May/June 2012

Articles

Postage due

The USPS is running out of money. Where does that leave magazines?

By Lauren Kirchner May 14, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Early on a February morning, in a glass-walled conference room high up in the Hearst Tower in Manhattan, Postmaster General... More

Encryption is your friend

Four easy ways to protect yourself and your sources

By Matthieu Aikins May 7, 2012 at 07:00 AM

• Depending on whether you use Windows, Mac, or Linux, there is a variety of built-in or free software for... More

Meanwhile, in the land of the free…

In the US, you can still say almost anything, but someone just may be listening in

By Dan Gillmor May 7, 2012 at 07:00 AM

In December 2010, the major payment systems used to buy goods and services online decided that Wikileaks was no longer... More

Beyond encryption

Hold the phone! And other security strategies…

By Dan Gillmor May 7, 2012 at 07:00 AM

Encrypted messaging is just one of many techniques that journalists should be deploying in the digital age. I asked Christopher... More

Censory overload

How a reluctant journalist used his software skills to aid the Arab Spring

By Walid Al-Saqaf May 4, 2012 at 06:00 AM

January 26, 2011, was just another cold winter day in Sweden, where I attend graduate school. I returned to... More

The reporter who saw it coming

Mike Hudson thought he was merely exposing injustice, but he also was unearthing the roots of a global financial meltdown

By Dean Starkman May 3, 2012 at 10:05 AM

Mike Hudson began reporting on the subprime mortgage business in the early 1990s when it was still a marginal,... More

The spy who came in from the code

How a filmmaker accidentally gave up his sources to Syrian spooks

By Matthieu Aikins May 3, 2012 at 09:56 AM

Last fall, “Kardokh,” a 25-year-old dissident and computer expert in the Syrian capital of Damascus, met with British journalist and... More

Sino the times

Can China’s billions buy media credibility?

By Sambuddha Mitra Mustafi May 2, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Locals call it da kucha, or “big boxer shorts,” because of its shape. China Central Television’s future headquarters in Beijing... More

Muscovy pluck

How long can Ekho Moskvy radio get away with pooh-poohing Putin?

By Paul Starobin May 1, 2012 at 06:00 AM

In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, there is no more persistent reproach to his autocratic rule than the country’s oldest independent... More

The reporter who saw it coming

Mike Hudson thought he was merely exposing injustice, but he also was unearthing the roots of a global financial meltdown

By Dean Starkman Apr 22, 2012 at 03:33 PM

Mike Hudson began reporting on the subprime mortgage business in the early 1990s when it was still a marginal,... More

Six degrees of aggregation

How The Huffington Post ate the Internet

By Michael Shapiro Apr 16, 2012 at 05:15 PM

Of the many and conflicting stories about how The Huffington Post came to be—how it boasts 68 sections, three... More

Departments

Basis Points

By Merrill Perlman May 31, 2012 at 06:50 AM

“On a case-by-case basis.” “On a regular basis.” “On an urgent basis.” Each of those base expressions, from The Associated... More

Sree Tips

Social-media etiquette for journalists

By Sree Sreenivasan May 30, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Q: I just came back from a conference; what’s the best way to use LinkedIn to connect with people... More

Open Bar

The Press Room

By The Editors May 29, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Year opened 1995 Owner James “Raff” Rafferty (born in Manchester, England) Distinguishing features Next door to the Santa Barbara... More

Not going the distance

By The Editors May 25, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Much ado… On March 21, The Orange County Register published a blog post, based on the sworn affidavit of... More

Title Search

User Experience (UX) Designer

By Jay Woodruff May 18, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Susan Rits is a User Experience (UX) Designer who worked at Time Warner, Fox, and Google. She is founder... More

Hard Numbers

Retracting “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory”

By The Editors May 17, 2012 at 06:50 AM

888,000 downloads of “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” the January 6 This American Life episode based on Mike Daisey’s... More

