Columbia Journalism Review back issues from May 2005:
With God on our side.(OPENING SHOT)(Christian news)(Brief Article)
May 01, 2005 ... It was an awful story: an ugly feud involving love, money, and dignity, a family matter laid out under the media's pitiless lights. It was a wonderful story, too: a national debate over law and politics, morality, and the very point of being alive. Terri Schiavo's case was also a new ...
Curveball strikeout?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
May 01, 2005; ... In your July/August 2004 issue you castigated a number of journalists for supposedly accepting faulty information from the Iraqi National Congress and publishing it unquestioningly. At the same time you singled out Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Jonathan Landay of Knight ...
Talking trash.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
May 01, 2005; ... What bullshit. The wishful comment by ABC News president David Westin about "redoubling our commitment to finding the truth" is outlandish (Voices, March/April). He will face further cuts in budget to satisfy the Disney stockholders. If he does not satisfy the demands of those greedy ...
On higher definition.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
May 01, 2005; ... In an editorial in the March/April issue, CJR lays out a prescription for reviving public regard for American journalism: We should do work that actually benefits people and explain ourselves Those are worthy ingredients in a strategy to rebuild trust with the public. But a ...
Inept tailor or inept press?(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
May 01, 2005; ... While it's always nice to win recognition, I must confess to being a bit disappointed in receiving runner-up honors in Corey Pein's January/February column for "Biggest Liberal Media Fantasy" on the strength of my investigative articles exposing the object under President Bush's jacket ...
Where the girls aren't: population trends in op-ed land.(EDITORIAL)
May 01, 2005 ... The media landscape this spring is still warm with the heat of the winter's two wars of words about women, one sparked by a male, East Coast university president, the other by a female, West Coast university professor, and both centered on the slow progress of women in, respectively, the ...
Awards: this year's winners of the Pulitzers, the duPonts, and the National Magazine awards.
May 01, 2005 ... The Pulitzer Prizes Public Service Los Angeles Times FINALISTS: The Orange County Register; Pensacola (Florida) News Journal Breaking News Reporting The Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey) staff FINALISTS: The Charlotte Sun staff, ...
Straight story, curved universe: why Michael Finkel is not Jayson Blair.(VOICES)
May 01, 2005; ... One of the most, yet simultaneously least, productive things I did in journalism school was take Lawrence Weschler's class in the art and craft of narrative journalism, The Fiction of Nonfiction. Most productive, since Weschler is a pioneer in the field, developing over the course of his ...
Letters from jail: taking time to right a wrong.(VOICES)
May 01, 2005; ... In an era of electronic mail, a small part of my correspondence still arrives the old-fashioned way, by U.S. Postal Service. The penmanship of these letters is frequently awful, and my address is sometimes incorrectly rendered. But John Williams has delivered mail to my home for twenty-one ...
Darts and Laurels.
May 01, 2005; ... DART to WREG, in Memphis, Tennessee, for less-than-divine journalism. Two weeks after the revelation by the city's bachelor mayor, Willie Herenton, that he was the father of a four-month-old boy, the child's mother, Claudine Marsh, granted an exclusive interview to the station's Andy Wise ....
Must-see TV: four from frontline.(STATE OF THE ART)
May 01, 2005; ... Between January and March, Frontline aired four documentaries that every American should see. They are a reminder of the sad fact that Frontline, now in its twenty-second year on public television, is unique in the world of TV journalism. "A Company of Soldiers" follows Dog ...
The Russians, the reporters, and a hired gun.(CURRENTS)
May 01, 2005; ... It's nothing new for journalists to serve in court as expert witnesses in libel cases. But the $400,000 paid to Joel Kaplan, a Syracuse University associate professor, for his work on behalf of alleged Russian gangsters has arched some eyebrows. The plaintiffs are Alfa Bank, one ...
