NewsTrust - Most Recent Stories

Why Aren’t More Arab Americans Working in Mainstream Journalism?

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - Jan. 31 - There are anywhere between 3.5 and 5.1 million Americans of Arab descent, according to figures from the Arab American Institute, yet relatively few work in journalism full time. While meaningful estimates aren’t known, as journalism scholars that conduct demographic research in American newsrooms do not typically tally newsmakers of Arab descent, the National Arab American Journalists Association counts around 250...

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The Tea Party Paradox

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Elbert Ventura - Jan. 20 (Review) - It remains one of the mysteries of our political age: How did a Wall Street-spawned meltdown and the worst recession in decades spark a populist reaction against government? In the 1930s, the failure of a Republican administration and laissez-faire economics led to a leftward swing and the New Deal. In our time, the financial crisis seemed poised to catalyze a revived reformism. But mere months—weeks even—after President Obama’s swearing-in, angry Americans began gathering in living rooms and town halls and public parks to demand an end to government tyranny. Who are they, and what do they want? In the nearly three years since the Tea Party’s efflorescence, political observers and the media have sought answers to those questions. A third question—what are they capable of?—has already been answered. Many liberals and political elites scoffed when the army of tricorn-wearing, teabag-toting protesters first appeared. A midterm election and a hijacked government later, the smirks are gone. The Tea Party, it turned out, is a real force, and its impact has been nothing less than seismic. The last couple of years have seen a rush of volumes hoping to explain and exploit the phenomenon, their titles matching the movement’s heat: Boiling Mad, The Whites of Their Eyes, The Backlash, Give Us Liberty, Mad as Hell. Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson’s The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism might seem a latecomer, but it is in its own way well timed, arriving in the midst of a presidential campaign. What does the Tea Party do now that it has had a taste of governing? And where does American democracy go from here?

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What the Fact-Checkers Get Wrong

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Greg Marx - Jan. 05 (News Analysis) - In the waning days of 2011, Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site, brought the wrath of the liberal blog world upon itself when it dubiously—though not unexpectedly—chose as its “Lie of the Year” Democratic claims that House Republicans had voted to “end Medicare.” The uproar was just the latest wave of recrimination against the “fact-checking” enterprise,...

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Confused NYT Coverage of Obama Health Care Law's Prospects

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - Nov. 16 (News Analysis) - The New York Times can't make up its mind on what a Supreme Court ruling against Obama health care plan's individual mandate would mean for the overall health-care law. On page one today, it reports this: Whatever Court Rules, Major Changes in Health Care Likely to Last On the website today, a news analysis , presumably going in...

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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...

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HuffPost Goes Deep On Google : CJR

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Greg Marx - Sep. 27 (Editorial) - The Huffington Post trio of Ryan Grim, Zach Carter, and Paul Blumenthal dropped their 6,800-word take on “Google, Microsoft, and the War for the Web” Sunday night, and like all of HuffPost’s deep dives, the piece was chock-full of good reporting. Among the nuggets of news large and small: • Google’s influence-buying spree has pushed the number of lobbyists in its employ up to ninety-three, spread across eighteen firms. (An antitrust investigation of the company led by the Senate Judiciary Committee is jokingly known as the “Leahy Full Employment Act,” after committee chairman Pat Leahy.) And the company’s new commitment to bipartisanship means that not only GOP-aligned lobbying shops but conservative think tanks like Heritage Foundation and AEI are now getting Google cash.

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The Long Tale

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Alissa Quart - Sep. 20 (Special Report) - When author Jon Krakauer started looking into the altruistic claims of his former friend, the best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson, he uncovered quite a story. Mortenson was famous as a philanthropist who raised millions for his charity, which builds schools and other resources in Afghanistan. But the...

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Shouldn't All Stories be 'Fact-Check' Stories?

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Greg Marx - Sep. 09 (Opinion) - On the subject of fact-checking the presidential debates, it’s worth noting that while the proliferation of “fact-check” stories over the last few years is probably a step in the right direction, it does come with a risk—that by assigning “fact-checking” responsibility to a particular story or blog, we send a message that the vast majority of political news...

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Web First, Print Later : CJR

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Alysia Santo - Aug. 17 (Opinion) - When Knight Foundation executive John Bracken said that “Print is the new vinyl” this weekend, the point of his comparison seemed lost on many. In a post on the Knight Foundation blog, Bracken clarified his metaphor: Here’s the core of the comparison: as more and more of the content we consume is based on bits, the ability to engage with atom-based media will, for some, gain value. Future of media discussions tend to hinge on the go-digital-or-die narrative; so the idea that print media stands to gain in significance is a counterintuitive one. And yet, for some digital news startups around the country, a complementary print strategy has proved useful in three distinct ways:

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Tornadoes and Climate Change

Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Curtis Brainard - May. 27 (News Analysis) - On Monday, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Bill McKibben, a writer and environmental activist, under the sarcastic headline, “A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!” McKibben mockingly chastises… well, the world, apparently. He directs his accusatory screed at “you” (as in, not him) for taking a hear-no-evil-see-no-evil position when it comes to...

