Columbia Journalism Review

The Pulitzer committee's decision to give its public service award this year to the Washington Post and the Guardian for their stories on government surveillance has elicited a few predictable reactions from those who believe that the source of the National Security Agency material--former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden--is not a whistleblower, but a criminal. US Rep. Peter King of New...

Just like any successful romance, a good editorial relationship starts with two people, a mutual attraction, and the hope that they can build something special and lasting together. While staff writers tend to settle down with one or two people, freelancers have a harder time committing: We juggle one-piece stands, steady dates, and editorial partners that are always up for...

On Monday afternoon, the Pulitzer board awarded the local news reporting prize to an impressive, powerfully written series of stories about the homeless. Each article, each photograph, in this series brought home the incompetence and neglect with which we treat those at the bottom rungs of society's ladder. But, for many of us, the surprise in the prize was this:...

Not long ago, we faulted press coverage of the Medicaid expansion debate for overlooking the personal experiences and struggles of people caught in the coverage "gap"--earning too much to qualify for Medicaid in states that turned down federal funds to expand that program, and too little to receive subsidies to buy insurance on the new exchanges. So it's only fair...

What happens when America's Newspaper tries to go Business Insider? Something like this: That's the America's Markets section of USA Today's website, which puts business journalism on the Hamster Wheel—I counted 12 bylines in one day from one reporter—with predictably poor results. Like this headline: Is a 1987-type market crash 37 days away? Betteridge's Law says if a headline is...

This column, a regular feature, was originally published on Reuters.com. 1. Sealing deadly court files: In the wake of continuing disclosures about General Motors' failure to acknowledge critical safety issues related to faulty ignition switches, there's a looming issue that has not been addressed: How litigation settlements negotiated by private parties can result in court-sanctioned cover-ups that endanger the public....

The headline on a recent article in a Tennessee newspaper said the local teachers were "among best-paid" in the state. The article, though, said the county teachers' salaries ranked "13th amongst all school systems," but "No. 3 amongst county systems." All told, the article used "amongst" five times. A college newspaper's review of the play Rentdiscussed the endurance of "the...

IBT Media, the parent company of International Business Times and Newsweek, has been violating New York labor law for years by breaking rules for how frequently employees are paid, according to multiple employees affected. Nine former and current IBT Media employees told CJR that they are paid only once a month, including Benjamin Reeves, who worked for International Business Times...

This year's Pulitzer Prizes were announced at 3pm on Monday at Columbia University, the final prizes overseen by outgoing administrator Sig Gissler. Big news events that swept the awards included the NSA revelations, the topic of the double-win in public service, and the Boston Marathon bombings, the topic of both the breaking news reporting and feature photography pieces. There was...

Even casual consumers of media news have heard of Ezra Klein and Nate Silver, two names that are now synonymous with the future of journalism. Their startups, Vox and FiveThirtyEight, are being closely watched as examples of what happens when journalists leave the mainstream-media nest and try to do things differently, on their own. But ask those same news consumers...

In some ways, the Julia Louis-Dreyfus Rolling Stone cover is a sign of how far we've come: A 53-year-old woman is naked on the cover of a major American magazine and the ensuing controversy isn't about bare skin, but historical accuracy--the US Constitution is printed on her back with "John Hancock" scribbled atop her butt, but his famous signature actually...

Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week: Ezra Klein on Vox's launch, media condescension, and competing with Wikipedia -- "If media professionals look at this and think, That's ridiculous, I already know all...

Earlier this week, David Espo of The Associated Press broke the news that an unlikely alliance of Democrats and Republicans in Congress had quietly repealed a significant provision of the Affordable Care Act. But, oddly, the AP piece downplayed its own scoop, calling the rule in question "relatively minor," and focusing instead on decoding what's happening within the Republican caucus....

Back in February we praised OnEarth, the editorial arm of the Natural Resources Defense Council, for using its website to publish original longform with the type of polish usually reserved for print. In an announcement today from editors Doug Barasch and Scott Dodd, they said that OnEarth is eliminating its quarterly print publication to focus all its resources on digital...

Having accurately predicted that Lachlan Murdoch would return to his dad's company, Michael Wolff, in his exhilaration, made this crack recently: ...and I thought I was kind of making this stuff up: http://t.co/8O0ZhTQ8PU— Michael Wolff (@MichaelWolffNYC) March 27, 2014 Good one. Except he's gotten so much other stuff wrong lately, particularly on the state of digital media, that you start...

KANSAS CITY -- Voters in Joplin, MO, the small Midwestern city still recovering from a 2011 tornado, went to the polls earlier this week, and a council member who's been at the center of a local controversy won re-election to his seat. But before that, The Joplin Globe scored a victory of a different sort: The paper secured a court...

Yesterday's release by the Department of Health & Human Services of Medicare physician payment and service data--for decades out of public reach--holds great promise for journalistic exploration. Included in the unprecedented data dump: $77 billion in Medicare payments from 2012 for the some 800,000 doctors who treat Medicare Part B beneficiaries; the doctors' names, addresses and specialties; the number of...