I’m There, You’re Not, Let Me Tell You About It
A Brief Essay on the Origins of Authority in Journalism A few months ago at PressThink, I published Voice of San Diego’s guidelines for new reporters. They say: Write with authority. You earn the right...
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Rosen’s Trust Puzzler: What Explains Falling Confidence in the Press?
Help me figure it out. Here are five explanations, each of them a partial truth. As you can see from the chart, the percentage of Americans who had a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the...
View ArticleCovering Wicked Problems
This is my keynote address to the 2nd UK Conference of Science Journalists, June 25, 2012 at The Royal Society, London. I think every writer, every journalist, every scholar, should tell you where he’s...
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If Mitt Romney were running a “post-truth” campaign, would the political...
No, they would not. This falls under: too big to tell. The Boston Globe reports: Mitt Romney stayed at Bain 3 years longer than he stated. ”Firm’s 2002 filings identify him as CEO, though he said he...
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Everything That’s Wrong with Political Journalism in One Washington Post Item
So what is the job of a political journalist today? Is it to describe the reality of American politics, as a “straight” reporter would? Or is it to defend reality and its “base” in American politics…...
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“You’re not entitled to your own facts” vs. That’s your opinion. Kiss my ad.
So what do we do about that divide? And what if the problem isn’t evenly distributed across the landscape or within a party, but pools and concentrates in certain spots? Do journalists go to those...
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#presspushback
“Professional journalists, whose self-image starts with: ‘We’re a check on…’ had to decide what to do about the truck that just ran their checkpoint, carrying the brain trust of the Romney campaign,...
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The clash of absolutes and the on-air fact check
Soledad O’Brien makes political television slightly realer-er when she comes ready to fight on air for a documented fact. Yes, I have a clip to show you. The fact checkers in the press have spoken on a...
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The vanishing moderator: Jim Lehrer answers your questions about his part in...
“I was not there to question people. I was there to allow the candidates to question each other.” Yeah, we saw that, Jim. Will Martha Raddatz of ABC News take the same approach in tonight’s Vice...
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Loyalty and obsession are intimates: Andrew Sullivan goes independent
“We, the journalists, have part of what it takes to create an informative and exciting site. You, the users, have the other part.” Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan announced that he’s parting ways with the...
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Mounting costs for the default model of trust production in American newsrooms
The outlines of the new system are now coming into view. Accuracy and verification, fairness and intellectual honesty–traditional virtues for sure–join up with transparency, “show your work,” the...
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“Even about your Lie of the Year there is doubt.”
Romney’s chief strategist Stu Stevens is trying to re-litigate a campaign ad suggesting that Jeep was shipping factory jobs to China. Why? I speculate. “Lie of the Year,” people in the establishment...
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Look, you’re right, okay? But you’re also wrong.
A post that arises from a certain image I have of disaffected newsroom “traditionalists,” who look upon changes in journalism since the rise of the web with fear and loathing. It is not addressed to...
View ArticleSome shifts in power visible in journalism today
“To some degree they have achieved what Tim Russert of NBC News had when he was host of Meet the Press. Sitting down for an interview with Swisher and Mossberg is a thing you do to show that you are a...
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Designs for a Networked Beat
“When the users know more than the journalists, what are good journalists supposed to do?” These are lecture notes and links from my presentation to the editors of Quartz, May 13, 2013. The ideas that...
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Jon Karl got played by a confidential source and now ABC News has a big...
“His colleagues at other news organizations know it. His friends at the network, were they real friends, would try to talk him out of this disastrous state of denial.” [With four updates below: May 19,...
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Mark Thompson, CEO of the New York Times, misinforms Columbia B-school about...
No one knew if it would work when the Times started to charge regular visitors to its site. There were no experts. But there was a reasonably well-informed debate among people who followed it closely....
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Politics: some / Politics: none. Two ways to excel in political journalism....
“Edward Snowden’s decision to leak to Greenwald, and Glenn’s domination of newsland for several days, tells us that politics: none is not the only way of excelling in journalism. It now has to share...
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No, Candy Crowley. That is not good enough.
“You have to know your stuff. You have to mute your instinct to reduce everything to the next election. This is serious business. We need interviewers who are dead serious about holding people...
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David Gregory tries to read Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian out of the...
That’s my interpretation. But watch the clip and see what you think. On Meet the Press Sunday, host David Gregory said the question, “who is a journalist?” was raised by Glenn Greenwald’s dealings with...
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