NewsTrust - Mainstream Media - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Feb. 10 (Opinion) - When I read things like this I'm simultaneously amazed by two things. The first is the unbelievable tone-deafness of people who would complain out loud, during a time when millions of people around the country are literally losing their homes, that their bonuses - not their total compensation, mind you, but just their cash bonuses, paid in addition to their salaries and their stock packages - are barely enough to cover the mortgage payments for their new condos, the taxis they take when walking is too burdensome, and their girlfriends with expensive tastes. The second thing that amazes me is that Sherman is buying all this.

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Jesse James: Return of the outlaw biker

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Susan Carpenter - Dec. 05 (Entertainment) - Jesse James had it all. The Hollywood A-list wife. A top-ranked cable-TV show. He'd built his Long Beach shop, West Coast Choppers, into an empire, wrenching custom $80,000-plus motorcycles for a celebrity clientele — an endeavor he spun off into a mass-market clothing line for Wal-Mart, a glossy gearhead magazine and an eco-friendly burger joint he hoped to franchise.

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NewsTrust on Fact-Checking and the Wisdom of Crowds

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Walter Frick - Aug. 25 (Interview) - Truthsquad is a new pro-am fact-checking service we are developing with the Center for Public Integrity, to help journalists and citizens separate fact from fiction together. We are combining the best practices of crowdsourcing with the knowledge of a large nonprofit newsroom and the reach of major news partners. This unique approach empowers citizens to collaborate with journalists to investigate controversial statements from politicians and newsmakers. Participants are invited to post questionable claims online, research factual evidence supporting or opposing these claims, and verify their accuracy as a community, with professional oversight.

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Phone hacking row shows News Corp is no ordinary news company

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jay Rosen - Jul. 20 (Opinion) - Rupert Murdoch's news organisations are not in the news business. What they crave is influence Watching the phone hacking crisis crack wide open over the last few weeks has left me puzzled about its ultimate causes: what is it about News Corp that has produced these events? I don't think we understand very much about this. We can say things like, "Ultimate responsibility goes to the man at the top," meaning Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO. And that sounds right, but it still doesn't explain how any of it happened. "The key people are criminals, liars, or willfully blind..." We could say that, but then we would have to explain how so many of them ended up at one company. Puzzles like these have led many people to the conclusion that there's a culture inside News Corp, that is in some way responsible, and I basically agree with that. Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family of Milly Dowler, said after Rebekah Brooks resigned: "This is not just about one individual but about the culture of an ...

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Debate: The news industry

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - By Jay Rosen, Nicholas Carr, Tom Standage - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - There is no question that the internet is transforming the news industry, just as it has reshaped so many other industries. And, as in those other cases, the internet's impact has both positive and negative aspects. Does this, on balance, strengthen or weaken the news system? This question is not merely of academic interest, or self-interest on the part of journalists. Through an accident of history, the news industry is a largely commercial venture that provides important public goods: serving communities, facilitating public debate and holding those in power to account. This debate will hinge, I suspect, on the effectiveness and sustainability of the new models of accountability journalism that the internet makes possible.

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Getting to Crazy

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Jul. 15 (Opinion) - Commentators seem shocked at Republican unreasonableness as a debt default looms, but it is the end result of a process that has lasted decades.

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How Britain's Guardian is Making Journalism History

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Peter Osnos, Clive Priddle - Jul. 12 (Opinion) - From WikiLeaks to News of the World's closure, the trust-owned newspaper has shifted how Britons see the role of the media

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Murdoch's malign influence must die with the News of the World

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Jul. 10 (Editorial) - The scandal over phone hacking has exposed a rotten empire and the urgent need for stronger press regulation Suddenly, Rupert Murdoch seems much less a global mogul, much more a diminished man of glass. He flies into London this weekend from Sun Valley, Idaho, in time for the last rites of the most successful Sunday newspaper in Britain, the News of the World . One hundred and sixty-eight years ago, it pledged: "Our motto is the truth, our practice is fearless advocacy of the truth." After today, the tabloid will appear no more, felled not by one royal rogue reporter but by the arrogance, ambition and apparent tolerance of systemic criminal behaviour by members of the senior News International management. The loss of a newspaper, especially one with a proud history of award-winning investigative journalism, is a cause for sadness. The News of the World was the biggest-selling Sunday tabloid in the English-speaking world. The death of a paper in such rude health is unprecedented and ...

