The WaPo‘s ombudsman, Deborah Howell, joins the choir pleading for more substance in campaign coverage: My monitoring of political stories since Nov. 12, done with my assistant Jean Hwang, shows that almost twice as many “horse race” stories (675) have been written as stories on issues (295) and biographical background (99). Part of that reflects […]

Read all about “Boogyin’ With Barack.”

From the I’d-be-cringing-in-horror-if-I-weren’t-laughing-so-hard department: footage of noted nuance-lover Barack Obama submitting to free-association game-playing while being interviewed about the economy. (Keep it snappy, Barack. No nuance allowed!) The whole thing, be warned, is incredibly, almost painfully awkward to watch. And just to clarify, it isn’t from Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show. It’s from […]

Wikipedia, aid and scourge of journalists the world over, is considering adding a layer of monitoring to protect the site and its readers against vandalism. The update to the Wiki hierarchy, currently in a kind of pilot phase in German Wikipedia, would require an editor to sign off on each update users make before those […]

Good news for all you tired, you poor, you huddled bloggers yearning not to work for free: you might be getting paid! Well, someday! Down the road! Maybe! In an interview with Colby College’s alumni magazine (h/t: Jeff Bercovici), Huffington Post CEO Betsy Morgan allowed the possibility that the “newspaper of the future” might eventually—gasp!—compensate […]

So, in addition to his many other otherworldly qualities—the leg-thrilling oratory, the generation-uniting charisma, the Halo of Hope that bathes him in a glow of light—it looks like we’ve got one more to add to the list: Barack Obama, apparently, doesn’t sweat. No, seriously. Dry as a bone. The Dems’ nominee presumptive does aspiration, yeah. […]

Earlier this week, we praised the outlets that are keeping the story of Myanmar’s devastation in both the news and the American consciousness. Among the pieces we mentioned was CNN’s on-the-ground report on the bleak situation in the Irrawaddy Delta, which depicted, in ways a print story simply cannot, the deplorable conditions so many of […]

In the wake of McCain’s and Obama’s appearances at the National Council of La Raza conference earlier this week, Jon Stewart institutes a new method of measuring their success in charming hispanic voters. (Who needs opinion polls?) “The best way to measure success in wooing the Latino community,” Stewart says, “is by using the Dobbs-O-Meter: […]

Good lord. The Washington Post, in the midst of rolling out its big, bold, incredibly odd Chandra Levy inquiry, fronts today’s paper with another searing investigation: into the danger of DC’s double decker tour buses. Seriously. Here’s the lede: Passengers riding in a double-decker sightseeing bus ducked and brushed aside low-hanging branches yesterday as they […]

Wow, who knew how many people love Rachel Maddow?? In the wake of Jacques Steinberg’s New York Times profile of the MSNBC pundette—favored, Steinberg reports-slash-suggests, to get her own anchoring gig once Chris Matthews’s contract expires next year—the often snark-laden world of media blogging has united in massive, fawning, and not-even-ironic adoration of Maddow. Vanity […]