Media

Space age

CJR Daily - October 7, 2013 - 1:50pm
A few years ago, a student journalist wrote a profile for a class that recalled how she found her calling: "Her love for photojournalism came from spending evenings in a dark room with her father." The student could not understand why the professor doubled over with laughter. "I think you meant darkroom, not dark room," the prof said. "What's the...
Categories: Media

Aggregating Congress

CJR Daily - October 7, 2013 - 1:50pm
FAIRWAY, KS -- In the five days leading up to the government shutdown on Oct. 1, Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas was a busy man. He helped lead the charge of Tea Party Republicans pushing House leadership to refuse to fund the government unless Obamacare was defunded or delayed--making a cameo on the Senate floor to plot strategy with Republicans...
Categories: Media

Breaking Away: Top Public Universities Push for ‘Autonomy’ From States

Pro Publica - October 7, 2013 - 11:46am

The chancellor of Oregon’s higher-education system currently oversees all seven of the state’s public colleges and universities. But as of July next year, she’ll be chancellor of four.

The schools aren’t closing. Rather, Oregon’s three largest state schools are in the process of breaking away from the rest of the public system.

The move, long pushed by some university leaders in the system, will give the University of Oregon, Portland State University and Oregon State University more freedom to hire and fire presidents, issue revenue bonds, and raise tuition.

Across the country, a small but growing number of public universities are making similar pushes, looking to cut deals with state lawmakers that scale back direct oversight, often in return for less funding or for meeting certain performance targets. Over the past few years, schools in Texas, Virginia and Florida have all gotten more flexibility to raise tuition. Other plans have recently been broached, though with less success, in Wisconsin, California and Louisiana.  

The proposals vary in scope, but their proponents generally argue that more autonomy allows public universities to operate with less red tape and with greater freedom to raise revenue as state funding has fallen.  

But many within higher education point to the potential downsides. They worry that these universities -- often the better-known and wealthier public universities -- could end up sidelining broader state goals such as access and affordability in pursuit of their own agendas, such as moving up in college rankings.

“My fear is that if public flagships become so focused on revenue and prestige, and so focused on autonomy, they will minimize their commitment to the public agenda,” said Richard Novak, who was previously director of public-sector programs at the Association of Governing Boards. “They should be leading the public agenda. If they privatize too much, they’re not going to be doing it for much longer.”

Others have similar concerns.

“I think there’s a potential for confusion, unhealthy competition and misuse of resources,” said Robert O’Neil, who headed the statewide University of Wisconsin system and was also president of the University of Virginia. In O’Neil’s experience, centralized oversight helps keep in check ambitions that might lead colleges to pursue wasteful projects or duplicative programs.

There’s relatively little research on the overall benefits or drawbacks of schools gaining autonomy, but it does appear that such universities often end up resembling private colleges, moving toward a “high tuition, high aid” model in which schools hike sticker prices significantly while offering big discounts to students schools are trying to attract.  (As ProPublica has detailed, state schools have been giving a growing portion of grants to wealthier students and a shrinking portion to the neediest.) 

State and university officials pushing for more autonomy often balk at the term “privatization,” noting that the universities aren’t severing all ties with the state.

As one planning group at the University of Virginia wrote last month, “Autonomous is not the opposite of public.”

The University of Virginia, along with two other state universities, struck deals in 2005 that won it significant autonomy from the Commonwealth. Those agreements mandated that the schools still meet various benchmarks -- but they also gave the universities wiggle room.

Three years after the deal, a state audit report concluded that while the schools were meeting their “access” goals, the number of low-income students at each of the universities -- as measured by federal Pell grants -- was actually decreasing. (A university spokesman said enrollment of low-income students has gone up since then.)   

Even some supporters of moving toward privatization have begun to have second thoughts. 

James Garland, former president of Miami University, a public university in Ohio, was once a strong proponent of what he calls “semi-privatization” of American public universities, having headed a university that he describes as “public in name only.” In 2009, he wrote a book arguing that public universities should be autonomous and deregulated by their states.

