Planet Abell

A t the risk of gushing, Linda Greenhouse's decision to leave the New York Times has left me very depressed. Her departure is not a death in the family but it is always a passing of note when a writer who has defined her beat in the best traditions of writing and reporting decides to get off the bus. Greenhouse, who has worked at the paper for 30 years and is the dean of the Supreme Court press corps, is an appointment read for me. I like the law anyway and the Supreme Court especially -- of course I read " Becoming Justice Blackmun " and am reading " The Nine " right now -- but her abilities transcend the subject matter. Her prose is consistently clear and diligent and spare, at any length. She eschews the soft lead so common elsewhere in the paper (and elsewhere) but does not rigidly adhere to the 5Ws . Great writers can pull that off, but she is a professional driver on a closed track: do not try this at home. As a reporter, Greenhouse leave no relevant sto...

Y eah, I love this debate. I wrote at the Committee of Concerned Journalists on the naughty word controversy ( What the $%*&#! Did He Say ) and how newspapers perpetuate a silly standard of keeping foul language off their pages even if the foul language is the story (btw,the clip doesn't make clear what prompted Sam Zell to curse; it was the reporter who asked the question walking off before he had finished talking). But the merit of the question is fundamental. And I don't think there is an easy answer. Unlike, say, the Big Three automakers it is too easy to blame newspaper executives for failed strategies that have left their businesses struggling; while Detroit is similarly saddled with legacy issues that new players were fortunate to be able to avoid, it is also true that US carmakers missed and dissed trends that invited nimble competitors to flourish. But people still buy cars, so at least the automakers don’t have to start making bicycles, gyrocopters -- or frozen pi...

J eff Jarvis asks a provocative question (imagine the odds): What will the "distributed university look like?" Start here: Why should my son or daughter have to pick a single college and with it only the teachers and courses offered there? Online, they should be able to take most any course anywhere. Indeed, schools from MIT to Stanford are now offering their curricula the internet. Similarly, why should a professor pick just from the students accepted at his or her school? Online, the best can pick from the best, cutting out the middleman of university admissions. Looking way out into the future (but, hey, Sam Zell is saying that nupes will be OK — in 30 years! ), I wonder if we are rubbing up against forces that will expose the limitations of the free market as it relates to supply. If aggregators become the dominant publishers but do not participate in news gathering, what happens to reporting? If it is a practical truth that any movie or book can be obtained easily and...

w hen you really, really want to insult a news organization you accuse them of being no better than the National Enquirer, it seems. But it looks like we set some kind of record for this invective in the past few days. ( Committee of Concerned Journalists )

w hen a story isn't a story but it generates a lot of stories, nobody looks particularly good. ( Committee of Concerned Journalists )

N ew York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt takes his paper to task for its original John McCain story as well as the Friday follow-up . Hoyt concludes that the newspaper didn’t have enough to report that top McCain aides had become “convinced” the senator’s was having an intimate relationship with a lobbyist, that they story did need that angle to make its points and that including it had invited distraction from what was otherwise “a good story.” ( Committee of Concerned Journalists )

The New York Times insides its second-day McCain story, writes around the romance angle and offers no new reporting about the bombshell affair allegation which caused a substantial reaction from media critics and thousands of New York Times’ readers. ( Committee of Concerned Journalists )