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The future of news: Back to the coffee house

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - Three hundred years ago news travelled by word of mouth or letter, and circulated in taverns and coffee houses in the form of pamphlets, newsletters and broadsides. “The Coffee houses particularly are very commodious for a free Conversation, and for reading at an easie Rate all manner of printed News,” noted one observer. Everything changed in 1833 when the first mass-audience newspaper, the New York Sun, pioneered the use of advertising to reduce the cost of news, thus giving advertisers access to a wider audience. At the time of the launch America’s bestselling paper sold just 4,500 copies a day; the Sun, with its steam press, soon reached 15,000. The penny press, followed by radio and television, turned news from a two-way conversation into a one-way broadcast, with a relatively small number of firms controlling the media. Now, as our special report explains, the news industry is returning to something closer to the coffee house. The internet is making news more participatory, social, diverse and partisan, reviving the discursive ethos of the era before mass media. That will have profound effects on society and politics.

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The Singularity We Live In …

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Craig Newmark - Jun. 30 (Opinion) - Around five hundred years ago, another nerd, Johannes Gutenberg, invented some tech, but lacked the marketing skills to go really big. That took a social media practitioner, Martin Luther, who started with a posting on a church door. That had impact similar to a really good Facebook Wall post. However, Luther made use of a social networking platform, the Church store-and-forward network, which really got his stuff around, to considerable effect, in the Western hemisphere. That played out over maybe a few hundred years and led to a new balance of power in Europe and a loss of message control, resulting in many strains of Protestantism, and the democratization of Christianity. The latter led to greatly increased literacy. The social network platform was built by a much earlier social media practitioner, Paul of Tarsus, or St. Paul, to successfully effect mass change. Paul used what I call “e-mail”, or “epistle mail”.

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Mindlessly following Palin tour does the media no favors:

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Anchorage Daily News - By Elise Patkotak - Jun. 08 (Opinion) - First, Sarah Palin makes the term "lamestream media" her own, then she goes and proves they really are. And the lamestream media is right there helping her by acting like a bunch of buffoons. Like summer movies, the coverage being provided of Palin's summer vacation is vacuous and forgettable -- it is, as the Bard would say, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Five myths about the future of journalism

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Tom Rosenstiel - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - There are few things journalists like to discuss more than, well, themselves and the long-term prospects for their industry. How long will print newspapers survive? Are news aggregation sites the future? Or are online paywalls — such as the one the New York Times just launched — the way to go? As media organizations plot their future, it’s worth discarding some misconceptions about what it will take to keep the press from becoming yesterday’s news.

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A Note to Our Readers on the Times Pay Model and the Economics of Reporting

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nate Silver - Mar. 24 (Opinion) - Let me say up front that I have some mixed feelings about The New York Times’s metered model, which takes effect on March 28. I’d encourage you to read my colleague David Carr’s take, as well as some of the many analyses that have been circulating throughout the print and digital media.

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NPR's Toothless Defense Strategy

