January/February 2012

Articles

By Michael Massing Feb 6, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Few Western correspondents have a background as unique as Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s. A native of Iraq at the time of... More

Friday Night Bytes

In Texas, high school football is the killer app

By Jake Batsell Jan 30, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Brimming with swagger, the top-ranked Allen High Eagles burst from an inflatable tunnel, rip through a paper banner, and sprint... More

The Ring is Counted Out

Boxing’s duplicity devours an honest magazine

By Ivan G. Goldman Jan 23, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Let’s get two things straight. One, last September I was fired from The Ring, the venerable boxing magazine, along... More

What Scientist Shortage?

The Johnny-can’t-do-science myth damages US research

By Beryl Lieff Benderly Jan 17, 2012 at 01:45 PM

On July 28, 2011, Senator Chuck Schumer, a democrat from New York, opened a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on high-skill... More

Get Real

The unlikely marriage of documentary filmmakers and reality TV

By Alissa Quart Jan 17, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Dionicio is a heroin addict who was terribly abused as a child and turned to drugs and crime when... More

The Times and the Jews

A vocal segment of American Jewry has long believed that the paper has been unfair to Israel. Here’s why—and why they’re wrong.

By Neil Lewis Jan 13, 2012 at 04:20 PM

During the winter of 1974, Seymour Topping, the assistant managing editor of The New York Times, and his wife, Audrey,... More

A Narrowed Gaze

How the business press forgot the rest of us

By Dean Starkman Jan 9, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Steve Lipin didn’t fit the profile of a transformative media figure when he took over the mergers-and-acquisitions beat for... More

The Girl Who Loved Journalists

Stieg Larsson’s posthumous gift to an embattled industry

By Eric Alterman Jan 4, 2012 at 06:00 AM

For a profession whose entire raison d’être is communication, American journalists sure have done a lousy job of explaining... More

Departments

Florida Roots

A native son discusses environmental journalism

By Curtis Brainard Feb 2, 2012 at 06:00 AM

On any day, there are six novels hiding in the pages of The Miami Herald, says Carl Hiaasen, the... More

The Jury is in

On “jury-rigged” and “jerry-built” confusion

By Merrill Perlman Jan 27, 2012 at 06:00 AM

An article about a rundown neighborhood said that “most of the buildings are jerry-rigged structures of corrugated aluminum.” Another article... More

The Velvet Rope

Why do journalists still care about seeing their name in print?

By Janet Paskin Jan 24, 2012 at 06:00 AM

If print media is truly in an advanced stage of decline, if journalism’s great hope is online, why do... More

Notes From our Online Readers

Readers respond to Erika Fry’s “The Romenesko Saga”

By The Editors Jan 20, 2012 at 06:00 AM

In early November, CJR’s Erika Fry contacted the Poynter Institute with questions about new aggregation practices at its popular Romenesko+... More

Saturation Point

A plethora of news outlets doesn’t mean deeper coverage

By Michael Meyer Jan 16, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Consider the situation in many local news markets—some coverage from a newspaper, some from television, maybe one online outlet making... More

Hard Numbers

Some stats and figures on the news industry

By The Editors Jan 13, 2012 at 06:00 AM

105 number of countries with freedom of information laws; The Associated Press sent each a request on terrorism arrests and... More

In the Dark

The campaign to weaken campaign-finance disclosure laws

By The Editors Jan 12, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Journalists are big believers in the First Amendment; its legal force undergirds the fearless journalism that democracy requires. But... More

Readers respond to our 50th anniversary issue

By The Editors Jan 10, 2012 at 06:00 AM

At Fifty Congratulations on the publication of your recent fiftieth anniversary issue (CJR, November/December 2011). It was truly the finest... More

Show us how the game is rigged

By The Editors Jan 6, 2012 at 06:00 AM

On November 26, 2011, The New York Times published an investigation of Ronald Lauder’s aggressive use of strategies available... More

Univision, The Miami Herald, and Marco Rubio, the GOP’s rising star

By Erika Fry Jan 5, 2012 at 05:00 PM

In December 1987, federal police in Miami made their biggest drug bust of the year. Dubbed “Operation Cobra,” agents arrested... More

Executive Editor’s Note

Welcome Cyndi Stivers, our new editor in chief

By Mike Hoyt Jan 5, 2012 at 06:00 AM

This is the first issue of the Columbia Journalism Review’s second half century, and already you’ll find a significant change... More

Corrections

Mistakes from our 50th anniversary issue

By The Editors Dec 20, 2011 at 01:02 PM

• We regret that in our fiftieth anniversary special masthead, a list of everyone who’s ever worked here, we garbled... More

Univision, The Miami Herald, and Marco Rubio, the GOP’s rising star

By Erika Fry Dec 16, 2011 at 03:47 PM

In July 2011, Univision, the nation’s leading Spanish-language network, reported that Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s brother-in-law, Orlando Cicilia, had been... More

Ideas & Reviews

Brief Encounters

Reviewing anthologies on food in wartime reporting and the best of Wolcott Gibbs

By James Boylan Feb 1, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Stories of Food During Wartime by the World’s Leading Correspondents Edited by Matt McAllester |... More

The Algorithm Method

Making news decisions in a clickocracy

By Michael Schudson and Katherine Fink Jan 31, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Journalists relate to their audiences differently in the age of online news, according to C. W. Anderson, in recent articles in... More

Headlines that editors probably wish they could take back

By The Editors Jan 26, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Elderly woman found using GPS—The Herald News (Fall River, MA) 10/8/11 SARGEANT: Victim donated to charity—The Journal News (White Plains,... More

When the 99% Had a Paper

The brief, wondrous life of PM

By Christopher B. Daly Jan 25, 2012 at 06:00 AM

For months, the journalism world had been abuzz with the rumor that Ralph Ingersoll, the editorial genius behind Time,... More

The Road Book

Before Ernie Pyle went to war, he wrote about America

By Kevin Coyne Jan 18, 2012 at 06:00 AM

In the spring of 1932, Ernie Pyle took over as the new managing editor of The Washington Daily News,... More

The Tea Party Paradox

A democratic movement that is anti-democratic at heart

By Elbert Ventura Jan 11, 2012 at 06:00 AM

It remains one of the mysteries of our political age: How did a Wall Street-spawned meltdown and the worst recession... 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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