NewsTrust - All Rated Stories

NewsTrust Baltimore: An Experiment in Civility

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Bruce Wallace - Nov. 09 (News Analysis) - The first thing you notice about NewsTrust Baltimore, an online aggregator of stories from local news sources, is how friggin’ civil all the commenters are. Consider one reader’s critique of a story about the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Westboro Baptist Church’s right to protest at military funerals: This story does a good job of putting a...

NewsTrust Rating: 2.0 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Beyond the Facts

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - Feb. 04 (Editorial) - The voters have seated a new House of Representatives with an agenda dramatically at odds with that of the president, and we’re entering a period in which the partisan divisions that shaped the first half of the Obama administration will play out in a different way. Battles will be waged with the usual weapons—a mix of facts and spin, which can be difficult to tease apart. At stake is the direction of American policy. What can the press do to be a force for a more productive democratic conversation? PolitiFact—the Pulitzer-winning project of the St. Petersburg Times—has one idea. The project, which has been fact-checking statements by political figures since 2008, is a digital expansion of a more traditional form: newspaper pieces that check the accuracy of political advertisements. But PolitiFact doesn’t fold up its tent after the voting and has continued to stand ready to adjudicate the factual basis of any claim that might cause a typical citizen to ask, “Is that true?” And it’s expanding. PolitiFact has franchised local versions in eight states, overseen by local newspapers. We’re all for it. Still, while PolitiFact and its Truth-O-Meter produce eye-catching accountability journalism, in some ways it’s also a symptom of how journalism has lost its way. The work it specializes in ought to be the task of every reporter on every beat. It shouldn’t be confined to a special team.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Sebelius Watch, Part III

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Trudy Lieberman - Jun. 10 (News Analysis) - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has emerged as the person to watch as the Obama administration scrambles to implement health reform. The health care czarina’s words and silences offer clues about the way health reform will play out for millions of Americans. The rules, the regulations, and the compromises with health care stakeholders will determine the ultimate value of the reforms.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

WSJ Blows the Ratings-Agencies Story

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Ryan Chittum - Apr. 24 (Special Report) - The Wall Street Journal does a terrible job today of covering the ratings-agency investigation news, which is a big deal (to state what should be the obvious).

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average - 11 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Trust Falls

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Justin Peters - Mar. 07 (News Analysis) - In November of 2009, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch decided to show his readers who was boss. After a commenter persisted in posting “a vulgar expression for a part of a woman’s anatomy” on a “Talk of the Day” feature asking readers to name “the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten,” the editor, Kurt Greenbaum, observed that the comment originated from a local school’s IP address. Greenbaum called the school to inform them that somebody had been posting obscene comments from one of their computers. Shortly thereafter, officials at the school deduced that the comments had been posted by an adult employee. After being confronted with the evidence, the employee resigned. Greenbaum told this story in a matter-of-fact Post-Dispatch blog post titled “Post a vulgar comment while you’re at work, lose your job.” The post, along with a follow-up, elicited over 600 responses from readers, overwhelmingly upset at the heavy-handed move and Greenbaum’s perceived smugness in defending it. (On his Twitter account, Greenbaum professed amazement “at the readers who comment in defense of a jackass who posted a vulgarity on our site — and lost his job.”) He may well have expected praise for his actions. A jackass had posted a stupid comment. In the interest of civility, Greenbaum removed both the comment and the jackass.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

How Will Comprehensive Reform Improve Health Care for Americans?

