Talk about someone being tough as nails. Over the weekend, photojournalist Joao Silva stepped on a mine in Afghanistan and was severely injured. He was on assignment for the New York Times. He and NYT reporter Carlotta Gall (who was unhurt) were embedded with a U.S. patrol. Army medics got to Silva within seconds and…Continue Reading…
Ryan Lizza, a reporter for The New Yorker, stopped by the Grist office yesterday to chat about his widely read article on How the Senate and White House missed their best chance to deal with climate change Today, David Roberts provides the highlights of the chat, in which he notes at the end of his…Continue Reading…
I don’t blog about TV journalism because I hardly watch TV anymore. But I know what I’m missing on CNN and Fox News, which David Rothkopf reaffirms with this meta commentary on the Rick Sanchez firing: The problem with CNN is in fact not that they failed to fire Sanchez more explicitly for his anti-Semitism,…Continue Reading…
Lawrence Wright has a short piece in The New Yorker this week–a commentary on America’s latest culture war. For those not familiar with Wright, he’s the the author of the masterful, 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning (for non-fiction) The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. I mention it because last night I happened to…Continue Reading…
I’m always amazed at how climate bloggers blame the media every time the narrative isn’t to their liking. Joe Romm and Michael Tobis, on one side of the spectrum, are famous for this. They often complain of a press that gives too much credence to climate skeptics. Additionally, both have asserted that “climategate” was a…Continue Reading…
Over the years, Andrew Revkin has perceptively identified “slow drip” environmental stories as a category unto itself. These range from the tragic to the banal. It’s bad enough that these “slow drip” stories receive little sustained coverage; it’s worse when you write about them and nobody seems to notice. John Fleck, the superb science writer…Continue Reading…
I’m surprised Tobis didn’t include Fred Pearce in his little Broderite grouping. BTW, I’m just a piker compared to Revkin (and Pearce), both who are far more distinguished than me. Speaking of Pearce, a Bishop Hill reader provides a nice dispatch of a recent Pearce lecture at the Royal Institution. As for the Jay Rosen…Continue Reading…
Are traditional journalists who take a vow of objectivity walking around like libido-suppressed priests? Except that reporters struggle to keep a lid on their opinions? Here’s Matt Welch, a former UPI reporter, on the Helen Thomas eruption: I am tempted to feel bad for an 89-year-old lady getting caught in what might be passed off…Continue Reading…
UPDATE: Do check out the dynamic comment thread, where Andy Revkin makes a confession (and also a tart observation on journalistic peer review); John Fleck calls out a frequent critic of the science press; and Judith Curry corrects some blogospheric “misconceptions” of the media’s coverage of climate issues. Let me make this quick, because according…Continue Reading…
I’m a little late to this Wired profile on Energy Secretary Steven Chu, since I just started reading the May issue last night. For hardcore Chu watchers, probably not much is new, but the piece by Daniel Roth is still worth a read, if only to be reminded that the battle against global warming is…Continue Reading…