Government spent millions on voting machines now being dumped
Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding that have gone to upgrade the nation's voting machines since 2003 were used to purchase touch-screen systems that many states are now scrapping because of concerns about their security and reliability
(McClatchy Washington Bureau)

Electric grid is still vulnerable
The country has strengthened the reliability of the electricity grid following the worst blackout in U.S. history. But new challenges in demand, investment and energy resources leave the system vulnerable to another large-scale failure.
(ABC News)

Decline in support for mixing religion and politics
A Pew Research survey shows a majority holding the view that churches should stay out of politics.
(Pew Research Center)

Obama's $2 million man
Since 2005, Senator Barack Obama's campaign has paid out more than $2.1 million to the consulting firm AKPD, run by its chief strategist, David Axelrod, according to federal campaign finance reports.
(ABC News)

Not what the doctor ordered
A Toledo Blade multi-media investigative report shows a growing number of doctors believe that the problem of insurers dictating medical decisions has reached epidemic proportions.
(Toledo Blade)

U.S. inaction on oil royalties suit could have cost millions
Senior Justice Department officials blocked the U.S. attorney in Colorado from supporting a whistleblower's suit last year, jeopardizing the government's prospects for recovering as much as $40 million from Kerr-McGee Corp., a major oil company, for its alleged underpayment of royalties.
(McClatchy Washington Bureau)

A surge in corporate money for the Democrats
One thing that Barack Obama has helped change is the direction of corporate giving. By late July, the political action committees of American companies had contributed almost $214 million to the Democrats and Republicans. And for the first time in over two decades, the cash was evenly divided.
(The Economist)

The vanishing male voter
Over the last 40 years, some 16 million men—a population roughly the size of Michigan and Indiana combined—have stopped pulling the lever. That's a hole five times the size of George W. Bush's margin of victory in 2004. How did it get so bad?
(Newsweek)

Early voting
45-minute waits on long lines are reported for early voters in Georgia. Reporters: what about early voting in your area?
(Atlanta Journal Constitution)

This page is loading too slowly
The second annual speedmatters.org survey of actual Internet speeds of users nationwide shows that the United States has not made significant improvements in deploying high-speed broadband networks in the past year. Includes state-by-state figures.
(Communications Workers of America)

The next President should set his sights on cancer
If a war were killing 565,000 Americans a year (and none of our wars ever has), you'd hear more than one or two references to it at the party conventions.
(Newsweek)

Out of sight only in the U.S.
The Bush administration has gone to extraordinary efforts to prevent grisly photos of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from making it into the U.S. press. But people in other countries frequently see them.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Wiki-ing toward better elections
A Web site in which users rate and describe their voting places.
(Balkin.com)

New journalism Web site
The Committee to Protect Journalists says 34 journalists have been killed in 2008 because of their work. This is one of the new items on an updated CPJ Web site.
(Committee to Protect Journalists)

Hate radio
Eric Boehlert and Jamison Foser put together a compendium of radio talk show hate, listing the smearers and who and what they are railing against
(Media Matters for America)

What people around the world want from government
By consensus, large majorities in every country say government should ensure that citizens can meet their basic needs for food, healthcare, and education. How they rate their individual goverhnments is a different question.
(Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland)

The Bush legacy: War on the press
Eric Alterman and George Zornick write that 'the Bush administration's war against not just the media, but the very idea of free expression, is one that will need to be reversed as surely as the midnight regulations currently being written by administration officials.'
(Center for American Progress)

Andrew Sullivan on Rick Warren as Inaugural Invocator
"If I cannot pray with Rick Warren, I realize, then I am not worthy of being called a Christian. And if I cannot engage him, then I am not worthy of being called a writer. And if we cannot work with Obama to bridge these divides, none of us will be worthy of the great moral cause that this civil rights movement truly is."
(The Atlantic)

China rebuilds its wall
Rebuilds its firewall, that is. As host to the 2008 Summer Olympics, China pledged to expand press freedom. The games now over, China reportedly has resumed blocking access to some Internet sites, including the BBC, Voice of America, Hong Kong's Ming Pao and Asiaweek.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Attention on Olympics, dissident goes missing in China
Beijing-based human rights activist Zeng Jinyan and her baby daughter have been missing since August 7th. But missing dissidents and arrests of protesters have gone largely uncovered as the Games steal the headlines.
(ABC News)

Drinking water, arsenic and diabetes
Arsenic, a common trace contaminant in well water, has been linked to type 2 diabetes, a disease that has reached pandemic proportions and now accounts for 1 in every 10 American dollars spent on healthcare.
(U.S. News & World Report)

The Daniel Pearl Award
The Center for Public Integrity lists finalists for prizes for international investigative reporting.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Many school cafeterias aren't properly inspected
Nearly two-thirds of schools in New York state are not receiving the twice-yearly health inspections required by federal law to curb food poisoning. Only 12 states, including Florida and Virginia, reported 90 per cent or more of their schools in compliance, according to Department of Agriculture data. An equal number of states, including California, had less than half their schools inspected twice.
(Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)

Some subscribers stuck with big bills
GAO issues warning on fee-for-service Medicare Advantage plans.
(Reuters)

U.S., world's leading arms supplier
The United States accounted for more than 45 percent of all weapons transferred globally in 2007.
(New America Foundation)

Colorado River peril
The West’s energy boom could threaten drinking water availability for one in 12 Americans.
(Pro Publica/San Diego Union-Tribune)

Science groups protest CNN cuts
In a letter to the network, four groups write: "In wielding this ax, your network has lost an experienced and highly regarded group of science journalists at a time when science coverage could not be more important in our national and international discourse."
(Columbia Journalism Review)

Military contractor in Iraq holds foreign workers in warehouses
About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Najlaa International Catering Services, a Kuwaiti subcontractor to KBR, have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.
(McClatchy)

Piecing together information on a government DNA database
Stephen Aftergood collects the scattered details of a little-known U.S. government database containing the DNA of suspected terrorists.
(Secrecy News)

Navy said to be thwarting inquiry into a 1964 McCain auto accident
McCain's Navy: A law suit filed by the National Security News Service says the Navy has refused to release records, contending they "could only have historical value and could not become a breaking news story."
(Court House News Service)

Most corporations pay no taxes
A survey of returns from 1998 to 2005 finds that two thirds of corporations doing business in the United States paid no taxes.
(Government Accountability Office)

Income concentration at highest level since 1928
Average pre-tax incomes in 2006 jumped by about $60,000 (5.8 percent) for the top 1 percent of households, but just $430 (1.4 percent) for the bottom 90 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to a new report. The analysis of newly released IRS data shows that in 2006, the shares of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent of households were higher than in any year since 1928.
(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

Cheney's pipeline push
A two-year-old-letter by Vice President Dick Cheney that pushed a controversial Alaska natural-gas pipeline bill is getting renewed scrutiny because of recently disclosed evidence in the Justice Department's corruption case against Senator Ted Stevens.
(Newsweek)

The great populist divide
Historian Michael Kazin on populist rhetoric Republican style since Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and the failure of Democrats to counter it.
(The Washington Independent)

U.S. Cold War waste irks Greenland
Pentagon refuses to clean up toxic military bases, saying it would set a bad precedent.
(Christian Science Monitor)

Civil Rights Commission's latest hire
Hans von Spakovsky, the former Justice Department official whose nomination to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) was thwarted when Democrats objected to his long record of support for restrictions on voting rights, has been hired as a "consultant and temporary full-time employee" at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
(Talking Points Memo)

Senate rules keep donors under wraps
Due to antiquated rules requiring senators to file campaign disclosures on paper, the records of upper chamber members take weeks to process. The procedure means that donations made closest to November's elections will go largely unseen until well after the last vote has been cast.
(Washington Independent)

Taliban, Al Qaeda unchecked in Pakistan
Executions of suspected U.S. spies hamper CIA's already weak effort to find Osama bin Laden.
(The Washington Independent)

Mission Creep: U.S. military presence worldwide
A year-long project maps out Pentagon's worldwide troop data from every half-decade since 1950, plus 2007, the latest year for which the data is available.
(Mother Jones)

Poll on men v. women as leaders
When it comes to honesty, intelligence and a handful of other character traits Americans value highly in leaders, the public rates women superior to men. Nevertheless, a mere 6 per cent of respondents in a recent Pew survey of 2,250 adults say that women make better political leaders than men. About one-in-five say men make the better leaders, while the vast majority say men and women make equally good leaders.
(Pew Research Center)

FBI's civil rights initiative: no trials yet
Flanked by officials from the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center, FBI Director Robert Mueller last year announced with considerable fanfare a new partnership between his agency and civil rights organizations. The goal: To bring justice in long-ignored murders from the civil rights era. The outcome: Not one case has been prosecuted under the FBI's Cold Case Initiative, which actually began two years ago with no fanfare at all.
(Associated Press)

Study: U.S. financial aid fails students who need it most
The U.S. government spends more than $86 billion a year on grants, loans, work aid and tax benefits for college students. But a study group formed by The College Board says that the patchwork system is a barrier to many who are academically qualified for college. Among the group's recommendations is eliminating the complex Free Application for Federal Student Aid and having the IRS supply the tax information to the Department of Education to determine eligibility for federal grants.
(Christian Science Monitor)

Another costly military hospital failure
An apparently flawed data system is said to be a very costly impediment to health care for hospitalized soldiers, and a Mother Jones article says the Pentagon stayed with the program long after its failures became known.
(Mother Jones)

Democrats up, GOP down in Party ID
Underlying Democratic leads nationally and in key states are sharp gains the party has made in the percentage of people identifying themselves as Democrats.
(Pew Research Foundation)

Wasilla, under Palin, charged rape victims for forensic exams
Former Alaska Governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat, said that Wasilla charged rape victims for their own forensic tests when Palin was mayor. Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the Alaska Legislature to pass a bill—signed into law by Knowles—that banned the practice statewide.
(Anchorage Daily News)

Billions for contractors in Iraq
From 2003 through 2007, U.S. agencies awarded $85 billion in contracts for work to be principally performed in the Iraq theater, accounting for almost 20 percent of funding for operations in Iraq. As of early 2008 at least 190,000 contractor personnel were working on U.S.-funded contracts in the Iraq theater.
(Congressional Budget Office)

Power plants killing fish, fish eggs
Environmentalists say the nation's power plants are needlessly killing fish and fish eggs with their cooling systems and are refusing to adopt technologies to limit the damage. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which counts only species that are valuable for commerce or recreation, the number of eggs and larvae killed each year at the large power plants would have grown into 1.5 billion one-year-old fish.
(Associated Press)

Waxman's watchdog legacy
As chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Henry Waxman did what the committee under Republican leadership mostly failed to do—investigate waste, fraud and abuse in the Bush administration. His replacement hasn't been picked, and it's not clear if the Democrats will be as vigilant of a president from their party.
(Washington Independent)

Legislators' financial disclosures put online
A Houston-based public information advocacy group recently posted the financial disclosure forms for every incumbent state lawmaker. The people behind TexasWatchdog.org hope it will have a far greater impact in Austin during next year's legislative session. If a state representative or senator begins pushing a bill seen as favorable to a certain company or industry, the public will be easily able to see for themselves where that lawmaker’s personal interests lie, said Jennifer Pebbles, a reporter for the site.
(McClatchy)

A government that fails to protect us
The regulatory system in the U.S. is in need of serious repair. OMB Watch convened a panel of experts to compile a series of recommendations on regulatory reform for Obama and the next Congress.
(OMB Watch)

McCain aide doesn't see any voter fraud
John McCain has issued dire warnings of voter fraud. But Ronald Michaelson, a veteran election administrator and member of the McCain-Palin Honest and Open Election Committee, said that he could not name a single instance in which this had occurred.
(Pro Publica)

