Sunday, December 02, 2012. Last Update: Fri 3:29 PM EST
Contact | Donate | Advertise

The Industry

  1. Minority Reports — November 16, 2012 06:50 AM

    The media’s woman blaming

    Most coverage wrongly blames Paula Broadwell for leading Gen. David Petraeus astray

    By Jennifer Vanasco

    In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.

    Frank Bruni gets it.

    The New York Times columnist wrote a smart, sensitive piece this week about the Petraeus mess, calling out all those in media who heaped more blame on Paula Broadwell for the affair than they did on Gen. David Petraeus.

    What...

    Continue reading
  2. Behind the News — November 16, 2012 06:50 AM

    An Occupy Sandy photo faux pas

    A storm relief image that went viral with incorrect context serves as a social media lesson

    By Abby Ohlheiser

    A photo depicting a cluster of men in military uniform listening attentively to a woman with a plastic “OCCUPY” armband shot around the twittersphere this past weekend, cited as evidence of something pretty unusual: Occupy Sandy training the National Guard in relief work.

    A sample of tweets:

    National Guard receiving training from @occupysandy ow.ly/i/17cGF #sandy #volunteersandy

    — Occupy Wall...

    Continue reading
  3. The Observatory — November 15, 2012 03:30 PM

    What’s the MATTER?

    A Kickstarter-funded longform narrative science journalism site launches

    By Sara Morrison

    MATTER, a Kickstarter-funded longform science journalism project, launched on Wednesday with its first article, written by prominent science writer Anil Ananthaswamy. Just shy of 7,800 words, it tells the story of a man, "David," and his struggle with Body Integrity Identity Disorder. Basically, David desperately wants to cut one of his legs off. He's helped on his quest by a...

    Continue reading
  4. Behind the News — November 15, 2012 03:00 PM

    Letter from a Londoner

    The BBC is in crisis. Should you care?

    By Hazel Sheffield

    This week, the BBC celebrates its 90th birthday. As birthdays go, it’s a rather unhappy one. In the last month, reports of scandal wracking the BBC have appeared in publications across the globe, each struggling to distill the absurdities of a historical culture of pedophilia and abuse that infiltrated Britain’s treasured public broadcaster. (Emily Bell has one of the best...

    Continue reading
  5. Between the Spreadsheets — November 15, 2012 11:50 AM

    Decision 2012: Who mapped it best?

    From Daily Beast's red/blue simplicity to WNYC's intricate oranges, greens, and purples

    By Anna Codrea-Rado

    Data journalism and information visualization is a burgeoning field. Every week, Between the Spreadsheets will analyze, interrogate, and explore emerging work in this area. Between the Spreadsheets is brought to you by CJR and Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

    As CJR's Meta Newsroom showed, a glut of media outlets incorporated digital innovation into their reporting during the recent election....

    Continue reading
  6. The Kicker — November 15, 2012 07:37 AM

    Boo wins National Book Award

    For her debut work about an Indian slum

    By Kira Goldenberg

    New Yorker staff writer Katherine Boo has won a National Book Award for her debut nonfiction work Behind the Beautiful Forevers, the National Book Foundation announced on Wednesday night.

    CJR profiled Boo in our July/August issue, where she spoke about her development as a writer of slow, careful, descriptive journalism. Read it here, and check out our review of...

    Continue reading
  7. #Realtalk — November 15, 2012 06:50 AM

    Call me, maybe

    How to get sources, other journalists, and editors to respond to you

    By Ann Friedman
    Sometimes the likelihood of my pitch being accepted hinges on my accessibility to a particular interview subject, or the likelihood of the subject agreeing to the interview hinges on the reputation of the proposed publication. The problem comes when both contingencies occur on the same pitch. When I'm not on close terms with either the subject or the outlet—but I...

    Continue reading
  8. The Kicker — November 14, 2012 04:23 PM

    Marcus the unlucky

    Good fortune followed by bad, and again

    By Mike Hoyt

    Scott Sherman, in "A Rocket's Trajectory," his fine profile of Marcus Brauchli in the September/October 2010 issue of CJR, noted that the man is ambitious but unlucky. Good luck is followed by misfortune, which is followed by good luck, and then again, bad.

    He started in the basement of Dow Jones, and, twenty-three years later, clawed his way to...

    Continue reading
  9. The Kicker — November 14, 2012 11:00 AM

    Two music journos plan a longform site

    The duo is running a Kickstarter campaign to finance UNCOOL

    By Hazel Sheffield

    Two music journalists from Los Angeles have launched a Kickstarter to fund a reader-supported, ad-free longform site. David Greenwald (Billboard, GQ) and Daniel Siegal (Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times) are behind UNCOOL, which landed on Kickstarter on November 8 and is seeking $54,000 by January to make the project happen.

    “This is more about the fact that there...

    Continue reading
  10. The Kicker — November 13, 2012 12:49 PM

    Learn about Marty Baron

    The incoming Washington Post editor visited Columbia's j-school last year

    By Kira Goldenberg

    The Washington Post announced on Tuesday that editor Marcus Brauchli is stepping down and will be succeeded by Boston Globe editor Martin Baron.

    Last year, Baron came to the Columbia Journalism School to speak to students about the changing newspaper industry, and he sat down with former CJR assistant editor Alysia Santo for an interview. "Our aim is to...

