Helen Thomas was gallant, even heroic, in forcing the case for women in journalism. But she was also, in what was then the era of objectivity as a professional objective, a subversive precursor of the prejudicial slant in reporting that has come to characterize the worst in the shrill polemicists in the blogosphere and cable news.

“Anonymous” won this year’s Polk Award for journalistic merit — for recording the death of Neda Agha-Soltan during the uprising in Iran last June over the contested elections. “Anonymous” shot the footage — and shared it with the world by uploading it to YouTube. “In a way,” says Polk curator John Darnton, it recognizes that “neutral platforms like YouTube and Facebook can actually disseminate news — news in the raw — in addition to just social networking.”

Who can afford investigative reporters? Along with the other costly paragons of journalistic excellence, they cost money — which most media organizations no longer seem to have. But if investigative journalism is a public good, shouldn’t, then, the public look to supporting it? LSU J-school dean John Maxwell Hamilton, author of Journalism’s Roving Eye, thinks so. “Like parks, soup kitchens, local opera, and educational institutions, high-quality media rarely pays for itself.”

Just as great men stand on the shoulders of giants, so too is history built on what came before. This now-elapsing decade — The Aughts, or whatever you want to call them — has been a decade of change not only compared to the decades before it, but because of them. Perhaps that’s why now, more than ever, it’s important to remember how we got here.

“What a relief to get the odious Lou Dobbs out of the news business, at least for a while.” Let’s just say that Bil Rappleye thinks his replacement with John King is a step in the right direction for CNN.

While the news business is shedding its old skin, a new hybrid has emerged: It’s Examiner.com, part of the vast array of assets in media, entertainment, and energy owned by billionaire Philip Anshutz. It has become the exemplar of what has come to be called micropolar journalism, as the industry leader in creating local content, with more than 17,000 contributors in more than 100 U.S. cities, and 18 million a month. But they insist they’re not journalists, so what gives?

What troubles me the most about Glenn Beck is how he is slopping over into the new journalism. For those who are troubled over the lack of judgment, filters, and discipline in the handling of the new spontaneous news flows, his careless call-outs to his flock for dirt on enemies represents a new reach into chaos for the profession.

Sometimes it takes a passel of other people’s troubles to  open the way to make a dream come true. Their rubble can be your foundation. “I don’t know if you could call it a paradox, but the pulling back by the American news media from the world has created an opening for us to provide [...]

Amidst the dark days for media during the country’s latest recession, The Week has shown profit and growth for the first six months of 2009. That’s actually pretty standard for The Week, which has enjoyed profit and growth pretty much since its launch in 2001. What is it doing right?

Historians generally agree that Watergate was a great moment for the press – and for the Washington Post, which published the scoops of that would eventually take down a president. But the July 17th issue of the Economist points to a more unorthodox take: That the Washington Post was selfish, irresponsible, and directly responsible for thwarting the World Peace that Richard Nixon would certainly have won.

In the ruthless quest for cutting costs every which way, the practice of pooling — the assignment of a single crew to cover a routine event for several local TV stations — is taking hold in newsrooms all across the country.

In most cases, carefully handled, pooling can cover routine events adequately, with no loss in basic news service, and put the saved manpower to work on original, fresh stories. But at the same time it can make redundant — read: fireable — each station’s crew that would otherwise be on that job. These days the opportunity to cut costs can be irresistible.

The giant  rear-view mirror held up by Walter Cronkite’s death, seen through the fog of adulation and nostalgia for historic feats of journalism,  brings into focus the essence of his importance:  it was the trust he inspired — by dint of professional  skills, personal accessibility and exposure as the  first  designated anchor  for the new [...]

While the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment has never been successfully challenged politically, it is now being challenged economically: as a practical matter, the press is not so free. So, how to pay for the vital probings on behalf of the entire polity, in this time of forced deprivation?

For the media business — in turmoil  as it tries to figure out what it should be doing and how it should be doing it — events along the emotionally -conflicted career path of Robert McNamara give us a whole course curriculum of case studies and  topics for debate. Here are just a few – [...]

My name is Bill Rappleye. I’m 85. I started as a copy boy right after the war – that war, WWII – and have spent my life in journalism in the sixty-plus years since. I started at Time magazine in 1947, and worked my way up to a couple of dream assignments– Southwest: Bureau Chief [...]