40% say they get their news via Internet
A new poll says the internet has now surpassed all media except TV as a main source for national and international news.
(Pew Research Center)

SEC report on some of its own workers
Look into Madoff? Sorry, I'm busy with really important stuff.
(Pro Publica)

When American kids become mass murderers
In his book, "Ceremonial Violence," Jonathan Fast, a professor of social work at Yeshiva University, argues that school shootings are a type of terrorism. The book is an in-depth study of 13 incidents in which a person (or persons) under 18 shot two or more people on school grounds.
(Salon)

Top ten science breathroughs
Science Magazine issues its list of the top ten breakthroughs of 2008. At the top is converting human skin cells to stem cells.
(Science Magazine)

Xpensiv txting
Text messaging is seen as insanely popular but annoyingly expensive. One U.S. senator, Kohl of Wisconsin, is asking why per-message costs to consumers have doubled since 2005 with no apparent technical justification.
(ars technica)

New formaldehyde mess
Report says Mississippi agency knew it was providing cottages with dangerous formaldehyde levels to Katrina victims.
(Pro Publica)

The white, White House press corps
Sam Fulwood writes that Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign led to careers for a cadre of black political reporters—but that hasn’t been the case with the ascendance of Barack Obama.
(The Root)

Afghan officials crack down on the press
Government agencies are intimidating and arresting journalists. The crackdown marks the decline of a hard-won, post-Taliban-era press freedom.
(Christian Science Monitor)

Joe Biden's real estate
Though he's considered one of the least wealthy senators, Biden is well-off by ordinary standards, with his home in Delaware accounting for most of his net worth.
(Delaware News Journal)

Early skirmishes over voting
The 2008 presidential election may well be determined by some of the legal and election administration skirmishes going on now in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida and perhaps other places now under the radar. News organizations everywhere should be looking for stories like this.
(Slate)

More than just charitable giving?
During the first six months of 2008, lobbyists, corporations and interest groups gave approximately $13 million to charities and nonprofit organizations in honor of more than 200 members of the U.S. Congress. The donations came from firms with numerous interests before the Congress, such as Wal-Mart, the Ford Motor Company and Pfizer. They were received by charities including prominent organizations like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, as well as local groups controlled by members of Congress or those close to them.
(New York Times)

Multiple deployments raise mental health risks
Multiple combat deployments to Iraq are increasing serious mental health problems among soldiers, triggering drug and alcohol abuse and contributing to record suicide levels, according to Army reports.
(USA Today)

Gingrich's 527 pushes drilling
The slogan "Drill here. Drill now. Pay less." is fueling Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future, a 527 group not subject to federal campaign finance law and its limits on donations. So far this election cycle, it has raised $13.1 million; only two other 527 groups, both liberal, have collected more money.
(Center for Public Integrity)

3,400 ballots missing in Florida election: recount flips race
Palm Beach County, Florida, is in the news again for another election mishap. This time the culprit isn't the county's infamous butterfly ballot that made headlines in the 2000 presidential race. Instead, the problem is ballots used with the county's new $5.5 million optical-scan machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems.
(Wired)

Soldier suicides increasing
The number for 2008 could eclipse the 115 of last year--and the rate per 100,000 could surpass that of the civilian population. The main factors in soldier suicides continue to be problems with their personal relationships, legal and financial issues, work problems and the repeated deployments.
(Associated Press)

WHO report on social inequality and life expectancy
"Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale," concludes a recent World Health Organization report, pointing to factors such as poverty and bad housing. In the United States, 886,202 deaths would have been averted between 1991 and 2000 if mortality rates between white and African-Americans were equalized. This contrasts to 176,633 lives saved in the U.S. by medical advances in the same period.
(World Health Organization)

Internet as a necessity
A New York Times article describes the start-up of a new Web site by a group aimed at making access to broadband a national priority.
(New York Times)

Context needed
The press needs to do a lot better in sorting out mental illness issues. Right now, too often, it just perpetuates a stigma.
(The American Prospect)

’Killing Friends, Making Enemies'
A new report suggests that the massive increase in the amount of munitions being fired or dropped in Afghanistan has fueled popular anger -- and the Taliban resurgence.
(U.S. Institute for Peace)

Emergency department visits jump to new high of 119 Million
Visits to emergency departments climbed to a record high of 119.2 million in 2006, up from 115 million in 2005, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Emergency physicians are providing a health care safety net for everyone.
(American College of Emergency Physicians ()

The GOP's Soros
Thomas Edsall on Sheldon Adelson, said to be the third richest man in America and a major benefactor of the American right.
(Huffington Post)

Uproar over a New Yorker cover
In the name of let's get it all out there, a New Yorker cover shows Obama in Muslim garb, Michelle Obama as a terrorist, a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall and an American flag burning in a fireplace. Richard Prince (Journal-isms)puts together some of the reaction.
(The Maynard Institute)

Postwar crime
Crimes committed by returning Iraq war veterans are being blamed on post-traumatic stress disorder but their past criminal records may offer a better explanation.
(The Sacramento Bee)

Why terrorists quit Al Qaeda
Some do quit, and Michael Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, one of the investigators for the 9/11 Commission, explores why.
(U.S. News & World Report)

Election Day crunch?
A New York Times story on changes in voting machines and concerns. Editors: This one falls in the `all news is local` category.
(New York Times)

FEMA trailers and formaldehyde
The transcript is out from a July congressional hearing at which officials from four companies that manufactured travel trailers provided by FEMA to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita responded to the charge that they were aware that trailers emitted high levels of formaldehyde.
(House Oversight Committee)

Ads pulled in Iraq
Independent newspapers said to be hurt as the Maliki government drops publication of bid requests.
(Editors Weblog)

Got a good family doctor? You're lucky
Primary care physicians, the backbone of the U.S. medical system, have become an endangered species.
(Salon)

Do Jackson's remarks help or hurt Obama?
In his Journal-isms column, Richard Prince reviews coverage of Jesse Jackson's crude remarks about Obama.
(The Maynard Institute)

Your TSA at work
TSA seizes pilot's butter knife. Pilot tries to reason with TSA. Pilot ponders his lost cause.
(Salon)

IRS Outsourcing
IRS refuses to drop private debt collectors in spite of calls by its own independent review service that warns of "potential taxpayer rights violations."
(ABC News)

Hiring good public school teachers
Selectivity in hiring doesn't seem to make a difference in students' test scores. Should public schools snub the master's in education and put teachers through an apprenticeship program instead?
(Slate)

'Politics at the speed of Internet'
New players in the 2008 campaign--ones who don't need a go-ahead from headquarters--are grabbing the spotlight.
(New York Times)

Buying science?
A Center for Public Integrity report finds court documents showing that welding companies paid more than $12.5 million to 25 organizations and 33 researchers, virtually all of whom have published papers dismissing connections between welding fumes and workers’ ailments.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Jesse Helms recalled
Richard Prince finds unsurprising but nevertheless startling differences in send-offs for Helms, who died on July 4th.
(Maynard Institute)

In balancing the budget, step 2 is the key
Economist/blogger Brad DeLong describing John McCain’s balanced budget plan: “1.Cut taxes and spend more on the military; 2. ? ; 3. Balanced budget!!” Aside from this analysis in his own blog, DeLong was quoted in a New York Times article on McCain's budget plans.
(Brad DeLong's Weblog)

A more opinionated AP
AP's new Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier is facing criticism for his plans to revamp the wire's signature style and an e-mail to Karl Rove.
(Mother Jones [MoJo Blog])

O-v-e-r-r-r-e-a-c-t-i-n-g
For those who've got a headache over the New Yorker's Obama cover, Dan Kennedy's advice in the Guardian is, pretty much, to take two aspirin and see if it doesn't go away.
(The Guardian)

Howell Raines on gasoline prices and 'crude reporting'
Howell Raines--yes, that Howell Raines--on the question of whom to trust for an explanation of high gas prices. His answer: start with Barlett and Steele.
(Portfolio)

Naomi Klein
The shock doctrine and Iraqi oil. And ANWR drilling. And offshore drilling.
(The Nation)

China in Africa
Writer Richard Behar presents a well-documented, provocative scenario on China's almost effortless move toward dominance in sub-Saharan Africa.
(FastCompany.com)

Editors talk about reduced Iraq coverage
Sherry Ricchiardi, in the June-July issue of AJR, interviews editors about what she calls the 'staggering decline' in coverage.
(American Journalism Review)

Politics & gay marriage, 2008
A Pew survey finds opposition to gay marriage has softened since 2004. Whether it will be a campaign issue is another question.
(Pew Research Center)

Massive corruption in Iraq
The lead item in a Center for Investigative Reporting roundup: Possibly $23 billion has been lost or stolen or simply unaccounted for in Iraq.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Obama's rainmakers
Obama relies heavily on small donors but he's got some big bundlers, too--328 of whom have brought in at least $31.65 million.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Russert tributes
Romenesko gathers tributes to Tim Russert, who died June 13 at age 58.
(Poynter Institute)

Stay of execution sought
In a new filing, lawyers for a Texan convicted of murder and facing death Tuesday allege that the judge should have been disqualified because she and the prosecutor were having an affair.
(Salon)

International poll on Israel and the Palestinians
In an opinion survey in 18 countries, everyone involved, including the U.S. and Arab states, gets low marks for resolving the conflict.
(PIPA/University of Maryland)

On Medicare, there's the People's House, and then there's the Senate
Medicare relief for doctors passes by a landslide in the House but falls a vote short of a needed super-majority in the Senate.
(Center for American Progress)

How 'What Happened' happened
An interview with Peter Osnos of Public Affairs, the publisher of Scott McLellan's book.
(Columbia Journalism Review)

The Pentagon propaganda program
A Media Matters report says the military analysts named in the NY Times exposé in April appeared or were quoted on broadcast networks, cable TV or NPR more than 4,500 times.
(Media Matters for America)

Web essentials
Leading journalism sites, blogs...

The Postville raid
On Point takes a probing look inside the biggest immigration raid in American history last month in a tiny Iowa town, and finds stories of coercion and child labor.
(WBUR and NPR)

An Army under pressure
The Army is facing a troubling shortage of qualified sergeants. But its response -- a wave of promotions for apparently unqualified soldiers -- may have jeopardized some combat operations in Iraq.
(Salon)

3 in 10 election officials don't know the law
A Sentencing Project report shows that many election officials don't know the voting rights of released felons. The result is confusion, to say the least.
(The Sentencing Project)

How are your bridges holding up?
MSNBC Web-publishes 500 internal e-mails from the Federal Highway Administration chock full of information on bridge safety and inspections nationwide.
(MSNBC)

Perilous new pesticides
A groundbreaking review of 10 years' worth of adverse-reaction reports filed with the Environmental Protection Agency by pesticide manufacturers finds that pyrethrins and pyrethroids -- used in thousands of supposedly 'safer' pesticides -- accounted for more than 26 percent of all fatal, 'major,' and 'moderate' human incidents in the United States in 2007, a 300% increase over the last decade.
(Center for Public Integrity)

States running low on jobless benefits
More than a dozen states would be hard-pressed to provide unemployment benefits if the economy tailspins into a full-blown recession and more workers get pink slips.
(Stateline.com)

The Nieman Narrative Conference
This year's Nieman Narrative Conference is March 20th to 22nd in Boston. If you attend, you'll mix with hundreds of colleagues and some of this country's best practitioners of narrative journalism.
(The Nieman Foundation)

New York Times is selling display ads on Page One
In the face of falling advertising revenues, The Times has started selling display advertising on its front page. Click here to see the first ad (bottom of page), which appeared Jan. 5th. It was bought by CBS.
(The New York Times)

