Columbia Journalism Review articles from March 2001

Columbia Journalism Review archives from March 2001

Letter from The Publisher.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Last fall Victor Navasky and I taught a class at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism about "The New York Media Elite." It was an unusual course, but even more unusual was that the students' papers would be considered for publication in...

CJR.ORG'S NEW LOOK.
March 1, 2001... CJR'S Web site, at cjr.org, has a new look and several new features, including daily headline news from three sources -- media news, via the Project for Excellence in Journalism; world press news, from the Committee to Protect Journalists; and...

LETTERS.
March 1, 2001... MEDIA MALFEASANCE Thanks to Christopher Hanson for "All the News That Fits the Myth" (CJR, January/February). I used to be so proud of America's free press. Then I found myself reading lie after easily detectable lie. There would have been...

CORRECTIONS.
March 1, 2001... An article in the January/February issue referred readers to a Web address for the Minnesota News Council that was out of date. The correct address is http://www.mtn. org/newscouncil. In an incident described in the November/December...

IN REVIEW: PLOT TWIST IN THE DOT.COM DRAMA?(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... In the two years I worked as a writer and editor for Fox News Online (1997 and 1998), News Corporation's chief, Rupert Murdoch, visited our Manhattan offices exactly twice. Roger Ailes, who runs Fox's news network, came once, for a...

Q & A: CLARENCE PAGE ON JESSE JACKSON.(Interview)
March 1, 2001... On January 18, The National Enquirer broke the story that Jesse Jackson had fathered a child out of wedlock, scooping the mainstream press. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune is part of that mainstream press. Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning...

THE PRESS AND THE PUBLIC: AT ODDS OVER PRIVACY?(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... They have long been a prized tool for reporters and researchers: electronic dossiers filled with names, addresses, and other identifying information collected from credit records. For about $20, journalists can buy the reports online, day or...

MORE PRINT/TV PARTNERSHIPS.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Television stations, long criticized for a lot of glitz and little substance in their news broadcasts, are now getting a chance to upgrade the quality of their news at little extra cost. More and more newspapers are stepping up their...

LOTS OF ACTION IN LOS ANGELES.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Changes in ownership and leadership at the Los Angeles Times have been well reported, but things have been happening at some of the smaller journalistic organizations in the area too. Los Angeles magazine has long been heavy on service...

PREVIEW: HIGH SCHOOL JOURNALISM -- `WE'RE TRYING TO INSPIRE FOLKS TO BELIEVE AGAIN'.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Plagued in recent years by censorship, budget crunches, and embattled or inexperienced advisers, high school journalism is getting some much-needed attention from an array of major industry organizations. Example: The American Society of...

IT ALL DEPENDS ON `U'.(evaluation of political terminology)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... "Stanch" is a verb meaning to block the flow of something -- anything from blood to a company's losses to emigration. It's also possible to stanch the thing causing the flow -- a wound, for example. "Staunch" -- note the "u" -- is an...

ROLE MODELS ROBERT TROUT.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Under the title ROLE MODELS, CJR asks accomplished journalists to write about the people who inspired them. Here Tom Nagorski, foreign editor for ABC's World News Tonight, remembers a brief but instructive moment with Robert Trout, whose path...

DARTS & ... LAURELS.
March 1, 2001... MISSING... The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on October 25 carried a signed column by Susan Laccetti Meyers about a proposed commuter rail between Athens and Atlanta, in which she bolstered her case against the rail with the concerns of...

Hanging with the Chads.
March 1, 2001... Our Man at the Great Florida Recount Do the media really need much justification for examining -- at this late date -- the ballots that were cast but not counted during the achingly close 2000 presidential contest in all-important Florida?...

NEW YORK RULES.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... Ten Thousand Journalists Together on a Tight Little Island If geography is destiny, then the epicenter for the media is Manhattan. This is the media capital of the world, home to leading newspapers, major magazines, news services, most...

