May/June 2011

Articles

By Pamela Newkirk May 25, 2011 at 12:00 AM

It started as a trickle. Sylvester Monroe resigned in 2006 as Sunday national editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and, two... More

The Smith Rules

Sam Smith covers the Chicago Bulls—for the Bulls

By Daniel Libit May 9, 2011 at 06:00 AM

Sam Smith says he’s living out the “ultimate journalistic fantasy” after leaving the news business. The former Chicago Tribune... More

Breathing Room

Toward a new Arab media

By Lawrence Pintak May 5, 2011 at 08:30 AM

Before there was Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or even Al Jazeera, there was Hama, Syria. It was 1982 and an... More

English Lesson

The moment has arrived for Al Jazeera English, except in the US

By Lawrence Pintak May 5, 2011 at 08:30 AM

[This is a sidebar article to the May/June 2011 cover story, "Breathing Room: Toward a new Arab media," which you... More

Anybody There?

Why the UK’s phone-hacking scandal met media silence

By Archie Bland May 4, 2011 at 08:45 AM

On Thursday, July 7, James Murdoch announced that, in the wake of the paper's escalating phone-hacking scandal, the 168-year-old... More

Covering Obama’s Secret War

When drones strike, key questions go unasked and unanswered

By Tara McKelvey May 3, 2011 at 08:30 AM

In the spring of 2009, New York Times reporter David Rohde was being held captive by Taliban gunmen in a... More

True Enough

The second age of PR

By John Sullivan May 2, 2011 at 06:00 AM

The Gulf oil spill was 2010’s biggest story, so when David Barstow walked into a Houston hotel for last... More

The Family Owner Rises Again

A tradition of hewing to basics pays off

By Bret J. Schulte May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

The Seaton family had spent four generations weaving a daisy chain of newspapers across the small towns of the... More

Departments

Lift the Shroud

Why we need Al Jazeera English

By The Editors Jun 7, 2011 at 09:45 AM

For most of the last decade, when Americans heard mention of Al Jazeera, the Arabic language Qatar-based satellite news... More

Darts & Laurels

The Oregonian and Village Voice Media help to de-sensationalize a story

By Lauren Kirchner May 26, 2011 at 01:00 AM

In early 2009, the FBI organized a nationwide sting operation to rescue victims of sex trafficking and arrest their pimps.... More

Attacks on reporters and photographers in the Arab world threaten journalism everywhere

By The Editors May 1, 2011 at 02:13 PM

Is journalism worth dying for? Murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s editor used those words as the title of a posthumously... More

Important News

Some “most important” notes on adverbs

By Merrill Perlman May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

Writers, rejoice! it’s perfectly acceptable to tell people what’s most important by saying “most importantly….” Many people were taught that... More

Notes from Our Online Readers

Readers weigh in on who should fill the slot on the New York Times op-ed page

By The Editors May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

With the recent departures of Frank Rich and Bob Herbert from the New York Times’s opinion pages, and a new... More

Freed Press

Upheaval in a Tunisian newsroom is all for the better

By Jabeen Bhatti May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

Watching the upheaval in her home region from a Tunis newsroom in late December, Assabah reporter Rim Saoudi became frustrated.... More

Hard Numbers

Some stats and figures on the news industry

By The Editors May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

30 percent of visitors to local news and information websites that live outside the site’s market 25 percent of visitors... More

Readers respond to our March/April cover story by LynNell Hancock, “Tested”

By The Editors May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

Grading Teachers LynNell Hancock’s article, “Tested: Covering schools in the age of micro-measurement” (CJR, March/April), gives a thoughtful and thorough... More

Editor’s Note

News about an upcoming web series on digital journalism, “The Story So Far”

By Mike Hoyt May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

This is a full issue and, we hope you agree, a good one. we invite you to read every word,... More

Paying Off

The problem of bribes in the Liberian press

By Emily Schmall May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

After two civil wars, Liberian journalists are enjoying unprecedented freedoms but struggling to maintain independence. The business of news is... More

Tide Change at Bay Journal

The Chesapeake Bay Journal celebrates twenty years of educating readers about the bay

By Curtis Brainard May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

The twentieth anniversary of the Chesapeake Bay Journal marks a watershed moment for a publication that knows something about watersheds.... More

Ideas & Reviews

Pay Up

Sources have their agendas. Why can’t money be one?

By John Cook Jun 2, 2011 at 10:10 AM

Paying for information is, among American journalists, generally regarded as falling in the same moral category as paying for sex.... More

The Paper Chase

For tabloid king Emile Gauvreau, it took a lifetime to slow down

By Michael Shapiro May 6, 2011 at 09:00 AM

Years later, when he recounted the events that would lead to his becoming the most sensational, shameless, ambitious, and... More

Bishops agree sex abuse rules

Headlines that editors probably wish they could take back

By The Editors May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

Girls Think Tank Has Emerged as Key Voice for Human Rights — The San Diego Union-Tribune 1/3/11 Padres pitcher Latos... More

How to Dow

Careless coverage of the Dow Jones Industrial Average can mislead readers

By Michael Schudson and Julia Sonnevend May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

Stock-market indices offer an alluring impression of rigor and certainty. But what do they really mean? The University of Michigan... More

Headless Body in Newspaper War

Paul Collins’s new history brings a gaudy death to life

By Kevin Baker May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Spaked The Tabloid Wars | By Paul... More

Brief Encounters

Short reviews of new books about war correspondents Roi Ottley and Byron Darnton

By James Boylan May 1, 2011 at 08:00 AM

Roi Ottley’s World War II: The Lost Diary of an African American Journalist | Edited with an introduction by Mark... More

Most Popular
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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

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