In the years since, Garland said, his views on the autonomy question have “mellowed.” Though he still believes autonomy can make sense for some schools, he’s also concerned about the potential pitfalls.

“Some of these flagships would like to make decisions that benefit their own financial future and give them the ability to build posh dining halls or giant stadiums or create new nanotechnology centers,” Garland said, “when what really may be more needed than that is simply providing a high-quality rigorous college education for legions of students in the state who can’t afford that now and have no place to go and get it.”

“It’s not an accident that you see this happening among big, well-funded publics,” Garland added.

At the University of Virginia, internal discussion of further steps toward privatization has continued. As the Washington Post recently reported, a draft report from a university planning committee recommended “another major restructuring of the relationship between the University and the Commonwealth.” The document notes that the change “would not mean complete privatization.”

University of Virginia spokesman McGregor McCance said the draft report was part of early discussions about possible models for public higher education, and that there are no plans for the university to ask for additional autonomy.

Colleges and universities that do seek to move in this direction need to have candid conversations about their goals, said Garland: “As more and more schools argue successfully for some kind of autonomy from their states, there has to be a real understanding about what the mission of those schools is going to be in the future and there has to be some way of evaluating their conformity to that mission.”

In Oregon, they’re still feeling their way through. All of the state’s public colleges will still be overseen in some way by a coordinating commission. That includes the three largest schools, which, even with their new freedoms, will still need the commission to approve certain items, such as tuition hikes beyond 5 percent. The details of how that system of checks and balances will work -- and how the change will affect the smaller universities still part of the system -- remain to be seen.

“It’s such a turbulent time for higher education, there’s a lot to be said for helping to position institutions to be much more nimble when it comes to shaping the business and delivery of higher education,” said Ben Cannon, the governor of Oregon’s education policy advisor, who was recently appointed head of the commission.

As to whether the new autonomy will actually help schools become more nimble, Cannon acknowledged, “It’s kind of unproven.”

Asked what they will call the new structure and whether the “Oregon University System” will nominally continue to refer to all seven universities, Cannon said that was still being decided.

“That’s a complicated question. The labels are still up for grabs,” Cannon said. “The structure really isn’t. That’s done.”

Categories: Media, Politics

Results of Our 2013 Reader Survey

Pro Publica - October 7, 2013 - 10:45am

We’ve got the results of ProPublica’s latest reader survey, fielded last week, and we wanted to share them with you.

Before turning to the results, many thanks to the 2,274 people who took the time to respond to the survey over just six days. The results are not scientific, but we do think they provide a meaningful reflection of the views and habits of our most committed readers.

Among the findings:

  • For all the growth of social media, mobile platforms and constant access (very much evident in the results, of course), there was also an important reminder that home PC’s remain the preferred way to consume long-form online journalism for a large plurality of respondents (68%);
  • The decline of legacy print may have plateaued a bit, at least for ProPublica readers. We began taking our surveys in 2008, the year we began publishing. When we asked that year about our readers’ primary source of national news, 57% said online. By 2010, it had risen to 60%, by 2011, 68%. This year it’s 67%, not a meaningful difference, but at least a pause in the trend. On the other end of the scale, print newspapers were the primary source for 21% in 2008, 18.5% in 2010, 13% in 2011 and 15% this year. Again, not such a significant shift as to mark a reversal, but still intriguing.

You still seem to like what we do, which we deeply appreciate. Fully 90% find the length of ProPublica stories “just right” (and the rest are almost exactly evenly split between wishing them longer and shorter). Nearly 78% approve of how often we post stories, and almost all of the rest wish we’d post more. Readers are most likely to look regularly at our longer features and investigations (88%), but almost half also look regularly at MuckReads links to investigations by other news organizations, and 42% look regularly at shorter stories and blog posts.