Sound bite.(CURRENTS)
May 01, 2005 ... Q Do you mean "F--ing Murderers" when you say "insurgents" and "fighters" in your STUPIDITY? I've grown sick and tired of you "politically incorrect" reporters. Why don't you have the gumption to call a spade a ...
Ten minutes, a thousand letters.(CURRENTS)(Brief Article)
May 01, 2005; ... If letters to the editor are like a home-cooked meal, then Capitol Advantage, the country's largest e-mail lobbying firm, is the McDonald's of grassroots public opinion: massive, mechanized, and a little synthetic. The company guides e-mail missiles for over 1,300 clients, from ...
Where stories can save lives.(CURRENTS)(Interview)
May 01, 2005; ... Nicholas D. Kristof has lately brought the heft of his New York Times column to bear on the massacres in the Darfur region of Sudan. For two years now, government-backed gangs of Arab Muslims have slaughtered black Muslims without mercy or opposition. A number roughly equal to the ...
The sin of wages.(LANGUAGE CORNER)
May 01, 2005; ... First one pop performer and then another, Curtis Gropp reported in an e-mail to Language Corner, insisted on singing "But the battle wages on for toy soldiers." Irritating though it was, Gropp, a copywriter for Creative Ad Services in Huntington Beach, California, just assumed it was a ...
Hard numbers.(CURRENTS)
May 01, 2005 ... 33: Percent by which the number of new public affairs officers exceeded the growth rate Of the overall federal work force between 2000 and 2004. 1: Percent of Pakistani students attending madrassas, or Islamic schools, according to a World Bank study. Widespread newspaper ...
A public editor's private story: bruised egos, lynch mobs, and tricky self-interest; Daniel Okrent's run at The New York Times.(Q&A)(Interview)
May 01, 2005; ... In December 2004, for the first time in its 152-year history, and in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, The New York Times hired an ombudsman or public editor, as it chose to call the position. The Times chose Daniel Okrent, fifty-seven, who published his first column on December 7, ...
The new wave: the Voice of America is being drowned out by a mix of pop-flavored propaganda. What should America sound like?(on the job)
May 01, 2005; ... Even as insiders fear it could be muted, the Voice of America can find few friends at home, where it needs them. Which is not entirely surprising, since many American journalism think of it as a mere propaganda outlet, while many in government--particularly those of a hawkish bent--see the ...
Stations of the cross: how evangelical Christians are creating an alternative universe of faith-based news.(Cover Story)
May 01, 2005; ... It's the first Tuesday of April. In Washington, D.C., the magnolia trees are blooming, tourists crowd the sidewalk cafes, and Congress has just returned from its spring recess. CBN News has chosen this time to unveil its new and greatly expanded Washington bureau in the Dupont Circle area, ...
The struggle at 60: what 60 Minutes does matters. But this season it has fallen short of the standard set by its legendary (and aging) staff. Can the program reinvent itself?
May 01, 2005; ... Those who hold out hope that CBS's venerable newsmagazine 60 Minutes will forever retain its position as the gold standard for TV news must not have been pleased on the night of November 28, 2004, when the correspondent Steve Kroft delivered his profile of the actor Dustin Hoffman. ...
Sinclair's shadow: canned news and conservative commentary ... coming soon to a station near you?
May 01, 2005; ... Local news on WSYX, the ABC affiliate in Columbus, Ohio, can cause mental whiplash. One minute you're absorbing a snapshot of Zoe, a Shi Tsu-Maltese fluffball, sent in by a viewer for the station's "Snow Hound" feature. Blink, and a clean-cut executive from the station's corporate ...
After Rupert? Can News Corporation survive ...
May 01, 2005; ... "What if Rupert is hit by a bus tomorrow?" That's a question that recurs when the subject of Rupert Murdoch and the future of his global, Rube Goldberg empire comes up. What happens to News Corporation, the Brobdingnagian contraption he virtually willed into existence by the power of his ...