'A perception management tool'
The Pentagon now spends more than $550 million a year -- at least double the amount since 2003 -- on public affairs. AP's chief executive, Tom Curley, is calling for news organizations "to resist the propaganda."
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Fewer journalists killed in 2008
Doctors Without Borders reports that fewer journalists were killed this year doing their jobs than in 2007 due to a big fall in the number of deaths in Iraq.
(Reuters)

Up 439% in 25 years
High costs threaten to put a college education out of reach for most Americans. (Editors: Isn't this a story in your area?)
(New York Times)

Will others join NJ in repeal of death penalty?
A year after New Jersey became the first state in a generation to repeal the death penalty, capital punishment opponents in Maryland and New Mexico are pointing to recent political developments in their states as a sign they could be next.
(Stateline.org)

Veterans deserve better
Tim Rutten is unhappy that a new report confirming the existence of Gulf War syndrome didn't make the front page of a single major paper -- even though 175,000 veterans are afflicted.
(Los Angeles Times)

Pattern of lowball penalties for oil spills is cited
Ex-EPA investigator charges that a probe of North Slope oil spills, one of them the largest ever, was cut off prematurely.
(McClatchy)

Quick reviews at FDA
The NY Times reports that the FDA lets thousands of devices on the market each year "after only cursory review and with no clear evidence that they help patients."
(New York Times)

Campaign reporters and McCain
A revealing look--what Glenn Greenwald calls cringe-inducing--at some passengers on the old Straight Talk Express.
(Salon)

Race crimes up following Obama win
From cross burnings to racial epithets, there have been "hundreds" of hate crime incidents since the election, many more than usual, according to Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
(AP)

New battleground: Voter registration
As Barack Obama tries to draw hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls, Republicans are beginning to scrutinize registrants' eligibility as both sides draw a major battle line over voting rights.
(Wall Street Journal)

This is not about Obama and Ayers
`McCain tied to Watergate burglary mastermind.` That's not the headline--but it could be--as reported by Media Matters for America. Think there's a double standard?
(Media Matters for America)

A primer on socialism
Before the last few days, it has been a long time since mainstream politicians called progressive tax rates socialism. Here's a primer by Steve Coll.
(The New Yorker)

Snafus in South Florida early voting
Waits of 2 hours or more are reported; lines stretch for blocks. Two reasons are cited: large turnout and state law that cut the number of polling places and hours of operation.
(McClatchy)

Rescue them? With bonuses like that, they could rescue us
In 2007, reports an ABC blog, Wall Street's five biggest firms -- Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley -- paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves.
(ABC News)

Fewer journalists killed in 2008
60 killed doing their job this year compared to 86 in 2007; the difference is attributed to a sharp drop in deaths in Iraq.
(Reuters)

Asking readers for questions
In his New York Times “Dot Earth” column, Andrew C. Revkin asks readers for questions to put to the Obama science team. He starts out with one on dealing with threats to maritime life.
(New York Times)

Paulson's track record
An American Prospect report says that Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, now asking for $700 billion and new, unprecedented powers, has failed at every step along the way to see the consequences of trhe collapse of the housing bubble.
(The American Prospect)

Those FEMA trailers
Even empty, it costs $28 million a year to store trailers and mobile homes in Mississippi while the government decides what to do with them.
(MCclatchy)

A big win--but daunting challenges
A McClatchy piece doesn't waste any time on congratulations; instead it lays out some of the daunting challenges for Obama as president.
(McClatchy)

Watchdogging on the Web
As traditional news outlets shed staff, Web-based news operations in several cities are engaging in hard-digging investigative reporting.
(New York Times)

Pentagon lagged on safe vehicles
A new report says military leaders knew the dangers posed by roadside bombs before the start of the Iraq war but did little to develop vehicles with better protection.
(USA Today)

Anti-Obama push polls
Jews in Pennsylvania, Florida report getting calls from alleged poll interviewers who bad-mouth Obama.
(Haaretz)

Income concentration at highest level since 1928
Average pre-tax incomes in 2006 jumped by about $60,000 (5.8 percent) for the top 1 percent of households, but just $430 (1.4 percent) for the bottom 90 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to a new report. The analysis of newly released IRS data shows that in 2006, the shares of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent of households were higher than in any year since 1928.
(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

Conflict in government contracting
Outsourcing -- privatization -- comes under focus as jury finds fraud by firm that does work for NRC and other agencies.
(The Washington Post)

Obama, LBJ and MLK, Jr.
"To me," writes Robert Caro in a moving New York Times op ed, "Barack Obama is the inheritor of Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legacy. As I sit listening to Mr. Obama tonight, I will be hearing other words as well. I will be hearing Lyndon Johnson saying, 'We shall overcome.'”
(New York Times)

To cave or not to cave?
Asks E.J. Dionne, Jr.: Will this be the third time this decade that conservative attacks lead reporters to tilt to the right?
(Washington Post)

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Jon Marshall of the Medill School keeps track of investigative reporting in a site called 'News Gems' that he does for the Society of Professional Journalists.
(Society of Professional Journalists)

Dan Rather on candidates avoiding the press
`Folks, there are some issues that demand unpacking here, and they go far, far beyond Sarah Palin and the question of whether one supports the Republican or the Democratic presidential ticket.`
(Hearst Newspapers)

Nancy Hicks Maynard dies
Nancy Hicks Maynard, a co-founder of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, former co-publisher of the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune and a pioneer in newsroom diversity efforts, died in Los Angeles Sunday at age 61.
(Richard Prince's Journal-isms)

Reporters: Is voter registration a mess in your area?
NY Times: In recent months, elections officials in some battleground states and elsewhere have removed two voters for every new one added. Often the removals appear illegal.
(New York Times)

$15 million for Palin's emails
Not only is the price high but most of the emails of Gov. Palin, her senior staff and other state employees won't be made public until at least several weeks after the Nov. 4 presidential election.
(MSNBC)

APME award to Milwaukee
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has won the Associated Press Managing Editors' Innovator of the Year Award for launching an investigative reporting team. The team won a Pulitzer for a series on the padding of county employee pensions--a story that is waiting to be reported in many places.
(APME)

$1.2 billion on private contractors
The government is spending more money than ever on private security contractos in Iraq.
(USA Today)

Issues coverage, for a change
The L.A. Times cuts through campaign rhetoric to point out sharp differences in the tax plans offered by Obama and McCain.
(Los Angeles Times)

Polling on offshore drilling
Opinion polls are fueling politicians and candidates to push for more U.S. offshore oil drilling but as with all polls, the framing is paramount and the media's interpretation crucial.
(Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media)

Election Day problems expected
Among the problems: An anticipated high turnout, weak planning, untested machines.
(Washington Post)

Newspapers in broad flight from DC
Will anyone be left to cover Congress? The agencies? A New York Times report on the closing or cutting the size of bureaus in the nation's capital.
(New York Times)

Der Spiegel on Bush at the UN
`There are days when all it takes is a single speech to illustrate the decline of a world power...Kings and queens have clung to the past before and humiliated themselves in public, but this time it was merely a United States president. Or what is left of him.`
(Der Spiegel)

FDA in need of overhaul
Washington Post writer Rob Stein describes a vital agency that is now in decline and turmoil.
(Washington Post)

Shrinking the environment
A New York Times piece on CNN's decision to eliminate its seven-person science, environment and technology unit. (Includes references to a CJR article.)
(New York Times)

Auto workers' pay
$73-an-hour, a widely-used figure, isn't far off when fringe benefits and retiree bemnefits are included. But David Leonhardt writes that it's the product itself, not auto workers' pay, that is so damaging to Detroit.
(New York Times)

Phony voter fraud
A Newsweek account of GOP efforts to lower turnout.
(Newsweek)

A new voting machine concern
In use for years, a system designed to reveal flaws may fail to do so.
(McClatchy Newspapeers)

Anthrax then and now
Some tough and highly relevant questions about the government's anthrax investigation and the so-called war on terror.
(tomdispatch.com)

No bailout for the poor
Joel Berg, an advocate for the poor and hungry, is used to being told there's no money to help them.
(Washington Post)

Cheney's memory
Twenty-two things Dick Cheney can't recall about the Valerie Plame case.
(Mother Jones)

The 2009-2010 Nieman Class
Reflecting the changing news industry, the coming year's 24 Nieman Fellows, their names just announced, include more free-lancers than ever before.
(The Nieman Foundation)

You mean the purpose of America isn’t to make us rich?
David Cay Johnston, in Mother Jones, writes: “The economic crisis can help us clear away the rot and build a more solid foundation—one that elevates people over capital, kick-starts commerce, and removes some of the costliest barriers to individual success and national progress.”
(Mother Jones)

The Henry Demarest Lloyd Investigative Fund
The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) announces a new effort to “probe behind the walls of secrecy erected by government and powerful corporations.”
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

NSA accused of spying on journalists
Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice says that journalists were targeted by the agency in its surveillance activities.
(Politico)

Bush aides and the revolving door
A new report says that 17 of 24 former Bush Cabinet members have taken positions with at least 119 companies, including 65 firms that lobby the government and 40 that lobby the agencies they headed.
(McClatchy)

The millions that still face foreclosure
Economists estimate that 6 to 8 million Americans will have their homes foreclosed in the next three years. Some 2.7 million people are eligible to have their loans modified and are covered by the services offered by Obama's Home Affordable Modification Program, but only 15 percent have been offered assistance and only 9 percent have received it.
(The American Prospect)

Pentagon seeks an enormous increase in propaganda funding
A House committee says the Defense Department is seeking a $988 million "information" allotment, much of it for "alarmingly non-military propaganda, public relations, and behavioral modification messaging." That figure is up from $9 million in 2005.
(Washington Post)

Broadband roundtable
Bruce Kushnick, others discuss broadband, including shortcomings, with Bob Garfield on his radio show.
(On the Media)

More states are moving toward gambling
Recession is weakening the resistance of even anti-gaming governors.
(Stateline.org)

The hidden costs of clean coal
The Center for Public Integrity issues a report, a year in the making, on the social and environmental costs of producing clean coal.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Do the banks still "own the place?"
Credit card reform legislation will test the power of the banking industry.
(The Washington Independent)

Radio reporter slain in Honduras
Dragged from car and shot eight times, the journalist had been reporting on violent crime.
(Associated Press)

Empty disclosure forms
Over the past decade, lobbyists collected over half a billion dollars with little reporting on what they did to earn the money. That's because activities that are not classified as lobbying are not required to be disclosed by law.
(Center for Responsive Politics)

Found: 22 million missing Bush e-mails
Computer technicians recovered some 22 million missing White House e-mails from the George W. Bush administration, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive, groups that filed (and settled) a lawsuit against the Bush White House for failing to install an electronic record keeping system. Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, says that the discovery "gives us confirmation that the Bush administration lied when they said no e-mails were missing."
(Associated Press)

'One crisis away from bankruptcy'
More Americans die of lack of health insurance than terrorism, homicide, drunk driving and HIV combined, writes Holly Sklar, an advocate of Medicare for all.
(Axcess News)

Those Mohammed cartoons
On Jan 2 a man with an axe tried to attack the Danish artist whose 12 depictions of the prophet Mohammed created a furor in 2005. After the failed attack, a Norwegian newspaper reprinted six of the drawings.
(Editors Weblog)

Afghanistan explained
Dexter Filkins offers a lucid account of Afghanistan since the Americans came and the obstacles now looming.
(The New Republic)

Sex trafficking in Iraq and Afghanistan
The Washington Post and the Center for Public Integrity combine to report, in the Post, that sex trafficking by U.S. government contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is being ignored despite an eight-year-old policy aimed at eradicating it.
(The Washington Post)

A plea to Obama
Scientists and doctors call for an end to corruption and wrongdoing at the Food and Drug Administration.
(Association of Health Care Journalists)

