The Nieman Journalism Lab is a collaborative attempt to figure out how quality journalism can survive and thrive in the Internet age. At Harvard they are working with the Business School on new business models, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society on understanding online life, and the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations on one potential path for news organizations.
posted by netbros on Jan 22, 2009 - 11 comments

Enjoy over 170,000 screencaps of your favorite cable news personalities at ReporterCaps.com.
posted by dhammond on Mar 30, 2008 - 20 comments

“Oh, I took the roofs road" --just one of the fascinating things at a new Iraq blog--Inside Iraq-- daily life in a war zone through the words of Iraqi journalists in McClatchy's Baghdad Bureau as they risk so much each day to survive. These are unedited first hand accounts of their experiences. Their complete names have been withheld for security reasons.
posted by amberglow on Jan 17, 2007 - 9 comments

"We are losing much of the history of the twentieth century because the copyright industries are more litigious than ever." A cogent "primer for reporters [and others] who find themselves lost in the copyright jungle" in the age of Google and the DMCA.
posted by OmieWise on Sep 27, 2006 - 40 comments

Studs Terkel, lengendary historian and radio host pays a visit to Democracy Now! today. Audio and Video, as well as the transcript of this historic interview are here. Also, the WBAI pledge drive is this week too, please give what you can.
posted by wheelieman on Oct 5, 2005 - 16 comments

Sy Hersh's Loose Relationship with the Literal Truth | Interesting article from NY Metro which seems to condem Hersh's squirrely handling of facts while admiring his accomplishments & tenacity: "In bending the truth, Hersh is, paradoxically enough, remarkably candid. When he supplies unconfirmed accounts of military assaults on Iraqi civilians, or changes certain important details from an episode inside Abu Ghraib (thus rendering the story unverifiable), Hersh argues that he’s protecting the identities of sources who could face grave repercussions for talking. 'I defend that totally,' Hersh says of the factual fudges he serves up in speeches and lectures."
posted by jenleigh on Jun 2, 2005 - 33 comments

The Vindication of Eason Jordan. This, coupled with previous incidents, should make it clear that the right wing blogosphere "took down" someone who was telling the truth.
posted by Hat Maui on Mar 4, 2005 - 137 comments

Next in the "America slowly slipping toward fascism" saga: Reporter Convicted for Refusing to Give Identity of a Source. Mr. Taricani would be one of only a handful of journalists to go to jail for refusing to identify a source. Mr. Taricani was convicted in connection with a long-running federal investigation called Operation Plunderdome, which resulted in the conviction of at least nine city officials, including Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., who was sentenced to 64 months for racketeering conspiracy. His bad: refusing to identify the person who leaked him an F.B.I. videotape in 2001 related to an investigation of government corruption in Providence.
posted by acrobat on Nov 19, 2004 - 59 comments

"The most intriguing story in Washington these days is a subterranean conflict that reporters cannot cover because some of them are involved. A potent guerrilla insurgency has formed in and around the Bush presidency - a revolt of old pros in government who strike from the shadows with devastating effect. They tell the truth. They explode big lies. They provide documentary evidence..." - William Greider, on what could prove to be one of the defining power struggles of our time. Through a lens darkly, yes. But deniable ? - not plausibly. As gossip, growing louder now, the shadow-war advances. Unstoppably? No.
posted by troutfishing on Jun 27, 2004 - 40 comments

Bush in Baghdad, Behind the Scenes. Drudge has posted Washington Post reporter Mike Allen's raw notes from the 2-day secret whirlwind trip to Iraq. It reads like a script from "The West Wing." (The stripped-down finished article appears in Friday's Post.) Meanwhile, some in the journalism field are pissed, says Howard Kurtz. Says one: "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."
posted by PrinceValium on Nov 27, 2003 - 59 comments

U.S. Army Used Media Cover in Iraq for Own Ends which sounds like a big old bowl of yellow journalism but isn't really, at least I don't think so. It was more to refute the Iraqi Minister of Lies talking about the whooping the Iraqi war machine was delivering to the coalition forces.

The main issue that the reporters had was that they were only getting the one side of the story and not the Iraqi perspective.

But it raises some questions about the supposed objectivity of the media. Is this a proper use of them? To help achieve military goals? Or to try to avoid more unnecessary deaths?
posted by fenriq on Sep 8, 2003 - 15 comments

Unbiased (ideally) but not inhuman (hopefully) The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at the University of Washington studies the effects of crazy badness ("if it bleeds, it leads") on reporters and studies ways in which the news media can better cover traumatic events in the life of the world: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. From a piece on the site, "9-11 Journalists Share Memories, Support," "Long before Sept. 11, he was interested in how journalists respond to the pain and misery they encounter in their work, and the lack of support they often find in a traditionally tough-minded business. Then he nearly died while photographing the World Trade Center attack, and found those issues hit closer to home than he ever imagined."
posted by jengod on Jul 23, 2003 - 2 comments

Jayson Blair doesn't know when to shut up. The first interview with the disgraced New York Times reporter indicates that if he's feeling bad about what he did, he's not exactly showing it. Oh, and he has "a book full of anecdotes." Very subtle, Jayson.
posted by solistrato on May 22, 2003 - 36 comments

Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception The New York Times runs a long article detailing its preliminary findings in the matter of Jayson Blair, The Times' young staff reporter who made up sources, facts, and anecdotes in potentially hundreds of stories. Does this investigation help the Times avoid permanent disgrace? Or does this just confirm what you've always thought about the Times? Slate magazine is attributing part of the problem to affirmative action (Blair is black). Is AA relevant here?
posted by hhc5 on May 10, 2003 - 39 comments

Media Map of Iraq (Requires Flash 6.) Click on a location or unit to see a list of embedded reporters. Then each reporter's name is a link to a list of their war reporting either at their website or via a Google News search. Also, Poynter.org is constantly looking to improve this map via reader input, as the Pentagon is not giving up much information on the embedment program. Also, The Atlantic Monthly/Washington Post's Michael Kelly is the first embedded reporter to be killed in this war.
posted by pitchblende on Apr 4, 2003 - 8 comments

Not All Iraqis Dancing in the Streets. To watch the neutered embedded reporters, you would think that every Iraqi is overjoyed to see America in his or her country. But the reality seems to be quite different: "Why are you here in this country? Are you trying to take over? Are you going to take our country forever? Are the Israelis coming next? Are you here to steal our oil? When are you going to get out?"
posted by owillis on Mar 22, 2003 - 35 comments

E-terrorism over-rated. Journalist Brian McWilliams exposes the media whoring of fellow "reporter" Dan Verton and "security intelligence" company mi2g. He shows just how easy it is to fake a "terrorist" organization online and finally gives some exposure to the amount of FUD that gets spread around by some reporters and a lot of comp. sec companies simply to make money. Though I don't think Verton gets it:

"Although the hoax this week taught me a valuable lesson about the nature of information on the Internet, it's less clear that McWilliams' scheme has done anything to advance the understanding of cyberterrorism."

Um...yeah Dan. He showed just how half-assed a job some people do in actually verifying sources and Internet-based information. Kudos to your anti-FUD efforts, Brian.
posted by bkdelong on Feb 6, 2003 - 8 comments

More mischief in Florida: Jeb's "devious plans" Unaware that a reporter with a tape recorder was present, Jeb Bush told Florida lawmakers last wednesday about his "couple of devious plans" to thwart the will of Florida voters. And that's not all....
posted by troutfishing on Oct 6, 2002 - 21 comments

TRAPPED, CUFFED & BUSSED Two Diamondback (Univ. of Maryland student newspaper)reporters covering the IMF-World Bank protests were arrested Friday morning and manacled for 23 hours. Surrounded by hundreds of protesters in Pershing Park, Washington Metropolitan Police circled and arrested the entire group. Jason Flanagan and Debra Kahn were there as impartial observers, and despite the newspaper's efforts to release them, they were stripped of all their possessions - even their shoelaces. What follows is a first-person account of their arrest and detention.
posted by Ty Webb on Oct 2, 2002 - 71 comments

Reporters Find New Outlet, and Concerns, in Web Logs according the Gray Old Lady today. I never read the blog by Steve Olafson, a.k.a. Banjo Jones, but it was shut down at the request of his employer, the Houston Chronicle. Today's NYT article confirms he was fired over it. Other journalists mentioned: Eric Alterman, Dan Gillmor, Mickey Kaus, and Sheila Lennon (professional blog | personal blog).
posted by tbc on Sep 23, 2002 - 4 comments

New York post fires reporter for story on Disney ... but publishes no corrections ...
posted by magullo on Mar 20, 2002 - 14 comments

WSJ Reporter Daniel Pearl allegedly killed I certainly hope the reports aren't true. By placing the international media under seige, the stakes of the "war" against terrorism will rise drastically.
posted by prozaction on Feb 1, 2002 - 51 comments

Ideas have consequences. On the subject of the Daniel Pearl kidnapping, an interesting letter to Media News today (scroll down to the "Journalists as Political Operatives" item), reads in part, "I would not want to trivialize it for all the world, but I am constrained to point out that it was only recently that Mr. Pearl's newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, felt compelled to praise the book "Bias" which perports to lay bare the 'liberal bias' of mainstream journalism. In fact, the WSJ editorial board has for years persisted, along with other conservative commentators, to label journalists as political tools in service of a larger political agenda. The kidnappers of Mr. Pearl insist that he is a political tool, a spy, for some foreign government (one day the U.S., the next day Israel.) Where could they have possibly gotten the idea that journalists are not the dedicated professionals they claim to be but are instead something else in disguise?" Thoughts?
posted by nance on Jan 31, 2002 - 35 comments

Veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk attacked in Afghanistan. Fisk's been my dispassionate-knowledgeable-counterpoint-supplier-of-choice for the events of the last few months, and unfortunately he's been very badly beaten by a mob near Quetta . His reaction: "They had every reason to be angry... If I had been them, I would have attacked me".
posted by blackbeltjones on Dec 9, 2001 - 72 comments

Are all the journalists on summer vacation? The "big stories" on the CNN homepage: Second attempt launched to save injured whale, Backstreet Boys postpone summer concerts, and, the big news in the year's political sex scandal, D.C. police want to search congressman's apartment. Please wake me up when the real reporters return to CNN.
posted by tranquileye on Jul 10, 2001 - 12 comments

Got Milk? Two reporters win a lawsuit against Fox for being fired when they wouldn't lie about bovine growth hormone.
posted by thunder on May 9, 2001 - 22 comments

Slate's MeZine Central offers a sampling of politically oriented journalists' sites, featuring what they call "The Best Political Weblogs".
posted by frednorman on Apr 11, 2001 - 0 comments