Columbia Journalism Review

Mondo Times editors    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 7:56am on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Hey, Big Brother -- Newspapers Could Use Some Creative Help, opines the Columbia Journalism Review:

"We are not in favor of a bailout for the newspaper business, and we certainly don’t support subsidies that would simply prop up the status quo.

But it seems increasingly clear that, at least in the short term, sustaining the kind of accountability journalism that our society needs—and that newspapers have been the chief producers of—will require some creative help from Uncle Sam.

And not because newspapers failed to adapt to the digital age. Ultimately, this isn’t about newspapers."


The full story:
http://www.cjr.org/editorial/a_helping_hand.php

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 3:54pm on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Columbia University has suspended its environmental journalism program, the Columbia Journalism Review reported on October 19, 2009:

"For the first time since it was created fourteen years ago, Columbia University’s highly regarded dual-degree graduate program in environmental journalism will not be accepting applications for next academic year.

In a letter to faculty at the Graduate School of Journalism, the Department of Environmental Sciences, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the program directors cited falling employment in the field, the rising costs of education, and a lack of financial aid for students as the reasons for their decision."

The full story:
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/columbia_suspends_environmenta.php

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 11:27pm on Sunday, September 27th, 2009

Michael Massing described the financial structure of the network news in the Columbia Journalism Review on September 23, 2009:

"While doing some recent research on the news business, I came upon this remarkable fact: Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.

This is not a new development, of course. It’s been unfolding since 1986, when billionaire Laurence Tisch bought CBS and eviscerated its news division in order to boost profits. (For a sharp, first-hand account of this process, see Bad News: The Decline of Reporting, The Business of News, and the Danger to Us All, by former CBS correspondent Tom Fenton.) But the issue seems worth revisiting in light of the recent naming of Diane Sawyer to replace Charlie Gibson as the anchor of ABC’s World News. We don’t yet know how much Sawyer is going to be paid, but it will no doubt surpass Gibson’s current estimated salary of $8 million. Sawyer will thus be perpetuating the corrosive, top-heavy system of the network news."

The full story:
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/katie_and_diane_the_wrong_ques.php?page=all

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 3:31pm on Monday, February 23rd, 2009

February 23, 2009: The Columbia Journalism Review has received a $230,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to understand how magazine web sites can be improved. According to a statement, the goal of the study is "to help magazines find a way to the best online editorial and business practices."

CJR chairman Victor Navasky said:

"It's like the wild west out there. Each magazine is making it up as it goes along, and nobody knows what anybody else is doing. The advent of these online off-springs has given rise to a vast set of ethical issues, culture clashes, chaotic and inefficient business and legal practices, and perhaps even malpractices."