Columbia Journalism Review back issues from November 2007:
Opening shot.(Editorial)
Nov 01, 2007 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Language has awesome power. It can rouse whole nations, as Charles de Gaulle is attempting above, on the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris, or it can mount a defense in closer quarters, as the author Alice Sebold discovered some years ago ....
Iraq and the cost of coverage: serious stories, serious money.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)
Nov 01, 2007 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The debate about the ramifications of the U.S. troop "surge" that began last winter in Iraq is both highly politicized and highly significant. Critics from the right assail the press for failing to report signs of progress from the surge, while critics ...
Book covers.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2007; ... I read with interest and approval "Goodbye to All That" by Steve Wasserman on the importance of literary journalism for newspapers (CJR, September/ October). It is mystifying why publishers don't appreciate the connection between serious books coverage and readership. Though a good paper ...
San Diego calling.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2007; ... "The Nonprofit Road" by Charles Lewis (CJR, September/October) rang a few bells. About two and a half years ago, we started voiceofsandiego.org, a nonprofit, online-only daily dedicated solely to local journalism and with a strong focus on investigative and in-depth reporting and ...
In the best of Health.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2007; ... From the tone of "How Healthy Is Men's Health?" (CJR, September/October), it sounds like Christopher Hanson would like Men's Health to become an alarmist, policy-heavy newsmagazine providing frontline screeds on diseases of the week. As a young reporter at Men's Health, I wanted the same, ...
Editor's note.(Editorial)
Nov 01, 2007; ... "IF YOU LOOK AT the whole arc of this thing, it used to be easy in the beginning, but it was never easy ...." So says Dexter Filkins of The New York Times, recalling the strange day he drove over the border into Iraq, just as the U.S. military was rolling in for the start of a long war. So ...
Quality investments.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2007; ... "The Uncle Sam Solution" by Bree Nordenson (CJR, September/October) suggests that the government should defray the costs of foreign reporting. As a retired engineer with foreign experience, I believe that foreign reporting is well worth the investment. Since other countries already support ...
Stung.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
Nov 01, 2007; ... I share in the sadness for the suicide of Louis Conradt Jr., who got caught in a To Catch a Predator sting operation ("The Shame Game" by Douglas McCollam, CJR, January/February). I have always been disturbed by To Catch a Predator, more than by the pathetic people who serve as the ...
Corrections and clarifications.(LETTERS)(Correction notice)
Nov 01, 2007 ... A few misfires found their way into the September/October issue. In Terry A. Dalton's piece on Mike Pride, an editor added a phrase asserting that Pride started his thirty-year career at the Concord Monitor on the sports desk. In fact, he started at the Monitor as the managing editor, and ...
The big picture.(Currents)
Nov 01, 2007; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The movie poster for this fall's The Hunting Party features a black-and-white photo of Richard Gere and Terrence Howard, press passes dangling from their necks, pasted on a blood-orange background that reads: LIARS--CHEATS--PLAYBOYS--THIEVES. The last word ...
Hard numbers.(Currents)(Brief article)
Nov 01, 2007 ... 356 applicants for Knight Foundation/MTV-sponsored "Young Creators Award," which funds innovative ideas to transform physical communities through digitally delivered news 25 maximum age for applicants 71 approximate percent of stories on user-driven news-aggregation ...
'Twas ever thus.(LANGUAGE CORNER)(Brief article)
Nov 01, 2007; ... A CAVEAT: "Thusly" can be used in a humorous context, but if you do it, put up a sign. Otherwise, chances are nobody will get it; they'll wonder why you didn't use "thus." Some recent examples: 1. "President Bush should declare this nonoccupation doctrine thusly:" ...
Darts & laurels.
Nov 01, 2007; ... LAUREL to The Principia Pilot for truth-telling under difficult circumstances. When rumors began to circulate that CEO Stuart Jenkins, who oversees Principia College, had been given a big pay raise, editor Caitlin Carpenter began digging. She soon found out that not only were the rumors ...
The war expert: wrong wrong, wrong again. But the media still want Ken Pollack.(ON THE CONTRARY)
Nov 01, 2007; ... ON JULY 30, AS THE DEBATE OVER THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S "SURGE" IN Iraq was heating up, The New York Times ran an op-ed article that enthusiastically endorsed it. Titled n WAR WE MIGHT JUST WIN, it was written by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, both of the Brookings Institution, ...
The new health-care debate: 1992 echoes loudly, but today's story isn't just back to the future.(Q&A)(Interview)
Nov 01, 2007; ... A 2005 SURVEY BY THE KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION FOUND THAT TWICE AS many people rely on the media for information about health care as rely on doctors or friends or family combined. In 2007, with health care a major issue in the presidential campaign, people will lean on the press even more ....
The American newsroom.
Nov 01, 2007; ... ...
Orwell in '08.(writer George Orwell)
Nov 01, 2007 ... George Orwell's classic 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language," attacked murky writing--dying metaphors, pretentious diction, meaningless words--and proposed that clear writing can lead to clear thinking and a better world. Mostly, he went after fuzzy academics, though he included ...