Job satisfaction at record low
Only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work; the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue.
(Associated Press)

Health insurers secretly blacklist millions with common ailments
The Miami Herald found that many insurers automatically deny coverage to those with gallstones, rheumatoid arthritis, sleep problems and other common ailments.
(Miami Herald)

Putting off surgery...or hurrying it up
Some people are putting off elective surgery because of the economy; others are rushing to have it before they lose their insurance.
(New York Times)

A press bailout
John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney call for a government bailout of the press, starting with $60 billion over a three-year period. They call it “a free press ‘infrastructure project’ that is necessary to maintain an informed citizenry, and democracy itself.”
(The Nation Magazine)

A reporter's 20-year retrospective on Iraq
Jane Arraf, the longest-serving Western reporter in Baghdad, reflects on her friends' lives under Saddam Hussein and the American occupation.
(The Christian Science Monitor)

'The Pocantico Declaration'
A group of nonprofit investigative news organizations, including some of the leading ones, has just taken the first steps toward creating a new, nationwide collaborative.
(Building an Investigative News Network)

Guess who's writing tobacco legislation
A Republican Senator confirms that Philip Morris co-authored a much-criticized bill that would give the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco products.
(The Center for Media and Democracy)

VA seizes, returns radio equipment
"OK, you can't talk anymore....You can't do it," Gloria Hairston, a public affairs officer at Washington VA Medica Center, told Army veteran Tommie Canady, who was speaking to a public radio reporter about the treatment of minorities by the VA. The reporter's recording equipment was seized and later returned.
(Washington Post)

States working together
Minnesota and Wisconsin cope with the economy by collaborating on some projects.
(Stateline.org)

Obama PR machine
A group of liberal organizations is said to meet regularly to plan message discipline in support of Obama.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Health care journalism awards
Winners in 11 categories chosen by Association of Health Care Journalists.
(Association of Health Care Journalists)

A concern for Iraqi translators
As the U.S.-Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement is about to go into effect, Iraqi translators fear their employers will hand over identifying information to the Iraqi government, making it easier for militias and insurgents to target them.
(The Washington Independent)

Where's my paper?
First Monday without a home delivery print edition in Detroit.
(Editor & Publisher)

High jobless rate for veterans
Up 4 percentage points in the past year to 11.2%. As a consequence, re-enlistments are way up.
(USA Today)

Credit crunch eases slightly
It’s still hard for states to borrow money, but Georgia shows it’s not impossible.
(Stateline.org)

Lame headlines and Lady Gaga
Washington Post humor columnist Gene Weingarten mourns the loss of brisk headline writing in the age of search engine optimization, and uses Lady Gaga to help make his point.
(The Washington Post)

Rape in Iraq
A moving seven-minute video, “Living in Hiding,” on victims of rape. A project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and Frontline.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Chicago News Cooperative and the dilemmas of nonprofit funding
"The danger is not so much that foundations will dictate what gets covered and what does not. That is relatively easy to resist. It is that we will seek to ingratiate ourselves to funders in order to stay afloat," writes Jamie Kalven.
(Columbia Journalism Review)

Problems in stimulus oversight
Some states are having trouble checking on fraud and abuse in the stimulus program. In some instances workers who would do the checking have been laid off because of budget cuts.
(Stateline.org)

A Saudi influence on Murdoch
A Saudi prince now owns a 7 percent stake in the News Corp. He is the largest shareholder outside the Murdoch family, and is said to be gaining influence at Fox News.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

'People are shocked'
CJR interviews Greg Mitchell on the closing of Editor & Publisher. Under Mitchell the venerable trade publication became a force urging stronger news reporting.
(Columbia Journalism Review)

Afghanistan surge to rely heavily on private contractors
Private contractors are expected to make up at least half of the total military workforce in Afghanistan, according to Defense Department officials cited in a recent study from the Congressional Research Service. The number of contractors will likely increase by between 16,000 and 56,000 for a total of 120,000-160,000.
(TPM Muckraker)

Pentagon's unidentified contractors
In 2008, the Pentagon paid $2.7 billion to unidentified contractors, according to Aviation Week's analysis of Defense Department data provided by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. These contractors were responsible for handling everything from media campaigns to meals for detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Aviation Week)

Doctors for a public option
In a survey of doctors published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 63 percent support health care reform that includes a public option and an additional 10 percent back an entirely public health system.
(The Huffington Post)

Energy firms bankroll overseas trips for California regulators
Oil and utility companies such as Chevron and Pacific Gas and Electric have funneled money into nonprofits that in turn paid for overseas trips for secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency and other top officials overseeing the state's climate change policy.
(The Sacramento Bee)

Torture for the NPR ombudsperson
Bob Garfield knows what torture is, and how to apply it in an interview.
(On the Media [NPR])

Women and the minimum wage
The majority of minimum-wage earners earners are adult women, whose salaries have become more relied upon during the recession. Even with the recent minimum wage increase (to $7.25), a full-time minimum wage worker will earn just $14,500. And the government hasn't changed the federal wage of $2.13 an hour for tipped workers in 18 years.
(The American Prospect)

Selective and misleading reporting on incomes
"The bottom 90 percent of Americans...earned incomes in 2007 that were 1.7 percent less than in 2000, the equivalent of working fifty-two weeks but getting paid for only fifty-one...while the top 1 percent during the same period saw their incomes rise 12 percent," writes David Cay Johnston. But you wouldn't know it by reading The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, whose coverage has exaggerated the negative effects of the economic crisis on the rich.
(Columbia Journalism Review)

Tracking foreign lobbying
More than 280 lobbying firms collected $87 million in fees from 340 foreign clients during 2008 and part of 2007, according to the Sunlight Foundation and ProPublica. Reporters can follow the money using the Foreign Policy Influence Tracker at http://foreignlobbying.org/.
(ProPublica)

Nieman business journalism fellowship
At a time when economic stories are becoming more and more important, the Nieman Foundation has been awarded a grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation to establish a new annual fellowship for business journalists.
(The Nieman Foundation)

New editor at The Root
Longtime journalist Joel Dreyfuss is named managing editor of theRoot.com.
(Richard Prince's Journal-isms)

Raquel Rutledge wins Worth Bingham Prize
Rutledge, a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter, exposed how lax oversight of a $350 million taxpayer-subsidized child care program resulted in massive fraud. In the course of her investigation, she helped uncover $20 million in suspicious payments to child care providers as well as criminal activity connected to the system that repeatedly put children in danger.
(Nieman Foundation)

Behind the new spike in gas prices
Supply is up, demand is down--and prices are soaring. What's behind that? Wall Street speculators, maybe?
(McClatchy Newspapers)

Early release saves money
States look to cut spending on prisons. Kentucky hopes to save $30 million by early release of prisoners, including some murderers.
(Stateline.org)

Recession scars will be lasting
The aftershocks from deep recessions reverberate for years, even decades.
(USA Today)

Unpaid internships
Young people in the news business used to get paid at least something. But that's one custom, Edward Wasserman writes, the industry has apparently decided it could dispense with. Meet the internship.
(McClatchy)

Light penalties for cheating
Students will cheat but why are universities letting them get away with it?
(The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Nobody minding the store?
Pentagon contracting almost doubled during the Bush years but fraud inquiries plummeted.
(Center for Public Integrity)

The Investigators: a new CIR series
A new web-video, part of a series by the Center for Investigative Reporting, highlights Colombian journalists who risk their lives to unearth the hidden history of the country’s long-running guerilla wars.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

The emotional costs of the economic crisis
NPR tells the story of one woman who attempted suicide after being laid off. CrisisLink, a suicide hot line she called in Virginia, has seen the number of suicide calls jump from 150 a month last year to close to 270 today, a 77 percent increase.
(NPR)

Observer wins Taylor Award
The Charlotte Observer has won the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers for its coverage of health and safety violations in the poultry industry.
(Nieman Foundation)

10 years later...
Michael Montgomery returns to the Balkans to investigate the disappearances of Serbs allegedly kidnapped and killed by ethnic Albanians.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Women and the courts
A Northwestern School of Law study suggests that male judges rule somewhat differently when they're sharing the bench with a woman.
(Slate)

Largest retail union sets sights on largest company
The largest retail workers union, UFCW, is said to be active in 17 states, trying to organize workers at Wal-Mart.
(The Minnesota Independent)

‘3 Minutes to Fort Totten’
An outstanding, at times painful reconstruction of the June 22nd collision that killed a train operator and eight Metro rail passengers and left scores injured in Washington, DC.
(The Washington Post)

Waterboarding prosecutions
Under Reagan, the Justice Department prosecuted a Texas sheriff and three deputies for waterboarding inmates to elicit confessions. The sheriff was sentenced to ten years, the deputies to four.
(Truthout.org)

Why lobby? Because there's a 22,000 percent return.
U.S. corporations, including bailout recipients JP Morgan and Citigroup, got a 22,000 percent return on their lobbying efforts in 2003 and 2004 after pushing through a tax break on their overseas earnings, according to a University of Kansas study.
(Christian Science Monitor)

What Nick Clooney asked Eisenhower
The veteran journalist recollects being not so great on advice for his son, but being right on the mark--and jeered for it--as a teenage reporter.
(Wasington Post Magazine)

They're safe in Skagway
How Skagway, Alaska, population 823, has been spending the millions it got in anti-terrorism money.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Bypassing the media
------------------------------As president, Obama is keeping an open line to his 13 million Internet followers. _________________________
(New York Times)

Unhinged, doomsday programming
Eric Boehlert sees an ominous side to Fox News.
(Media Matters for America)

Investigations
A Pro Publica roundup of news media watchdog stories.
(Pro Publica)

Homeland security spending, state by state
A map documenting how how authorities in individual states have managed, or mismanaged, federal anti-terrorism funds.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Somebody needs to tell Frank Luntz that it's a sin to tell a lie
'You don't know Orwellian until you know Frank Luntz' is the headline on a Salon story by Gabriel Winant.
(Salon)

Dangerous caregivers missing from federal database
Numerous disciplinary records appear to be missing from a federal database. Indiana, for example, didn't report hundreds of disciplinary actions in 2004 and 2005 – including nearly 100 nurses who were indefinitely barred from caring for patients. In one case, a nurse had put a knife to a co-worker's throat.
(Pro Publica)

The curious spending of a GOP pro-choice PAC
The money doesn't seem to actually go to supporting choice.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Homeland security funds wasted in CA
Government inspectors found more than $15 million in questionable costs and lack of oversight of homeland security funds in California, according to an analysis of documents by California Watch.
(California Watch (Center for Investigative Reporting))

The 20-year-old FOIA request
After 20 years, the CIA finally processes an FOIA request filed by the National Security Archive regarding Manucher Ghorbanifar, a key player in the Iran-Contra affair.
(The National Security Archive)

Spending but not running
Florida Senator Mel Martinez has spent $147,642 in campaign contributions on consultants, staff, air fares, meals, cellphones and purchases at the Senate gift shop since he announced eight months ago that he wouldn't seek re-election.
(McClatchy)

Scientology defectors
Former Scientology executives describe intimidation and violence in an-depth, multi-media report that focuses on Scientology leader David Miscavige.
(St. Petersburg Times)

When caregivers cause harm
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has started cleaning house after a Pro Publica and LA Times investigation found it often takes years to act on complaints submitted to the state's oversight board for nurses.
(Pro Publica)

A major advance for watchdog reporting
In a six-month experiment, AP will distribute news reports by four non-profit investigative news organizations.
(New York Times)

Serial catastrophes in Afghanistan threaten Obama policy
Juan Cole wonder: "Is the bombing at FOB Chapman the tip of an iceberg of misinformation, on which the Titanic of Obama's AfPak policy could well founder?"
(Informed Comment)