With respect to who you are, you remain a very impressive group. Fully 82% have a college degree, and more than half of these (47% of all readers) a graduate degree. More than one in eight live outside the U.S. The median household income is just below $75,000 (and this includes a substantial component of readers who are students or retired). Nearly one-third of you have a household net worth above half a million dollars. You’re actively on social media, with more than two-thirds on Facebook, and more than a third on each of LinkedIn and Twitter. Your median age remains in the 50s, but one in eight are under 35. Fully 60% are male and 40% female, which isn’t unusual for online news, but this is some progress from 62% male in 2011 and 64% in 2008.

As we have with previous surveys, we want to report on the question of ideology, one that comes up a lot in discussion of news organizations these days. The findings were consistent with those we’ve seen before. A substantial plurality of you (46%) consider ProPublica “non-ideological”—as we do. The rest are almost evenly split between seeing us as liberal (29%) and moderate (24%); very few regard us as conservative. This is at substantial variance from how you classify yourselves, with just 13% calling themselves “non-ideological” and 60% liberal, with 21% moderate; 5% of readers call themselves conservative. Presidential election exit polls last year showed voters self-described as 41% moderate, 35% conservative and 25% liberal.

Categories: Media, Politics

WaPo eyes FDA access-peddling by academics

CJR Daily - October 7, 2013 - 9:47am
We write a lot about Wall Street corruption here at The Audit. But if you ask me, Wall Street's got nothing on Big Medicine, where the stakes are even bigger. In just the last four years, four major pharmaceutical companies have reached billion-dollar settlements for criminal activities. Check out this rap sheet of kickbacks, illegal marketing, and fraud by drug...
Categories: Media

UNITY at a crossroads

CJR Daily - October 7, 2013 - 9:10am
With the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) already gone, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) halfway out the door, David Steinberg has his work cut out for him as the new president of UNITY: Journalists for Diversity. Not only does he need to figure out how to repair relationships with NABJ and NAHJ, Steinberg also will need...
Categories: Media

Must-reads of the week

CJR Daily - October 4, 2013 - 1:50pm
Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week: If it happened there ... the government shutdown -- American events described using the tropes and tone normally employed by the American media to describe events...
Categories: Media

Reviewing Obamacare coverage: Week 1

CJR Daily - October 4, 2013 - 1:42pm
It's been overshadowed a little bit by the shutdown in Washington, but this week marked the rollout--at long last--of the Affordable Care Act, and with it came a wave of media attention. Over the next few weeks as implementation moves along, the early glitches (hopefully) get sorted out, and people sign up for insurance, we'll pass along our take on...
Categories: Media

Taking stock in Texas

CJR Daily - October 4, 2013 - 10:54am
AUSTIN, TX -- Last week on the sprawling, sunny campus of the University of Texas at Austin, some of the most established and up-and-coming media leaders in this state came together at an event organized by CJR and the UT School of Journalism to assess the state of accountability reporting--and where it can go from here. What ensued was a...
Categories: Media

Audit Notes: Stuart Varney, German papers, Pando garbage

CJR Daily - October 4, 2013 - 10:00am
Media Matters catches Fox Business's Stuart Varney in a viler-than-usual moment calling in to a radio show (emphasis mine): HOWELL: Do you think that federal workers, when this ends, are deserving of their back pay or not? VARNEY: That is a loaded question isn't it? You want my opinion? This is President Obama's shutdown. He is responsible for shutting this...
Categories: Media

Shutdown Prompts Rare Government Mix: Imagination and Laughter

Pro Publica - October 4, 2013 - 8:38am

The taped speech sounded almost like a confession, even a hostage plea.

“My name is Chris Galvin,” the faceless voice said, blaring out over the microphones in a conference room in the basement of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Bethesda, Md., on Wednesday afternoon. “I’m an analyst with the Office of Evaluation and Inspections for the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services. If you are listening to this, I apologize that I am unable to be there in person.”

Galvin, of course, was shut down, one of almost 800,000 federal employees deemed non-essential and sent home until Congress agrees on a bill to fund the government.

