Short Takes RSS
Thu, 10 Jul 2008
Katrina Washout
How will the presidential candidates continue recovery efforts? Let's ask them.
By Posted at 09:00 AM
In late August, as the Democrats convene in Denver to choose their presidential nominee, residents of the Gulf Coast will be about to enter their fourth year of recovery from Hurricane Katrina. You wouldn’t know it from press coverage of the campaign thus far. While the Gulf Coast recovery has popped up in the news here and there, coverage... Read More
Tue, 1 Jul 2008
Second Life
A storied German-language newspaper remakes itself as a magazine
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Even in this era of editorial reinvention, few media outlets have remade themselves as completely as the legendary German-language newspaper Aufbau.
Founded in 1934, the publication’s mission was to help Jewish refugees and their children shed their European past and rebuild their lives in the United States. It was, in the words of longtime editor Manfred George, “an... Read More
Thu, 26 Jun 2008
Outsourced Edit?
Newspaper ad departments are already outsourcing to India. Is editorial next?
By Posted at 09:00 AM Comments (2)
Rajesh Kumar, a twenty-six-year-old with tight jeans, long black hair, and a gold earring, drags a small black-and-white image of a pointing butler’s glove across the flat screen of his Mac. He’s designing an advertisement for the Star Tribune, a newspaper that publishes halfway around the world. The simple ad is for a home-cleaning service run by a man... Read More
Tue, 24 Jun 2008
Name-Dropping
Jay-Z? Shawn Carter? Mr. Z?
By Posted at 09:00 AM
The New York Times rarely refers to rock stars such as Alice Cooper, Moby, and Elton John by their birth names. With few exceptions, Vincent Furnier, Richard Melville Hall, and Reginald Dwight get free passes on their alter egos, as do the likes of American Idol icon Clay Aiken (Clayton Grissom) and anti-Christ
superstar Marilyn Manson (Brian Warner)....
Read More
Thu, 1 May 2008
Mission Revisited
Pundits paved the way to "Mission Accomplished"
By Posted at 12:00 PM
On May 1, 2003, President Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and told the world: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country.” The plans for securing and reconstructing weren’t so... Read More
Tue, 15 Apr 2008
Science in Arabic
A conversation with the leaders of the Arab Science Journalists Association
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Last fall, CJR’s Curtis Brainard discussed the state of science journalism in the Arab world with Nadia El-Awady and Zainab Ghosn, the president and a board member, respectively, of the nascent Arab Science Journalists Association (ASJA).
What kind of science stories do you find in the Arab world?
Nadia El-Awady: There are science topics that we all... Read More
Thu, 10 Apr 2008
Blogging the Coup
When their press was silent, Thai citizens delivered
By Posted at 09:00 AM
In September 2006, when the military overthrew the government of Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a bloodless coup, the Thai-language press had little to offer in the way of coverage or criticism. (This may have been due to the presence of soldiers in many newsrooms around the country.) Arthit Suriyawongkul, a native of Bangkok working in Germany at... Read More
Tue, 8 Apr 2008
Putting on Putin
Criticism gets creative at Russian Esquire
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Vladimir V. Putin is a fashion victim, addicted to luxurious clothes. Or at least he is according to the Russian version of Esquire magazine, which “posed” him as a model in December, the snow-peaked Kremlin towers in the background, in a pretentious fashion shoot that was actually a trick of the magazine’s art department. Putting on Putin has become a... Read More
Thu, 21 Feb 2008
Games in Palestine
Can a video game replicate reporting in a war-torn country?
By Posted at 09:00 AM
I had just arrived in the Middle East, and my editor was describing my first assignment for the wire service: I was to accompany the Israel Defense Forces on a raid of a suspected terrorist’s house. The piece would be published in a European paper that wanted a story about what happens on such missions, and how prisoners are treated.... Read More
Tue, 19 Feb 2008
Military Embeds: The World Tour
A military's handling of the media says a lot about its nation
By Posted at 09:00 AM
In February 2006, I was detained by the U.S. Army and ejected from Iraq. My crime? Reporting on the weapons and tactics used to counter Improvised Explosive Devices, in apparent violation of the ground rules for embedded media. Unbeknownst to me—and to my on-the-record source, apparently—the military considers details about radio jammers (designed to block the signals that detonate IEDs)... Read More
