January/February 2011

Articles

By Tristan McConnell Feb 1, 2011 at 06:00 AM

There had been ethnic massacres in Rwanda before, but nothing on the scale of the genocide that began in... More

Welcome to Tribune Company

Key advice for the next chief executive

By Charles M. Madigan Jan 11, 2011 at 09:30 AM

Dear Sir or Madam: Your most important responsibility before you settle in as CEO is to make certain everyone knows... More

Live From Chicago, It’s the Tribune Company!

Putting its talent on stage to reconnect with a local audience

By Tim Townsend Jan 8, 2011 at 06:59 PM

On a sunny afternoon in October, Tom Skilling, the popular meteorologist on Tribune Company’s WGN-TV, was in a stairwell of... More

Spain’s Not-So-Free Press

Long-promised freedom-of-information legislation stalls

By Richard Schweid Jan 8, 2011 at 06:55 PM

Ask Spaniards if they have a free press and most will answer yes. After all, since Francisco Franco died in... More

New Media Tips from Jacob Riis

A nineteenth-century journalist for a twenty-first-century world

By Paul Niwa Jan 8, 2011 at 06:53 PM

In 1878, Jacob Riis, a police reporter for the New York Tribune, stepped out of his office and into the... More

The Pornography Trap

How not to write about rape

By Jina Moore Jan 8, 2011 at 06:50 PM

In the Spring of 2009, a reporter for the Associated Press published a news feature about rape in the Democratic... More

Crossfire in Kandahar

Afghanistan’s new journalists navigate an ambiguous war

By Vanessa M. Gezari Jan 6, 2011 at 08:00 AM

One hot night in September, less than a week after Afghanistan’s parliamentary election, soldiers from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force... More

Departments

Beyond the Facts

A partisan era requires a vigorous press

By The Editors Jan 18, 2011 at 10:00 AM

The voters have seated a new House of Representatives with an agenda dramatically at odds with that of the president,... More

Laurels to a Texas Monthly reporter and an intrepid attorney who worked to free an innocent man

By Lauren Kirchner Jan 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM

When Anthony Graves was arrested for capital murder, he thought it was a practical joke. A surveillance camera in the... More

Whoa, Nelly!

On “reigning in” misspellings and misusage

By Merrill Perlman Jan 8, 2011 at 07:16 PM

"New Auditor Will Take Reigns in 2011" was the headline. Another article about money said that the "government refuses to... More

Hard Numbers

Some stats and figures on the news industry

By The Editors Jan 8, 2011 at 06:44 PM

100 journalists and analysts to be hired by Bloomberg Government, a D.C.-based subscription service launching in early 2011 $2,495 gets... More

Blog to Print

A Los Angeles blog launches a weekly print tabloid

By Nate Berg Jan 8, 2011 at 06:42 PM

Everything seems to be dead nowadays, depending on whom you ask. Print is dead. Blogging is dead. The Web is... More

Long-Form Saviors

New technology to encourage the reading of long articles, online and off

By Janet Paskin Jan 8, 2011 at 06:40 PM

Reading long articles online invites a thicket of distraction—ads, teasers for slideshows, videos, links hawking penny stocks and personal injury... More

Border Tales

A Q & A with Alfredo Corchado, Mexico correspondent, about reporting on drug cartels

By Lauren Kirchner Jan 8, 2011 at 06:38 PM

As drug cartel and gang violence escalates, Mexico is becoming one of the most dangerous places in the world to... More

Editor’s Note

Some announcements about CJR as we begin our fiftieth year

By Mike Hoyt Jan 8, 2011 at 06:34 PM

This month we begin our fiftieth year. The Columbia Journalism Review made its first appearance back in the fall of... More

Notes From Our Online Readers

Readers weigh in with comments on CJR articles on Fox News, MSNBC, and CBS

By The Editors Jan 8, 2011 at 06:29 PM

In our November/December editorial, we offered some ideas on how to rebuild the democratic conversation to coax readers out of... More

Readers respond to last month’s cover story, “A Media Policy for the Digital Age,” and features on In Demand and photo slideshows

By The Editors Jan 8, 2011 at 06:26 PM

‘A National Information Utility’ Re: “A Media Policy for the Digital Age” by Steve Coll (CJR, November/December). Driving around Middle... More

Notes on 2010, the year of WikiLeaks

By The Editors Jan 8, 2011 at 06:22 PM

It began in April with the release of a video showing Apache helicopter pilots killing civilians, including two Reuters employees,... More

Ideas & Reviews

Any Questions?

