The Audit

Scrappy Mortgage Blogger Fights Bad Court Ruling

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 10, 2009 at 12:08 PM

A reader points us to this Citizen Media Law Project report on an unlikely new front in the battle for... More

The Banking Industry’s Other Bad Loans

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 10, 2009 at 08:59 AM

Felix Salmon has an interesting chart showing what he aptly calls the "Usury Datapoint of the Day." The chart shows... More

Business-Press Beat-Sweetening

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 9, 2009 at 12:11 PM

I wrote about beat-sweeteners in my previous post and said I'd look at it in the business press next. It's... More

Slate’s Beat-Sweetener Reader

Good, but goes a bit too easy on the practice

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 9, 2009 at 11:54 AM

Timothy Noah has a fun column over at Slate on the journalism practice of "beat-sweeteners," stories written about key sources... More

The Press Buries the TARP Overseer’s Report

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 9, 2009 at 09:04 AM

The press has given short shrift to an important report by the Congressional Oversight Panel on the government's bailout efforts.... More

ProPublica Wants YOU to Dig into Obama Records

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 8, 2009 at 05:13 PM

ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative group, has rounded up a mother lode of Obama administration financial disclosures. They're asking readers to... More

NYT on Wall Street Versus Small-Town America

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 8, 2009 at 04:52 PM

The New York Times fronts a story that illustrates well the asymmetry of information between the financial industry and those... More

What I Wanna Know: Scott Harshbarger

A former Massachusetts AG offers questions for Geithner, Holder

By Scott Harshbarger   Apr 8, 2009 at 02:25 PM

“What I Wanna Know” is a new series from CJR, in which we invite outside experts to propose questions about... More

WSJ With a Big Story on Grid Spies

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 8, 2009 at 12:50 PM

The Wall Street Journal gets a major scoop on its page one this morning, reporting that China and Russia have... More

WaPo Finds Stimulus Bucks Going Further

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 8, 2009 at 09:27 AM

The Washington Post has a piece of good news (really!) on its front page today: We're going to get more... More

Doing the Math on Online Subscriptions

What do newspapers have to lose?

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 7, 2009 at 05:10 PM

Martin Langeveld over at the Nieman Journalism Lab runs some back-of-the-envelope calculations on whether charging online can work for newspapers... More

Resurgent WSJ Marches Into Glorious Future

Rivals are crushed, Aussie sister paper says; Elitists, counter-revolutionary elements on the bleedin’ run

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 7, 2009 at 02:39 PM

Here's an interesting thought experiment: What do you get when a longtime Rupert Murdoch newspaper interviews one of Murdoch's key... More

NYT Looks at the Economy’s Lost Years

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 7, 2009 at 08:54 AM

The New York Times has an interesting angle on the economy this morning, looking at how far the deep downturn... More

Good Wall Street Journal Op-ed on the Bubble’s Advent

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 6, 2009 at 03:17 PM

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page runs a must-read today on why the housing bubble has caused so much more... More

Unemployment Rate Misses True Labor Picture, Bloomberg Says

By Ryan Chittum   Apr 6, 2009 at 09:50 AM

Bloomberg has a nice story today on how the unemployment rate is woefully understating the amount of pain in the... More