tag:www.cjr.org,2011-09-12://4 2012-02-09T19:27:33Z Columbia Journalism Review: Strong Press, Strong Democracy Movable Type Pro 4.34-en tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29793 2012-02-09T19:20:25Z 2012-02-09T19:27:33Z

Murdoch, at a fork in the road, chose the coverup

Ryan Chittum Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a fantastic story reporting on a critical meeting Rupert Murdoch held last May to plot how to contain the hacking scandal. The detail and reporting here are remarkable. Nobody at the dinner in Murdoch's London townhouse goes on the record, but Bloomberg's Greg Farrell pieces together the meeting by talking to four attendees on background. With color tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29792 2012-02-09T06:53:09Z 2012-02-09T06:53:38Z

Ryan Chittum I like this Nieman Journalism Lab piece on how Salon hopped off the hamster wheel and saw site traffic increase dramatically. Salon's traffic jumped 40 percent even though it posted a third less than it had a year earlier. Adrienne LaFrance talks to Salon editor Kerry Lauerman: “I remember we had aggregated a Charlie Sheen story, and I saw it tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29785 2012-02-08T15:16:58Z 2012-02-08T15:16:22Z

Ryan Chittum tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29784 2012-02-08T06:49:04Z 2012-02-08T14:59:16Z

Ryan Chittum American Banker's Victoria Finkle and Jeff Horwitz report on the credit card industry's payment-protection racket and note that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is scrutinizing at least one major player, Discover cards, something that could spell trouble for the industry. Customers get just 21 cents in benefits for every dollar they pay into these protections plans. The Banker says that tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29776 2012-02-07T07:02:10Z 2012-02-07T16:03:24Z

Ryan Chittum tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29775 2012-02-07T05:38:44Z 2012-02-07T05:38:57Z

Ryan Chittum Kevin Drum looks at how regressive taxes are at the state and local level, an issue that doesn't get nearly enough attention. While the federal system is progressive overall, even after taking into account payroll taxes, the well-off pay far less of their income in state and local taxes than the poor do. I live in Seattle, a very liberal tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29773 2012-02-07T00:41:11Z 2012-02-07T00:44:13Z

Ryan Chittum Brad DeLong catches The Wall Street Journal editorial page in some hilariously bad math. Here's Stephen Moore: Federal workers on balance still receive much better benefits and pay packages than comparable private sector workers, the Congressional Budget Office reports. The report says that on average the compensation paid to federal workers is nearly 50% higher than in the private sector, tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29769 2012-02-06T16:28:31Z 2012-02-06T18:36:42Z

Felix Salmon http://www.cjr.org There are three main reasons that I like entering into bets with people. The first is, simply, that it’s fun. The second is that I love to win bets. And the third is that I love to lose them. I don’t ever trade the markets: all of my investments are strictly buy-and-hold, with a time horizon measured in decades. That tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29767 2012-02-03T23:44:36Z 2012-02-03T23:49:38Z

Ryan Chittum The Wall Street Journal runs an editorial today criticizing Mitt Romney for his support for increasing the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation. Few policies are as destructive as the minimum wage at keeping the young and least skilled out of the job market. By setting an arbitrary wage floor, politicians make it impossible for businesses to hire people tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29765 2012-02-03T19:41:33Z 2012-02-03T19:43:54Z

Ryan Chittum The New York Times has an excellent investigation today that shows in a new light how the SEC lets Wall Street off the hook despite repeated fraud. Edward Wyatt reports that the SEC has given banks waivers 350 times in the last ten years that allow it to avoid "the full force of the law" supposed to govern what happens tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29763 2012-02-03T16:15:45Z 2012-02-03T16:20:28Z

Felix Salmon http://www.cjr.org Ken Doctor has a very smart and interesting take on the news that the NYT now has 390,000 paying digital subscribers — plus another 16,000 at the Boston Globe. It’s unambiguously good news, on many fronts. First, and most importantly, digital ad revenues went up by 10% in the area of the business with the paywall, while plunging by 26% tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29762 2012-02-03T05:29:03Z 2012-02-03T05:29:42Z

Ryan Chittum Sure enough, the Justice Department charged former Credit Suisse CDO executive Kareem Serageldin with fraud for allegedly artificially inflating CDO values. Two of his underlings pleaded guilty and say Serageldin orchestrated the scheme. The NYT: The government’s case against the former Credit Suisse traders depicts a brazen scheme to artificially increase the price of bonds on their books to create tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29761 2012-02-03T00:21:13Z 2012-02-03T00:30:19Z

Ryan Chittum News that Sony's board has picked a new CEO gets page-one play in The Wall Street Journal, apparently because Kazuo Hirai gave the paper an exclusive interview. But the story is weak, almost entirely from Hirai's and the company's perspective, and it probably should have been stuck somewhere inside the paper. There's not even much news value here, much less tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29752 2012-02-01T23:41:55Z 2012-02-02T00:00:35Z

Ryan Chittum The New York Times's curtain-raiser on the Facebook IPO this morning asks, "Personal Data’s Value? Facebook Is Set to Find Out." But is that really what Facebook is set to find out? The Times says about all this private data: "It is a siren to advertisers hoping to leverage that information to match their ads with the right audience." You tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.29745 2012-02-01T06:30:41Z 2012-02-01T06:35:04Z

Ryan Chittum The Wall Street Journal reports, and as far as I can tell, scoops that the Justice Department is preparing to file criminal charges against mortgage-bond traders at Credit Suisse for fraud. The WSJ says two traders will plead guilty, which would be the first such convictions of the crisis. That's a big deal, even if I suppose we shouldn't be