    Continue reading
  11. Behind the News — November 13, 2012 11:00 AM

    Stories I’d like to see

    The clown-show economics of storm-hit utilities, and in search of open primaries

    By Steven Brill

    In his weekly “Stories I’d like to see” column, journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill spotlights topics that, in his opinion, have received insufficient media attention. This article was originally published on Reuters.com.

    1. My Alaska-Hawaii electricity repair team:

    It’s 10 o’clock and the lights are out. Do you know where your local utility actually lives?

    I have already written that...

    Continue reading
  12. The Kicker — November 13, 2012 06:50 AM

    Who really holds leverage on Bush tax cuts?

    Bloomberg's Barro argues even post-"cliff," GOP would have the upper hand

    By Greg Marx

    My Friday post about how reporters are missing a big part of the “fiscal cliff” story—the leverage President Obama and congressional Democrats can gain in the debate over rich people’s taxes by not doing anything until after the New Year—opened by approvingly citing a blog post by Slate’s Matt Yglesias. And I added an update at the end flagging a...

    Continue reading
  13. Swing States Project — November 12, 2012 02:50 PM

    A dart to Yahoo Finance

    For utterly confusing its readers about Social Security

    By Trudy Lieberman

    By now we’re accustomed to weak reporting about Social Security, but a piece on Yahoo Finance, part of its “Just Explain It” series, is a real doozey. It does not come within one centimeter of explaining Social Security, and instead misleads the 16,089 readers, as of mid-day Monday, who have weighed in with comments, plus thousands of others who...

    Continue reading
  14. Minority Reports — November 12, 2012 06:50 AM

    Historic votes, hidden from live coverage

    The four gay marriage votes in last week's election were hard to follow in real-time

    By Jennifer Vanasco

    In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.

    Do you know what was most frustrating to me about the election last week? Trying to track real-time results for the ballot questions on same-sex marriage in four states.

    Maine, Maryland, and Washington all asked voters if gays and lesbians should have marriage equality in...

    Continue reading
  15. Behind the News — November 11, 2012 12:09 PM

    What’s happening at the BBC

    The Corporation is facing a serious challenge to its future and to its independence

    By Emily Bell

    “To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” —Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

    A very British crisis needs a very British epigraph. The BBC has lost not one, but two directors general in the space of three months. The first, Mark Thompson, left the Corporation under what seemed like...

    Continue reading
  16. The Kicker — November 9, 2012 03:24 PM

    Pass the #popcorn

    Don't treat CNN's Don Lemon like "the help"

    By Sara Morrison

    According to a recent Pew study, 15 percent of adults online use Twitter — 8 percent daily. I’m pretty sure most of that 8 percent are journalists. Journalists love Twitter, whether using it for writing, conversation, or fighting. And I love to watch—and judge—the sparring.

    If you see a #JournoTweetFight that you think merits inclusion, please give me a heads...

    Continue reading
  17. Behind the News — November 9, 2012 03:00 PM

    Now This News launches an app to grow its global audience

    A new mobile and social news service for millennials is evolving

    By Hazel Sheffield

    Things have been going well for Now This News since a spate of stories in September announced that the video news service was creeping onto the scene with some impressive hires. The mobile and social-focused startup, founded by Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer with former HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau and Bedrocket’s Brian Bedol, rolled out its app, targeted at 18-34...

    Continue reading
  18. The Kicker — November 9, 2012 07:05 AM

    And the award for sexist pig goes to…

    Feminist media watchdogs gave out awards for sexist campaign coverage

    By Sara Morrison

    The Women's Media Center celebrated the end of election season on Thursday by giving out awards for sexist coverage of female politicians through WMC's "Name It. Change It." project. Sadly, there was no red carpet for the awards ceremony (which happened during a webinar presented by WMC president Julie Burton, That She Should Run foundation CEO and president Siobhan “Sam”...

    Continue reading
  19. Behind the News — November 8, 2012 03:00 PM

    Letter from a Londoner

    Mark Thompson must sink his teeth into the Times

    By Hazel Sheffield

    Journalists at The New York Times are suddenly not feeling so confident about their new chief executive. In the last month, Thompson’s judgement was called into question, because he was the director-general of the BBC when an in-house investigation there into alleged sex abuse by a well-loved former personality was shelved. Thompson hasn’t helped matters by flip-flopping when asked what...

    Continue reading
  20. #Realtalk — November 8, 2012 06:50 AM

    Who generates story ideas?

    When writers expect editors to do the all the legwork

    By Ann Friedman
    I am the managing and news editor at my university paper. I'm having problems getting the staff writers to pitch their own stories. It's my job to schedule the news, but I'm burning out. I find that I spend all my time off scouring university documents, agendas, calendars, and other news sources just to barely fill our daily paper while...

    Continue reading
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
—advertisement—

Desks

The Audit Business
The Observatory Science
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
Behind the News The Media

Receive a FREE Issue

of Columbia Journalism Review
  • If you like the magazine, get the rest of the year for just $19.95 (6 issues in all).
  • If not, simply write cancel on the bill and return it. You will owe nothing.

Blog

The Kicker last updated: Fri 3:00 PM
More
Join The CJR E-mail List

The Future of Media

News Startups Guide last updated: Thu 10:24 AM
More

Spirits
Time-lapse of the northern and southern lights over Norway

More

The Magazine

Nov/Dec 12

More
RSS More Feeds

Audio / Podcast

More

Editors' Picks