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - Sep. 05 (Special Report) - Far too many Americans have no health insurance or are underinsured. And, meanwhile, far too large a percentage of America’s Gross National Product goes toward health care. Our health care system is inadequate-- yet it costs too much, threatening the economy. How do we cover more people yet bring the costs down? That is the problem that all of America,...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Grave Dancer’s Folly

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - Jul. 22 (Editorial) - Despite the tedious posturing of both Web triumphalists (Jeff Jarvis to the Newspaper Association of America: “You blew it!”) and ideologues on either end of the political spectrum (two recent reader comments on CJR.org: “The mainstream media has sold out to our corporate controlled Congress,” and “Newspapers deserve to die like Pravda and Izveztia [sic]”), nobody is winning the debate...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Groundhog Day

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Trudy Lieberman - Jul. 06 (News Analysis) - Why this year's health-care debate sounds like the one in 1993

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Science Journalism's Crystal Ball

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Cristine Russell - May. 07 (News Analysis) - In covering a crisis, it is crucial to quickly separate reliable information from speculation and hype—or, in the case of the fast-moving swine flu story, an epidemic from a pandemic. It’s easier, of course, if you have strong science and medical reporters on board.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Sarcastic Times

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Alissa Quart - Mar. 13 (Opinion) - ... what really makes the show special is how it embodies the rise of what I think of as sarcasm news. More and more news programs are likely to go absurdist in the coming months and years. As faith in and loyalty to traditional anchors wither, one can even hear ironic Maddowian intonations creeping into the delivery of CNN’s not-so-funny anchor Campbell Brown on her new show.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Get Off the Bus

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Amanda Michel - Mar. 05 (Special Report) - Collectively, we could do what a single reporter or traditional news organization could not. We dispatched people to report on dozens of events happening simultaneously around the country. We distributed research tasks among hundreds of volunteers, instead of a handful of paid reporters working full-time for weeks. Ground-level access, networked intelligence, and distributed labor became our editorial mainstays. More than twelve thousand people eventually signed up to participate in one way or another, including seventeen hundred writers. With such numbers, Mayhill Fowler’s Bittergate story—or something like it—was almost inevitable.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.2 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Grand Experiment: A Public Editor for Education

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Megan Garber - Feb. 08 (Interview) - As our newsrooms shrink, journalists working the education beat are often among the hardest hit. Not only are they working with fewer resources, but, due to newsroom restructuring, education writers often answer to editors who don’t fully understand the bureaucratic nuances of the school systems. To combat this problem, the Education Writers Association announced in December the creation of a new position, a Public Editor, to serve as an additional resource for education journalists. This week, the EWA announced the hiring of Linda Perlstein, a former Washington Post education reporter and currently a freelance writer and book author (see her CJR essay about why she left the Post to write books, here), to fill the unique new role.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Above the Fold: Complex Analysis

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Charles Kaiser - Dec. 02 (Opinion) - Is there any limit to the shamelessness of NBC News? That is one of several questions sparked by David Barstow’s 5,000-word assault against the military-industrial complex in general and “One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex” in particular—the one owned and operated by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey...The networks reacted to that Times story with a stunning wall of silence.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Overload!

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Bree Nordenson - Nov. 19 (Special Report) - The idea that news consumers, even young ones, are overloaded should hardly come as a surprise. The information age is defined by output: we produce far more information than we can possibly manage, let alone absorb. Before the digital era, information was limited by our means to contain it. Publishing was restricted by paper and delivery costs; broadcasting was circumscribed by available frequencies and airtime. The Internet, on the other hand, has unlimited capacity at near-zero cost. There are more than 70 million blogs and 150 million Web sites today—a number that is expanding at a rate of approximately ten thousand an hour. Two hundred and ten billion e-mails are sent each day. Say goodbye to the gigabyte and hello to the exabyte, five of which are worth 37,000 Libraries of Congress. In 2006 alone, the world produced 161 exabytes of digital data, the equivalent of three million times the information contained in all the books ever written. By 2010, it is estimated that this number will increase to 988. Pick your metaphor: we’re drowning, buried, snowed under.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Moonlight and Valentino

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Megan Garber - Oct. 23 (Opinion) - It's a story that gives the tired old dichotomies of Palin’s controversial candidacy (conservative politics versus liberal; street smarts versus book smarts; folksiness versus erudition; elitism versus Joe-six-packism; blah versus blah) a Pygmalionesque implication: that by bringing the outsider onto the GOP ticket and into the party’s echelons, McCain and his team have invited the common to infiltrate the exclusive, thereby daring—expecting?—the former to change the latter from within.

