Behind the News
-
January 06, 2009 09:03 AM
Aspen New Year’s Eve Bomb Threat
Proves—once again—the value of a local paper
ASPEN, Colo. — The hottest item in the frigid early morning hours of New Year’s Day in this fashionable ski resort town was the free street edition of The Aspen Times, featuring this stark double-deck headline: “Bomb Threats Paralyze Aspen.” The front page featured an exclusive hand-written note delivered to the paper the night before by an embittered...
Continue reading -
January 05, 2009 03:12 PM
Under Presser
Okay, maybe it was "the first governmental press conference ever held on Twitter." Is that really a story?
It's a pattern familiar to the point of cliché: an international crisis—or, to be slightly more precise, a crisis that takes place in a foreign country—occurs, and in its aftermath, American media outlets produce think pieces considering how the media performed in covering said crisis. These articles will almost always find that the mainstream coverage was somehow wanting. They will...
Continue reading -
January 02, 2009 03:13 PM
RTE's New Year Wishes
New year’s resolutions for corrections and accuracy
Several months ago, I received a phone call from an editor at a major U.S. newspaper. He explained that his paper’s Web site had been hosting blogs for roughly a year, but staff had recently realized that they were without a corrections style for blog posts.
Understandably, he wanted to get something in place as soon as possible.
Every...
Continue reading -
January 02, 2009 12:00 PM
Best of 2008: Jane Kim
Kim picks her top stories from 2008
1) Vulgus, Schmulgus Bill Kristol used precious column space in the NYT to write unproductively and misleadingly about a Peggy Noonan column critiquing Sarah Palin. We wanted to set the record straight.
2) News Hog(wash) Michael Tomasky's essay in the New York Review of Books on the presidential candidates' respective media strategies was sharply written,...
Continue reading -
January 01, 2009 03:10 PM
Best of 2008: Trudy Lieberman
Lieberman picks her top stories from 2008
1) Health Care on the Mississippi By showing how real people would fare under the proposals of both candidates, the holes and warts in their plans got exposed. I remember the people I met and their struggles with health care every time I see some pronouncement from a politician or an advocacy group, and ask myself if they...
Continue reading -
December 30, 2008 12:09 PM
Best of 2008: Megan Garber
Garber picks her top stories from 2008
1) The People vs. Jeremiah Wright The media's general condemnation of Jeremiah Wright wasn't just about race or politics or the intersection between the two. It was also about dissent. The treatment of Wright, I thought, highlighted just how uncomfortable—distressingly uncomfortable—we've become with ideas that challenge the mainstream.
2) Notes on a Scandal Remember twelve...
Continue reading -
December 29, 2008 12:17 PM
Best of 2008: Clint Hendler
Hendler picks his top stories from 2008
1) The Edwards Slog Long, long ago, when John Edwards was just another Democratic candidate with an even shot to win the Iowa caucus, I joined his press retinue as he crossed the state in the last hours before the nomination season's first contest. They weren't happy to see me.
2) There's Always Hope in Hillaryland...
Continue reading -
December 26, 2008 05:18 PM
Best of 2008: Liz Cox Barrett's Picks
Barrett picks her top stories from 2008
1) Media's Mixed Nuts I personally enjoyed cataloging how reporters handled Jesse Jackson's open mic moment. So prudish. Also, I learned a new word: orchiectomy.
2) Lara Logan This is one example of an ongoing issue in media criticism: (Howard) Kurtzian buck-passing. Does the WaPo's media critic ever actually...criticize?
3) The Anti-Chris Matthews Vote...
Continue reading -
December 23, 2008 05:31 PM
Best of 2008: CJR's Ten Most Popular Stories
CJR's ten most popular stories from 2008
10. Obama's Lobbyist Line: Trudy Lieberman examined what Barack Obama really meant when he said he wasn't going to take any money from lobbyists.
9. Bubble Trouble: Megan Garber on how, as of April, the recession had yet to be profoundly felt in Washington, D.C.
8. The Inestimable Popular Vote Estimates: Clint Hendler on how to account...
Continue reading -
December 23, 2008 03:03 PM
Consumer Revolution on the Web: Overview
A comprehensive overview of CJR's recent consumer reporting conference
On November 20th 2008, nearly 100 participants from several regions of the United States and from Denmark, Norway and Ireland as well attended a one-day conference at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism
Continue reading
focused on the pressing topic: "Consumer Revolution on the Web: Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism." Co-sponsored by Columbia Journalism Review and Consumer Reports, the gathering featured... -
December 23, 2008 02:37 PM
The New Age of Citizen Journalism
Audio of the Jarvis/Darnton panel on citizen journalism
On November 20, 2008, CJR and Consumer Reports staged a conference called "Consumer Revolution on the Web: Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism." The conference was designed to address questions about how professional journalists should cover consumer issues at a time when big-name bloggers, online vigilantes, and anonymous user-reviewers have turned word-of-mouth into a powerful weapon and traditional consumer reporters are...
