TopicsOn The Media is produced by:
Plenty of eyebrows were raised this week after The New York Times ran a front-page story about incriminating revelations by an Iraqi chemical weapons scientist. In the article, reporter Judith Miller wrote that "the terms of her accreditation" prevented her from interviewing the scientist, and required that she submit her article for military review. Brooke talks to Slate.com's Jack Shafer about Miller's untraditional arrangement.
For Chicago's public housing residents, the biggest local story of the past few years has been the demolition of the city's infamous high-rise projects. One newspaper has diligently covered the story from the inside - literally. OTM's Ron Feemster has the story of The Residents' Journal - a paper that is written, edited, distributed and read by people who live in public housing.
Every so often, newspaper editors turn to their readers for advice on re-arranging their comic strips. But Cleveland Plain Dealer Features Editor Elizabeth McIntyre recently learned that many readers don't take the changes lightly. Why are the funnies so important to people? And why are they so…un-funny?
The New York Herald Tribune died in 1965, but the European edition survived and was jointly produced by The Washington Post and The New York Times… until now. After a bitter internal struggle between the two heavyweights, the Times beat out the Post and took sole ownership of the 115-year old publication. As Frank Browning reports, the troubled story of the Trib reveals much about both America’s romance with Paris, and the new reality of global branding in the media.
Joining a local school board. Wearing a political campaign button. Participating in a protest march. These are some of the things that staffers at The New York Times will not be permitted to do under the paper's new ethics code. Brooke discusses the new rules with the Poynter Institute's Bob Steele and with Slate.com founder Michael Kinsley.
In a series called "After the Media," reporters from the Allentown, PA daily newspaper, "The Morning Call" return to the victims of tragedy, scandal, and other media feeding-frenzies, so that they can describe the experience of being trapped in the camera's lens. Brooke talks with journalists Margie Peterson, who came up with the idea, and Mike Frassinelli, who regularly writes for the series.
Tabloid papers like the New York Post depend on big, splashy headlines to push newsstand sales. And there's a real science to crafting them. Which headlines work better than others? Michael Shain and Mike Pearl, both veteran tabloid journalists, have created a card game called "Man Bites Dog," bringing the lurid world of the tabloids to living rooms all over the country. Bob Garfield speaks with Michael Shain.
With 32 stories in three months about the Augusta National's exclusion of women, many have accused the New York Times of leading a personal crusade against the golf tournament. When the Times spiked two recent stories that disagreed with the editorial page on the matter those same critics asked whether the paper had gone too far. Bob speaks with Alex Jones, ex Times writer and current Director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.
