the audit

Best of 2013: Ryan Chittum

A look back at some of my favorite posts this year
December 24, 2013

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The Battle of New Orleans: Amidst the gutting of one of the nation’s few remaining great regional newspapers, I took a long look at “the radical change in how journalism is done at the 176-year-old Times-Picayune and what that means for the future of news coverage.”

An ink-stained stretch. Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register–and the newspaper industry? I called it “the most interesting–and important–experiment in journalism right now.”

A BusinessWeek cover crosses a line. Minorities as greedy grotesqueries fueling a new housing bubble.

No, it’s not another housing bubble. Hysteria in pockets of the press over a long-awaited recovery.

A Big Mac miss by The Huffington Post. Poor reporting on a “study” by a Kansas undergrad. And a follow-up on who did and didn’t correct their errors.

The New York Times‘s paywall continued to keep the paper afloat. I wrote about how it had reached $150 million in annual revenue, how paywall revenue overtook digital-ad revenue, and that despite all that, it still gets no respect amongst the types who said it wouldn’t work in the first place. And I criticized the Times for choosing to issue a dividend despite its still-uncertain financial future.

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The Greg Packer of small business. Drew Greenblatt’s frequent press hits usually omit National Association of Manufacturers ties

Andrew Ross Sorkin, Wall Street concern troll. The CNBC/NYTer turns up the drama for a video on the crisis anniversary.

Sympathy for the Walmart flack. How the PR-afflicted colossus pushes its “jobs” narrative on a credulous press.

Guardian bombshells in an escalating battle against journalism. Greenwald partner’s detention, prior-restraint threats, and smashed hard drives

The extraordinary promise of the new Greenwald-Omidyar venture. Adversarial muckrakers + civic-minded billionaire = a whole new world.

Frontline’s landmark ‘League of Denial’. A gripping story of decades of NFL coverup and the deadly consequences

John Paton, the Gorbachev of paywalls. Digital First Media will roll out meters across its newspaper portfolio.

Elizabeth Warren, the antidote to CNBC. The senator schools the talking heads on bank regulation

Ryan Chittum is a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and deputy editor of The Audit, CJR’s business section. If you see notable business journalism, give him a heads-up at rc2538@columbia.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @ryanchittum.