Newsrooms depend on beat reporting – assigning reporters to specific subject areas. And beat reporting depends on sources – sources some reporters won’t want to cross. Journalism professor Edward Wasserman argues the system is inherently corrupt.

These are dark days for the newspaper industry. Almost every week brings news of worse profits and more job cuts. But a handful of family-owned papers, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, have managed to insulate themselves from Wall ...

When publisher Jesus Diaz resigned this week after just 14 months at the helm of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, some suggested the company was caving to pressure from Miami’s anti-Castro Cubans. Others say he wasn’t temperamentally suited to the job. But it’s also possible that Diaz simply ...

Chicago Tribune reporter Paul Salopek has had a distinguished, often dangerous, career as a far-flung correspondent. Working on a freelance assignment for National Geographic last month, Salopek was apprehended for espionage in Sudan, a charge that could carry 20 years. Bob speaks with Salopek about his arrest and release, 34 ...

Apart from opinion columns and magazine pieces, news outlets tend to place any mention of civil war in the mouths of sources, or qualify it with phrases like “on the brink of” and “risks descending into.” Brooke asks New York Times Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner why.

Eight senior staff members of the Santa Barbara News-Press have now resigned after that paper’s private owner, Wendy McCaw, broke down the wall that traditionally separates the executive suite from the newsroom. Fortune Magazine editor-at-large Justin Fox tells Bob that the whole affair is a reminder that the publicly-held model ...

The press took a tongue-lashing from politicos this week for reporting how the government tracked terrorists through the global banking industry. Bob talks with Heather Mac Donald, of the Manhattan Institute, who believes the New York Times in particular is a national security threat. Not so, says Scott Armstrong of ...

It’s hardly controversial to say newspapers should reflect their communities. But not everybody agrees on the best way to broaden the range of news-sources. Some reporters at the Detroit Free Press, for example, were surprised when editors asked them to compile a list of minority sources. They feared the “rainbow ...

Once on the fringes, the alternative weekly has become an institution. Between its pages are investigative reports; close coverage of the cultural avant-garde; and sharp commentary. The granddaddy of alt-weeklies is The Village Voice, which for 50 years has proffered its downtown view to New Yorkers and the world. Last ...

With a new mayoral candidate poised to unseat New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, there’s been much talk about the extent to which Hurricane Katrina changed the complexion of the city. But the floods also wrought deep changes to the decades-old contours of the local newspaper and broadcasting scenes. Last week, ...

February, 1957: Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro is assumed by his government and many news outlets to be dead. In fact, Castro is hiding in the jungle and eager to meet with an American journalist. A cable is sent to New York Times editorial writer Herbert L. Matthews, urging him to ...

This week, the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced. Almost immediately, some slammed the awards as showing an anti-Bush bias. Escaping the controversy was Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan, winner of the prize for criticism. But a closer look at her writing shows that in Washington, even getting dressed ...

The Big Apple is powered by gossip, but the electrical grid nearly overloaded last week when the best gossip was about the gossips themselves. The case continues to be fought in the court of public opinion as nearly every paper spills ink bemoaning our lurid fascination with those who live ...

To many Latinos, the immigration policy debate is plagued by all sorts of misunderstandings about immigrants themselves. But a columnist for the OC Weekly in Orange County, California is doing what he can to change that. Gustavo Arellano started inviting readers to “Ask a Mexican” as a joke, but has ...

The Newspaper Guild represents the interests of some 34,000 journalists and they’re preparing to bid on the 12 newspapers that McClatchy is selling. If their offer is successful the purchase will create an unprecedented chain in which employees own the majority of the stock and thus the papers themselves. Linda ...

Caught in the anxious middle of the Knight Ridder deal are employees of the twelve newspapers scattered around the country, which have just changed ownership and will be changing hands again sometime soon. David Hanners, general assignment reporter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, joins Bob to discuss daily journalism ...

Knight Ridder, publisher of 32 papers across the country, was bought this week by the McClatchy Company – an outfit roughly half its size. McClatchy plans to keep only 20 of its newly-purchased properties and put the rest up for sale. Buzz Merritt was a Knight-Ridder employee for more then ...

If China can limit the reach of American media companies, it can completely quash its own recalcitrant party-run publications. In late January, the Propaganda Department shut down Freezing Point, a popular weekly insert to the China Youth Daily. Although the supplement was known for taboo reporting on farmer protests and ...

Newspapers around the world reprinted sections of Pope Benedict's first encyclical this week. No problem. But if you'd like to use a portion of the Pope's writing in a book you're working on - get ready to pay up. The Vatican publishing house will henceforth enforce copyright fees on the ...

The money trail of indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff last week led reporters to a couple of prominent Washington opinion makers. It turns out that for years, Abramoff has been paying two think-tankers, Doug Bandow and Peter Ferrara, to write op-ed pieces favorable to Abramoff’s clients. Bob talks to blogger Joshua ...