Currents

  1. February 2, 2012 06:00 AM

    Florida Roots

    A native son discusses environmental journalism

    By Curtis Brainard

    On any day, there are six novels hiding in the pages of The Miami Herald, says Carl Hiaasen, the green-minded columnist and author. One example: in the 1990s, the Herald covered a string of tourists who paid to swim with bottlenose dolphins and experienced “manifestations of physical attraction.” Tickled by the idea, Hiaasen saw to it that...

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  2. January 24, 2012 06:00 AM

    The Velvet Rope

    Why do journalists still care about seeing their name in print?

    By Janet Paskin

    If print media is truly in an advanced stage of decline, if journalism’s great hope is online, why do journalists still like so very much to see their names in print? By now, it ought to be like advertising one’s preference for filing by Telex, but even the new media apostle who once blogged that “print is...

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  3. January 16, 2012 06:00 AM

    Saturation Point

    A plethora of news outlets doesn't mean deeper coverage

    By Michael Meyer

    Consider the situation in many local news markets—some coverage from a newspaper, some from television, maybe one online outlet making a go of it. And then consider Evanston, Illinois, the affluent Chicago suburb that’s home to Northwestern University, where at least six local print and online outlets compete for the attention of just 75,000 residents.

    Until 2006, a trio of...

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  4. January 13, 2012 06:00 AM

    Hard Numbers

    Some stats and figures on the news industry

    By The Editors

    105 number of countries with freedom of information laws; The Associated Press sent each a request on terrorism arrests and convictions

    49 percentage of those countries that responded with at least some relevant information; 73 percent of those responses came in after the countries’ legal deadline

    18 percentage of countries that either promised to...

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  5. November 4, 2011 09:00 AM

    Hard Numbers

    Markers in a changing news landscape, from sourcing to salaries to cyberspace

    By Alysia Santo

    Typewriter sales and service shops in the Manhattan phone book:

    341 (1961)

    320 (1986)

    25 (2011)



    Computer sales and service shops in the Manhattan phone book:

    0 (1961)

    74 (1986)

    300+ (2011)



    Minority group employees (black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American) in newspaper newsrooms:

    400...

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  6. August 28, 2011 01:49 PM

    News Frontier

    The power of one

    By Michael Meyer

    Entry barriers are low in the online news world. Cheap hosting and free templates have launched a million blogs, including some where a single person, calling himself “Gazette” or “Bugle” or “Wire” or what have you, masquerades as a full-on news publication.

    Most often, such sites are hardly worthy of attention—there’s at least one that lists the owner’s cats as...

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  7. August 28, 2011 01:38 PM

    Hard Numbers

    Some stats and figures on the news industry

    By The Editors

    109number of segments CNN aired on the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal, July 4-13

    71number of segments aired on MSNBC

    30number of segments aired on News Corp.-owned Fox News

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  8. August 28, 2011 01:30 PM

    Haven Bound

    A Q&A with Icelandic Parliamentarian, Birgitta Jónsdóttir

    By Alysia Santo






    In 2008, Iceland was hit hard by the global financial crisis. Citizen outrage and political unrest followed, sparking a people-powered shift in government policies. In June of 2010, the parliament passed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), a resolution to draft the world’s strongest free speech protections. Then, this spring, the government began...

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  9. August 28, 2011 01:23 PM

    Local (Wiki)Leaks

    Finding local angles in the secret cables

    By Dave Maass






    Like any digital-age enterprise reporter, I scan certain online databases as a matter of daily routine: local campaign-finance and lobbyist disclosures, hazardous spill alerts, and federal court filings. My new favorite? WikiLeaks’s diplomatic-cable dump.

    On November 28, 2010, WikiLeaks began publishing the largest secret document leak in history—251,287 US State...

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  10. July 5, 2011 05:07 PM

    Hard Numbers

    Some stats and figures on the news industry

    By The Editors

    41 percent of the US news media workforce who are women

    23.3 percent of top-level US news media managers who are women

    93 percent of US news companies that have a policy on workplace sexual harassment

    79 percent of US news companies that have a specific policy on gender equality

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  11. July 5, 2011 05:01 PM

    All Politics is Local

    Highlights from CJR.org's News Frontier Database

    By Michael Meyer

    One of the most important questions facing the news industry in its search to sustain journalism online is how the models of financially successful national news sites, which have the benefit of higher traffic volume to make up for measly online ad rates, translates to the local level. To help answer this and many other questions about the future...

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  12. July 5, 2011 12:21 PM

    Kling’s Warning

    A Q&A with Minnesota Public Radio's first CEO as he steps down

    By Joel Meares

    In 1967, in exchange for free graduate-school tuition, Bill Kling agreed to help Minnesota’s St. John’s University start a radio station. Today that effort’s descendent, Minnesota Public Radio, operates a forty-four-station network heard by more than nine hundred thousand people each week—the largest audience of any regional public radio network. After forty-four years as MPR’s first...

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  13. July 5, 2011 12:20 PM

    Silence Across the Sinai

    Some topics remain tense in post-Mubarak Egypt

    By Lisa Goldman

    Sometime in late March, at a Cairo protest, a prominent Egyptian activist pretended he was meeting me for the first time, despite our six-year acquaintance. “Military intelligence,” he murmured, as he formally shook my hand and brushed past to greet fellow activists. Later, he sent a message through a mutual friend asking that I not contact him...

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  14. May 1, 2011 08:00 AM

    Hard Numbers

    Some stats and figures on the news industry

    By The Editors

    30 percent of visitors to local news and information websites that live outside the site’s market

    25 percent of visitors to those same sites that are “fly-bys” who come to a story from an outside link and may not return for another year, if ever

    $3.75 what the US spent on public broadcasting per capita in 2008

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