Everyone has an opinion on ‘the media’ today because the pampered TV anchors and insular political reporters have once again made it easy to narrowly define the term, with their ridiculous annual decision to party with the people they’re supposed to be covering. Not shown nor considered are all the journalists in the world who were busy doing their jobs and may not even own tuxedos and evening gowns. Read more →
Every morning, we get an email from the digital bosses at the World Headquarters of NewsCut. It’s the daily page view and “engagement time” for everything that appears on the MPR News website. I don’t pretend to know what most of it means other than it feels better to be at the top of the list from Chartbeat than not on it at all. Read more →
There’s more than the Wetterlings’ reputation and the reputation of journalists at stake with what comes next; there’s also the willingness of victims and others to assist investigators in the future. Read more →
The Minnesota Daily, operated by journalism students at the University of Minnesota, told a story that needed be told — excessive drinking at parties run by fraternities and sororities, specifically the February death of Mitchell Hoenig. Read more →
Unquestionably, there is a right to free speech; that’s not the issue. This is: Does journalism have a responsibility to give it a megaphone? Read more →
Mark Conditt was portrayed by authorities as not motivated by hatred, but was upset about his life, so he sent package bombs to people, all of whom happened to be black. Did journalists go along with that depiction because they’re mostly white and Christian, too? The New York Times says ‘no.’ Read more →
These are tough times for the newspaper industry, tougher times for people who make their living as ink-stained wretches, and it’s no picnic for readers either when the newspaper owners talk to us as if we’re stupid on those occasions when they talk to their customers at all. Read more →
From all indications, Newsweek is exhibiting a death rattle this week.
It started when the magazine retracted its story suggesting that ‘bots’ took down Sen. Al Franken. Read more →
Every day across America, the country becomes a little better place because investigative reporters shake off the bricks thrown by readers, viewers, and listeners who refuse to accept what they don’t want to believe, and hold accountable the powerful who corrupt decency on a daily basis. Read more →
In the end, it was easier for NPR to use an obscenity than it was during the presidential campaign to use a word that is far less offensive: ‘lie’. Read more →
Poor Domenico Montanaro, NPR’s lead political editor, found out the hard way that a large segment the public radio audience likes things just the way they’ve always been. A touch of humor? That’s risky business. Read more →
Radio people of a certain age get accustomed to departures. It’s the nature of the business. Long before the “gig economy” became a thing, radio was one giant gig economy. People come, people go, the institution moves on as if they’d never been there at all. Read more →
Listeners to a Story Corps episode on NPR about what happened when a man met the imprisoned man who killed his son in a shooting spree on a Western Massachusetts campus apparently noticed the same thing about the episode that I did when I wrote about it the day it aired: There was a lot left out. Read more →
The Rochester Post Bulletin has announced it will no longer issue a printed Friday edition. It will publish only five days a week. Read more →
James O’Keefe, the Project Veritas boss who’s made quite a name for himself by secretly filming meetings with media organizations, probably isn’t going to reveal what happened when he tried to trap the Washington Post’s reporters into offering their views of Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate who’s been embroiled in a controversy over alleged relationships with underage girls.
The Post didn’t bite on O’Keefe’s attempt to trap the journalists by sending a woman claiming she was impregnanted by Moore.
Read more →
Bob Collins