Torture probe abandoned
For lack of interest, the Senate will not move ahead on the idea to appoint a commission to investigate detention, rendition and interrogation policies by the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration.
(Secrecy News)

Susan Tifft, teacher, journalist, author dies
After learning she had cancer in 2007, Susan Tifft kept a blog reporting on her illness and treatment. In her last entry, March 24th, she wrote, “Final advice? Always do the right thing. It will gratify your friends and enrage your enemies.”
(Boston Globe)

'Training grounds for falure'
Michael Santos finds plenty wrong with the penal system. Imprisoned for 23 years now, he is speaking from experience.
(Huffington Post)

Bribes? Extortion? Or Congressional business as usual?
The Times reports on an investigation into eight House members, Democrats and Republicans, who asked for and got campaign contributions from financial institutions even as they were debating and voting on parts of the financial regulatory legislation that is now up for final approval.
(The New York Times)

35 dead in a mine, unreported for 3 months
Reporter Sharon LaFraniere describes an astounding culture of of graft and cover-ups in China.
(New York Times)

2009, the bloodiest year ever for the news media
On World Press Freedom Day the Committee to Protect Journalists focuses on the murder of reporters and challenges authorities in 10 nations "to bring justice and reverse a culture of impunity"
(Committee to Protect Journalists)

Mcclatchy to cut another 1,600 jobs
It's the most severe of three recent cuts, eliminating 15 percent of the workforce.
(Sacramento Bee)

If you missed it...
Jon Stewart's 8-minute takedown of CNBC is seen as a model for reporting that "most newsrooms would kill for."
(Philly.com)

Stickin' it to the union
On Meet the Press David Gregory asks the new head of GM lots of questions about unions but none about fuel efficiency.
(Media Matters for America)

Pincus on the press
For more than a decade, Walter Pincus writes, journalism has been "chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers."
(Columbia Journalism Review)

'Clueless' on voting machines
Voting machine vendors are said to misrepresent studies regarding machines' security.
(Pro Publica)

Roger Cohen in Tehran
A vivid first-hand account of the street protests, tear gas, bloody confrontations and all. "There were people of all ages," the columnist writes. "I saw an old man on crutches, middle-aged office workers and bands of teenagers. Unlike the student revolts of 2003 and 1999, this movement is broad."
(The New York Times)

Pesticides blamed for bee deaths
Beekeepers say that the world's best-selling insecticide, produced by Bayer CropScience Inc., is responsible for the collapse of the country's hives.
(Salon)

The C Street House
A disturbing report on a group of U.S. Senators, members of the House and others, and on the concept of "Jesus plus nothing."
(Salon)

Crude propaganda
Ernesto Londoño reports on the latest American attempts, widely mocked, to tell Iraqis how well things are going in their country.
(Washington Post)

Psst, you in Congress: People want a 'public option'
Despite unease over government involvement, a great majority in a New York Times/CBS News poll -- 72 percent -- favor just that: a government health plan to compete with private ones.
(New York Times)

Dental care inequities
Guy Boulton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that dental care for the needy is “one of the most entrenched, widespread and overlooked problems of the U.S. health care system."
(Association of Health Care Journalists)

Fake letters to the editor
Lobbying firm is said to do a little extra on behalf of Medicare Advantage clients.
(PR Watch.org)

Summers's enormous pay cut
Criticizing Larry Summers for his Wall Street ties is wrongheaded, writes columnist Richard Cohen.
(The Washington Post)

Recession blamed for increase in shooting sprees
Financial pressure is viewed as a main factor in many of the recent killings in the United States, with at least 58 fatalities in eight incidents over the past month.
(The London Times)

Do you want him to fail?
Some of the worst of Limbaugh; a collection of inflammatory, often ugly, remarks.
(Media Matters for America)

Buying credibility
The monkeys and their organ grinders, or put another way, corporations and their think tanks.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Details of the Washington Post's salon plans: who knew what
The Post's ombudsman reports that three top editors, aside from the executive editor, were consulted about the planned corporate-sponsored dinners at the publisher's home. In addition, 200 Post managers were given "a quick explanation" of the idea at a meeting.
(The Washington Post)

A torture inquiry...in Britain
British Prime Minister David Cameron announced a judicial inquiry into the country's role in torture and rendition since the 9/11 attacks.
(The Guardian)

Cause marketing, or why facts no longer matter
The Center for Media and Democracy on PR techniques corporations use to get inside your head.
(PRwatch.org)

Find out what your member of Congress is spending
The House is reporting disbursements for the first time. The Sunlight Foundation has created a searchable database of each House member's expenditures.
(Sunlight Foundation)

The FCC and the Internet
A New York Times editorial gets to the nitty-gritty after a court ruling that stripped the FCC of authority to regulate the Internet.
(The New York Times)

Beyond the IQ wars
In Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, Richard E. Nisbett, a professor of psychology at University of Michigan, argues that practical measures such as eye exams and smaller classes can play an important role in raising IQ of the nation's disadvantaged
(The American Prospect)

Find John Brennan's op ed
Harry Shearer, working from a fantasy assignment desk, wants reporters to find a 2005 anti-Iraq war op ed that never was published.
(Huffington Post)

Chicago Tribune wins Taylor Award
In “Clout Goes to College,” the newspaper revealed that lawmakers and university trustees helped subpar applicants gain admission to the University of Illinois, at times over the objections of admissions officers. The paper exposed secret admissions clout lists and a corrupt admissions process and in doing so, paved the way for reforms including a new admissions system, a new university president and chancellor, and six new members of the university’s Board of Trustees.
(he Nieman Foundation)

$1.4 million a day for lobbying
The health care industry, spending $1.4 million a day on lobbying, has hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress.
(The Washington Post)

Trials and non-trials at Gitmo
The first of 35 Guantánamo detainees is scheduled to get his military-commission trial in 2011, but 50 other detainees are deemed by the Obama administration as "too dangerous to release" but ineligible for trial.
(The American Prospect)

Feeling threatened by Obama
Big increase reported in gun and ammo sales. Reporters: what's the story in your area?
(The Washington Independent)

367,000 foreclosures in March (A story here, maybe?)
Almost two years after the onset of the financial crisis, The Center for Media and Democracy takes a hard look and says "nothing is being done to put a stop to this on-going tragedy."
(PR Watch)

$1 million for the Center for Public Integrity
The much-praised watchdog group gets $750,000 from the MacArthur Foundation and $250,000 from the Park Foundation.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Tom Tomorow
Coverup exposed: The real financial collapse culprits were Jimmy Carter and, before him, Roosevelt.
(Salon)

Essential reading
Recent articles of value to journalists caught in the meltdown.
(Online Journalism Review)

Oil, gas, coal lobbying budget is up 50%
Energy industries' goal "is to water down or kill off" cap and trade measures, says the Guardian.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Patrick Buchanan, MSNBC and Holocaust denial
A member of a Holocaust survival group questions MSNBC's reaction, or lack of one, to Buchanan's sponsoring a Holocaust denial forum on his Web site.
(Jerusalem Post)

In Israel, rooting for Iran
Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston is "in awe of the people of Iran," and also of "the world revolutionary named Barack Obama."
(Haaretz)

One in 10 on food stamps
A record 32.2 million people--one in every 10 Americans--received food stamps in January. The average benefit for the government food aid program was $112.82 per person.
(Reuters)

Baghdad/LA
Exploring the impact of the Iraq war in Los Angeles, a joint project of the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Annenberg School at USC.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Get it right next time, please
The AP incorrectly reported that President Obama referred to Social Security as the most pressing fiscal challenge.
(Media Matters for America)

Wikileaks isn't done yet
It plans to publish 15,000 more war documents despite strong Pentagon complaints. Assange says "freedom of the press" is at stake.
(New York Times)

A health reform primer
Reporters and editors, note: The Congressional Research Service has put together a 20-page report on the underlying problems and major issues facing health care reform efforts.
(Association of Health Care Journalists)

Watchdog failure
Bloomberg is increasing coverage of Washington, DC, agencies but almost all other news organizations are cutting back or shutting down. Ralph Nader says failure to cover "the guts" of the federal government has cost American lives, and this AJR piece offers strong support for that view.
(American Journalism Review)

Worth replicating in your state?
Riverside County issues three times more death penalty convictions than average for California counties, an intgeractive map shows. A map like this looks worth replicating elsewhere.
(Sacramento Bee)

For hospital CEOs, charity begins at home
CEOs at California nonprofits earn more than their hospitals spend on charity.
(California Watch)

New reporting venture in California
With a 3-year grant, the Center for Investigative Reporting will focus on statewide issues.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Summer bogus trend stories alert!
The New York Times on med-impaired drivers, Boston Globe on doggie snubs and USA Today on the return of the bomb shelter take the prize for some of this summer's bogus trend stories. "Hey, USA Today, get back to me after the guy builds and sells his 20 shelters and then we can talk honestly about the shelter comeback," writes Slate's Jack Shafer. 
(Slate)

Fewer reporters, less news
Cops are hiding a lot more news these days, writes David Simon, and the press isn't fighting to uncover it.
(Washington Post)

Pentagon rejects its own whitewash
A new Pentagon report rejects an earlier one that denied any wrongdoing in the coaching of retired military leaders to spout the company line.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Medicare Now
A reminder of what health care for the elderly was like in America before LBJ signed the Medicare Act in 1965.
(Center for Medicare Advocacy)

Turning poverty into a multibillion-dollar industry
Gary Rivlin, author of Broke, USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc.--How the Working Poor Became Big Business, talks about the growth of the $33 billion-a-year payday lending industry.
(NPR's Fresh Air)

Facebook stalking...by Facebook
"As Facebook continues to put a positive spin on dubious privacy practices, we early adopters are feeling rather queasy. We've started to throw around the term 'Facebook Stalking'—once used to describe how we would silently monitor our friends' activities on the social networking site—in a new context: to describe the way Facebook stalks us," writes Erica Newland, a policy analyst for the Center for Democracy & Technology.
(Huffington Post)

POGO finds $18.7 billion in penalties for the top U.S. contractors
The top 100 federal contractors for fiscal year 2009 "have accumulated 642 misconduct instances and over $18.7 billion in monetary penalties since 1995," according to the Project on Government Oversight.
(California Watchblog)

Covering the health care budget
Tips for reporters and editors on localizing Obama's health care proposals.
(Association of Health Care Journalists)

Land of the locked up
"Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little," writes The Economist in its cover article on America's prison system. At least 2.3 million Americans, or about one in every 100 adults, are behind bars.
(The Economist)

The climate change lobby
A Center for Public Integrity report shows that more than 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence federal policy on climate change in the past year.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Saying goodbye in Denver
Columbia Journalism Review runs comments from some on the Rocky Mountain News as the paper goes under.
(Columbia Journalism Review)

Grassroots shell game
Can you say 'manipulate?' Here's a corporate-funded group trying to persuade liberals that they should be opposed to financial reform legislation.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

DNA evidence neglected
Half the states lack requirements to preserve DNA evidence, despite a series of dramatic exonerations based on the critical biological material.
(USA Today)

Pregnancy deaths rise in the U.S.
"A lot of mothers have died in this country who probably would have been fine if they had lived in Italy."
(California Watch)

Minnesota case
Voting illegally last November costs a felon 30 days in jail.
(Associated Press)

Beer with Obama
Washington pundits keep saying Barack Obama has a problem connecting with regular voters even as polls show otherwise.
(Media Matters for America)

Clinics charge U.S. for fake HIV treatment
South Florida healthcare clinics are billing for bogus HIV drug infusion treatment as part of a multibillion-dollar underground economy.
(Miami Herald)

