The Kicker

When is the last time that you can remember that the entire front page of The New York Times was devoted to a single story? It’s another signal of how seriously the crisis–and the bill’s failure–is being taken. Also worth noting is the appearance of a service journalism Q&A (“‘Is My Money Safe?’ and Other […]

Speaking of “phoning it in…” Remember how Bono was scheduled to sit down with Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin last Thursday? And to blog about it for the FT? Well: Due to gridlock in Manhattan and the markets yesterday, our ONE campaign meeting with Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin morphed into a phone […]

Timesologist Gabriel Sherman has a good catch from over the weekend. In a Times book review of Bob Woodward’s The War Within, New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson admits that she “failed” to push hard enough for the publication of a major WMD-claim doubting piece by James Risen in the run up to the […]

Wow. Not since Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace has a piece of video been so eagerly anticipated by nerds around the country. (Ourselves, by the way, included.) Because there’s more video of the Couric/Palin interview that CBS has yet to air…and it apparently contains footage of yet another Palin gaffe. CBS has said […]

Grab ’em while they’re hot. Today’s issue of The New York Sun will be the last. The Sun may not have always been my cup of tea, but newspaper shutdowns are sad for all the things they represent–the end of an era, the laid-off reporters, the loss of a civic voice, and these days, perhaps […]

The pundits of MSNBC’s Morning Joe (and invited guests) did some self-flagellating (finger-pointing?) while exploring What Happened to Our Economy? this morning: MSNBC’s MIKE BARNACLE: Let’s talk about the failure of the institution called the media. Over the last seven or eight years we have failed to track the fact that this conservative business school […]

Talk about burying a lede. Some 1,100 words into his 1,400-word piece (“‘Substantive’ Press Is Taken for a Spin”) in today’s Washington Post, uber-critic Howie Kurtz writes, “While some journalists say privately they are censoring their comments about Palin to avoid looking like they’re piling on, pundits on the right are jumping ship.” The news […]

On MSNBC they keep calling today’s market plunge “the biggest intraday point drop ever.” Which is, as The Audit’s Dean Starkman just observed while walking by our office TV, if not pointless, not a particularly helpful way to be talking about all this. Biggest point drop in history? Does that mean Wall Street’s Worst Day […]

The cable nets are carrying the House’s bailout vote live–as the Nay votes tick up, the Dow drops down. It’s very dramatic, and I’m not afraid to say, very frightening. Of course, speculation immediately turns to Pelosi & Co. holding the clock open and twisting arms to get the bill over the top. “So we […]

Howard Kurtz visits the spin room/media tent after Friday’s presidential debate and gets this mind-boggling quote: “The spin is something we should pay less attention to, but it’s important because it can change the story line,” says NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. And the one (attention paid by reporters) clearly has nothing to do with the other […]

James Fallows recommends Fareed Zakaria’s interview on CNN with China’s premier, Wen Jiabao. “Interview appearances by Wen or president Hu Jintao are so rare, let alone with the foreign media, that this session is noteworthy simply for its existence,” writes Fallows, as well as for Wen’s “openness and non-defensiveness.” Fallows just wishes Zakaria hadn’t called […]

While Sen. Joe Biden was omnipresent in the minutes and hours after Friday’s debate, helping TV viewers understand what they just saw, Gov. Sarah Palin was nowhere to be found. Pity, per Time‘s Nancy Gibbs: Post-debate spin would have been a natural for her; a chance to be sharp and funny and charming and not […]

In case you haven’t already seen it, here’s a valuable run down of Obama’s and McCain’s more questionable debate claims from the folks at FactCheck.org, run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s no real time crowd opinion-meter, but hey, different strokes for different folks.

Todd Gitlin, who writes our “Sunday Watch” column for Campaign Desk (check out today’s, here), had a fantastic op-ed in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. Newspaper opinion pieces, for all their verbal verve or rhetorical punch, are rarely lyrical; Gitlin’s piece is, thankfully, an exception to that rule. “This election campaign is about more than its […]