Between winter and spring: the crisis with Lebanon showed the Syrian press the limits of its freedom.(LETTER FROM DAMASCUS)
May 01, 2005; ... On a dark stage in a central Damascus theater, six newscasters sit behind small desks in a straight line, a spotlight illuminating each in turn. An Al Jazeera newsreader speaks frantically of occupiers entering Iraq. Next up, a Lebanese anchorwoman--in tight black pants, breasts pushed up, ...
A technical guide for editing gonzo: Hunter S. Thompson from the other end of the Mojo Wire.(ESSAY)
May 01, 2005; ... I never drank with Hunter, nor did I do drugs with him, but I was his editor on about a dozen pieces over three decades and with three magazines. Some of these were short and pointed, like the obloquy for Richard Nixon on the occasion of his death or his review of Kitty Kelley's loathsome ...
Recklessness and arrogance: E.J. Graff on Heda Kovaly's Under A Cruel Star and the need for more 'intimate political reportage'.(SECOND READ)
May 01, 2005; ... In 1986 my favorite bookseller handed me Under A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, telling me I must read it. I did, and I've since given copies of it to at least a dozen people and recommended it to dozens more. I can't be alone in this. Originally published by Helen Epstein, who ...
Un-shining hour: Sulzberger and his Jewish problem.(Buried By the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper)(Book Review)
May 01, 2005; ... BURIED BY THE TIMES: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper by Laurel Leff Cambridge University Press 432 pp., $29 Which American newspaper greeted Hifler's diplomatic victory at Munich with a recommendation that the world place its hopes in the Kellogg Briand ...
Journalism on stage: four plays that skewer the press.(Moot the Messenger)(Permanent Collection)(The Story)(Theater Review)
May 01, 2005; ... PERMANENT COLLECTION By Thomas Gibbons THE STORY By Tracey Scott Wilson HAZARD COUNTY By Allison Moore MOOT THE MESSENGER By Kia Corthon Mendacity and betrayal in the newsroom, the perils of chain ownership, the tensions between patriotism and ...
Breaking through the barrier: a torture victim asks to be tortured again--on television.(EXCERPT)
May 01, 2005 ... In A Matter of Opinion, published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Victor Navasky reflects on a lifetime in magazine journalism. Or, more specifically (with one brief detour at The New York Times) on a career devoted to magazines of opinion, those small and often struggling ...
Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy at Risk.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2005; ... KNIGHTFALL: KNIGHT RIDDER AND HOW THE EROSION OF NEWSPAPER JOURNALISM IS PUTTING DEMOCRACY AT RISK By Davis Merritt Amacom 242 pp. $24.95 Davis Merritt has been identified in recent years with the efforts at community engagement called public journalism, but in Knightfall, ...
Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, the Business of News, and the Danger to Us All.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2005; ... BAD NEWS: THE DECLINE OF REPORTING, THE BUSINESS OF NEWS, AND THE DANGER TO US ALL By Tom Fenton ReganBooks $25.95. 262 pp. Like Knightfall, Tom Fenton's Bad News is a lament for a past era--the days when foreign correspondents, stationed in the capitals of the world, counted ...
Bad News and Good Judgment: A Guide to Reporting on Sensitive Issues in a Small-Town Newspaper.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
May 01, 2005; ... BAD NEWS AND GOOD JUDGMENT: A GUIDE TO REPORTING ON SENSITIVE ISSUES IN A SMALL-TOWN NEWSPAPER By Jim Pumarlo Marion Street Press 118 pp. $18.95 paper Jim Pumarlo, former editor of the Red Wing (Minnesota) Republican Eagle, reflects on journalism at its most intimate, when the ...
The wake-up call.(SCENE)
May 01, 2005; ... When the caller started telling me how her bosses had ruined her life, I looked longingly across the cubicle at the computer where I had been crunching data when the phone rang; if I could just get her off the line. She started crying. The call came after I had ...