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Howard Kurtz - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - Steve Inskeep, A veteran National Public Radio correspondent, is calling from Cairo, having just visited a 23-year-old man with welts on his back who says the Egyptian Army tortured him. “That, to me, is a real story,” he says. At a time when he is trying to get flak jackets to his colleagues in Libya, Inskeep has little patience for charges that NPR leans to the left. “What’s important to us is the work we do,” he says. “I actually get accused of being a conservative as often as I get accused of being a liberal.” In Chicago, Ira Glass, who hosts This American Life, has used his own network’s airwaves to challenge his bosses for being timid. “Public radio is being hit with a barrage of criticism that it’s left-wing media–biased, reprehensible—and we’re doing nothing to stand up for our brand,” he tells NEWSWEEK. “They’re not responding like a multimedia organization that’s actually growing and superpopular.” These exasperated reporters are speaking out against their embattled company in what amounts to a revolt in the ranks. NPR, reeling from an undercover sting that cost the network its chief executive and a chunk of its credibility, is facing the biggest threat in its 41-year history. The House just voted 228 to 192 to eliminate the federal funding that makes up 10 to 15 percent of public-radio budgets, an effort fueled by longstanding conservative complaints about NPR’s alleged leftist leanings. But with its future on the line, NPR’s decimated management has opted for quiet diplomacy rather than a full-throated defense of one of the few news operations that is actually expanding, reaching an impressive 27 million listeners a week.

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Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:25:51 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Fallows - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - Consumer-obsessed, sensationalist, and passionate about their work, digital upstarts are undermining the old media—and they may also be pointing the way to a brighter future.

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The Economics of Blogging and The Huffington Post

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Nate Silver - Feb. 13 (Opinion) - Although The Huffington Post does not pay those who volunteer to write blogs for it, this content represents only a small share of its traffic. And, to put it bluntly, many of those blog posts aren't worth very much.

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SEO Speedwagon

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Jack Shafer - Feb. 07 (Opinion) - Back in 2005, no self-respecting journalist would ever sink so low to chum the waters with such foul SEO bait. But thanks to Huffington, all self-respecting journalists—especially those who fear for their jobs—have abandoned those anxieties and are happy to chase Arianna's SEO Speedwagon wherever it may go.

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Cable News Broadcasts: Bad Uses Of Your Time

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Conor Friedersdorf - Jan. 24 (Opinion) - Olbermann offered something that couldn't be found elsewhere on television. For liberals who like that medium, I'm sure the show proved cathartic. But wouldn't they be better informed, more meaningfully entertained, and psychicly happier if just read Washington Monthly instead?

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I'm declaring February a Palin-free month. Join me!

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Dana Milbank - Jan. 21 (Opinion) - I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin - in print, online or on television - for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February.

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Catastrophe on camera: Why media coverage of natural disasters is flawed

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

The Independent - By Patrick Cockburn - Jan. 20 (Comment) - The media generally assume that news of war, crime and natural disasters will always win an audience. "If it bleeds, it leads," is a well-tried adage of American journalism. Of the three categories, coverage of war has attracted criticism for its lies,

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The Humbug Express

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Dec. 24 (Opinion) - The production of humbug has become a systematic, even industrial process. Just listen to some of the recent speeches of Republican presidential hopefuls.

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Post's problems with anonymous-source rules get worse online

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Andrew Alexander - Dec. 17 (Editorial) - Post readers constantly complain about the excessive use of anonymous sources in the newspaper. But the problem is even worse online.

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She Who Must Not Be Named

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Charles M. Blow - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - This is it. This is the last time I’m going to write the name Sarah Palin until she does something truly newsworthy, like declare herself a candidate for the presidency. Until then, I will no longer take part in the left’s obsessive-compulsive fascination with her, which is both unhealthy and counterproductive.

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False promise of ‘objectivity’ proves ‘truth’ superior to ‘fact’

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Countdown - By Keith Olbermann - Nov. 15 (Comment) - Mr. Koppel does not have to wait. The kind of television journalism he eulogizes failed this country because when truth was needed, all we got were facts, most of which were lies, anyway. The journalism failed and those who practiced it failed, and Mr. Koppel failed. I don't know that I'm doing it exactly right here. I'm trying. I have to, because whatever that television news was before, we now have to fix it.

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Listen to Me, Barack!

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By David Weigel - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - On Friday, the Washington Post published the worst column of the year. It's been a long year, and a stupid year, so this is no light accusation. And pollster-pundits Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell write a lot of bad columns—they are good ways to spend the slow hours between Fox and Friends and Hannity, more productive than knitting or Sudoku. Still, the hackwork in their call for President Obama to retire after one term was something special.

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