Orwell abuse.(Orwell in '08)(George Orwell)
Nov 01, 2007; ... ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE, ONE ENCOUNTERS A WRITER WHO seems not only to have a finger on the pulse of his or her own era, but also to have something authoritative to say to posterity. In the English language, Dr. Johnson is still probably the paradigmatic example of such a writer. But since ...
Rights and wrongs.(Orwell in '08)
Nov 01, 2007; ... IN 2002, A YEAR AFTER THE TERRORIST ATTACKS ON NEW York and Washington, the Bush administration published a new version of "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America." That document helped to signal the administration's intent to launch a war against Iraq by asserting ...
The limits of language.(Orwell in '08)
Nov 01, 2007; ... CAN THERE BE A POLITICAL WRITER WHO HAS NOT FALLEN in love with George Orwell's 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language"? Part of its appeal is what's appealing about all of Orwell--its directness and honesty, its plain-spokenness, its faith, against all evidence, that human affairs ...
'Surge,' meet 'escalation'.(Orwell in '08)
Nov 01, 2007; ... NOTHING HAS THE CAPACITY TO FRAME POLITICAL DEBATE more successfully than a good turn of phrase, characterization, or metaphor; nor can anything do more to pervert democratic discourse than inaccurate, imprecise, or misleading language. George Orwell understood the game and called its ...
The rhetoric beat.(Orwell in '08)
Nov 01, 2007; ... THERE WAS A SERIES OF MOMENTS, DURING THE FIRST twenty-four hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001, when the choice of words--by the press and government officials--played a crucial role in setting America on a course that led, ultimately, to our military action in Iraq. Martin ...
If you build it ... the Journal-Constitution gambles on a digitally driven makeover.(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
Nov 01, 2007; ... John C. Mellott, the affable publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is moving his forearm up and down like a lever. "This," he explains, "is the skillful management of a toggle." Where is a photographer when you really need one? Of course, if I were a "mojo"--"mobile ...
Musharraf's monster: in Pakistan, independent TV is young powerful, and biting the hand that fed it.(Letter from Islamabad)(President Pervez Musharraf)
Nov 01, 2007; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One evening last June, during an oppressively hot summer in Islamabad, I attended a protest organized by Pakistani television journalists. A fiery stream lit Constitution Avenue--the broad thoroughfare is lined with the state's most powerful political ...
The unvanquished: Marshall Frady and the dime-store rascals of southern politics.(SECOND READ)(Biography)
Nov 01, 2007; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A few months before he died in a car accident, David Halberstam published a droll, melancholy homage to his colleague and friend Marshall Frady, who lost a prolonged battle with cancer in 2004. The essay appears as a new introduction to two books by Frady ...
Cowboys and damsels: Susan Faludi oversimplifies post-9/11 America.(The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2007; ... The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America By Susan Faludi Metropolitan Books 351 pages, $26 SINCE SEPTEMBER 12, 2001, THE American media have churned out a remarkable body of work on our nation's response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The issue has been hashed ...
Parting shot: WFB shores up his place in the establishment.(Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes & Asides From National Review)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes & Asides From National Review by William F. Buckley Jr. Basic Books 256 pages, $24 A CONFESSION: BACK IN JUNE OF 1988, when journalist John Judis (The New Republic) published his respectable and respectful biography, William F. Buckley ...
Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else.(BRIEF ENCOUNTERS)(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else By Reporters of the Associated Press, with a foreword by David Halberstam Princeton Architectural Press 432 pages, $35 IN THIS MULTI-AUTHORED NEW HIStory of the Associated Press, Larry ...
The United States v. I. Lewis Libby.(BRIEF ENCOUNTERS)(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2007; ... The United States v. l. Lewis Libby Edited and with reporting by Murray Waas, with additional editing and reporting by Jeff Lomonaco Union Square Press 584 pages, $12.95 paper MURRAY WAAS, A DISCIPLE OF JACK Anderson, the ultimate outsider, has assembled a plump volume of the ...
Managing the President's Message: The White House Communications Operation.(BRIEF ENCOUNTERS)(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Managing the President's Message: The White House Communications Operation By Martha Joynt Kumar The Johns Hopkins University Press 345 pages, $35 NOT EVERYBODY MAY REALIZE THAT during the seven years that The West Wing ran on network television, there was another, nonfictional ...
Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights.(BRIEF ENCOUNTERS)(Brief article)(Book review)
Nov 01, 2007; ... Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights By Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose Random House 214 pages, $24.95 SADLY, THE UNMISTAKABLE VOICE OF Molly Ivins diminishes and all but vanishes in this last book to bear her name. It is nothing against her ...
Who hates the press?(THE RESEARCH REPORT)
Nov 01, 2007; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A NEW STUDY TRACES MORE THAN thirty years of changing public attitudes toward the news media, and unhappily finds that to know journalism is to disdain it. Timothy E. Cook and Paul Gronke, in the July edition of Political Communication, find that "for the ...