Sociolinguists study the changes in presidential press conferences over five decades

By Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend Jan 27, 2011 at 10:15 AM

Sociolinguists are sociologists who study how people talk to one another. They are typically interested in naturally occurring speech, but... More

Bad Medicine

Seth Mnookin’s new book asks, are vaccine fears endangering our health?

By Harriet A. Washington Jan 25, 2011 at 10:30 AM

The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear | By Seth Mnookin | Simon & Schuster |... More

Her Great Depression

Re-reading Betty MacDonald’s Anybody Can Do Anything, on the Northwest’s bust years

By Claire Dederer Jan 20, 2011 at 10:00 AM

From the time I was nine or ten, I carried a spiral-bound Mead notebook with me at all times. I... More

Solar system plagued again by thieves

Headlines that editors probably wish they could take back

By The Editors Jan 8, 2011 at 07:14 PM

Terrorist Is Returned To Prison In Gun Case -The New York Times 10/29/10 Ex-Trader Gets 3 Years In France -The... More

Anger Management

A review of Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right by Dominic Sandbrook

By Sasha Abramsky Jan 8, 2011 at 07:11 PM

Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right | By Dominic Sandbrook |... More

Brief Encounters

Short reviews of books on Garry Wills and the decline of The New York Times

By James Boylan Jan 8, 2011 at 07:08 PM

Outside Looking In: Adventures of an Observer | By Garry Wills | Viking | 195 pages, $25.95 This is a... More

Golden Years?

Susan Jacoby takes on the old-age deniers in Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age

By Chris Lehmann Jan 8, 2011 at 07:05 PM

Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age | By Susan Jacoby | Pantheon Books |... More

Most Popular
Most Commented
Twitter

New survey reveals everything you think about freelancing is true - Data from Project Word quantifies challenges of freelance investigative reporting

Why one editor won’t run any more op-eds by the Heritage Foundation’s top economist - A reply to Paul Krugman on state taxes and job growth made some incorrect claims

Why we ‘stave off’ colds - It all started with wine

The New Republic, then and now - Tallying the staff turnover at the overhauled magazine

Why serious journalism can coexist with audience-pleasing content - Legacy media organizations should experiment with digital platforms while continuing to publish hard news

Why Bill O'Reilly can play hardball on his war zone story (5)

Why scientists often hate records requests (4)

Showdown over the future of independent documentaries at PBS (2)

The LA Times goes deep on superbug outbreak (2)

Why Jan Brewer is sounding like James Risen (2)

Tweets by @CJR

Email blasts from CJR writers and editors

The rise of feelings journalism (TNR)

“Bloom engaged in an increasingly popular style of writing, which I’ve discussed on my blog before, which I call “feelings journalism.” It involves a writer making an argument based on what they imagine someone else is thinking, what they feel may be another person’s feelings. The realm of fact, of reporting, has been left behind.”

Things a war correspondent should never say (WSJ)

“The correspondent retelling war stories surely knows that fellow correspondents had faced the same dangers or worse”

The joyful, bloody media circus of bringing down Brian Williams (Bloomberg)

“In the media, we eat our own for sport”

On WaPo trying to interview a cow (National Journal)

“‘I wasn’t milked on the White House lawn by a strange man,’ The Washington Post—the venerable institution that would later come to break the Watergate scandal and win 48 Pulitzers—quoted her, a farm animal, as saying”

Bloggingheads

Greg Marx discusses democracy and news with Tom Rosenstiel of the American Press Institute

If you like the magazine, get the rest of the year for just $19.95 (6 issues in all).
If not, simply write cancel on the bill and return it. You will owe nothing.