The Kicker

The Washington Post has a haunting, detailed

Teaching the next generation of news consumers how to discern quality news and information from the dreck and, more importantly, why the distinction matters, is something that anyone who is serious about sustaining good journalism should support. That is precisely what the nascent news literacy movement, born in Howie Schneider’s Stony Brook lab, aims to […]

The New York Observer explores the question: “Does print journalism matter this election?” and talks to the New York Times‘s executive editor, Bill Keller, about why his paper’s front-page Sunday story on Palin (“Once Hired, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes”) didn’t seem to have coattails– cable or otherwise. In sum: it’s the Internet’s fault. […]

Every now and then, Maureen Dowd’s column reads unusually chaotic (unedited?)…. disjointed, a string of zingers without a home (until now, here, courtesy of the New York Times). Today is such a day. The column is, best I can describe: References to random bits of recent “news” from the campaign trail (the most important things […]

Remember Passport-Gate? That tense moment in which the media were fixated on the fact that Barack Obama’s—and Hillary Clinton’s!—and John McCain’s!!!—passport files had been hacked into? You’d be forgiven if you don’t. After all, the whole scandal—from Breaking News Item #1 to Breaking News Item #5—played out in, basically, one evening. One hyped-up, nervous, melodramatic […]

In the great state of Ohio, early voting in the presidential election is set to begin on September 30. (No, not a typo: September 30. Exactly two weeks from today.) In light of that fact, and in light of the fact that, “while the national electoral terrain appears to be broader than it was in […]

Bitch, the print magazine devoted to feminist analysis and media criticism, is in danger of going under. A memo on its Web site, entitled, “Bitch’s fate is in your hands,” lays it out for supporters. The bad news: “Simply put: We need to raise $40,000 by October 15th in order to print the next issue […]

“One hesitates to be too hopeful,” Megan wrote earlier today, pointing to HuffPo’s “HELLO ECONOMY, GOODBYE LIPSTICK” headline and other evidence suggesting that campaign coverage may, possibly, be taking a turn for the serious and substantial. Here‘s a similar headline now from the AP: “Forget the lipstick, economy takes over campaign.” (Is that an AP […]

Hi, reporter for important New York news outlet? Let’s say the wife of a founder of Google founded a genetic testing company, with financial and moral support from assorted media moguls whom she then gathered in one place in New York City during Fashion Week for a promotional event (billed a “Spit Party”) at which […]

Get your heads in the game, candidates!

Turns out, Part 2 of what Fox News’s on-screen graphic promised would be “Greta Goes to Alaska to Discover the Real Todd Palin,” contained all the meat (and by that I mean Van Susteren’s reference to caribou and moose meat). Part 1? No meat. Although openings were there… Was, Van Susteren wondered early in the […]

There are many questions about what role race will play in this November, but one way in which race always figures in elections is in the context of access at the polls. In the September 25 issue of The New York Review of Books, Andrew Hacker offers a comprehensive look at the legal decisions and […]

In a year of viral video, here’s a new one where independent Presidential candidate Ralph Nader bemoans the lack of press attention that his campaign (and his issues) are getting by somberly commiserating with a parrot, and wondering to what depths he may have to stoop. It’s a worthy question, deserving of a more serious […]

Gibson’s “Get” wasn’t the only one to be gotten. Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren got the “first interview” with Todd Palin, Gov. Sarah Palin’s husband and kicked off last night’s Part 2 of said interview (while donning a North Face puffy vest) by really trying to pin Palin down, to get Palin to own up […]

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