It's a measure of the change in the discourse that David Bromwich, Yale's Sterling Professor of English who used to write op-ed in the New York Times, now keeps a sort of Times Watch in the Huffington Post, the New York Review of Books, and the London...
Susannah Vila | Posted November 24, 2009 | Media
It's not uncommon for a president to recommend scholarly or journalistic work. It's rarer for the process to happen entirely online, as in the case of Ron Brownstein's recent blog post on the Senate healthcare bill.
The post, which argues that Reid's bill is more cost-efficient than critics suggest,...
Sheryl Sandberg | Posted November 24, 2009 | Impact
It is tradition to celebrate Thanksgiving with family, food, and thanks. Like many families, mine starts the holiday meal by going around the table so everyone can say what they are most thankful for. For me, I am thankful that as a woman, I live in the peace and security...
Zack Exley | Posted November 24, 2009 | Media
Two days before Thanksgiving, the top headline here in Kansas City is budget cuts. Kansas Governor Parkinson is telling kids to expect larger classes; patients, more overworked staff; poor neighborhoods, even less assistance. Meanwhile, evidence of the president's stimulus spending is all around us: Whatever direction you head out of...
Charles Warner | Posted November 24, 2009 | Media
The marriage between Oprah and national broadcast television was made in show business heaven, but after 25 years she's going to abandon the aging broadcast TV dinosaur, which will help push it into extinction.
TV made Oprah the most famous, most influential, most beloved, most generous, richest (about $2.3 billion)...
Jarvis Coffin | Posted November 24, 2009 | Media
The new Aol mark featuring lower case "o" and "l" and a dot at the end does a nice job of cracking open the brand for a new look. Watch the teaser spot first and then read the interview with Tim Armstrong at Paid Content.
Janet Tavakoli | Posted November 25, 2009 | Business
Pulitzer Prize-winner Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times wrote a must read article ("Revisiting a Fed Waltz with AIG," November 21, 2009) on Sunday in which she recaps salient points from the November 17, 2009 report of the Office of the Special Inspector General (Neil Barofsky)...
Steve Rosenbaum | Posted November 25, 2009 | Technology
David Quigg | Posted November 24, 2009 | Media
The front page of last Friday's edition of The Cleveland Plain Dealer included a story headlined "Photographer destroyed photos of soldiers in the act of killing." Before I type even one sentence more, I want to make clear that I have never ever done anything brave enough...
Michael Shaw | Posted November 24, 2009 | Media
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March on Washington on MLK Day? Libertarian conventions? 100 year plans?
Using his "latest-book" tour as the field test for...
Virginia M. Moncrieff | Posted November 24, 2009 | World
Twelve journalists in the southern Philippines have been slaughtered, in what will surely be remembered as the worst single day in the history of journalism.
The journalists were accompanying a local political family -- the Mangudadatus -- on their way to file candidacy papers for gubernatorial elections on the...
Sam Sedaei | Posted November 23, 2009 | Media
In March of 2007, three American soldiers detained four suspects in Iraq. They were supposed to take them to a detainee housing area. But instead, the first sergeant in the group approached another soldier in the group, Pfc Josh Hartson, and asked him whether he would have a problem "if...
Glynnis MacNicol | Posted November 24, 2009 | Media
Let the games begin! Now that Oprah Winfrey has officially decided to end her talk show the race is on to find her daytime replacement. Brian Stelter pens a speculative piece in today's Times about...
Lapham's Quarterly | Posted November 23, 2009 | Technology
For more winged moon-men and other historical misfits, please visit www.laphamsquarterly.org.
2009: Last month, NASA scientists crashed a bus-sized satellite into the surface of the moon. On November 13th, they announced that they had found water. As the New York Times reported, "The confirmation of scientists' suspicions is...
Bill Mann | Posted November 24, 2009 | Media
Several polls have shown recently that even the most popular radio talk-show hosts (the Limbaughs and Dobbses) who trade in politics on their shows would never get elected to public office.
(OK, except for maybe in two or three Congressional districts in Texas or South Carolina.)
And...
Justine Bateman | Posted November 23, 2009 | Media
The web as you know it is going to end.
Julie Menin | Posted November 26, 2009 | Politics
Coulter's stream of unconscionables is predictably high on drama and low on facts. In one of her more outlandish comments, Coulter calls Representative Maxine Waters, "Very, very stupid, despite the fact that she's black, she is stupid. It is possible to be black and stupid."
Elissa Altman | Posted November 23, 2009 | Media
When my father died in 2002, I inherited his thousand-album music collection which ran the gamut from The Red Army Choir Plays Kalinka to a chortle-inducing bit of vinyl called Port Said, the cover of which involved a belly dancer wearing what appeared to my once very embarrassed young...
Peter M. Shane | Posted November 23, 2009 | Media
Last Friday, about 35 of us got together at Ohio State for an informal symposium about the local implications of Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age, which was the final report of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. As the Commission's...
Danny Groner | Posted November 22, 2009 | Media
Chalk it up to a coincidence, but within the span of a week the New York Times ran obituaries for two people named John J. O'Connor.
The first announced the death of the husband of former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired from the Supreme Court to care for...
Christopher Lydon | Posted November 25, 2009 | World