He had been slated to appear at a conference sponsored by the Drug Information Association, a global nonprofit organization. The conference had been scheduled for months, and was meant to wrestle with the push for greater transparency in the world of clinical drug trials.

Almost 100 people showed up, mostly from across the United States, but also from Canada, Denmark and Germany. Most spent at least $595 to attend (except for the media, who graciously were allowed in for free). There were top officials from pharmaceutical companies, leading academics, consultants, patient advocates and two officials from the Canadian government.

What was missing: Their counterparts, the U.S. officials. Suffice it to say, it left some major holes in certain sessions.

In some ways, the conference, held on Tuesday and Wednesday in the hotel’s Haverford suite, with a small stage, inconsistent audio, a large screen backed by beige curtains, and round tables with floor-dragging white tablecloths, is a microcosm of how the country has been MacGyvering its way through the government shutdown. Most people have been finding workarounds, waiting for Congress to quit bickering, hoping that the shutdown will be lifted before something really bad happens, like poor children running out of food or, well, not getting enrolled in clinical trials for new cancer drugs.

In other ways, the conference shows how no stopgap really substitutes for the real thing, even when the real thing is the notoriously cautious and circumspect Food and Drug Administration or its parent agency, HHS.

A pharmaceutical executive and a consultant ended up reading the slides from two U.S. government officials who didn’t record their comments. PowerPoint fatigue set in. And little useful clarity emerged about where the FDA actually stood on enforcing requirements for greater and accurate disclosure of certain clinical trial results.

The determination of the conference to stay on schedule, and to hold sessions even without the government speakers, ultimately came to seem like an odd, but kind of admirable, act of defiance. Elsewhere, other meetings challenged by a distinct lack of government participants just folded. For example, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board  — better known as PCLOB —canceled its planned hearing on Friday, after being notified “by a significant number of witnesses that they are unable to testify.”

Galvin, for sure, went beyond the call of duty. He could have just skipped the clinical drug trial conference.

But he prerecorded his speech, even saying “next slide” whenever the moderator was supposed to click ahead in his PowerPoint presentation. (There was one moment when what sounded like a guitar string interrupted the recording, inexplicably. The audience laughed.)

Many of the conference’s participants had been most interested in his final session, “Clinical Trial Disclosure—FDA Enforcement Activities,” held on Wednesday afternoon, and featuring Galvin and Jarilyn Dupont, the director of regulatory policy for the Food and Drug Administration. In fact, some participants mentioned that it was the main reason they traveled to Bethesda, curious what the FDA would say, especially since FDA enforcement of clinical trial disclosure rules so far seems to be just as quiet as their offices this week.

The final session’s moderator, Robert Paarlberg, a pharmaceutical consultant who specializes in global clinical trial disclosure strategy and regulations, did his best. He launched into the enforcement session, using a picture of a kayaker landing on a whale, saying that he didn’t want anyone in the audience to be stuck in that position. Two of the three chairs for speakers, reserved for Galvin and Dupont, sat empty.

First, the lone speaker, Mark Barnes, a lawyer and medical research expert with Ropes & Gray in Boston, spoke about enforcement for about a half-hour. Then Paarlberg turned on the tape of Galvin, while clicking through Galvin’s slides.

At the end, Galvin said: “Once again, I am sorry I was unable to be there and perhaps answer questions. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact me.” Galvin then gave his email address.

There was a pause, before a bit of confused clapping.

“But he can’t answer the email until after this is over,” Paarlberg reminded everyone.

