Columbia Journalism Review

I wrote on Monday that GoldieBlox's parody of the Beastie Boys song "Girls" was a a "clear case" of copyright infringement. As Felix Salmon pointed out (ADDING: and Shane Ferro, I should say), that overstated the legal argument quite a bit—it's rarely clear on much involving copyright and fair use claims. I do still think GoldieBlox's actions were egregious enough...

It was something of a shock to open my parents' New York Times this morning and see, stretching across four columns at the top of A1, a woman who looks like me. That is, she has two tell-tale lumpectomy scars--one from her tumor removal, and one from a lymph node dissection--on her breast. The photo, which starts at the woman's...

Outside the doors of the Waldorf-Astoria on Tuesday night, protesters pause and wait for the next video camera light to turn on. Buttressing both sides of the Park Avenue entrance, they stand in the drizzle clutching umbrellas, dozens of miniature Ecuadorean flags, and signs bearing journalist Janet Hinostroza's face, emblazoned with the words, "VERGUENZA DEL PERIODISMO" (shame of journalism), "VENDE...

The New York Times editorializes today about the "War on Thanksgiving" that retailers and shoppers are waging on the last noncommercial holiday. That's a knowing slap at Fox News's annual campaign against the trumped-up "War on Christmas." But, say, how has Fox covered what is an actual attack on a sacred American holiday? It hasn't, really. Google pulls up 842...

A Twitter conversation last weekend between MSNBC's Timothy Noah and some Washington Post reporters revealed a lot about how the consumer story of the Affordable Care Act is being covered. In short: the bar for consumer coverage is set way too low. You can see much of the conversation in the thread here; I've also collected the most relevant tweets...

The woman is defenseless, strolling down the street with a pocketbook over her shoulder. She has no idea that she's about to be brutally attacked. The man, who is black, runs up behind her, rears his right arm back and to the side, and strikes her viciously in the head. She falls to the ground, apparently out cold, while he...

Inequality is an issue not just for the United States, but also for our northern, and very similar, neighbor. American journalists take note: The Globe and Mail, Canada's national business newspaper, published a superb two-week series on the far-reaching consequences of inequality that is a font of insights and story ideas. For their work, the paper merits a CJR...

Oops. The current issue of Fast Company has Anne Wojcicki—founder of 23andMe and estranged wife of billionaire cyborg Sergey Brin—on its cover with the headline "The Most Daring CEO in America." She's daring all right. So daring that her DNA-testing company, which will monetize your DNA by putting it in a database and mining it for pharmaceuticals, has since May...

What kind of company takes a copyrighted hit song, rewrites the lyrics, and uses it in a commercial—without bothering to even ask the artist if that was okay? As Felix Salmon points out, the kind that comes from Silicon Valley's "cult of disruption." I've followed GoldieBlox since its Kickstarter because the founder is a friend of a friend. My interest...

DETROIT, MI -- Among the old metro dailies, that battered flagship of American journalism, the most celebrated investigative newsroom in the country probably belongs to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Actually, check that--the Journal Sentinel has one of the most acclaimed watchdog teams in the country, period. The paper's investigative unit was organized in 2006, not long before the newspaper industry...

On October 9, William Kennedy delivered the following musing on his career and on journalism today to mark the 40th anniversary of the journalism program at SUNY Albany, where he taught until 1982. I was not privy to the arrival of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany, and I heard it had a somewhat uncertain birth. The program...

Perhaps I'm feeling a little wistful as I prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving outside the U.S. for the first time. As I told Brooke Gladstone this weekend on On the Media, it's my favorite day of the year. You know, turkey and dressing, pumpkin pie, grandma's house, backyard football, crisp autumn air—all that bit. Just as important: It's been the last...

The most controversial media error in recent months came in a 60 Minutes report by Lara Logan about the attack on the US mission in Benghazi, which ran for more than 15 minutes on Oct. 27. Logan's story featured claims by a security officer that were later shown to contradict his statement to the FBI. After the officer's claims came...

Feeling kinda droopy? Like you had "tired blood?" Well, better than Geritol would be a dose of David Folkenflik's new book, Murdoch's World (Public Affairs Press, 2013). If the NPR media correspondent's tale of "buccaneer" Rupert Murdoch doesn't get your blood percolating, call 9-1-1. Most of your bloodboil will come directly from Murdoch, but once in a while, you may...

Every year, the Committee to Protect Journalists presents the International Press Freedom Awards to four reporters who have produced outstanding coverage in the face of restrictive government policies, threats, and imprisonment. On Tuesday evening, CPJ will recognize the awardees for 2013: Nguyen Van Hai (Dieu Cay, Vietnam), Janet Hinostroza (Teleamazonas, Ecuador), Nedim Şener (Posta, Turkey), and Bassem Youssef (Capital Broadcast...

It has become accepted wisdom in future-of-news debates that the church-state divide between the newsroom and the business side was something of an archaism, one more legacy that legacy news had to shed. The current thinking is that reporters have to at least be aware of how their paychecks are earned, and it's hard to argue with this narrow point,...

In January of 2010, Daniel Morel, a professional photojournalist, was in Haiti when an earthquake struck. Within a few hours, he had taken hundreds of photos and uploaded a select few onto Twitter. A photo editor at Agence France-Presse found them being passed Twitter, under another user's name, and he put them into the AFP photo system, which linked to...

During Wendy Davis' "filibuster" of the Texas Senate in May, seeking to block a bill to limit abortions, Gov. Rick Perry said the tactic was "nothing more than the hijacking of the democratic process." Those words were echoed in the runup to the US Senate's elimination of "filibustering" for most presidential nominees last week. Equating a "filibuster" to a crime...

I went on On the Media with Brooke Gladstone this weekend. We talked about the press antics that inevitably accompany the annual cost-of-Thanksgiving-dinner press release. Have a listen: — Thanks to this New York Times report, we know that talking about the concept of redistribution two decades earlier meant the Obama administration would not pick you to run the Council...

PRAIRIE VILLAGE, KS -- On Nov. 14, the newly-minted Iowa Public Information Board (IPIB), whose formation was the result of years of lobbying by media groups and transparency activists, made a suite of rulings that caused some of those same activists to question how aggressively it would pursue its open-government mandate. IPIB dismissed petitions by The Des Moines Register, which...