Three key questions still unanswered in anthrax case
Among them: Why, after he came under suspicion in 2005 or earlier, was Bruce Ivins allowed to retain a high-level security clearance?
(McClatchy Newspapers)

Senate Medicare action
Paul Krugman, on a rare move by Congress to slow the privatization of Medicare.
(New York Times)

Veteran reporters criticize 2008 campaign coverage
Jules Witcover, Jack Nelson, Christine Dolan, Hal Bruno take a hard look.
(Houston Chronicle)

'We were basically hiring terrorists'
The U.S. signed up legions of sketchy Iraqi fighters to help stop sectarian violence. Now, a joint U.S.-Iraqi government plan to disband the force could put up to 80,000 men out of work -- and leave them armed and disgruntled.
(Salon)

40 rollover accidents
MWRAPs--large trucks that are used to provide the best protection in Iraq and Afghanistan--have a problem of their own: they tip over.
(Associated Press)

Photo censorship in Iraq?
The New York Times could find only six photographers from western countries covering the war.
(New York Times)

Smitten
In a 6,500-word piece, Eric Alterman and George Zornick describe the love affair between John McCain and many leading journalists. “Again and again,” they write, “you will see that many of the most admired and respected reporters in the business are not merely ‘in the tank’ for McCain; they are practically unpaid members of his campaign staff.”
(The Nation Magazine)

Whither your phone fees?
Congress is looking into the program that subsidizes rural phone service with billions of dollars in fees charged to all land-line and wireless customers. How are the telecoms spending that money?
(Dallas Morning News)

Watch your back
A review of Massachussets state documents finds that botched spine surgeries account for more of the mistakes than any other type of operation.
(Boston Globe)

Bullying army recruiters
The Delayed Entry Program is designed to introduce young people to the Army without a binding commitment. But some Houston recruiters have threatened high school students who want to opt out.
(KHOU-TV)

Newspaper stocks down 35 percent
Alterman's column: Watch as owners cut staff, cut newshole, cut pay, raise newsstand prices. Well, at least they haven't cut executive compensation.
(The Nation)

Strike a pose
A look back at 10 magazine covers that came under fire.
(Los Angeles Times)

Last place among industrialized countries
American health care system is said to cost more, deliver less.
(New York Times)

Out of FISA's reach
While the National Security Agency faces new checks under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a host of domestic spying programs go on as before.
(Baltimore Sun)

Writer waterboarded
Christopher Hitchens documents his torturous waterboarding session.
(Vanity Fair)

Uproar over a New Yorker cover
In the name of let's get it all out there, a New Yorker cover shows Obama in Muslim garb, Michelle Obama as a terrorist, a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall and an American flag burning in a fireplace. Richard Prince (Journal-isms)puts together some of the reaction.
(The Maynard Institute)

Criminal militia
Members of a Rio group with ties to police are said to kidnap and torture a reporter, photographer and driver from O Dia.
(Committee to Protect Journalists)

McCain's war record is off limits! Got it?
That's the message the three network evening newscasts seemed to send as they attacked Gen. Wesley Clark for things he didn't say.
(Media Matters for America)

Reporting on gas prices
A McClatchy article lists three ways to cut oil and gas prices--and asks why Bush, Obama and McCain are ignoring them.
(McClatchy DC bureau)

A dangerous place
Three TV journalists abducted, missing in the Philippines.
(World Editors Forum)

War crimes, torture and the press
Charles Kaiser asks if those responsible for war crimes will be held accountable.
(Radar)

Fewer reporters, less news
Which came first in Iraq: fewer reporters or less news?
(New York Times)

What makes McClatchy's DC bureau different
Something to think about: Lack of access to the higher-ups made for better reporting in the run-up to the Iraq war.
(USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review)

Tax questions for McCain
NY Times columnist Dave Leonhardt is calling McCain's hand on taxes. He offers three questions—and reporters should put all of them to the candidate.
(New York Times)

After the surge
It's time for reporters to get past the sound bites and prod McCain and Obama on what happens next in Iraq.
(L.A. Times)

Is it time to report on issues yet?
A good look at what a McCain or Obama win would mean for the Supreme Court.
(Washington Post)

Can we go off the record?
Some byplay between the Pentagon and Justice Department and reporters seeking a response to a Supreme Court decision.
(McClatchy DC Bureau Blog)

No debate—literally—on climate change
A lot of Americans want the president and Congress to deal with energy and the environment, but to many journalists—most obviously those running presidential debates—these issues are nonstarters.
(New York Times)

Storytelling Required
The news coverage of the Iraq War almost always ignores the daily lives of ordinary Iraqis. Seeking out those personal stories could help us understand the war's human cost, writes Ann Friedman.
(The American Prospect)

McCain and Gordon Liddy
"I'm proud of you,” McCain is quoted as saying. “Congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."
(Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune)

Horserace coverage
The media have already basically winnowed the presidential race to five candidates -- but have offered Americans relatively little information about their records or what they would do if elected.
(Project for Excellence in Journalism)

Toxic waste, 27 years later
The Superfund backlog grows and money for cleanup is running out. A Center for Public Integrity report, one year in the making.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Soft money 2008
Groups on all sides are starting to shovel money into politics, a la the Swift Boaters, as a result of a Supreme Court decision.
(The New York Times)

Enough with the diamonds or pearls questions
There have been about 1500 questions in the 17 presidential debates thus far, but very few have been on substantive issues.
(Media Matters for America)

Windfalls of War II
A new Center for Public Integrity report traces the rise of government contracts from $11 billion in 2004 to more than $25 billion in 2006.
(Center for Public Integrity)

What happened to the benchmarks?
Talking Points Memo, citing a New York Times article, says that while the surge in Iraq is drawing great praise, the Bush administration has given up on the benchmarks that were supposed to determine its success.
(Talking Points Memo)

Over U.S. objections...
Europe takes the lead in dealing with toxic chemicals. A report -- and a book -- by Mark Schapiro.
(Harper's Magazine)

A watchdog story everywhere?
With hard-sell trickery, beneficiaries of traditional Medicare are being lured out of the program and into private plans.
(The New York Times)

Getting answers from the candidates
Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe shows how it's done -- getting most of the major presidential candidates to address questions about the limits of executive power.
(boston.com)

Are voters in your state being disenfranchised?
USA Today finds that databases to deter voter fraud could disenfranchise thousands of legal voters.
(USA Today)

What brought Loretta Tofani back to journalism
The Pulitzer Prize winner tells how, as a businesswoman, not a reporter as such, she became gripped by and had to write the story of Chinese workers dying slow, difficult deaths caused by toxic chemicals.
(Center for Investigative Reporting)

Falling upward
Tom Tomorrow, on the wisdom and insight of the New York Times's new columnist, William Kristol.
(Credo)

Eric Boehlert
A lesson from New Hampshire: "The press is no longer up to the task of helping us pick our next president."
(Media Matters for America)

An AP reporter and Romney go at it
A video of an argument at a campaign stop over the role of a lobbyist in Romney’s campaign.
(CBS News)

A bad 2008 for Fox News?
Eric Boehlert says the good news for Fox News was that it succeeded in appealing almost exclusively to GOP voters—and that’s also the bad news.
(Media Matters for America)

Repairing America's image
Advisers to presidents since Jimmy Carter urge this year’s candidates to say what they would do about climate change, nuclear terrorism and other key international issues.
(McClatchy)

Looking for a plan
Drought—a story across the U.S.—has states turning to Washington for help.
(Stateline.org)

Rutten tears into CNN
LA Times media writer calls the network ‘corrupt and incompetent’ on the basis of its performance in last week’s GOP presidential candidates debate.
(Los Angeles Times)

Second time around
American Journalism Review compares current reporting on Iran to prewar reporting on Iraq.
(American Journalism Review)

Unhinged in 30 days
Eric Boehlert writes that the "Republican Noise Machine didn't need the customary 100 days to size up the new president;" it took them barely 30 days.
(Media Matters for America)

Sharing stories
The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette have begun sharing news stories.
(Editor & Publisher)

How smart can a bomb be?
Mark Benjamin examines what the Air Force is doing to avoid civilian casualties in Iraq.
(Salon)

The Times and the McCain story
Keller, Abramson, others at the NY Times respond online to a massive reader outcry.
(NYTimes.com)

Money in the campaign
The Center for Public Integrity's 2008 look into the buying of the presidency.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Getting readers back
A health care and parenting tip in every Washington Post story, editorials that flip either pro or con, snacks in every delivery bag and much, much more in Richard’s Poor Almanack.
(Washington Post)

Anti-McCain ads
The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and NPR report the start of what no doubt will be big spending by independent groups in the 2008 election campaign.
(CIR and NPR)

When Iraq disappears from the news
Awareness of Iraq war fatalities has plummeted, along with sharp declines in news coverage.
(Pew Research Center)

Five years in Iraq
A key finding in Part 1 of a Times series: money more than ideology is what motivates a majority of Sunni insurgents.
(New York Times)

Poverty, John Edwards and the News
Journalism prof Caryl Rivers on how, while poverty is on the rise in the U.S., coverage of it has just about vanished.
(Huffington Post)

Diversity and comic strips
Richard Prince reports on findings showing that only one-quarter of newspapers have comic strips of color and hardly any have more than one.
(The Maynard Institute)

Chris Matthews plays gotcha
He's so tough on an Obama backer that you'd think the man was supporting Hillary.
(Obsidian Wings)

The FOIA endurance game
Clark Hoyt writes that for NY Times reporters Bernstein and Barstow, information from the government on big stories didn't come so freely.
(New York Times)

Update on Pentagon propaganda
More spin uncovered, suggestions of White House involvement, and the media remain mostly silent.
(The Progress Report)

The team that got Iraq right
The Huffington Post interviews journalists from the former Knight Ridder Washington bureau, who were almost alone in questioning the Iraq war before it began.
(Huffington Post)

Where have all the reporters gone?
Which comes first: lack of coverage of Iraq, or lack of public interest?
(New York Times)

A quick response
On Thursday a California court ruled same-sex marriage legal. On Friday the NY Times had an instructive (if not conclusive) piece on whether the issue will resonate politically this year.
(NY Times)

High jobless rate for veterans
Up 4 percentage points in the past year to 11.2%. As a consequence, re-enlistments are way up.
(USA Today)

Avoiding the `gotchas`
Ezra Klein envisions politicians and campaigns that overcome the news media hunger for sound bites, trivia and gaffes.
(Los Angeles Times)

Where they stand
NYTimes.com describes where McCain, Obama and Clinton stand on the issues of abortion, climate change, Iraq and others.
(NYTimes.com)

Grilling Petraeus
What top national security experts would ask General Petraeus in his upcoming appearance before House and Senate committees. A sample question: What’s the definition of ‘acceptable’ violence?
(Mother Jones)

Journal-isms
Richard Prince writes a regular column for the Maynard Institute. Here's a sampling.
(The Maynard Institute)

‘The reality of hunger’
It has always been hard to live from paycheck to paycheck, but for some these days it’s almost impossible. An AP report.
(Associated Press)

States slowing down actions on immigration
Legislators, still frustrated, dive into the debate but their actions are measured. A Stateline.org report.
(Stateline.org)

U.S. choppers kill ... who?
Hannah Allam and Jenan Hussein examine one American helicopter attack in Bahgdad and try to determine if the victims were the enemy or innocents.
(McClatchy Newspapers)

So now what?
The Times weighs in on what may happen next, now that Rupert Murdoch is acquiring the Wall Street Journal.
(New York Times)

Under the watchful eye
California cities are moving quickly to install video surveillance cameras on public streets and plazas -- without regulations, with little or no public debate, and without an evaluation of their effectiveness, writes the ACLU. What's your city doing?
(ACLU)