MANHATTAN MINDSET.
March 1, 2001... The World Sees News Through New York Eyes Richard Berke's page-one story in The New York Times on October 25, 1999, turned Senator John McCain's temper into a campaign issue overnight. Until then, McCain's moods had been mentioned...

NO DEGREES OF SEPARATION.(social life of journalists)
March 1, 2001... Working and Partying -- It's All in the Media Mix A lunch date at Michael's, the media hotspot at 24 West Fifty-fifth Street. On this day the reservation list includes Arthur Taylor, formerly of CBS; Peter Price, of Avenue Magazine, Glenda...

The Party of the Year.
March 1, 2001... For the tenth annual International Press Freedom Awards dinner, the venue was the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria on Manhattan's Park Avenue. The dress code: black tie. Over time the affair has become the A-list media gathering, where...

My Search for the Media Elite.
March 1, 2001... Jessica Siegal's fingers were gliding around a goblet of white wine that she held in her left hand. She was dressed in a black, hugging ball gown, fringed at the wrists and hem-line in smooth fur. Without my soliciting, she whispered into my...

RULES OF THE GAME.
March 1, 2001... What Journalism School Won't Teach You Rules of conduct for the exclusive media elite in New York -- I call them the MetaMedia (MM) -- bear precious little relation to those taught inside the nation's top journalism schools. If Hollywood is...

WHY NEW YORK COULD RULE NEW MEDIA.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The receptionist at Inside.com's front desk is color-coordinated to the online magazine's spacious northern Chelsea loft. Her teeny, bright sea-green halter top conveniently shows off a prominent tattoo on her right shoulder, and it is a...

MARKET DRIVEN.
March 1, 2001... The (Liberal) Media Elite Have Acquired a New Tilt One night in mid-November, several dozen journalists gathered in the Tribeca loft of the writer Jacob Weisberg to celebrate the publication of The Slate Diaries, a collection of journal...

PLAYERS ONLY.(periodical 'Foreign Affairs')
March 1, 2001... Where Media and Foreign Policy Elites Talk Geopolitics Almost every student of the liberal arts has seen, at one time or another, a reproduction of Raphael's great painting, the School of Athens. Depicted there are the profound thinkers of...

SNAPSHOTS.
March 1, 2001... Brief portraits of five New York media figures, developed out of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism's New York media elite" class and written by students in the class `It's easier for women these days -- but it's not easy' ...

THE OTHER COAST WEIGHS IN.
March 1, 2001... CJR asked journalists outside New York to evaluate the impact of Manhattan's media. Here are their responses Los Angeles: `New York seems to float away from America' BY STEVE WASSERMAN, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR, LOS ANGELES TIMES The...

FROM OTHER PLACES, SOME OTHER VIEWS.(attitudes toward the New York media industry)
March 1, 2001... Sacramento: `Looking at ink blots' BY GREGORY FAVRE, GROUP EDITOR, McCLATCHY About thirty-five years ago, our American Press Institute class for managing editors was entertained at The New York Times with drinks and dinner and...

A BEAT COMES OF AGE.(baby boomers)
March 1, 2001... One Baby Boomer Turns Fifty Every Seven Seconds The Press Is Paying Attention Although all newspapers do stories that bear on aging -- the local senior center, the presidential candidates positions on Medicare reform, prescription drug...

A Daily Column -- or A Day at the Races?(columnist Jack Germond explains why he quit)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... On December 20, the syndicated columnist Jack Germond of the Baltimore Sun's Washington bureau announced he was quitting the column that he and his partner Jules Witcover had produced five times a week for twenty-four years. On January 8,...

Wagging the Dog: Technology and Local TV News.(an evaluation of live news coverage)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The announcer promises live, local, late-breaking news as the theme music of the news show rises to a crescendo. The news operation then delivers, as promised, a number of live reports from across the market. Somewhere, though, the...

How Long, (According to The Media) Should Grief Last?
March 1, 2001... A man whose wife of thirty-five years died twelve months ago does not suddenly walk out his front door today and say, "Okay, I've resolved that issue." Parents whose four-year-old daughter drowned in a swimming pool do not announce five years...

