism project is off to an inauspicious start. First there's the name: Quartz, which is different, and that doesn’t mean worse, necessarily, but…whatever. It's a name. Here's the press release explaining why the venture will be called Quartz instead of The Atlantic Business, Bizlantic, Blantic or, say, Topaz or Borax: “We’re making great progress in our...

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14. August 23, 2011 12:15 PM

    Covering the Fringe Candidates

    How should the press decide which dissents to take seriously?

    By Greg Marx

    Jon Huntsman’s campaign for president doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, so why does he retain his commanding lead in the magazine profile primary? At his Atlantic blog, Conor Friedersdorf has some sharp thoughts on the appeal of the erstwhile ambassador to China—and, in particular, why Huntsman fares so well with the media compared to the similarly doomed Ron Paul...

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15. March 6, 2012 12:05 PM

    Few Female Bylines in Major Magazines

    Losing the count

    By Erin Siegal

    It's appropriate that the red, the color of passion and anger, represents the female male slice of the pie in latest set of charts created by VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.* The infographics reveal an ugly, unchanging truth: in 2011, the number of articles published by women in top thought-leader magazines was significantly less than the number of articles published...

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16. August 15, 2012 06:51 AM

    The media’s Internet infatuation

    Much of the coverage makes claims "that are grand, outlandish, and ultimately unverifiable"

    By Michael Massing

    The New York Times finds the Internet, and the business and culture surrounding it, endlessly fascinating. When Marissa Mayer was named CEO of Yahoo last month, the paper devoted more than a dozen pieces to the event, pondering everything from the ramifications of her pregnancy to the depth of the challenges she faces. “Does Facebook Turn People Into Narcissists?” Tara...

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17. July 1, 2011 02:36 AM

    The State of the Blog

    Felix Salmon Talks to Alexis Madrigal

    By Felix Salmon

    I’ve felt for a while now that the kind of blogging I do — one person writing a series of blog posts in reverse-chronological order — is dying, even if it’s not quite dead. There are still lots of great blogs out there, but my Portfolio.com guide to the econoblogosphere, now almost four years old, is not nearly as...

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