An embubbled press
The overseas press is reporting a mass exodus of doctors and nurses from Iraq, but Harry Shearer couldn't find a word about it in the American media.
(Huffington Post)

Don Quixote Copps
A video and transcript of FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps telling Bill Moyers that the news media are special and must serve the public interest.
(PBS)

See-saw college costs
Legislators balk at tuition hikes, so state schools tack on fees. (Editors: what about the schools in your area?)
(New York Times)

The myth of AQI
To make the White House happy, the U.S. military is wildly overstating the significance of al Qaeda in Iraq.
(Washington Monthly)

Editorial page study
Conservative columnists get a lot more space than liberals.
(Media Matters for America)

Sloganeering by Romney
In washingtonpost.com (but not in the print edition), Dan Balz offers sharp coverage of the GOP response to Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal.
(washingtonpost.com)

Greider on Greenspan
Alan Greenspan never made any mistakes as Fed chairman. Charges that he did are all lies. What housing bubble? What stock market bubble?
(The Nation)

What Krugman hates...
... about political coverage: 'Instead of telling us what candidates are actually saying – and whether it’s true or false, sensible or silly – [political reporters] tell us how it went over, and how they think it affects the horse race.'
(nytimes.com)

Well, some people liked that ad
Mother Jones reported that more than 12,000 people donated $500,000 to Moveon.org — its biggest day this year — after the General Petraeus ad.
(Mother Jones)

Russell Baker
Never has the demise of newspapers been discussed so stylishly.
(New York Review of Books)

When Congress stops wars
The authors of 'While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers' write that members of Congress can exert a great deal of influence over the conduct of war.
(Foreign Affairs)

'A totally political scandal'
Barry Sussman, editor of NiemanWatchdog.org, talks to Bob Garfield about the coverage of the U.S. attorney firings -- and how it compares to Watergate.
(NPR's 'On the Media')

McClatchy's New Mottos
The McClatchy Washington bureau adopts "Truth to Power" and "Accountability" as its new mottos. Its leaders declare: "Our aim is to provide readers with the information they need to hold their leaders accountable and to make informed decisions, not only about public issues but also about their own lives and families."
(McClatchy Newspapers)

Shame on us
More than four years into the war in Iraq, 41 percent of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein's regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
(Newsweek)

Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq
The Los Angeles Times reports on new U.S. data that show how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of the war-torn nation.
(Los Angeles Times)

Confronting Bush's single-villain spin
New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt writes: "While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the accuracy of his statements."
(New York Times)

What can we actually accomplish in Iraq?
Rosa Brooks writes: "If we're serious about resolving the Iraq crisis, we need to get away from the rhetoric of sacrifice, cost and responsibility and instead ask clear-eyed questions about our capacities and interests."
(Los Angeles Times)

ABC's Pennsylvania debate
Tom Shales says questioners Gibson and Stephanopolous turned in shoddy, despicable performances.
(Washington Post)

Moyers on Murdoch
Bill Moyers writes that Rupert Murdoch's pursuit of the Wall Street Journal is only the latest "in a cascading series of mergers, buy-outs, and other financial legerdemain that are making a shipwreck of journalism."
(PBS)

America could do with a few feral beasts
Jemima Lewis writes that "there is a thin line between respectable and supine, and American journalism has settled on the wrong side."
(The Independent)

Tom Tomorrow
How the news works: A cartoonist's biting version of NY Times front pages.
(Salon)

A call for Congress to act
In a powerful Washington Post essay, William Odom, a frequent NiemanWatchdog contributor, outlines a path out of Iraq.
(The Washington Post)

Halberstam
A warm appreciation by Henry Allen for a reporter who saw journalism as a calling.
(Washington Post)

A new chief editor’s credo
Being an information center is okay but it’s being a watchdog that’s most important
(The Morris County Daily Record)

Holding leaders accountable
The Center for Public Integrity tracks and rates personal financial disclosure by governors, judges and legislators. A useful tool for reporters everywhere.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Fact-checking the president
Mark Seibel writes that Bush and his aides are "offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events" in Iraq.
(McClatchy Newspapers)

'A blow to reporters'
Congressional Research Service staff gets new restrictions on speaking to the press
(Secrecy News Blog/Federation of American Scientists)

Uncovering accounting fraud
A Harvard Business School professor finds that print business reporters are digging up a lot of original information on accounting fraud.
(Harvard Business School)

Linda Bilmes
Pentagon tries to trash Harvard lecturer for her work on the true costs of the Iraq war, some of which has appeared on NiemanWatchdog.
(Insidehighered.com)

The press under siege
Record number of reporters were killed worldwide in 2006 and 2007 is starting out badly.
(Reporters Without Borders)

What to ask before the next war
Former CIA official Paul R. Pillar (also a NiemanWatchdog contributor) writes: 'Not only must proponents of military action not be allowed to manipulate the answers, they also should not be allowed to define the questions.'
(Washington Post)

Katrina watch
The latest in the continuing coverage of post-hurricane politics, struggles and investigations by the Center for Public Integrity.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Vows to improve but no fixes
Grim, dangerous conditions persist in a California youth prison. Reporters: what about juvenile facilities in your area?
(San Francisco Chronicle)

Extra! Extra!
A compilation of recent investigative reports from around the U.S.
(Investigative Reporters and Editors)

Explosive news but little impact
Seymour Hersh has scoop after scoop on very big stories. Is anybody paying any attention?
(Tomdispatch.com)

ASNE's highest honor
Andrew Barnes of St. Petersburg Times and Poynter to get award for editorial leadership
(American Society of Newspaper Editors)

Less news gathering but more access to it
Kevin Drum sees blogs as an antidote to media consolidation – at least for now
(MotherJones.com)

Feel safer now?
Part of the sentence for David Hicks, the Aussie Taliban held in Guantanamo, is that he can’t speak to the news media for one year. What’s that about?
(San Francisco Chronicle)

Newspapers at a crossroads
Analyst John Morton says more cuts would make him pessimistic, investment in news optimistic.
(Project for Excellence in Journalism)

21st Century newsrooms
The Editors Weblog launches a series of reports on the integration of print and online newsrooms at four British newspapers.
(World Editors Forum)

Conason on Imus
‘From the beginning, the only relevant question was whether the networks would uphold decent values.’
(Salon.com)

A resource package
Suggestions from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma for reporters covering the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings.
(Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma)

'Buying the war'
Moyers show, airing Wednesday, is said to be the strongest indictment yet of the failure of the press during the runup to the Iraq war.
(Editor & Publisher)

'Buying the war'
Transcript, video of the Moyers report on press failure during the runup to the Iraq war
(pbs.org)

Tom Tomorrow
What a few pundits said about the Iraq war. They're batting 1,000...or is it .000?
(Huffington Post)

The forgotten poor
E.J. Dionne cites a new report on what to do about the 31% of Americans who live below or just above the poverty line. It’s time the press paid attention to this enormous problem.
(Center for American Progress)

The phony voter rights scare
Garrett Epps, in Salon, reports on the drive to keep people away from the polls.
(Salon)

'Breaking the news'
Ordered killed by the FCC but not dead: studies showing damaging effects of media consolidation.
(Mother Jones)

Held without charges
Clarence Page asks if journalism has become a crime in Bush's war on terror.
(Chicago Tribune)

Outsourcing reporters
Covering local Pasadena news from India at bargain rates.
(Huffington Post)

Reward for good work?
McClatchy reporters were kept off Rumsfeld's plane and Gates hasn't let them on, either.
(Editor & Publisher)

Journalistic integrity? Murdoch?
Jack Shafer has questions the Bancrofts should put to Murdoch.
(Slate)

Baghdad college life
Not your typical graduating class, as shown in text and video
(New York Times)

A 'feral beast' exchange
Tony Blair says the media are victims of change, not its masters. The "Independent" responds.
(The New York Times)

When Congress checks out
Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann write that over the past six years, oversight has virtually collapsed, even as the Bush administration has aggressively asserted executive prerogatives.
(Foreign Affairs)

Possible impact
A report from before the election on what may happen in a Democratic Congress.
(National Journal/CongressDaily)

Feeding conflicts
The U.S. sells almost half of all weapons that go to militaries in developing countries
(Boston Globe)

Voting insecurity
Advisory group says electronic voting machines can’t be made secure and endorses optical-scan systems.
(Washington Post)

A 'fundamental shift'
A blogger, dismayed by a Washington Post editorial on Pinochet, says it illustrates the ‘corruption of our journalistic institutions.’
(Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory)

VA buckling under the volume
50,000 U.S. wounded and not enough care. A story here?
(Los Angeles Times)

Any more Poynters out there?
The St. Pete Times as a reporting and business model in a time of industry decline
(New York Times)

Ballot problems
Think the Nov. 7th voting went smoothly? It didn't.
(New York Times)

Bye-bye, paperless voting?
Sweeping changes expected for 2008.
(New York Times)

What went wrong?
There was a massive undervote in a tight Florida U.S. House race, caused, at least in part, by a poor ballot design.
(Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

Vote aftermath
Pew poll says large majorities are glad Democrats won and want them to take the lead in governing.
(Pew Research Center)

George Wilson on Iraq spending
The Iraq war is costing more than the wars in Korea or Vietnam, with no end in sight. (PDF)
(National Journal)

Guarding the democratic process
Why is the press acting like the possibility of manipulation of the vote in national elections doesn't exist?
(Columbia Journalism Review)

Trick or treat?!
For an ominous Halloween costume, how about going as a touch-screen electronic voting machine?
(Gocomics)

The CIA and the war
The recently retired head of key CIA unit says of Iraq: "We need to get out of there."
(Harper's)

Russian reporter slain
‘Honest journalist,’ critic of Putin and the Chechnya campaign, is shot to death at her apartment building in Moscow.
(MyFoxDallas)

Fraud? What fraud?
USA Today says report showing hardly any voter fraud has been kept under wraps for 4 months as conservatives complain about its findings.
(USA Today)

A leak trial in London
Did Bush order bombing of al-Jazeera? A British court may find out, but only in secret. In an earlier story, a coverup is alleged.
(The Guardian)

Read this
Gene Weingarten on Garry Trudeau. 8400 words. Read them all.
(Washington Post Magazine)

Guantanamo lawyer
The Supreme Court approved Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift’s challenge of Bush detainee policies. Two weeks later the Navy notified him he’d been passed over for promotion and had to retire.
(Newsday)

Who counts your votes?
Jill Lawrence writes about the new attention focused on those obscure but vital state offices that determine who votes and how those votes are counted.
(USA Today)

Nine Tough Questions for Congress
James Ridgeway writes that Capitol Hill is way overdue for a blockbuster investigation, and suggests some questions to get Congress rolling.
(Mother Jones)

No news until after the vote
Eric Boehlert lists stories the press sat on or didn’t go after during the 2004 election campaign. All would have hurt Bush, he writes.
(Huffington Post)

Corporate spin can come in disguise
Bill Adair writes that to get their views in the mainstream, some companies help finance columnists whose work can appear in print as independent opinion.
(St. Petersburg Times)

The battle over voter ID laws
Peter Wallsten writes about a spate of new state laws and rules backed primarily by Republicans that require people to show photo identification in order to vote and, in some cases, proof of citizenship and identification when registering to vote.
(Los Angeles Times)

New threats to eligible voters
James Rosen writes about worries over voter suppression in a dozen states.
(McClatchy Newspapers)

I.F. Stone as proto-blogger
Timothy J. McNulty notes that the legendary independent muckraker time and again scooped the rest of the press corps.
(Chicago Tribune)

Secrecy news
The NSA has told its employees to look for and report unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
(Steven Aftergood, The Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy)

How to cover lying politicians
Rule No. 1: Don’t say they’re lying, even if it’s not raining when they say it is.
(Media Matters for America)

