The Kicker

Which reporter in which major newspaper recently granted anonymity to a source for a quotation, the lot about which Jack Shafer says: “I’ve gleaned more useful data from infomercials” and to which Shafer gives a “5” rating (“awful”) on his Was Anonymity Necessary? grading chart, which examines anonymous sources from two weeks’ worth of assorted […]

…and other assorted Obama humor

Tired of justifying his slalom toward the center, fed up with endless charges of betrayal, Barack Obama finally rolled his sleeves up and put his foot down. “Look, let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center,” he told a town-hall-ish gathering in Georgia last week. “The […]

I’m probably just still recovering from last week’s Nuts-Gate, but a pair of passages stood out to me from two separate pieces (both worth a read in their entireties) in the current issue of New York magazine. The first is from Mark Binelli’s piece, “How Joe Scarborough Reinvented Himself As The Liberal’s Favorite Talk Show […]

Adding to what Katia said yesterday: In a ten-minute interview on last night’s Hardball (airtime shared with Ron Brownstein of National Journal) Ryan Lizza got ten seconds — the final ten seconds — to talk about his New Yorker article, “Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama.” The other nine minutes and change went to That […]

A breath of fresh air on MSNBC this morning (fresh not just for MSNBC, but for political reporting in general). Mika Brzezinski caught herself offering he-said/she-said reporting, unnecessarily attributing a factually true statement to someone (in this case “critics” of President Bush’s lifting of the offshore oil drilling ban) instead of stating it as fact– […]

Well, how about this one, located safely inside this week’s issue, complete with caption (additional hint: panhandlers are not the target here; nor are, or perhaps not exclusively, the suited men).

Media whips itself into tizzy about New Yorker cover, neglects to read article

At Politico, Michael Calderone ponders whether the Associated Press’s acting Washington bureau chief, Ron Fournier, is “saving or destroying the AP” with his “accountability journalism” (an example of which I wrote about in November). Calderone reports that although Fournier has only written one piece since becoming acting bureau chief, “he intends to take on a […]

“MSNBC.com users have chosen Mitt Romney” as John McCain’s running-mate (in that online Veepstakes game). What? You’re waiting to see who John McCain chooses?

Today, The New York Times writes up the inevitable “What of Joe Lieberman?” piece, teasing the uneasy relationship between some members of the Democratic caucus and the party’s not-so-far-past vice-presidential nominee. You see, he’s now a loud McCain supporter and that makes things, well, awkward. If you’ve been following this story, there’s not too much […]

There is something both disturbing and hilarious about listening to Fox News (of “terrorist fist jab” and not-so-subtly-digitally-altered-photos-of-New York Times–reporters-who-wrote-ill-of-Fox-News fame) discussing whether this week’s New Yorker cover (depicting “terrorist fist jab”-exchanging sketched caricatures of Barack and Michelle Obama, he in a turban and she with a rifle on her back which, per the magazine, […]

The Detroit Free Press lets Sen. McCain talk (lots) for himself in its coverage of his speech on the economy at Bayloff Stamped Products in Michigan yesterday. Reading like a transcript of the exchange between McCain and his audience, it underscores the need for local media to challenge the candidates’ sound bytes and perform more […]

Considering this “mental recession” we’re in, and considering how much we’ve, apparently, been whining about said recession, I was fairly shocked to see the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s news index for this week: That’s right, folks: apparently, only 3 percent—3 percent!—of this week’s news hole was occupied in the classic American pasttime that is […]