Categories: Media, Politics

After the uproar

CJR Daily - October 4, 2013 - 5:50am
Earlier this year, photographer Sara Lewkowicz caught a moment of domestic violence on camera. Lewkowicz had been working the tedious documentary slog, spending long days and nights with a couple named Maggie and Shane, hoping to cull from their daily lives images that would tell a story about returning veteransrecidivism. Instead, Lewkowicz ended up with images of abuse. Six of...
Categories: Media

Hank Greenberg's narcissistic and deluded defense of Jamie Dimon

CJR Daily - October 4, 2013 - 5:50am
This Hank Greenberg column in the Journal on Tuesday is more shameless than your average WSJ op-ed. And that's saying something. Greenberg, whose too-big-to-fail company played a critical role—perhaps the critical role—in goosing the housing bubble by acting as a sort of dump for Wall Street's mortgage-securities risk, comes to the defense of JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, who's been getting...
Categories: Media

When scientists attack

CJR Daily - October 3, 2013 - 2:30pm
Spend extended time reading the science press, and it's easy to think that science is a one-note story about the amazing discoveries that happen in test tubes and laboratories. In reality, there's a plethora of under-covered science angles, most notably the politics of research funding and science policy. That's why Stéphane Horel and Brian Bienkowski deserve a laurel for an...
Categories: Media

Florida goes solo on Common Core tests

CJR Daily - October 3, 2013 - 1:50pm
MIAMI, FL -- When Gov. Rick Scott announced last week he was pulling Florida out of a multi-state consortium working to create tests that will assess students' mastery of the new Common Core curriculum standards beginning next school year, the news appropriately drew wide coverage from the state's press corps. Journalists here sketched out in broad terms what the news...
Categories: Media

How a Telecom Helped the Government Spy on Me

Pro Publica - October 3, 2013 - 1:00pm

Over the past several months, the Obama Administration has defended the government’s far-reaching data collection efforts, arguing that only criminals and terrorists need worry. The nation’s leading internet and telecommunications companies have said they are committed to the sanctity of their customers’ privacy.

I have some very personal reasons to doubt those assurances.

In 2004, my telephone records as well as those of another New York Times reporter and two reporters from the Washington Post, were obtained by federal agents assigned to investigate a leak of classified information. What happened next says a lot about what happens when the government’s privacy protections collide with the day-to-day realities of global surveillance.

The story begins in 2003 when I wrote an article about the killing of two American teachers in West Papua, a remote region of Indonesia where Freeport-McMoRan operates one of the world’s largest copper and gold mines. The Indonesian government and Freeport blamed the killings on a separatist group, the Free Papua Movement, which had been fighting a low-level guerrilla war for several decades.

I opened my article with this sentence: “Bush Administration officials have determined that Indonesian soldiers carried out a deadly ambush that killed two American teachers.”

 I also reported that two FBI agents had travelled to Indonesia to assist in the inquiry and quoted a “senior administration official” as saying there “was no question there was a military involvement.’’

The story prompted a leak investigation. The FBI sought to obtain my  phone records and those of  Jane Perlez, the Times bureau chief in Indonesia and my wife. They also went after the records of the Washington Post reporters in Indonesia who had published the first reports about the Indonesian government’s involvement in the killings.

As part of its investigation, the FBI asked for help from what is described in a subsequent government report as an “on-site communications service” provider. The report, by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, offers only the vaguest description of this key player, calling it “Company A.’’

“We do not identify the specific companies because the identities of the specific providers who were under contract with the FBI for specific services are classified,’’ the report explained.

Whoever they were, Company A had some impressive powers. Through some means – the report is silent on how – Company A obtained  records of calls made on Indonesian cell phones and landlines by the Times and Post reporters. The records showed whom we called, when and for how long -- what has now become famous as “metadata.”

Under DOJ rules, the FBI investigators were required to ask the Attorney General to approve a grand jury subpoena before requesting records of reporters’ calls. But that’s not what happened.

Instead, the bureau sent Company A what is known as an “exigent letter’’ asking for the metadata.

A heavily redacted version of the DOJ report, released in 2010, noted that exigent letters are supposed to be used in extreme circumstances where there is no time to ask a judge to issue a subpoena. The report found nothing “exigent’’ in an investigation of several three-year-old newspaper stories.

The need for an exigent letter suggests two things about Company A. First, that it was an American firm subject to American laws. Second, that it had come to possess my records through lawful means and needed legal justification to turn them over to the government.