How I got that story

RealRural

By The Editors May 16, 2012 at 06:50 AM

In March 2011, Lisa M. Hamilton, a writer and photographer, began a series of road trips around rural California.... More

What’s in My…

Dean Takahashi from GamesBeat unpacks

By Tyler Orsburn May 11, 2012 at 06:50 AM

It’s fitting that veteran tech journalist Dean Takahashi, who grew up a self-described “arcade rat,” weaned on classics like... More

Notes from our Online Readers

Readers weigh in on Ron Howell’s “The New York Times Goes to the Dogs”

By The Editors May 9, 2012 at 07:00 AM

In a March piece, Ron Howell wrote about the increase in stories about dogs in The New York Times since... More

Aggregated assault

Whose work is it, anyway? A plea for standards.

By Cyndi Stivers May 9, 2012 at 07:00 AM

“There’s nothing new under the sun.” Thus spake my high-school teacher, then nearing retirement, and if I remembered nothing... More

An unflinching witness

Long Island native Marie Colvin spent her career chronicling the horrors of war and oppression, from Sri Lanka to Syria. She wanted the world to see what she saw.

By Jon Swain May 8, 2012 at 12:10 AM

Marie Colvin, who was killed in Syria on February 22, represents a great deal that is excellent about the... More

Readers respond to our March/April issue

By The Editors May 8, 2012 at 12:10 AM

Patch work Excellent piece (“The constant gardener” by Sean Roach, CJR, March/April), and even though I didn’t join Patch until... More

The Instagram campaign

By The Editors May 2, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Every presidential campaign produces its share of iconic images, but never before have we been able to see trail... More

Editor in Chief’s Note

CJR’s 50th birthday party continues

By Cyndi Stivers May 1, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Perhaps the best thing about turning 50 is that people tend to toss you more than one party. Christie Hefner,... More

Ideas & Reviews

Headlines that editors probably wish they could take back

By The Editors Jun 1, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Mother arrested after drowning —Houston Chronicle, 10/18/11 173 animals seized; 2 face cruelty charges —Bellingham (WA) World, 9/23/11 La. chimpanzees... More

Brief Encounters

Short reviews of Hitlerland and Yazoo

By James Boylan May 28, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power | By Andrew Nagorski | Simon & Schuster | 385 pages,... More

Guiding Starr

Freedom of expression is not freedom of the press

By Michael Schudson and Katherine Fink May 24, 2012 at 11:35 AM

Paul Starr’s short essay, “An Unexpected Crisis: The News Media in Postindustrial Democracies” in the International Journal of Press/Politics (2012),... More

A master’s missteps

Fixated on Kapuscinski’s flaws, a new biography misses the point

By Ted Conover May 23, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Celebrated for his reportage about world-changing events and leaders of his day—the Iranian Revolution, Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution,... More

Exit Interview

C-SPAN’s maestro exits the stage

By Erika Fry May 22, 2012 at 06:50 AM

In 1979, Brian Lamb, then the head of Cablevision’s DC bureau, achieved what now seems unimaginable: He convinced Congress... More

The re-entry problem

America’s tough-on-crime policies didn’t work. Now what?

By Alan Prendergast May 21, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Over the course of eight days in 1978, a 15-year-old terror named Willie Bosket managed to satisfy his curiosity about... More

The astroturf Cassandra

Why hacks like Andrew Keen really fear the social Web

By Maureen Tkacik May 15, 2012 at 06:50 AM

Long before Facebook or Foursquare, men like the late management consultant Martin Jay Levitt were connoisseurs of social networks. At... More

Laboratory confidential

The Double Helix’s warts-and-all portrayal of scientific pursuits shook up the formal world of science writing

By Jonathan Weiner May 10, 2012 at 06:50 AM

W hen The Double Helix appeared in the winter of 1968, I reviewed it for The Laureate, the literary magazine... More

Most Popular
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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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