A Reality Check For FCC Debate

CJR.ORG — November 16, 2007
Every time the FCC proposes new media ownership rules (as it did four years ago, and seven years before that) it’s an opportunity to witness the power of spin. Those who favor deregulation, and those who oppose it, describe the media landscape in ways that favor their position. In the swirl [...]

Information Wants to Be – Not So Free?

CJR.ORG — October 6, 2005
One glance at the “most emailed articles” list on the New York Times Web site is enough to see what an adverse effect the new pay wall, TimesSelect, is having on readership of the paper’s columnists. Before, Frank Rich’s long Sunday column about politics and culture or Thomas Friedman’s musings on [...]

Auletta’s Opus, and Warring Novelists

CJR.ORG — October 4, 2005
Ken Auletta’s profile of the Los Angeles Times in this week’s New Yorker offers some insight into what went wrong after the Tribune Company bought the Times five years ago from the Chandler family (unfortunately, the piece is not available online).
The challenge this purchase presented was, as John Carroll, the star [...]

What’s Really Up in Los Angeles?

CJR.ORG — October 3, 2005
Times have been tough for newspapers lately. We wrote recently about personnel and budget cuts at some pretty prominent papers: The New York Times Company is cutting 500 jobs, 45 of them in the newsroom; the Philadelphia Inquirer is axing 75 reporters and editors; the San Francisco Chronicle wants to let [...]

Product Placement: It’s Everywhere, It’s Everywhere

CJR.ORG — September 29, 2005
So we were sipping our Starbucks macchiato, sitting in front of our Dell computer, a bottle of crystal clear Evian at our side, when we came upon this headline in the Christian Science Monitor today: “Product placement pushes into print.”
Already, you can’t watch a movie or TV show without seeing some [...]