The report disclosed that the agents’ use of the exigent letter was choreographed by the company and the bureau. It said the FBI agent drafting the letter received “guidance” from “a Company A analyst.’’  According to the report, lawyers for Company A and the bureau worked together to develop the approach.

Not surprisingly, “Company A” quickly responded to the letter it helped write. In fact, it was particularly generous, supplying the FBI with records covering a 22-month period, even though the bureau’s investigationwas limited to a seven-month period.Altogether, “Company A” gave the FBI metadata on 1,627 calls by me and the other  reporters.

Only three calls were within the seven-month window of phone conversations investigators had decided to review.

It doesn’t end there.

The DOJ report asserts that “the FBI made no investigative use of the reporters’ telephone records.” But I don’t believe that is accurate.

In 2007, I heard rumblings  that the leak investigation was focusing on a diplomat named Steve Mull, who was the deputy chief of mission in Indonesia at the time of the killings. I had known Mull when he was a political officer in Poland and I was posted there in the early 1990s. He is a person of great integrity and a dedicated public servant.

The DOJ asked to interview me. Of course, I would not agree to help law enforcement officials identify my anonymous sources. But I was troubled because I felt an honorable public servant had been forced to spend money on lawyers to fend off a charge that was untrue. After considerable internal debate, I decided to talk to the DOJ for the limited purpose of clearing Mull.

It was not a decision I could make unilaterally. The Times also had a stake in this. If I allowed myself to be interviewed, how could the Times say no the next time the government wanted to question a Times reporter about a leak?

The Times lawyer handling this was George Freeman, a journalist’s lawyer, a man Times reporters liked having in their corner. George and the DOJ lawyers began to negotiate over my interview. Eventually, we agreed that I would speak on two conditions: one, that they could not ask me for the name of my source; and two, if they asked me if it was ‘X,’ and I said no, they could not then start going through other names.

Freeman and I sat across a table from two DOJ lawyers. I’m a lawyer, and prided myself on being able to answer their questions with ease, never having to turn to Freeman for advice.

Until that is, one of the lawyers took a sheaf of papers that were just off to his right, and began asking me about phone calls I made to Mull. One call was for 19 minutes, the DOJ lawyer said, giving me the date and time. I asked for a break to consult with Freeman.

We came back, and answered questions about the phone calls. I said that I couldn’t remember what these calls were about – it had been more than four years earlier – but that Mull had not given me any information about the killings. Per our agreement, the DOJ lawyers did not ask further questions about my sources, and the interview ended.

I didn’t know how the DOJ had gotten my phone records, but assumed the Indonesian government had provided them. Then, about a year later, I received a letter from the FBI’s general counsel, Valerie Caproni who wrote that my phone records had been taken from “certain databases” under the authority of an “exigent letter,’’ (a term I had never heard).

Caproni sent similar letters to Perlez, to the Washington Post reporters, and to the executive editors of the Post and the Times, Leonard Downie and Bill Keller, respectively. In addition, FBI Director Robert Mueller called Downie and Keller, according to the report.

Caproni wrote that the records had not been seen by anyone other than the agent requesting them and that they had been expunged from all databases.

I’m uneasy because the DOJ report makes clear that the FBI is still concealing some aspect of this incident. After describing Caproni’s letters, the report says: “However, the FBI did not disclose to the reporters or their editors that [BLACKED OUT).”  The thick black lines obliterate what appear to be several sentences.

dc.embed.loadNote('http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/801274/annotations/124414.js');

If you were to ask senior intelligence officials whether I should wonder about those deletions, they’d probably say no.

I’m not so sure.

The government learned extensive details about my personal and professional life. Most of those calls were about other stories I was writing. Some were undoubtedly to arrange my golf game with the Australian ambassador. Is he now under suspicion? The report says the data has been destroyed and that only two analysts ever looked at it.

But who is this 'Company A" that willing cooperated with the government?  Why was it working hand in glove with the FBI? And what did the FBI director not tell the editors of the Times and the Washington Post when he called them acknowledging the government had improperly obtained reporter's records?



