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With a tricky definition and a lag-time to compile statistics, it may take up to a year to know if we are indeed in a recession right now. In the meantime, the media speculate. Critics from the left and right weigh in on whether the media jump the gun by invoking the R-word and David Wessel, economics editor for the Wall Street Journal, explains the word's place in the newsroom.
On Wednesday morning, reporters, pundits and pollsters marveled at how little voters had heeded their New Hampshire primary predictions. But Christopher Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation, argues that campaign coverage is bound to fail because of the flawed structure of covering the presidential race. Hot off the trail he offers a corrective.
Last February we spoke with L.A. Times crime reporter Jill Leovy, who started a blog called the Homicide Report. Her goal: to chronicle every murder in the county of Los Angeles. One year and more than 800 homicides later, Leovy is optimistic.
If you watch movies on DVD, you’re using an outdated technology. But no single high-definition disc has emerged as the replacement to the inferior DVD, mainly because of a battle between two competing formats: Sony’s Blu-ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD. Shane Buettner of Home Theater Magazine explains that Blu-ray may have won the war.
If there’s one essential quality of the world-wide web it's that it is, well, world-wide. But recent moves by the body that governs the net may be opening the door to individual webs, starting with countries like China and Russia. Tim Wu, professor of internet and law, explains the implications of a many-webbed world.
Founded in 1924, the Daily Worker – which ceased to be a daily 50 years ago – was the de facto house organ of American Communism. Historian Vernon Pedersen says the paper was strident and ideological, yes, but also an important cultural artifact.
Highlights from Past Shows
Journalists covering the 2008 presidential race have spent the past year-and-a-half obsessing over every incremental development. But after Thursday's caucus in Iowa they can finally respond to actual voting. Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism took a look at some of the coverage.
From Giuliani’s “Leadership” to Clinton’s “Living History,” having a book - or two or three - seems like a prerequisite for candidacy in 2008. Emily Heil of the congressional newspaper Roll Call has read a whole stack of them - so you don't have to.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