Blowing the Whistle On Your Own Station.(two reporters file suit against WTVT)
March 1, 2001... To understand why television stations find serious investigative reporting so costly, time-consuming, hard to do, and on occasion intimidating, take a look at the experience of Fox-owned WTVT in Tampa, Florida, and its former investigative...

The People, the Press, and the Pulpit.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... The increasingly important role of religion in public life presents a challenge for the press. The media have particularly low credibility in this area -- even journalists themselves have doubts about their ability to cover religious issues....

There's No Business Like Your Own Newspaper's Business.
March 1, 2001... Quick: Name a business that newspapers cover really badly. You're thinking maybe something very new, a trade we know little about? How about a different candidate: us. When it comes to businesses that get skimpy, even cowardly, business...

DAILY NEWS, ETERNAL STORIES: THE MYTHOLOGICAL ROLE OF JOURNALISM.(Review)
March 1, 2001... DAILY NEWS, ETERNAL STORIES: THE MYTHOLOGICAL ROLE OF JOURNALISM BY JACK LULE THE GUILDFORD PRESS. 245 PP. $35.00; $17.95 PAPER The Legends Between the Lines After only a few months on the job, many reporters find themselves asking:...

ME AND TED AGAINST THE WORLD: THE UNAUTHORIZED STORY OF THE FOUNDING OF CNN.(Review)
March 1, 2001... ME AND TED AGAINST THE WORLD: THE UNAUTHORIZED STORY OF THE FOUNDING OF CNN BY REESE SCHONFELD. HARPERCOLLINS. 407 PP. $26 "We will stay on the air till the end of the world and then we will cover the story and sign off playing `Nearer My...

FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICA: THE BRUTAL ODYSSEY OF AN OUTLAW JOURNALIST 1968-1976.(Review)
March 1, 2001... FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICA: THE BRUTAL ODYSSEY OF AN OUTLAW JOURNALIST 1968-1976 By Hunter S. Thompson; foreword by David Halberstam; edited by Douglas Brinkley Simon & Schuster. 756 pp. $30 Here is the frenzied Dr. Thompson -- scourge of...

THE ELEMENTS OF JOURNALISM: WHAT NEWSPEOPLE SHOULD KNOW AND THE PUBLIC SHOULD EXPECT.(Review)
March 1, 2001... THE ELEMENTS OF JOURNALISM: WHAT NEWSPEOPLE SHOULD KNOW AND THE PUBLIC SHOULD EXPECT By Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel Crown. 208 pp. $20 Bill Kovach is the chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. Tom Rosenstiel is the director...

AHEAD OF TIME: MY EARLY YEARS AS A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT.(Review)
March 1, 2001... AHEAD OF TIME: MY EARLY YEARS AS A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT By Ruth Gruber Carroll & Graf. 319 pp. $14 In February, a fictionalized Ruth Gruber was portrayed in a CBS docudrama shepherding a thousand refugees to the United States during World...

SECRETS OF VICTORY: THE OFFICE OF CENSORSHIP AND THE AMERICAN PRESS AND RADIO IN WORLD WAR II.(Review)
March 1, 2001... SECRETS OF VICTORY: THE OFFICE OF CENSORSHIP AND THE AMERICAN PRESS AND RADIO IN WORLD WAR II By Michael S. Sweeney The University of North Carolina Press. 274 pp. $49.95. $18.95 paper Typically of the cagey Franklin D. Roosevelt, he named...

FAME AT LAST: WHO WAS WHO ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIES.(Review)
March 1, 2001... FAME AT LAST: WHO WAS WHO ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIES By John C. Ball and Jill Jones Andrews McMeel. 407 pp. $24.95 The authors, a professor of medicine and a free-lance writer, had the idea of applying the ruler to a...

A Different Kind of Lesson.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2001... When Vice President Al Gore's first class at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism was about to begin, the press was interested in what he would say. When it was announced that what he would say would be off the record, the press was no...