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Billionaire Sam Zell is taking over at the Tribune Company, parent of the L.A. Times. But who should own newspapers? Companies? Families? Very rich guys? L.A. Times media critic Tim Rutten says that behind every great newspaper is a great family.
The pen of the editorial cartoonist is often the sharpest in the newsroom. But if a pictorial barb gores the wrong ox, it is likely to be spiked. David Wallis has collected some of the best of what was deemed not fit to print in his new book, Killed Cartoons.
Newsrooms depend on beat reporting – assigning reporters to specific subject areas. And beat reporting depends on sources – sources some reporters won’t want to cross. Journalism professor Edward Wasserman argues the system is inherently corrupt.
For several years now, there’s been nothing but bad news for the newspaper business. But Marketplace correspondent Dan Grech reports that 2006 was the year that journalists finally saw the writing on the wall.
Judging from our mail, the public’s biggest frustration with news media is about what is and what isn't covered. But complaints are anecdotal, unless you count column inches and airtime minutes. Enter the News Coverage Index. Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism explains.
These are dark days for the newspaper industry. Almost every week brings news of worse profits and more job cuts. But a handful of family-owned papers, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, have managed to insulate themselves from Wall Street’s pressure. Brooke speaks with New Yorker staff writer Ken Auletta about the battle between the market and the press.
When publisher Jesus Diaz resigned this week after just 14 months at the helm of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, some suggested the company was caving to pressure from Miami’s anti-Castro Cubans. Others say he wasn’t temperamentally suited to the job. But it’s also possible that Diaz simply couldn’t reconcile the gulf between the journalistic cultures of the two papers he oversaw. Marketplace correspondent Dan Grech reports from Miami.
Apart from opinion columns and magazine pieces, news outlets tend to place any mention of civil war in the mouths of sources, or qualify it with phrases like “on the brink of” and “risks descending into.” Brooke asks New York Times Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner why.
