2005-2014

THE LEGEND OF AMAZONIA in journalism started on a sour note. The saga began in June 1999, as the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's new executive editor, Janet Weaver, agonized over whether to ask a former colleague to apply to become the paper's managing editor. The colleague was smart, well-respected--and a self-proclaimed enemy. Weaver had collided with her over a job promotion more than five years ago...

It feels like an age of plenty, but more children live in poverty now than twenty years ago; 17 percent of them live below the line, up from about 16 percent in 1979. Welfare reform has ushered more people into the work force, but low wages make it hard for many of them to cope with the cost of living. And 42 million people, most of them working but still poor, do not have health insurance. For...

The deal was sealed with a hug. Instead of being at war, Bertelsmann, the world's third-largest media conglomerate, and Napster, the popular upstart, are to be partners. Bertelsmann will drop its copyright infringement suit against Napster if the free file-sharing service can convert to paid subscriber services, using a secure system that grants access to Bertelsmann Music Group's catalogue...

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, Paul Grabowicz began hearing about some of the problems recent graduates were encountering when they went off to practice journalism at news Web sites. Nothing monstrous, mind you, but case after worrisome case in which marketing and advertising discussions had slopped over into the newsroom. "It wasn't just us reading it and chewing on it" anymore, says Grabowicz, the new...

THE FIRST UNSETTLING BRAVE New Reporter story I heard, when I went back to the Washington Post newsroom to see what I ought to be teaching journalism students these days, involved a cell phone, a video clip, multiple deadlines and a mouth full of dental gauze. The dental gauze turned out to be embellishment, but not by much; the story was told to me by Tracy Grant, managing editor for the Post's...

"DAMN" IS NO LONGER a bad word. At least not much of one. "Hell"? Nope, not a bad word either. "Ass"? Well, that's generally OK, too. But "asshole"? Now that's a little more touchy. The news media exhibited just how touchy in September after presidential candidate George W. Bush spoke the vulgarism to his running mate, Dick Cheney, in an aside that was accidentally picked up by microphones. The...

In a 10 October 2000 letter to the vice chancellor of the University of Calicut, K.K.N. Kurup, IPI condemned the decision of the University of Calicut to effectively ban the daily newspaper "Malayala Manorama" from the university campus. According to the information provided to IPI, on 5 October, the joint registrar in charge of the registrar issued Order No. Ad. A4/12176/2000, which cancelled the...

New Code Words for Censorship: Modern Labels for Curbs on the Press Edited by Marilyn J. Greene World Press Freedom Committee 138 pages; free (in reasonable quantities) Free speech is an elemental human need, and people are amazingly resourceful at finding ways to be heard. Sadly, though, the underside is also true. Would-be censors never give up either. The fall of communism and the swirl of...

THAT UNSEEMLY CLATTER heard 'round the World Wide Web recently was the sound of the Internet "content" business buckling, perhaps from the weight of over-inflated expectations. One by one, the New Economy's information darlings--Salon.com, iVillage.com, The-Street.com, Drkoop.com, to name a few--swooned and sputtered. Depending on whose numbers you believe, somewhere between 2,000 and 3,500 dotcom...

"[W]ithout some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated." -- Justice Byron White, Branzburg v. Hayes, 1972 For nearly forty years, journalists in the United States have been living in a fool's paradise. The First Amendment's prohibition against laws abridging press freedom, vigorously enforced by an independent judiciary, has meant that the American reporter...