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Updated: 5 years 15 weeks ago

Risky business

October 1, 2013 - 1:55pm
Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its report summarizing six years of global warming science Friday, the mammoth document has been picked and prodded by just about every environmental journalist. Even before the report went public, much debate focused on how strongly the panel would weigh in on people's role in climate change: specifically, if the IPCC would...
Categories: Media

Radio watchdogs

October 1, 2013 - 10:23am
On Saturday, the Public Radio Exchange and the Center for Investigative Reporting launched the pilot episode of Reveal, public radio's first program dedicated to investigative journalism and the work that goes into producing it. The hourlong show opened with an optimistic mission statement: "This is Reveal, where investigative journalism and you help change our world for the better." Journalists are...
Categories: Media

Free speech threats in the US and UK

October 1, 2013 - 10:00am
Everybody in public life in the US and UK claims to believe in freedom of expression and a free press. Strange, then, that a growing number of people should now choose to exercise that freedom in order to declare that it should be limited--at least for others. The mantra of the moment is, "Of course I believe in free speech--BUT..."...
Categories: Media

The roots of the shutdown fight

October 1, 2013 - 10:00am
Washington is in full blame-game mode as the federal government moves into shutdown this morning, including facile attributions of blame to national leaders. The true culprit, however, is deepening legislative polarization, which has its roots in intra-party dynamics playing out in districts around the country. To help voters understand what is happening and why, reporters should go local, providing richer...
Categories: Media

Bill Clinton on deregulation: 'The Republicans made me do it!'

October 1, 2013 - 6:02am
Bill Clinton sat down with Fareed Zakaria last week on CNN for a typically wide-ranging interview that touched on chemical weapons, big data and privacy, whether Chelsea Clinton should run for office, etc. You know, the usual Bill Clinton interview. But Clinton's comment about his record on regulation is an actual newsmaker, because it's a giant whopper: What happened? The...
Categories: Media

To tell a complicated climate science story: simplify, shorten, list

September 30, 2013 - 2:05pm
In a world of short attention spans, small screens, and social media, a massive United Nations report on the threat of global warming, compiled by hundreds of scientists over six years, presents a special journalistic challenge. How can the complexities of climate science be condensed into bite-size morsels for public, and political, consumption? It's simple: Take a page from Late...
Categories: Media

Place your bets

September 30, 2013 - 1:50pm
You have to be in Vegas for a conference, and you decide to while some time away at the slots. Are you "gambling" or "gaming"? Many people not associated with the industry would call it "gambling." Inside the industry, the preferred term is "gaming." The terms have coexisted for years, with "gambling" being the more familiar term for the activity...
Categories: Media

Exchange Watch: Telling half a story about the federal exchanges

September 30, 2013 - 1:50pm
We can probably forgive Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius for spinning tomorrow's debut of Obamacare in the best possible way for the administration. That's her job. But spinning doesn't cut it with journalists--or, shouldn't. That's why Politico deserves a shout-out for its coverage of the HHS conference call with reporters last week. When the administration released rates...
Categories: Media

A fault-finding mission

September 30, 2013 - 10:00am
SANTA BARBARA, CA -- When it comes to public service, journalists do some of their best work when focused on the here and now. They expose abuse of wealth and power in action, so it might be stopped by sunlight and embarrassment. They describe exploitation of the less privileged in immediate detail, hoping that society will be moved to provide...
Categories: Media

Couch reporters

September 30, 2013 - 6:13am
Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, a sports-talk radio host on Sirius/XM satellite radio (and formerly half of the best and most popular show of its kind, the Mike and the Mad Dog Show on WFAN in New York) recently opened his program not by recapping the dramatic action from pro or college football over the weekend, but by complaining at length...
Categories: Media

Google France's $81 million media boost

September 30, 2013 - 5:50am
After seven months of closed-door negotiations, Google France and a French media association announced the details of a 60 million euro ($81 million) fund earlier this month to spark legacy publishers' transformation to digital, but it immediately became controversial, because the money will not be open to all media. The Digital Innovation Press Fund (known in French as Fonds pour...
Categories: Media

The Post on how the Grahams lost the paper (UPDATED)

September 30, 2013 - 5:50am
The Washington Post has a fantastic, 6,300-word piece on the events leading to the Graham family's sale of the paper to Jeff Bezos. There's a lot of news here, including the fact that Don Graham talked to Robert Allbritton about buying the paper. Fortunately, the sure disaster that would have been a Politico Post didn't come to pass. The Post...
Categories: Media

Must-reads of the week

September 27, 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: Horse_ebooks is human after all -- The people behind the beloved spambot Columbia professor Prabhjot Singh was attacked in NYC for being Sikh on Saturday --...
Categories: Media

Utah journalism gets a jolt

September 27, 2013 - 1:04pm
PROVO, UT -- In 1995, James "Jay" Shelledy, then the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, started a newsstand and billboard campaign asking people to "Think of Utah Without It"--"it" being the Tribune. The campaign was ostensibly in response to the newspaper strike unfolding at the time in Detroit, but it was also meant to emphasize the independence and singular...
Categories: Media

Q&A: Andrew Kueneman and Steve Duenes, NYT graphic and Web designers

September 27, 2013 - 10:00am
The New York Times celebrated its 162nd birthday in style last week with the launch of "Tomato Can Blues," a longform multimedia piece that tells the story of Charlie Rowan, a small-time cage fighter turned petty crook. Featuring scrolling, comic book-style illustrations, and narration by actor Bobby Cannavale, the article's multimedia elements quickly drew comparisons with the Times' other interactive...
Categories: Media

In Egypt, an anti-Brotherhood media crackdown

September 27, 2013 - 5:50am
CAIRO--The screens went black around 9pm. It was night of July 3, and Egypt's military chief, General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, announced on state television that President Mohamed Morsi had been removed from power following huge protests. Then five Islamist-leaning television stations were immediately taken off the air. As Sisi spoke, police vehicles converged on Media Production City, the desert complex outside...
Categories: Media

The Big Lie of the Post-Crisis

September 27, 2013 - 5:50am
Bill Black is always worth reading and his column flagging a line in a Wall Street Journal editorial is no exception. Naturally, the entire WSJ piece deserves a closer look, as well. The WSJ argues that government came out ahead in the power race with banks after the financial crisis and it backs up that obtuse argument with examples like...
Categories: Media

For the sake of science

September 26, 2013 - 1:56pm
The internet has largely weighed in on Popular Science's sudden decision to shut off its comments section earlier this week. The responses have been, for the most part, positive, as battle-weary writers leap to the defense of a publication looking to preserve the integrity of its work from biased trolls. (Except for Mathew Ingram, who devoted a PaidContent post and...
Categories: Media

Audit Notes: Reuters Next, $11 billion from JPM?, 'Made in America' PR

September 26, 2013 - 5:50am
BuzzFeed's Matt Zeitlin dives deep into Chrystia Freeland's role in the Reuters Next failure. Granted, this piece has a distinct rats-fleeing-the-ship feel to it and there's not a single on-the-record source in it, but Freeland didn't help the situation, either, telling Zeitlin she wouldn't talk to BuzzFeed unless it was to a top-level editor. Perhaps she's spent a wee bit...
Categories: Media

Two stories, one press release

September 25, 2013 - 1:50pm
Here's a story of what happens when busy reporters have only one main source for a story--and that source is a press release. Back in 2011, members of the Motion Picture Association of America filed a suit against Hotfile, a cyberlocker service that lets users upload files and creates a link for each one. It was a popular service, and...
Categories: Media