Raymond Bonner, a lawyer and former New York Times reporter, is the author of "Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong."

Categories: Media, Politics

Awareness weak

CJR Daily - October 3, 2013 - 10:00am
You know it's October because of the pink. Breast Cancer Awareness Month has become inescapable, making the rare leap from a fake observance to a cultural moment. People are diagnosed with breast cancer every day of the year, but October is when we read their inspiring survival stories in women's magazines. "Awareness months" are tailor-made for the sort of reporting...
Categories: Media

Audit Notes: DealBook on JPMorgan excuses, Journal-Sentinel, AngelList

CJR Daily - October 3, 2013 - 5:50am
The New York Times's Peter Eavis has another excellent story for the paper's often-Wall Street-friendly DealBook on JPMorgan Chase and its legal woes. Eavis methodically dispenses with several arguments about why it's supposedly unfair for JPMorgan to pay for the crimes of its acquisitions, specifically for Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns: But JPMorgan may not be the martyr some think...
Categories: Media

5 threads reporters missed on Obamacare

CJR Daily - October 2, 2013 - 5:00pm
On Tuesday, the Affordable Care Act made its official debut, adding another patch to America's patchwork quilt of health insurance. This fix retains the system of private health insurance and private delivery of care, but aims to brings another 24 or 25 million people under the insurance cover. They are people who, for the most part, did not have insurance...
Categories: Media

Key Reads on Government Shutdowns

Pro Publica - October 2, 2013 - 1:36pm

We’ve been here before: The U.S. government has shut down due to lack of funding 18 times in its history. Most of those shutdowns were short-lived, usually lasting only a few days or a little over a week. The longest shutdown was also the most recent – 21 days in the winter of 1995 and 1996. We’ve compiled some of the best writing about that shutdown and the current one.

Have another great story about government shutdowns? Email me at kara.brandeisky@propublica.org.


Absolutely everything you need to know about how the government shutdown will work, Wonkblog, September 30, 2013

If you haven’t been following the story, Wonkblog will catch you up.


Rant, Listen, Exploit, Learn, Scare, Help, Manipulate, Lead, New York Times Magazine, January 28, 1996

In the wake of the 1996 shutdown, the New York Times Magazinedelved into the thinking of the man behind the move, then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. 


Distance From Budget Crisis No Comfort to Illinois Town, Los Angeles Times, January 7, 1996

Two Los Angeles Timesreporters trekked out to the small, conservative town of Sycamore, Ill. during the 1996 shutdown, where citizens fed up with politics were beginning to experience the effects of cuts in government services.


National Zoo reopens, but it's far from business as usual, Washington Post, January 7, 1996

If the government shuts down, who ships the elephant, rhino, hippo and giraffe manure out of the National Zoo? The Washington Post reported on the surprising and fascinating ways the 1996 shutdown hampered zoo operations.


Last Shutdown a Lesson Lost on Capitol Hill, New York Times, September 28, 2013

The last shutdown was actually quite different from the current one. For instance, in 1995, Congress had passed several appropriations bills, which funded parts of the government. Today, Congress hasn’t passed any.


The Odd Story of the Law That Dictates How Government Shutdowns Work, The Atlantic, September 28, 2013

No other government in the world shuts down the way the American government does, and it’s all because of an obscure law passed in the late 1800s. The Antideficiency Act was originally meant to prevent the president from entering into contracts before Congress approved the spending. Now it means that Congress can shut down the Executive Branch’s “non-essential” operations.


Australia had a government shutdown once. In the end, the queen fired everyone in Parliament, Wonkblog, October 1, 2013

In 1975, Australia’s parliament shut down the government during a budgetary battle. But over the course of one afternoon, Queen Elizabeth II’s official representative dissolved the whole Parliament. A month later, Australians elected a whole new government, and it has never had a shutdown since.

Categories: Media, Politics
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