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The story so far: what we know about the business of digital journalism

Tue, 10 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Bill Grueskin, Ava Seave, Lucas Graves - May. 10 (Special Report) - The difficult financial state of the U.S. news industry is no longer new. Most big newsrooms have faced severe cutbacks, and even though online-only outlets have sprung up in communities throughout the country, they haven’t fully taken the place of what has been lost. These issues were explored in a precursor report to this one, sponsored by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and written by Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, a professor at Columbia. At the end of that report, which was published in late 2009, the authors provided a number of recommendations to stanch the losses in independent reporting. Most of the recommendations were based in policy, including changes in the tax code to provide news organizations easier access to nonprofit status and encouraging philanthropists to support news gathering. Most controversially, Downie and Schudson recommended the creation of a national “Fund for Local News” supported with fees the Federal Communications Commission would collect from telecom users, broadcast licensees, or Internet service providers.

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WaPo’s New Opinion Tabs Miss the Mark

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Ben Adler - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - .. the Post’s tabs are troublesome because they expose the flawed measure that the mainstream media uses to quantify ideological diversity. Left versus right is only one of the ways that columnists can vary in their orientation, and arguably it is one of the less important. What really makes an op-ed page useful is when it presents writers from diverse backgrounds. This can mean many things, not just gender and ethnic diversity—although the Post opinion stable is severely lacking on both of those counts.

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Unpacking Rory Reid's 91 PACs Maneuver

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - Mar. 17 (News) - If this isn't illegal, it should be. This has been the "almost universal" reaction, says veteran Nevada political reporter Jon Ralston, to the news he broke March 4 on his "Ralston's Flash" blog with this arresting headline: "Rory Reid's gubernatorial campaign circumvented contribution limits, created 91 shell PACs to infuse $750,000 into campaign." Where there are campaign finance...

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A Zombie Lie Is Born

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Ryan Chittum - Mar. 11 (Special Report) - Two days ago I fisked a false report from CNBC that said more than a third of all wages and salaries are now government handouts. That kind of a report, based on a study by an outfit called TrimTabs Investment Research, is genetically engineered to go viral.

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Las Vegas Sun Shines Light on Nevada Health Care

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - Mar. 10 - CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—“Where do you go for great health care in Las Vegas?” Answer: “The airport.” That local joke set Las Vegas Sun reporters Marshall Allen and Alex Richards on a two-year quest to figure out what was wrong with medical treatment in Las Vegas—and why. The result, after a digital dig into 2.9 million inpatient hospital records and more...

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CNBC Misleads on "Welfare State" Dominance

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

Columbia Journalism Review - By Ryan Chittum - Mar. 09 (Special Report) - There are so many things wrong with this CNBC "Fast Money" story it's hard to know where to begin.   But let’s start with the headline:   Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages   I guess the first thing to point out is that the story, which is based on a study by some investment firm, is just inaccurate....

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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.

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How the press fared covering the post-Citizens United landscape, and stories to do now

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Liz Cox Barrett - Jan. 23 (News Analysis) - On the eve of the one year anniversary of the Supreme Court's controversial decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, CJR's Liz Cox Barrett spoke with Richard L. Hasen, a visiting professor at University of California Irvine School of Law and an expert in election law and campaign finance regulations, about Citizens United, its effect on the 2010 midterm elections, how the press fared in its coverage of it all, and what reporters should focus on now and in the run-up to 2012.

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Inc.'s Excellent Story on Entrepreneurship in Norway

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Felix Salmon - Jan. 20 (Review) - Max Chafkin has a fantastic story in Inc magazine about how to structure an economy so as to encourage entrepreneurship, full employment, and general happiness and contentment, all while drastically reducing inequality. It's easy, in fact: all you need to do is become Norway. There's loads of great stuff in this piece, and I'd encourage you to read the...

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Cable Access

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - By Craig Silverman - Jan. 07 (News Report) - Once again: WikiLeaks did not publicly release 250,000 diplomatic cables

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Frank Luntz Rides Again

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - Dec. 10 - Word came Thursday that, last year, Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon had directed his staff to avoid using the phrase “public option” to describe a proposal hotly debated during the health reform debate. That option, proposed by Yale political science professor Jacob Hacker and embraced by some—but not all—of the progressive advocates, would have injected a real element...

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Haiti Coverage and "Disaster Porn"

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - Nov. 19 - Last month I was reporting a story on the opening of a mango warehouse in Haiti’s countryside when a fellow reporter got a phone call from his editor: forget about mangoes and get to Saint Marc, where an unknown disease had already killed forty-four people. We arrived at the town’s hospital an hour later. Hundreds of people—men, women, and children—lay...

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The O’Reilly Factor

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - Aug. 16 (News) - Whenever they say ‘it’s not about the money,’ it is about the money.” - Fred W. Friendly It was a balmy Saturday––a perfect night for champagne toasts. Some 450 people from the local television industry gathered in the Grand Ballroom at the Boston

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Lara Logan’s Misplaced Question

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - By Clint Hendler - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - Logan’s question is the right one: Was what McChrystal and his aides did so bad as to compel the president to accept his resignation? But it’s not a question for Hastings—whether or not he’s ever enlisted. It’s a question for the president, who, after learning of what McChrystal and his aides were “doing,” decided that his career had to end.

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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.

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