It’s a wonderful compliment for Tribune Co.’s newspapers that so many people are worried about what might happen to them under the ownership of Charles and David Koch, the libertarian billionaires said to be considering a bid for the outlets. In California, unions and legislators have expressed concern about such a sale, the former […]
Na Imprensa Internacional
“The people of Los Angeles would be up in arms if some out-of-town billionaires tried to buy the Dodgers and institute a rule that only right-handers could play on the team,” Los Angeles Times cartoonist David Horsey writes in a piece accompanying a cartoon mocking the idea that the Koch brothers could buy Tribune […]
In 2010, I moved to Cairo to try something new. I had taken a job with an education N.G.O., and saw the work—which I knew from friends to be frustrating but fulfilling—as a fresh start. Development, I thought, was useful; I wasn’t sure I could say that about journalism. It took about a week […]
We are not plucky brunettes sporting hipster glasses, ready to tussle with old-school editors and sleep with anyone who gets between us and a scoop Journalism is one of the few jobs Hollywood has always let women do. Since the start of the talkies all the way through today, "female journalist" has been a […]
What is the reading public to make of the Mexican stand-off between politicians and the press? Each has produced a royal charter to regulate the behaviour of journalists, which threaten up to £1m in fines and even more in "exemplary damages" with forced front-page apologies for breaches of taste or privacy. Both claim to […]
TRAVELERS hitting the road with their mobile electronic devices have three questions about staying connected away from home: will there be Wi-Fi, how much will it cost and how well will it work? Increasingly, it is that last question that matters most. Hotels, airports and airlines are struggling to keep up with customers streaming […]
What are journalists worried about these days? Questions from the news:rewired conference in London on Friday suggest the impact of competition for ad revenue and the uncertainty of launching new products are key concerns, among many, as the industry continues to search for viable alternatives to print circulation and ad revenue. Online ad competitor […]
Following up on an initial LA Weekly report a month ago, The New York Times reported that the politically influential conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch are considering buying the eight newspapers of the recently bankrupt Tribune Co., including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Baltimore Sun. The move would be an explicitly […]
What can the second screen do for the first? Television was once a “lean-back” experience, passively consumed from the comfort of the couch, but the proliferation of laptops, smartphones and tablets is making media multitasking the norm. As viewers’ eyes flick from the set in the corner to the device in their hand, how […]
One of my favorite coffee-table books is an odd volume called “The Commissar Vanishes,” a portfolio of doctored photographs from Stalin’s Russia. When Stalin purged one of his fellow Bolsheviks, the comrade who fell from favor was duly cropped or airbrushed out of official photographs. “The Commissar Vanishes” juxtaposes the before and after. Here […]
IF you set out to design a political nemesis who would give Vladimir Putin the shivers, you might well come up with Aleksei Navalny. That is why the trial of the popular Russian activist on Wednesday is the most important political trial in Russia in decades. Navalny, a lawyer, anticorruption crusader and blogger, has […]
Ah, those online relationships. First you’re smitten by a social network or Web service and can’t stop spending time on it. Then it starts asking how you’re feeling, what you like, where you are, with whom, and why you don’t share as much anymore. Pretty soon, you’re ready to call it quits. But trying […]
Finally, a good excuse for journalists to drink alone. When three reporters for InsideClimate News found out they won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting on Monday, none were in the same city — Elizabeth McGowan was in Washington, Lisa Song was in Boston and David Hasemyer was in New York. “We’re a virtual […]
In February, an important two-year mark of the Arab Spring was commemorated in Cairo's Tahrir Square with demonstrations that were anything but springlike. The frustration and violence reflected none of the hope that once riveted the eyes of a global audience on Tunisia and Egypt, where masses gathered to topple two entrenched leaders, each […]
In the world that Maria Pallante, the US Register of Copyrights, inhabits, people sometimes call the Copyright Act of 1976 “the new law,” though it took decades to develop and, it can be argued, was already outdated by the time Congress managed to pass it. But as Pallante said Thursday, in a talk at […]
Paul Krugman, the popular columnist and Nobel economist, recently likened himself to heroic dissenters who stood up to the war whoops and opposed the invasion of Iraq. The go-to-war consensus among policy elites overwhelmed skeptics and tragedy ensued. Professor Krugman evidently sees himself playing a similar role on important economic controversies. “What we should […]
Michael Kelly had an uncharitable term for the column you are about to read: "The Nice Column." Nice columns—about ancient enmities overcome and people pulling together for the greater good and models of estimable human conduct and other Helen Keller-type themes—are the ones nice people complain about not finding often enough in the papers. […]
The data behind Pew’s State of the News Media 2013 are the latest terrifying signs of the decline of the news industry. With three of America’s most esteemed papers for sale — The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times — it’s time for a reboot to the fundamental business model […]
In his USA Today column published yesterday, Michael Wolff pulled out his wagging finger and directed it at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for appointing longtime New Yorker reporter Steve Coll as its dean. The supposed folly? Coll has never Tweeted. Using that as the kernel of his argument, Wolff calls the […]
"Nobody should condone the behaviour of parts of the press that led to the Leveson inquiry," said an editorial in yesterday's Sunday Times. But the point is that virtually all of the non-hacking press, including the Sunday Times, did condone it. They did not investigate the widespread claims of hacking when the story first […]