Recently added articles from Columbia Journalism Review:
Opening shot.(public-service journalism)(Brief article)
Mar 01, 2009 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Embattled automakers need lithium for the batteries that will power the next generation of electric cars. Bolivia has half the world's known supply of lithium, buried beneath massive salt flats (above). But questions of how to get it without despoiling ...
Reasons to believe: journalism's search for a support system.(Editorial)
Mar 01, 2009 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There is a lot of death talk around journalism lately. A case in point that stuck in our craw was Michael Hirschorn's recent Atlantic piece about The New York Times: the Gray Lady might expire, he predicted, by May. We doubt it. But more alarming, to us ...
Left hanging.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Mar 01, 2009; ... In "Hung Out to Dry" (CJR, January/ February), Laura Rozen makes a good point when she writes that "the national-security press dug up the dirt, but Congress wilted." But let's not forget that for most of the Bush years, the Republicans were the majority in both houses and weren't likely ...
Whose truth?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Mar 01, 2009; ... Excellent essay ("Un-American" by Michael Massing, CJR, January/February). After the 2004 election, when analysts were trying to figure out how the red and blue states had become so divided, it seemed apparent to me: a huge swath of the country were listening exclusively to conservative ...
Dart dispute.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Mar 01, 2009; ... You missed your target with the Dart thrown at the Cleveland Plain Dealer for failing to stick by reporter Bob Paynter's story on racial disparities in the Cuyahoga County criminal-justice system. Plain Dealer editor Susan Goldberg recognized that Paynter's reporting did not meet the Plain ...
Notes from online readers.(LETTERS)(Interview)(Brief article)
Mar 01, 2009 ... WE RECENTLY LAUNCHED PAGE VIEWS, our Wednesday blog about books. James Marcus, who edits the Ideas & Reviews section of C JR and, now, Page Views, interviewed David Denby, the New Yorker film critic, about Snark, Denby's new book. According to Denby, snarky writing may be reaching a new ...
Editor's note.(LETTERS)
Mar 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE THUMBNAIL MAGAZINE COVER ABOVE IS SOMETHING WE'RE PROUD TO present--the first issue of Columbia Journalism Review Chinese, to be published and distributed in China. CJRChinese will consist primarily of articles from ...
Craigslist = straw man.(Currents)(newspapers' advertising revenue)
Mar 01, 2009; ... [GRAPHIC OMITTED] Data gathered by the Newspaper Association of America show a savage decline in newspaper ad revenue in the third quarter of 2008, down 18 percent from the same period the previous year. Classified volume was down 30 percent for the same quarter. Craig Newmark, ...
One shot.(Currents)(Jamshid Bayrami)(Interview)
Mar 01, 2009; ... IN 1999, AN IRANIAN COLlege student and an Iranian news photographer crossed paths briefly but momentously in Tehran during a student protest of regime practices. The photographer, Jamshid Bayrami, on assignment for Reuters, snapped a shot of the student, Ahmad Batebi, holding up the ...
Hard numbers.(Currents)(Brief article)(Statistical data)
Mar 01, 2009 ... 26.9 million live video streams CNN.com Live delivered on inauguration clay (more than five times the previous record of 5.3 million last year on election day) 8,500 status updates posted on Facebook during the first minute of Obama's speech 600 000 status updates ...
They called me once--to comment when Britney and Madonna kissed....(Currents)(Britney Spears)(Brief article)
Mar 01, 2009; ... 'They called me once--to comment when Britney and Madonna kissed .... But I was too busy reading about ...
Dutch treat.(Currents)(government fund for the Netherlands' print media)
Mar 01, 2009; ... AFTER A CRY FOR HELP FROM the print media, the Dutch government has established an 8 million [euro] ($10.2 million) fund to jumpstart the search for digital and other innovative solutions to the dramatic collapse of revenues at newspapers and newsmagazines. In April, Ronald Plasterk, the ...
Snark hunt.(LANGUAGE CORNER)(snarky)(Definition)(Brief article)
Mar 01, 2009; ... SOMETIMES, DICTIONARIES JUST DON'T GET IT. THIS ONE WILL DEFINE A WORD ONE way; that one will define the same word another way. C'mon, people! It's not like anyone's depending on you or anything! If that sounded "snarky," you'd better check your definition, because that's one ...
Darts & laurels.
Mar 01, 2009; ... LAUREL to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, The Tennessean, and The Post and Courier for strong reporting on the coal-ash spill in Harriman, Tennessee. On December 22, a forty-acre elevated retention pond, which stored more than a billion gallons of fly-ash sludge, a byproduct ...
The sarcastic times: for Rachel Maddow and the other ironic anchors, absurdity is serious stuff.(IN MEDIA RES)
Mar 01, 2009; ... ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN DECEMBER, RACHEL MADDOW, IN A TOREADOR-style black jacket, waits for her show to start. She types last-minute notes on her computer with the intensity of a graduate student. At the 30 Rock news television studio, with its red, white, and blue decor, late-night ...
Good morning, Postville! An unlikely thorn in Agriprocessors' side.(ON THE JOB)
Mar 01, 2009; ... AS A NEW WORK WEEK BEGAN IN POSTVILLE, IOWA, LAST NOVEMBER, JEFF ABBAS, with his bushy gray beard and ample paunch, manned the mike at the town's lone radio station, KPVL. After a song by Billy Bragg, Abbas delivered the latest update on Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in ...
The companies they keep: Fortune's dubious list of the best employers.(ANNOTATION)
Mar 01, 2009; ... Fortune does the unemployed reader a disservice with this bold headline, "Now hiring! How to Land a Top Job." Or maybe not; we're in a bad recession. Throughout the issue, in fact, Fortune provides tips for the job seeker on how to land a position with these companies, though several were ...
The American newsroom.
Mar 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ProPublica ...
Roll the dice: how one journalist gambled on the future of news.(Cover story)
Mar 01, 2009; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nine months. We'd been at this project for nine months, beginning with a few sketches on a whiteboard about how we might design a Web site for international news in the digital age. Back then it was just Phil Balboni and me in our Boston offices, ...
2014: how we got here: voices from an imagined future.
Mar 01, 2009 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] These are hard times. CJR counts a stunning 11,250 journalism jobs lost, mostly at newspapers, in the last two years. Out of necessity, these are times of great innovation, too, both inside and outside of media companies. Will somebody come up with a ...