Beyond the yellow ribbon
A Stateline.org report on how the Minnesota National Guard welcomes Iraq veterans home.
(Stateline.org)

New investigative venture
$10+ million a year for an independent, non-profit group to be led by Paul Steiger.
(New York Times)

Curbing fraud or suppressing the vote?
USA Today reports on suits filed in Ohio and Florida over new voter registration restrictions.
(USA Today)

Ready for the big day?
There are questions as to whether Cleveland is capable of handling an election. What about where you live?
(Cleveland Plain Dealer)

E-voting vulnerability
Most of the electronic voting machines widely adopted since the disputed 2000 presidential election 'pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state and local elections,' says a new report.
(USA Today)

Gerald Loeb Award winners
Among the winners: The Associated Press for its story examining a government loan program, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for its series on Georgia's notoriously anti-consumer lending laws.
(Romenesko)

Openness defended
In a statement, ASNE says Bush and some in Congress are 'demonizing' the press instead of focusing on issues.
(American Society of Newspaper Editors)

A student debt story
Interest rates on student loans jumped 2 percentage points last weekend, the most ever, as a result of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act, reports the Center for American Progress.
(Center for American Progress)

Conditions in Iraq
Rod Nordland of Newsweek says conditions in Iraq are worse than are being reported, mostly for Iraqis but also for correspondents trying to get the news out.
(Foreign Policy [Carnegie Endowment for International Peace])

$12-billion reduction
Bloomberg News columnist John Wasik says Bush and Congress are crippling students and graduates with cuts in aid and higher loan interest. A story here?
(Bloomberg News)

The F-22 Money Pit
Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan writes about the $360-million-a-piece fighter jet we don't need.
(Tompaine.com)

Remember Afghanistan
Steve Coll says the media should be addressing such questions as: What are we doing right and what are we doing wrong? Are we tackling the right problems and in the right order? Why is the Taliban coming back to life? And more.
(American Journalism Review)

Why aren't we talking to Syria?
That's what CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer wants to know.
(CBSNews.com)

What's the real federal deficit?
Dennis Cauchon writes about how the federal government keeps two sets of books.
(USA Today)

Rumsfeld lies, press naps
Charles Kaiser writes that it used to be news when a senior official blatantly lied to a Senate Committee. No more.
(New York Observer)

Primitive politics
The terrorists need Bush and he needs them, writes William Greider.
(The Nation magazine)

Fitzgerald's unanswered questions
Dan Froomkin writes that if the special prosecutor won't be shedding any more light on Karl Rove's role in the outing of a CIA operative, then it's the press's job.
(washingtonpost.com)

Fetishizing objectivity
Eric Alterman writes that the press corps still hasn't figured out how to handle the White House's primary tactic of media management: lying.
(The Nation)

Rising to the challenges
"Powerful forces are very much against our getting the truth and printing it," says Knight Ridder Washington editor Clark Hoyt. He describes his bureau's lonely accountability journalism in 2002-03.
(John S. Knight Fellowships)

Bill McKibben
Questions to determine if candidates are serious about combating global warming
(Washington Post)

Why not a labor section?
After a 17-year hiatus, Sam Smith, seeing a thin Washington Post, is again giving advice to Donald Graham
(Progressive Review's 'Undernews')

Online vox populi
A new venture aims at getting people to do videos of themselves posing questions for presidential candidates.
(techPresident)

'Block the vote'
A New York Times editorial lays out new attempts to suppress the vote – in Florida, in the state of Washington, in Colorado and in Congress. All cry out for follow-up reporting.
(The New York Times)

Questions for Tony Snow
Readers of Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing column suggest tough, important -- and in many cases, long-unanswered -- questions about the Bush White House for its new press secretary.
(washingtonpost.com)

Weingarten to grads
'In a rapidly changing field, one thing is constant: Your editor will be an idiot'
(Washington Post)

The role of the Fourth Estate
Jonathan Turley praises the journalists who -- unlike Congress -- are standing up to the assertion of unchecked executive power.
(USA Today)

The battle to frame reality
Daniel Schulman writes that in the amorphous 'War on Terror,' disinformation has become a potent weapon.
(Columbia Journalism Review)

Questions for Hayden
Nat Hentoff has some questions about the Fourth Amendment for CIA director-designate Michael Hayden.
(USA Today)

'An increasingly ugly debate'
LA Times’s Tim Rutten on Keller v. the Wall St. Journal editorial board, and a ‘nasty turn’ in the dispute.
(Los Angeles Times)

No machines, no hacking
Diebold and other voting machine firms won’t do business with a county elections supervisor in Florida who checks the equipment independently.
(Washington Post)

Why is everyone ignoring Murray Waas?
Dan Froomkin asks why other reporters are ignoring Waas's scoops about how the Bush White House works.
(washingtonpost.com)

Keller responds to WSJ editorial
Bill Keller of the New York Times writes about two mistaken assumptions: One that when journalists write things politicians don't like, the motivation is sure to be political; the other that when presidents declare that secrecy is in the national interest, reporters should take that at face value.
(Wall Street Journal)

Voting in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere
4,000 Abu Ghraib detainees voted; UN has questions for US about felons and voting; Baltimore columnist urges strict standards for enfranchisement of felons
(The Sentencing Project)

'Fear is in the room'
Danny Schecter gives examples of how self-censorship makes for bland news and conformist reporting. Stick your head up and it can get chopped off.
(mediachannel.org)

A red-state paper on Bush as leaker
Salt Lake Trib urges Congress to come out of hiding and deal with Bush’s ‘disgustingly hollow’ statements.
(Salt Lake Tribune)

The Pulitzers
Jay Harris, Alex Jones on watchdog reporting: Harris: It’s individuals doing it, out of dedication, despite cutbacks. Jones: A lot more needs to be done.
(The News Hour)

Cherry picking
In a 60 Minutes interview, a former CIA official says it sticks in his craw when he hears talk about faulty intelligence leading to the war in Iraq. It was the policy that was faulty, he says.
(CBS News)

Who's lobbying against the estate tax?
Public Citizen find that 18 super-wealthy families worth a total of $185.5 billion have financed the effort to repeal the estate tax, a move that would collectively net them $71.6 billion.
(Public Citizen)

Secrecy not the only obstacle to the right to know
Philip Meyer writes that journalists also need to develop skills to deal with situations in which government and other power centers lead us to believe things 'that ain't so.'
(USA Today)

Katrina neglect
The Center for Public Integrity reports that while Congress set aside $2 billion for Katrina evacuees, hundreds of millions of that fund are not being used.
(Center for Public Integrity)

Are we in Iraq forever?
Philadelphia Inquirer political reporter Dick Polman asks on his new blog: Are we or are we not building permanent military bases in Iraq? (Also see this Watchdog item and this Tom Engelhardt piece.)
(dickpolman.blogspot.com)

Don't ignore the cruelty
Former Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora tells Jane Mayer that the media has focussed too narrowly on allegations of U.S.-sanctioned torture. As he sees it, the authorization of cruelty is equally pernicious.
(New Yorker)

How one reporter does it
In your face approach, or nice? Investigative business reporter and author Alec Klein tells why he prefers nice.
(BusinessJournalism.org)

Going at it on vote security
Nieman Watchdog contributor Roy Saltman responds to comments by readers.
(NiemanWatchdog.org)

A cartoons manifesto
Jyllands Posten joins a French weekly in a manifesto that calls Islamism a “new totalitarian global threat.” Among the signers is Salman Rushdie.
(The Editors Weblog)

Happy Sunshine Week!
During Sunshine Week, participating media drive public discussion about why open government is important to everyone, not just to journalists.
(sunshineweek.org)

Information or disinformation?
Rumsfeld wants military to mount ‘information’ campaign; criticizes US media for blocking initiatives.
(Washington Post)

The pew and the ballot box
In North Carolina the state GOP asks for church directories; anything like that going on in your state?
(Washington Post)

Can you say 'permanent bases'?
Why won't the American press touch this issue? (Also see this Watchdog item.)
(Tomdispatch.com)

Part of an overhaul
CBS adds Armen Keteyian as chief investigative correspondent on CBS Evening News.
(USA Today)

More than 1,000 articles planted
The N.Y. Times reports that the U.S. military runs a vast, hidden, expensive operation to place one-sided news stories in Baghdad, Kabul and elsewhere
(N.Y. Times)

Where are the stories about poverty?
David K. Shipler writes that what government fails to do is usually not defined as news --but it should be, for neglect is a form of policy, too.
(CJR)

Any future for investigative reporting?
Columnist Steve Outing on whether newspaper staff cuts are leaving a void and, if yes, whether other media will fill it.
(Editor & Publisher)

Pentagon propaganda in Iraq
LA Times: The Pentagon has been paying Iraqi papers to plant one-sided stories favorable to the U.S.
(LA Times)

The enemy within
Michael Massing on the structural problems that keep the press from fulfilling its responsibilities to serve as a witness to injustice and a watchdog over the powerful. (See also part one, "The End of News".)
(New York Review of Books)

Prize for Abramoff reporting
Three Washington Post reporters have won the $10,000 Worth Bingham prize for their reporting on lobbyist Jack Abramoff; Al Hunt, a judge, says scandal ‘would still be going on’ if not for their work.
(Worth Bingham Prize)

Government secrecy
TRAC, a highly regarded research group, is suing under the Freedom of Information Act on charges that the federal government is unlawfully withholding information, on a massive level, that it has provided routinely in the past.
(Syracuse University)

Prescription for chaos
A doctor who counsels the elderly says phone calls have increased four-fold due to Medicare Rx confusion.
(NiemanWatchdog, Discussions page)

'Excruciating pressure'
In an interview with John Eggerton, Bill Moyers talks about Kenneth Tomlinson and what happened at CPB
(Broadcasting & Cable)

Top climate scientist says NASA tried to muzzle him
James Hansen tells NY Times the future of the planet is at stake and the public must be made more aware of global warming.
(New York Times)

Questions of credibility
Readers of Dan Froomkin's 'White House Briefing' column suggest questions for President Bush.
(washingtonpost.com)

The Plame-Wilson case
Murray Waas sees Libby defense focusing on authorization from Cheney and using the Oliver North tactic of requesting voluminous classified documents.
(National Journal)

Miller leaves the Times
Judith Miller, NY Times agree on severance package; she had been a Times reporter for 28 years.
(New York Times)

Did Bush Roll Past the Legal Stop Signs?
Suzanne E. Spaulding asks: If President Bush can simply ignore laws that he thinks are unconstitutional, without getting a court ruling or having genuine consultations with Congress, where does it stop?
(Washington Post)

A tilt to the right
In a study of 7,000 guest appearances on Sunday network talk shows since 1997, researchers find a strong tilt to the right. (PDF file)
(Media Matters for America)

Where's the edge of the cliff?
Columnist David Ignatius asks if the press is ignoring ‘the biggest story in the history of humankind.’
(Washington Post)

Easy election thievery
Miami Herald reports that a computer hacker, in a test, effortlessly switched 6-2 ‘No’ vote to 7-1 ‘Yes’ vote, without leaving a trace.
(Miami Herald)

The Coming Meltdown
Bill McKibben writes that while the coverage of Katrina's aftermath was scathing in depicting the Bush administration's incompetence and cronyism, it ignored the far bigger failure to do anything to combat global warming.
(New York Review of Books)

More on Pentagon propaganda
NY Times: The Pentagon, using a Washington, DC, PR firm as a conduit, is paying millions to put propaganda in Iraqi news media.
(New York Times)

Watchdog conferences
J-Schools take note: In Nieman Watchdog Project conferences, top-flight journalists urged a more aggressive approach to reporting the news. See what they had to say...