CJR Daily

PROVO, UT -- When The Washington Post's "The Fix" blog published its annual list of the best state-based political reporters earlier this summer, the group of names under "Colorado" included a couple of Denver Post reporters, two from the Associated Press, and a Denver TV reporter. And then there was Peter Marcus of the weekly, tabloid-sized Colorado Statesman. Marcus, 32,...

This month, CJR presents "Required Skimming," a daily miniguide to our staffers' beats and obsessions. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments. Megan Garber -- Staff writer at The Atlantic (and CJR alum) who covers science and innovation with a geek's infectious sense of wonder. National Geographic -- Whether it's its indispensable science...

DETROIT, MI -- The first hour of the Aug. 20 installment of Radio Times, a long-running show on Philadelphia's WHYY, was an exemplary bit of public-policy journalism. The segment's hook was a local story: Barbara Mancini, a Philadelphia-area nurse, had been charged with homicide after giving her 93-year-old father a bottle of morphine. Her father was found by a hospice...

As we approach the moment when the centerpiece of Obamacare will be implemented, on October 1, a deluge of information and spin is coming with it. In her column today in The Cook Political Report, Elizabeth Wilner predicts "an unprecedented confluence of political and product ads." Those ads will be in conflict with each other, and will be brought...

AUSTIN, TX - In the wake of the industrial explosion that shattered the town of West, TX, earlier this year, leveling buildings and killing 15 people, much media coverage was shot through with repetitions of error, rash conclusions, and other flaws. Against that backdrop The Dallas Morning News stood out with reporting and commentary that was balanced and careful...

Most criminal defendants, whether fighting a DUI or fighting Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charges, have a small legal team, often just one overtaxed defense attorney. Matthew Keys, the social media editor who's accused of helping Anonymous vandalize the Los Angeles Times' website, has not just Tor Ekeland on his team, but also Jay Leiderman, another lawyer developing something of...

This month, CJR presents "Required Skimming," a daily miniguide to our staffers' beats and obsessions. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments. --YogaDork: This is the go-to blog for coverage of yoga-world scandals (the John Friend incidents; Lululemon's prejudice against full figures). But YogaDork, an anonymous New York City yogi, also writes posts...

Tor Ekeland works out of the smallest office I've ever seen, in the kind of Brooklyn coworking space where a guy is inexplicably asleep in the common area at 2:30 in the afternoon. The office has three chairs and glass walls and is not much wider than the doorway. There's just enough room for Ekeland, his partner, Mark Jaffe, and,...

This month, CJR presents "Required Skimming," a daily miniguide to our staffers' beats and obsessions. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments. Local Quarterly: Featuring a sleek design bedecked with sharp photographs, each issue includes stories about off-the-beaten-path American towns overlooked by the mainstream press. Most recently? Jersey Shore, PA. Perdiz: Barcelona-based Perdiz...

For the last several months, I've worked alongside law students in the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University. I'm a graduate student in the university's journalism school, and I was asked to support the project's investigations into cold murder cases from the civil rights era. The law students' work often starts with a few inches of text...

Markian Hawryluk, a reporter for The (Bend, OR) Bulletin--circulation 32,455-- has written one of the best pieces I've seen in a long time about the ties between the nation's doctors and the pharmaceutical makers that push the medicines we take. The myriad ways drug companies influence doctors has been well known in health policy circles for years. ProPublica has...

Starting in February 2011, as protests in Benghazi evolved into a nationwide insurrection and civil war, both staff and freelance journalists flocked into Libya to cover the rebellion against dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi. For five days in August, pro-Gaddafi gunmen held 36 journalists hostage in a hotel in Tripoli. Then, in October, Gaddafi was captured and killed by rebel vigilantes. "It...

In his "Stories I'd like to see" column, journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill spotlights topics that, in his opinion, have received insufficient media attention. This article was originally published on Reuters.com. 1. WashPost reporters: Get a Bezos comment These sentences in last week's Times profile of Amazon's Jeff Bezos beg for a follow-up from the house the Grahams built: "Every...

MIAMI, FL -- The "water wars" are back on. Two weeks ago, Florida Gov. Rick Scott traveled to the Apalachicola Bay, on the Gulf of Mexico in the northwest corner of the state, to announce that his administration plans to sue Georgia over access to water in the Apalachicola-Flint-Chattahoochee river basin--effectively cutting off negotiations between the states and asking the...

Press hysteria about another housing bubble seems to have cooled off a bit in the last few months. Which is good, since we're not in another housing bubble. But once you become convinced that we're in a bubble, you start seeing them everywhere. Take this post by Gawker's Hamilton Nolan headlined "Bubble Watch: Ridiculous Stock Values Edition." Which ridiculous stock...

This month, CJR presents "Required Skimming," a daily miniguide to our staffers' beats and obsessions. If we overlooked any of your must-read destinations, please tell us in the comments. LIFE magazine: The online archive for one of the finest photojournalism magazines ever published. Looking for iconic photos of Marilyn Monroe, the Vietnam war, or the Apollo 11 mission? Start here....

The "rules" under which hyphens are used to connect multiple modifiers, like "well(-)known man," are varied and difficult to remember. Some style guides try to avoid hyphens except when their absence would create confusion: Don't hyphenate "local business owner," for example, but do hyphenate "small-business owner," since it could be read that either the business or the owner is small....

Thanks to The Center for Public Integrity, we now have a substantial story that tells us about the latest Obamacare turf wars. As we well know, turf wars among professionals are all about protecting incomes, and when the bottom line is involved, the fighting gets fierce. This one is over who's best to advise those 24 million souls who will...

Just recently, the Boston Red Sox's parent company bought the Boston Globe, and the head of the dominant online retailer with many regulatory interests bought the capital's leading paper, The Washington Post. Meanwhile, in a footnote, the Orange County Register's parent was said to have struck a deal to serve as a broker of sorts for the city of...

Al Jazeera joined the American TV lineup last week with minimal damage to the republic. There was no sign of bin Laden, no call for jihad, and no ranting about the evils of the American empire--just a workmanlike recounting of the day's events, interspersed with testimonials from fresh-scrubbed young reporters, most recently employed by local TV stations, telling us how...