The Water Cooler
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December 10, 2009 01:58 PM
Q & A: Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell
E&P’s editor-in-chief on the magazine’s sudden demise
The media industry received an unpleasant bit of news on Thursday: the magazine Editor & Publisher, which has covered the newspaper industry for over a century and won acclaim and awards over the past decade for its critical reporting, will cease publication at the end of the year. The move comes after the sale of a...
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November 24, 2009 04:45 PM
Q&A: Bob Dietz
CPJ's Asia program coordinator on the killings in the Philippines
A brutal episode in the Philippines has put violence against journalists in headlines across the world. According to press reports, a convoy of supporters for gubernatorial candidate Ismael "Toto" Mangudadatu was abducted Monday while on the way to file nomination papers for upcoming elections in Maguindanao province. Authorities soon discovered their bodies, many of them in shallow mass...
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November 18, 2009 11:25 AM
Going Mobile: An Interview with Rob Durst
Thinking about print products as interfaces to online information
Rob Durst is a Boston-based business and technology consultant who believes that newspapers can remain viable—if they move quickly and use innovations such as “mobile codes.” Anderson University communication professor David Baird asked Durst a series of questions about how print media can adapt to the challenging new environment they find themselves in.
David Baird: Is it a foregone...
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October 16, 2009 01:50 PM
Q & A: Los Angeles Times Reporter Borzou Daragahi
The paper's Beirut bureau chief talks about the situation in Iran
When political unrest erupted in Iran earlier this year in the wake of a disputed presidential election, Borzou Daragahi had a front-row seat. Born in Iran, the former Pulitzer Prize finalist is now the Beirut-based bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times. Daraghi reported directly from Iran on the post-election protests, and since leaving the country in June due to...
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September 25, 2009 04:27 PM
Q & A: Jim Brady
Guardian America's Web consultant on building audiences, brands, and a culture of innovation
Named executive editor of washingtonpost.com in late 2004, Jim Brady presided over a near-doubling in Web traffic and saw the site win numerous awards during his four-year tenure. After the Post announced plans to integrate its print and online operations, Brady stepped down earlier this year. He is now serving as a consultant to Guardian America,...
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September 11, 2009 12:40 PM
Q & A: Financial Times CEO John Ridding
How the Financial Times not only kept its readers, but even got them to pay
While newspapers fight to stay afloat, the Financial Times is doing just fine. In fact, the paper has almost doubled its subscription prices and has been charging for online content. John Ridding, the Financial Times’s CEO, recently talked to CJR’s Diana Dellamere about believing in your content, being confident in your readers, and creating strategies for a financial future.
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August 28, 2009 06:30 AM
Q & A: Charles Sennott
GlobalPost’s founder talks about his site’s recent multimedia Afghanistan package
GlobalPost co-founder Charles Sennott recently spoke to CJR about his news outlet’s recent partnering with MediaStorm for their multimedia story package on Afghanistan, called “Life, Death and the Taliban”—the first of what Sennott hopes will be many in-depth, online packages for the fledgling foreign news outlet. The series takes the Afghanistan’s pulse at a time when the country...
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August 24, 2009 03:41 PM
Transparency Interview: Amrit Singh
An ACLU attorney explains how their FOIA suit helped net the CIA’s torture report
In May, shortly after the American Civil Liberties Union’s longstanding Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking documents illuminating the United States’s interrogation policies netted key memos from the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel, CJR spoke with ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer about the long course of the lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2003 in New York’s Southern District...
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August 13, 2009 09:05 AM
Q & A: The New York Times’s Damon Winter
The Pulitzer-winning photographer on covering contentious town halls
Splashed across the front page of yesterday’s New York Times was a four-column photo of a man shouting at Sen. Arlen Specter at a town hall held earlier that morning in Lebanon, Pa., taken by photojournalist Damon Winter, who won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. The photograph neatly illustrated the...
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August 11, 2009 10:27 AM
Q & A, Part Two: Spencer Ackerman
Part two of CJR's interview with the national security reporter
This is the second part of a two-part interview with national security reporter Spencer Ackerman. The first part is here. This is an edited transcript.
Greg Marx: Let’s get away from the media for a sec and talk about issues. This F-22 vote that came through the Senate a couple weeks ago, a lot was made at the time...
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August 10, 2009 11:15 AM
Q & A: Spencer Ackerman
Part one of a two-part interview with the national security reporter
The rise of Web-based journalism has brought forth an explosion of bright, young, often left-leaning reporters and bloggers. But at a time when America is engaged in two wars and faces daunting decisions regarding its role in the world, much of the best work produced by this new generation is focused on domestic policy and politics.
The trend would be...
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July 27, 2009 11:44 AM
We Just Don’t Know: An Interview with Jonathan Glick
There may be a future for the news business, but it’s going to be unrecognizable
In the early 1990s, Jonathan Glick, a programmer and news enthusiast, approached The New York Times about taking the paper digital. That path took him to AOL, iVillage, and finally--when the paper was ready to have an independent Web presence--The New York Times Online.
At a time when the term "news business" seems increasingly like an oxymoron, Jonathan Glick shared...
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July 22, 2009 10:35 AM
The Art of Listening
Pete Hamill chats about the joys of A.J. Liebling
With his phenomenal ear and rococo prose--not to mention the sort of wit that can still leave a reader helpless with laughter and delight--A.J. Liebling (1904-1963) captivated an entire generation of readers. His mandarin style was more or less impossible to imitate. But he offered a good many subliminal lessons to the aspiring journalist, as Pete Hamill recounts in the...
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June 04, 2009 12:20 PM
Talking Shop: Yvonne Wenger
The Post and Courier’s statehouse reporter talks about covering South Carolina
Nowhere in the country is the fight over the stimulus bill more heated than in South Carolina. Governor Mark Sanford’s opposition to the federal funds has exponentially complicated the state’s already precarious financial situation. Statehouse reporter Yvonne Wenger has been on the beat since February 2005, and has been covering the twists and turns in the...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- New Financial Sheriff in Town, Part III Times highlights SEC’s latest crackdown—on an Estonian brokerage
- Audit Notes: Bloomberg Backs the Buck; WSJ on Future State Taxes; Big Money vs. Student Loansharks; Mortgage Banker Schadenfreude, etc.
The Observatory Science
- “Waves in a Shallow Pan” Has climate coverage in the MSM lost its authority?
- Dumb Blonde Story Sunday Times botches the science in piece on the “princess effect”
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Unforced Error at Salon “O’Keefe’s race problem” story goes astray on key detail
- Is Health Reform Dead or Alive? Wanted: a newsmaker to give us the word


