Editorial
-
November 11, 2008 08:58 AM
Drawing Lines
Why do we let political operatives act like journalists?
Nicholas Kristof and William Kristol both write regular columns about politics and policy for the New York Times op-ed page. But one is a journalist (Kristof) and the other is a political operative who last summer was listed by a Council on Foreign Relations report as an informal part of John McCain’s foreign-policy brain trust (Kristol). The latter, writing...
Continue reading -
September 11, 2008 11:00 AM
What Are Newspapers Selling?
Time to mine the depth and knowledge niche
Hired by Sam Zell to find innovative ways to market Tribune’s newspapers, and for the moment, Abrams is among the more controversial actors in the drama of American newspapers at the start of the new century. Regardless of what you think of Abrams and his ideas, there is a more fundamental question to consider: What is Abrams selling?...
Continue reading -
August 07, 2008 09:58 AM
Dissent Deficit
An American ideal needs a workout
To suggest that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were in any way blowback from U.S. actions (and inactions) in the Muslim world is to dissent, rather sharply, from the principal narrative that took root in this country, and that persists to this day, about those attacks. In the months and years following 9/11, doing so was even...
Continue reading -
May 13, 2008 09:00 AM
Who Will Tell Us?
Journalism is losing its reporters
Read through the coverage of any presidential campaign and you will invariably find instances in which the conventional wisdom was turned on its head. Yet there is a sense that the conventional wisdom about the current contest has been especially wrong. The New York Times, itself a chief purveyor of conventional wisdom, said as much in a March 9 analysis...
Continue reading -
April 25, 2008 02:00 PM
Edward R. Murrow at 100
From the archives: an appreciation of the broadcaster’s famous 1958 speech
Edward R. Murrow was born on this day in 1908. Though he died, too young, in 1965, he left to those who would follow in his footsteps a model of journalistic integrity that remains as relevant now as it was last century—as well as the inspiration of his conviction that journalism is a powerful instrument for good.
To pay tribute...
Continue reading -
April 21, 2008 10:30 AM
Mind Games: CJR on the Military's Media Manipulation
Some context for the NYT’s excellent investigation
The New York Times’s 7,600-word piece on the secret Pentagon campaign to get retired military officers onto the leading television news channels as analysts to defend the Bush administration's Iraq policy—“an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse”—is the result of painstaking research and a great deal of tenacity. As its author, David Barstow,...
Continue reading -
March 06, 2008 09:00 AM
A Question of Velocity
In the pursuit of traffic, we'd do well to think before we post
The world of journalism is convulsed with matters of online traffic—how to get it, how to keep it, how to measure it. Traffic is the new circulation, and is considered central to the slow and uneven migration of the advertising-revenue model from print to digital. And just as the circulation equation can produce strategies that detract from the quality of...
Continue reading -
January 15, 2008 09:00 AM
Supply and Demand
Journalism must invest in educated consumers
The news in recent years about civic education and engagement in American society has been dismal, and particularly so when it comes to young people’s attention to serious news. All but the most cynical critics would agree that a ready supply of high-quality news and information is essential for our democracy to work, and that, for the moment, we...
Continue reading -
December 05, 2007 07:00 PM
Iraq and the Cost of Coverage
Serious stories, serious money
The debate about the ramifications of the U.S. troop “surge” that began last winter in Iraq is both highly politicized and highly significant. Critics from the right assail the press for failing to report signs of progress from the surge, while critics from the left fault it for failing to convey evidence of its futility. It falls to journalists...
Continue reading -
September 11, 2007 09:00 AM
Letting Go
It's time to rethink journalistic competition
In 1995, as newspapers were beginning to grapple with the seismic structural shift of digital technology, the late James Carey noted that modern American journalism is the product of a particular set of circumstances and a particular moment in history. “What is changing is not some preternatural form of journalism,” he wrote. “All terms of the political equation—democracy, public opinion,...
Continue reading -
July 01, 2007 08:30 AM
Missed Story in Iraq
When diplomats are in danger
Every March since the war in Iraq began, the Foreign Service Journal—the house organ of the American Foreign Service Association, the professional organization and union for U.S. foreign service employees—has examined the state of diplomacy and nation-building in Iraq. Reading those issues, one thing is apparent: the press has largely ignored an important story about the consequences for thousands of...
Continue reading -
June 13, 2007 11:03 AM
It's His Nature
Rupert Murdoch and Dow Jones
A familiar fable tells of a scorpion that asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is sensibly fearful of getting stung. But the scorpion is persuasive, pointing out that if he stings the frog, they will both sink into the water and die. Why would he do such a thing? So the frog agrees. Midway across...
Continue reading -
June 06, 2007 11:58 AM
Calling Uncle Sam
How government can and should support a free press
At a moment when our government appears to be battering the Bill of Rights in the name of combating terrorism and protecting national security, it’s important to keep in mind the many ways in which government–the state–can and should be a friend to and guarantor of free speech, the free flow of information, writers’ rights and liberties, and, yes, the...
Continue reading -
March 01, 2007 08:30 AM
Blinded by Dubai
While the press gawks, workers are dying.
“I realize I’m late to the party: Dubai is long past its media moment. The flurry of breathless write-ups—in Sunday travel sections and glossy lifestyle magazines—has come and gone.” Thus began Seth Stevenson, writing on January 8 in Slate about his own trip to Dubai. It’s true that the celebration of Dubai as the latest, greatest spawn of...
Continue reading -
January 01, 2007 08:30 AM
Time To Go: Why Tribune is like Rumsfeld
The Tribune Company’s Donald Rumsfeld moment.
In the military you shut up and follow orders; otherwise, things fall apart. Still, there can come a point when the strategy is a demonstrable loser. Then, sometimes, it is the generals who must go, or maybe the secretary of defense.
That’s true in corporations, too. When the Tribune Company orders manpower cuts, publishers and editors either follow...
Continue reading -
November 01, 2006 08:30 AM
Assignment Iraq
A note from the editors
In the middle of 2003, not long after President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln in May to tell the world that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” Time Books came out with a glossy hardback titled 21 Days to Baghdad — The Inside Story of How America Won the War Against Iraq. The book concludes with...
Continue reading
—advertisement—
Desks
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Baucus Watch, Part III Montana reporter digs deep into the senator’s white paper
- No More Questions A punctuation suggestion for Bob Herbert
The Audit Business
- WSJ Watchdogs Sketchy Conseco Insurance Move
- Ebony on the Fall of Detroit The magazine reports the U.S. car industry’s demise is hitting blacks especially hard