tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4 2012-05-16T11:11:45Z Columbia Journalism Review: Strong Press, Strong Democracy Movable Type 4.34-en tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30271 2012-05-16T10:50:00Z 2012-05-16T11:11:45Z

RealRural

By The Editors In March 2011, Lisa M. Hamilton, a writer and photographer, began a series of road trips around rural California. She had a grant from the Creative Work Fund—a San Francisco-based foundation that supports collaboration between artists and nonprofits—to tell stories that would help bridge the cultural divide between the rural and urban parts of the state. Initially she... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30439 2012-05-16T10:50:00Z 2012-05-16T04:21:32Z

A catalog of dialogues

By Merrill Perlman “Catalogue” can also be spelled “catalog.” “Dialogue” can also be spelled “dialog.” But “monologue” is rarely spelled “monolog.” The Americans are at it again. The combining form “logue” is French, descended from Latin, and it indicates an engagement of some sort, a discourse, if you will, between people or things. People browse “catalog(ue)s” to “discuss” what items to buy; a... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30438 2012-05-16T03:15:59Z 2012-05-16T09:56:38Z

By Ryan Chittum Conor Friedersdorf makes a nice catch on Tom Friedman's Sunday column bemoaning the commercialization of seemingly all aspects of American life: For example, his column is bizarrely titled, "This Column Is Not Sponsored by Anyone," despite the fact that right above it on NYTimes.com there is a banner ad for a Citi/American Airlines credit card. But Friedersdorf... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30437 2012-05-15T19:19:50Z 2012-05-15T19:27:48Z

What about Vermont? (Not to mention Maryland)

By Trudy Lieberman We all know Obamacare is Romneycare and Romneycare is Obamacare and that the Bay State has set the standard for everything health reform—from the individual mandate right down to ways to cut its gigantic medical bill. Or at least the media have passed along that narrative. The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece, “Same State, New Stab at Health... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30436 2012-05-15T18:15:52Z 2012-05-15T19:09:00Z

Time’s titillating cover overshadows article’s substance

By Curtis Brainard Time touched a nerve this week with its provocative cover photo of 26-year-old Jamie Lynne Grumet and her 3-year-old son standing on a chair next to her, nursing her left breast while both stare directly (and unapologetically) at readers. The underlying story focused on the “attachment parenting” method developed by Dr. William Sears, which... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30433 2012-05-15T12:41:26Z 2012-05-15T12:58:30Z

Press-dinner proceeds, cat-and-mouse China reporting, testing the testers

By Steven Brill In his weekly “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. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner: How much for charity? Two Sundays ago, Tom Brokaw used an appearance on Meet the Press to attack... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30432 2012-05-15T10:50:00Z 2012-05-15T18:49:45Z

Political ads may not be all "gravy" for local stations—but they're still an awfully good deal

By Erika Fry When Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign last month, the former Pennsylvania senator all but sealed Mitt Romney’s easy victory in the state’s April 24 primary. Santorum also dashed the expectations of his home state’s broadcasters, who were counting on the candidate to keep the race competitive and their ad inventory—much of which had already been reserved... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30249 2012-05-15T10:50:00Z 2012-05-15T11:38:54Z

Why hacks like Andrew Keen really fear the social Web

By Maureen Tkacik Long before Facebook or Foursquare, men like the late management consultant Martin Jay Levitt were connoisseurs of social networks. At the beginning of each new gig Levitt would have a client’s human resources director create detailed diagrams mapping the relationships between all employees, accounting for gossip, date of hire and pay, even details of his sex life, if any... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30431 2012-05-14T19:00:19Z 2012-05-14T19:00:55Z

A review of Samuel L. Popkin’s The Candidate

By Jordan Michael Smith The Candidate: What It Takes to Win—And Hold—The White House | By Samuel L. Popkin | Oxford University Press | 350 pages, $27.95 Academic political science and Washington policymaking once had a close relationship: during the Franklin Roosevelt and Kennedy administrations, for example. No longer. As Karl Rove writes as a blurb on this book, most contemporary political science... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30430 2012-05-14T15:29:39Z 2012-05-14T15:25:47Z

Michigan political reporters have a job to do

By Anna Clark MICHIGAN — Quinn Klinefelter is a longtime news editor at WDET, the National Public Radio station in Detroit. His voice is easily recognizable, and so, apparently, is his face. Klinefelter recalls walking down a block, absorbed in his thoughts, when he passed a man he’d never met. They were several yards past each other when the man turned back and... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30426 2012-05-14T15:04:51Z 2012-05-14T17:47:12Z

London Whale, sighted one month ago, knocks billions off JPMorgan's worth

By Ryan Chittum In what FT Alphaville called "the most excruciating bank conference call we’ve ever heard," press favorite Jamie Dimon announced last week that JPMorgan Chase has lost more than $2 billion on bad derivatives bets made by its chief investment office. It could (meaning, it probably will) lose more than that. On Thursday, we were told up to another... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30240 2012-05-14T10:50:00Z 2012-05-13T23:15:39Z

The USPS is running out of money. Where does that leave magazines?

By Lauren Kirchner Early on a February morning, in a glass-walled conference room high up in the Hearst Tower in Manhattan, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe spoke in a careful, reassuring tone. “We can do this; I know that we can do this,” he told the audience, which included representatives from magazine-industry heavyweights like Condé Nast, Hearst, and Time Inc. “Hang in there... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30429 2012-05-14T10:50:00Z 2012-05-15T13:00:46Z

But its writers are moving to another Seattle site: Crosscut.com

By Alysia Santo The Seattle-based political news site PubliCola is closing, despite strong readership. As founder Josh Feit describes in a post, the site is quite popular, with “more than 400,000 monthly page views during the election season and currently more than 10,000 Facebook and Twitter followers.” But that doesn’t always equal commensurate returns. Feit writes, “We haven’t been... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30427 2012-05-11T23:34:07Z 2012-05-11T23:37:27Z

By Ryan Chittum The hits keep coming at Chesapeake Energy. Today, it's The Wall Street Journal's turn. It reports on page one that the company has put $1.4 billion in unreported liabilities off its balance sheet, far more than analysts had estimated. Most of these costs will hit this year and next, at a time when the company needs to raise substantial... tag:www.cjr.org,2012://4.30425 2012-05-11T20:22:07Z 2012-05-11T20:25:19Z

Under a new FCC rule, data on campaign ad buys is going online. What's next?

By The Editors CJR has been writing since late last year about a proposed FCC rule that would require local TV stations to post their public records of political ad sales on the Internet. So with the new rule announced in late April and set to go into effect soon, we were delighted to team up with the folks at Poynter Friday afternoon...