NewsTrust Rating: 2.6 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Public Policy Matters After All

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Dean Starkman - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - ... our pals in the media&business press, political press, US Weekly--are treating this calamity like it was Hurricane Ike or some reenactment of the story of the Golden Calf. Public policy must matter at least somewhat. Otherwise, why do people pay so much attention to politics?

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Wall Street Sank Freddie and Fannie

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Dean Starkman - Sep. 09 (Opinion) - Wall Street dominated the subprime market, which crashed the credit market, which crashed the asset values of Freddie and Fannie, obliterating their (very thin) capital bases and leading us to this moment. Listen, you'll get no elegies from me for these government-sponsored candy stores. It's clear they used their taxpayer-supported advantages in the financial markets to keep their regulators at bay and buy protection from Congress. That stinks. The Wall Street Journal today smartly reminds readers of the staggering size of the GSEs' lobbying bill--$170 million over ten years. Ponder that one for a second. As their time was running out, they spent $3.5 million in the first quarter alone on forty-two lobbying firms. That's $83,000 a piece-- probably enough to pay the sushi bills.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 8 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

McCain's Health Care Plan: Gut Employer-Based Insurance

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Trudy Lieberman - Aug. 03 (News Analysis) - instead of just mentioning the tax credit, reporters could explain why a $2,500 credit might buy more insurance in the individual market for a young, healthy 26-year-old than for a 56-year-old with a couple of chronic conditions. Premiums in the individual market, where McCain hopes to send refugees from employer group plans, are based on age. Older people pay more, so a flat credit might not buy as much for them. And just how far will the credit go, anyway, considering that family policies now cost upwards of $12,000 a year?

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

McCain's Health Proposals Under the Microscope

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Trudy Lieberman - Jul. 18 (News Analysis) - If putting patients in charge is the cornerstone of McCain's health initiatives, shouldn't the media have been evaluating his premise? The truth is they've been MIA on this one. There's been virtually no examination of what McCain means by his lofty sound bite, and how that sound bite squares with reality.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Climate Change: Now What?

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - Jul. 15 (News Analysis) - Media coverage of climate change is at a crossroads, as it moves beyond the science of global warming into the broader arena of what governments, entrepreneurs, and ordinary citizens are doing about i

NewsTrust Rating: 4.5 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Can the Media Deal With Michelle Obama?

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:13:11 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Megan Garber - Jun. 21 (Opinion) - The media is pushing hard on the boundaries of being a life partner turns into being a political partner. She hates pantyhose!

NewsTrust Rating: 2.7 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Lost Media, Found Media

Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Alissa Quart - May. 21 (Special Report) - To be a Found Media journalist or pundit, one need not be elite, expert, or trained; one must simply produce punchy intellectual property that is in conversation with groups of other citizens. Found Media-ites don't tend to go to editors for approval, but rather to their readers and to their blog community. In many cases, they disdain the old models, particularly newspapers, which they see as having calcified over the decades, and, according to generally youthful Found Media logic, in deep need of a re-think, using all of youth's advantages: time and the ability to instantly summon a crowd. For Found Media's young journalists and bloggers, the attitude toward our craft tends not to be one of mourning for the ashram gone. Rather, it is of not needing a guru at all.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 8 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Love Thy Neighbor

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Tim Townsend - May. 06 (Interview) - As a reporter covering religion at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the last four years, I've been a witness to attitudes and language on my beat that would make veteran political reporters cringe. Even the blog I wrote for the paper, The God Beat, became such a target for corrosive, hateful comments that I was forced to shut it down.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average - 15 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Gassed Up

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - May. 05 (News Analysis) - One thing that struck me about last week's coverage of Hillary Clinton and John McCain's proposal to declare a gas tax holiday is how aggressive the press was been in showing the idea's ridiculousness.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Opening Bell: Economy Expands, But...

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - May. 01 (News Analysis) - The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Financial Times all go big with news that the economy expanded--barely--in the first quarter, but most signs point to recession.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer