An ombudsman is also occassionally knowns as the "reader's representative," they are someone in newspaper newsrooms who is the first contact for the public and is not supposed to be wedded to the company line. Unfortunately, it appears Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has abdicated this duty to the readers first, the paper second. The […]
The San Diego Union-Tribune is running a three-part series on embryonic stem cell research. The first installment ran in Sunday's paper. Disclaimer: I have had zero/zilch/nada to do with the writing, editing or even the page design of this series. The following comments and observations are my own and should not be construed to offer […]
Some of you may be familiar with blogger Bill Roggio and his reports as an embed with troops in Iraq. The Christian Science Monitor ran an interesting article on Roggio yesterday and I just wanted to highlight one observation by the author, Dante Chinni. But while some might discount Roggio as a journalist who lets […]
Generally putting a math problem in front of a journalist elicits a similar level of understanding as putting a map in front of a monkey. This might explain, but doesn't excuse the British Broadcasting Corporation trying to sell this garbage. Schoolchildren in Caversham have become the first in the country to learn about a new […]
I just wanted to call attention to this gem from The New York Times in a article about Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejecting the Iraq Study Group's lamebrained contention that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is somehow linked to Iraq. In a speech last week, the prime minister said that if the Palestinians could form a […]
Jeff Jarvis thinks even less of Byron Calame's latest column than I did. That's what I call an accomplishment.
New York Times public editor Byron Calame has an interesting, yet flawed, article in today's paper that seeks to sugarcoat a serious problem. Calame focuses on what motivates reporters in their work: Being first with new facts or fresh insights. Pursuing stories that can have impact. Winning prizes. Impressing sources. Figuring out what’s really happening. […]
If you haven't seen the 1992 movie "Sneakers," starring Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier and Dan Aykroyd as "Mother," then I encourage you to add it to your Netflix queue or pick it up at Blockbuster. Sneakers came to mind because there's a scene where Robert Redford's character goes into an office building to meet with […]
There's been a brouhaha in some of the right-wing media criticism sites over a move to describe Iraq today as being in the throes of a civil war. (See here, here and here.) Personally, despite the disconcerting level of violence that is going on in the Sunni-triangle area of Iraq, I don't think that it's […]