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This week, journalism's most mysterious anonymous source, Deep Throat, revealed himself to be former G-man W. Mark Felt. Media portrayals have cast him, alternatively, as a crusader driven by affection for the Bureau or a disaffected bureaucrat with an axe to grind. Bob reflects on the media's final installment of the "kind of crazy &$!#@ story" that imbeds itself in the psyche of a nation.
Photographs of American soldiers killed in Iraq are a window onto the cold reality of war there. Does that mean we should see those images in our morning papers? So far, the answer from editors seems to be no. LA Times media writer Jim Rainey surveyed eight major newspapers, and joins Brooke to discuss what he found.
Circulation for the Christian Science Monitor has plummeted in recent decades, and costly broadcast ventures by the organization haven’t helped. Recently, the Monitor named a new top editor, who, incidentally, is not a practicing journalist but rather a longtime church member. Is the paper in the midst of its most serious crisis ever? CSM managing editor Marshall Ingwerson gives Bob the view from within.
A GM official has acknowledged that a recent review by LA Times auto columnist Dan Neil contributed to the company’s decision to pull its ads from the paper. Brooke spoke to Neil last year after he became the first car critic to take home the Pulitzer Prize for criticism.
In the wake of the Jason Blair scandal at the New York Times, former Newsweek media reporter Seth Mnookin has written "Hard News," a look into how the scandal occurred and how the Times reacted. Bob speaks to Mnookin about the book and the Times' attempts at investigating and correcting itself.
Journalists make mistakes, enough so that most newspapers publish daily corrections along with their headlines, articles and crossword puzzle. In its storied history, the New York Times has averaged seven goof-ups a day, the best of which are collected in the book "Kill Duck Before Serving." Brooke chats with the book's editors, Dylan Loeb McClain and Linda Amster.
Newspaper editors around the world have their knickers in a twist over the dominance of TV news, the rising costs of newsprint, and the increasing age of their readership. No papers are safe, not even journalistic standard bearers as great as France's Le Monde. But do Le Monde's travails reflect something deeper than hard times at another daily? Frank Browning reports from Paris that it may also mark the end of an era in the nation where the Enlightenment was born.
This month, the legendary Jimmy Breslin retired from writing his thrice weekly column for Newsday. For over forty years, his column entertained and infuriated readers with tales of colorful New York City characters, and the occasional bombshell investigative story. Jon Kalish compiled this profile of a man famous for his legwork.
