Review RSS
Thu, 19 Jun 2008
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of books about the Pulitzers, early African American journalism, and the relationship between advertisers and consumers
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Pulitzer’s Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism By Roy J. Harris Jr.
University of Missouri Press
473 pages, $39.95
It is possible that hardly anybody would remember Joseph Pulitzer—he died in 1911—had he not attached his name to the Pulitzer Prizes. Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, established prizes in journalism,... Read More
Tue, 17 Jun 2008
America's Think Tank
Politics warps a new history of the mysterious RAND Corporation
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Ridiculed in Dr. Strangelove (as the “Bland Corporation”), castigated by Pravda (as the American “academy of science and death”), and thrust into the spotlight when the Pentagon Papers were stolen from it, the RAND Corporation has played a somewhat mysterious role in U.S. public policy since its founding in 1946. In Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the... Read More
Tue, 10 Jun 2008
What We Sow
The maddening folly of our man-made pension crisis
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Over the past couple of decades, American companies and American state and city governments have descended into financial purgatory just the way, in The Sun Also Rises, Mike Campbell says he went bankrupt: “gradually, and then suddenly.” A deadly combination of generous pension and health-care packages and years of passing the buck has left institutions like General Motors, Ford,... Read More
Thu, 15 May 2008
Best Face Forward
At the Newseum, a troubled industry looks good under glass
By Posted at 09:00 AM
And we think today’s reporters have it tough.
Picture this: To land a job, the journalistic aspirant known to history as Nellie Bly agrees to feign mental illness in order to uncover abuses at the notorious asylum for women on Blackwell’s Island. In a new “4-D” version of this familiar tale at the Newseum, an editor warns the... Read More
Tue, 6 May 2008
Love Thy Neighbor
The religion beat in an age of intolerance
By Posted at 09:00 AM Comments (8)
To watch Townsend discussing the religion beat, click here.
In the Gospel of Matthew, it doesn’t take long for the author to show his readers two different sides of Jesus Christ. One minute Jesus is sitting on a mountain, delivering a powerful sermon to a presumably rapt audience: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit...
Read More
Video: Love Thy Neighbor
The religion beat in an age of intolerance
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Tim Townsend discusses the story he wrote for the May/June issue of Columbia Journalism Review. To read that article, “Love Thy Neighbor,” click here.
Wed, 30 Apr 2008
School for Scandal?
A media critic takes aim at journalism education
By Posted at 09:00 AM Comments (1)
In The Big Picture, Jeffrey Scheuer grapples with a highly abstract subject: the intermingled roles of journalism, education, and democracy. The author has read widely and thought deeply about these matters (he is also the editor of a new series on Democracy and the News for Praeger Publishers). And in a rarity for just about any contemporary book touching on... Read More
Tue, 29 Apr 2008
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of books about Tarbell's muckraking, the cost of war, and that headless body in a topless bar
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller
By Steve Weinberg
W. W. Norton
256 pages, $25.95
Those who have seen the new film There Will Be Blood, based on Upton Sinclair’s novel about the oil industry, will recognize the cutthroat tactics and carnage in Taking on the Trust. Steve Weinberg’s book focuses... Read More
Mon, 28 Apr 2008
Crowd Control
Bouquets and brickbats for the 'electronic mob'
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Roughly a dozen years ago, when use of the Internet and World Wide Web was first ramping up, I was among a group of journalists to whom media critic and New York University professor Neil Postman delivered an informal talk. To paraphrase his remarks, he contended that we had already solved the problem of access to information and its... Read More
Tue, 26 Feb 2008
Brief Encounters
Short reviews of books: Woodward and Bernstein, the U.S. record on torture, and media populism
By Posted at 09:00 AM
Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate
By Alicia C. Shepard
John Wiley & Sons
288 pages, $24.95
In my files I have a folder of clippings, brown and soft as an old shoeshine cloth. The one on top led The Washington Post’s October 10, 1972, edition: FBI FINDS NIXON AIDES SABOTAGED DEMOCRATS. The double byline reads,... Read More
