Short Takes

  1. December 14, 2011 06:00 AM

    The Future of Magic Bullets

    Cartoonist Ted Rall shows us how to save the news business

    By Ted Rall

    Click here to look through Ted Rall's cartoon series on the news industry.


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  2. July 2, 2010 03:18 PM

    Bold Move

    Gannett makes a surprising venture into the online world

    By Janet Paskin

    Last Fall, a new, city-mag-style Web site quietly planted its flag in the crowded San Francisco blogosphere. There was no launch party, no ad campaign, just an eye-catching design and a single, first-person story about weird exercise classes on offer in the Bay Area. A few days later, another story, about a bike-thief stakeout. By the end of its...

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  3. July 2, 2010 02:55 PM

    Is the End Nigh?

    A libel reform campaign makes great strides in Great Britain

    By Clint Hendler

    Journalists have been whinging about England’s libel laws—which notoriously place the burden of proof on defendants, lack a strong defense for fair commentary or writing on public figures, and provide a venue for forum-shopping plaintiffs across the globe—for generations. But efforts at reform, like the parliamentary committees of 1948, 1975, and 1991, have produced only tweaks.

    So skeptics can...

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  4. May 4, 2010 08:00 AM

    A New Start

    An Iraqi journalist builds a life in New Jersey

    By Vera Haller

    Saif Alnasseri stepped out into a winter morning, stood on the wide front porch outside his apartment in a rambling house in suburban New Jersey, and pointed...

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  5. March 2, 2010 08:00 AM

    Too Much Information?

    The release of battle footage sparks a controversy in Norway

    By Lene Johansen

    It is New Year’s Eve in northern Afghanistan. A small group of Norwegian soldiers is en route to meet with a village leader to chat about the local security situation, at the request of Afghan authorities. Suddenly, the soldiers are ambushed from three sides....

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  6. February 25, 2010 03:44 PM

    Press Crimes?

    Scrutinizing whether media outlets spurred on the war in the Balkans

    By Bojana Stoparic

    On November 20, 1991, Serbia’s newspapers and TV stations picked up a startling report: forty-one Serbian children had been massacred in a school near the Croatian town of Vukovar.

    The allegation was plausible; Croats and Serbs in that ethnically mixed community had been fighting since June, when Croatia moved to secede from Yugoslavia. It was also false: subsequent reporting...

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  7. February 2, 2010 06:59 PM

    Weeklies On the Rise

    The center of gravity shifts in the world of business journalism

    By Chris Roush

    In the offices of the weekly Denver Business Journal there is a bulletin board known as “The Daily Beating.” On the board, staff members post stories clipped from the city’s leading newspaper, The Denver Post—each of which plays catch-up on a story first reported by the weekly. “It’s like they’re using us as their tickler file for article ideas,”...

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  8. December 9, 2009 04:21 PM

    Freeze Frame

    A photojournalist finds himself increasingly shut out

    By James Lo Scalzo

    I’ve encountered plenty of prohibitions on picture-making in fifteen years as a photojournalist. But the most infuriating came recently at the home of Thomas Jefferson, of all places.

    U.S. News & World Report had assigned me to photograph a touring Elderhostel group for the magazine’s annual retirement guide, and I was thrilled. This was the kind of job a photographer...

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  9. December 9, 2009 04:14 PM

    All the News Fit to Sing

    An interview with the man behind Pakistan's musical news cartoons

    By Ayesha Akram

    American coverage of Pakistan tends not to focus on its role as a media laboratory, but a sudden growth of private television channels there has created fierce competition and an almost desperate need to innovate. One channel, Express News, has launched an animated news segment that is quickly gaining popularity. Called “Bankay Mian,” the cartoon features four characters who relate...

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  10. December 6, 2009 04:06 PM

    Man on the (Digital) Street

    A new Web service helps reporters find the perfect quote

    By Janet Paskin

    It all began innocently enough. In fifteen years as a PR guy and serial entrepreneur, Peter Shankman had become something of a personal clearinghouse for reporters in need of sources. Shankman, thirty-seven, was particularly good at serving up “real people,” the elusive Joe Everymen whose personal experiences are de rigueur for trend stories. As reporters passed his name along to...

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  11. October 6, 2009 08:54 PM

    Somalia’s Dark Days

    By David Axe

    Ahmed Omar Hashi was no stranger to death threats. As a senior producer for Mogadishu’s popular Shabelle Radio, Hashi routinely reported on Somalia’s bloody, eighteen-year civil war, and all the bitter politics that accompany it. By 2007, he was regularly receiving threats, by phone and text message. But the Islamic insurgents from the hard-line Al-Shabab group, who were suspected in...

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  12. October 6, 2009 08:46 PM

    All Together Now (II)

    By Megan McGinley

    When the San Diego Union-Tribune went on sale in July 2008, veteran investigative reporter Lorie Hearn worried about the future of her I-team. Would new owners support costly and time-consuming investigations? Given the deteriorating financial situation of newspapers everywhere, could they even if they wanted to?

    Rather than wait for the answer, Hearn decided to gamble on an emerging trend:...

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  13. October 6, 2009 08:44 PM

    All Together Now (I)

    By Brent Cunningham

    Not long ago, Kevin Murphy was simply the president of the Berks County Community Foundation in Reading, Pennsylvania, a city of about 80,000 an hour northwest of Philadelphia. Like most community foundations, Murphy’s manages a range of charitable funds for everything from scholarships to farmland preservation. And like most people in the philanthropy business, Murphy likes his projects to be...

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  14. July 20, 2009 04:22 PM

    Global Village

    Are regional columnists under pressure to think locally?

    By Connie Schultz

    Let’s not call this a trend. Not yet, please. In April, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the paper that championed civil rights in the South in the 1950s and ’60s, announced that it was moving Cynthia Tucker, its Pulitzer-winning columnist and editorial page director, to Washington and replacing most of its editorial board.

    It became clear, too, that national and international...

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