Continue reading -
December 23, 2008 02:31 PM
Are Consumers the Right Watchdogs?
Audio of the panel discussion on amateur vs. professional consumer reporting
On November 20, 2008, CJR and Consumer Reports staged a conference called "Consumer Revolution on the Web: Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism." The conference was designed to address questions about how professional journalists should cover consumer issues at a time when big-name bloggers, online vigilantes, and anonymous user-reviewers have turned word-of-mouth into a powerful weapon and traditional consumer reporters are...
Continue reading -
December 23, 2008 02:25 PM
David Pogue: A Reviewer Reviews the Users
Audio of the NYT columnist's keynote at CJR's recent consumer reporting conference
On November 20, 2008, CJR and Consumer Reports staged a conference called "Consumer Revolution on the Web: Opportunities and Dangers for Journalism." The conference was designed to address questions about how professional journalists should cover consumer issues at a time when big-name bloggers, online vigilantes, and anonymous user-reviewers have turned word-of-mouth into a powerful weapon and traditional consumer reporters are...
Continue reading -
December 23, 2008 01:02 PM
Books for a Hard Season, Revisited
A reader-recommended list of books for journalists
Last week, we asked readers to recommend a book to members of the journalistic community. Below, we present an alphabetized list of the recommendations we received, with a link to more information for each book. If you've left your shopping until the last minute like we have, you could do worse than to give one or more of these...
Continue reading -
December 22, 2008 03:42 PM
Reporting the Drug War
LAT’s commendable multimedia effort on Mexico’s drug war
Props to the Los Angeles Times for its ongoing series, “Mexico under Siege,” which examines the complexities of that country’s drug war and its steeply increasing death toll.
A recent article looks at drug-related killings in Ciudad Juarez, a “sprawling border city that has registered more than 1,350 slayings in 2008, about a fourth of the country's...
Continue reading -
December 22, 2008 01:00 PM
The Mail
Reviewing recent issues of Milwaukee, LA Weekly, Bitch, and more
People send us their newspapers and magazines. Sometimes, we review them.
Milwaukee Magazine, January 2009
The January 2009 issue of Milwaukee Magazine features thirty-six innovators under age forty “who will change Milwaukee.” The most notable (and interesting) picks for us are the three reporters who make the list: Sean Ryan, a twenty-eight-year-old City Hall reporter for The Daily...
Continue reading -
December 19, 2008 03:09 PM
Heisman Educators
Gladwell fails to convert on article about teachers and NFL quaterbacks
In his latest piece in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell turns his attention to hiring practices:
There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired. So how do we know whom to choose in cases like that? In recent years, a number of...
Continue reading -
December 19, 2008 11:49 AM
Everybody’s a Critic
Where professional journalists must make a stand in consumer reporting
What is a professional consumer reporter do to when the Internet has empowered anybody to be a critic of everything from cars, to credit cards, to healthcare plans? Worse still, at a time when government and industry have diminished the ability of consumers to protect themselves in an increasingly complicated marketplace?
Last month, the Columbia Journalism Review and Continue reading
-
December 17, 2008 01:23 PM
Conflict in the Congo, Part II
Congo war finally hits Times's front page, but more coverage is needed
About a month ago, I wrote that the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was an A1-worthy story that American newspapers—even a leader in international reporting like The New York Times—were giving an A6-quality treatment. Apparently the Times agreed with me. A front-pager on Dec. 11 recounted the horrifying details of a...
Continue reading -
December 17, 2008 12:52 PM
Remembering Mountain Eagle Editor Tom Gish
The local newspaper as democracy's messenger
For all the talk of the demise or irrelevancy of ink on paper, those of us who gathered last month in eastern Kentucky for the funeral of Mountain Eagle publisher and editor Tom Gish left with an even deeper belief in the essential role of the newspaper, especially the local newspaper, as democracy’s indispensable messenger.
For more than fifty years,...
Continue reading
—advertisement—
