Media criticism.

If you'd like to sort this department listing by headline, author or date, please use the Slate search.

• What Was Alberto R. Gonzales Thinking? And what did Judge David Tatel write?
  Jack Shafer Dec. 22, 2006
  
• The Lobbyist as Reporter Is this the future of the business press?
  Jack Shafer Dec. 20, 2006
  
• Time and Again Richard Stengel's magazine makeover reeks of déjà vu.
  Jack Shafer Dec. 19, 2006
  
• Subpoena Silliness The feds overplay their hand against the ACLU.
  Jack Shafer Dec. 14, 2006
  
• Steal This Idea Every news beat needs something like the KSJ Tracker.
  Jack Shafer Dec. 13, 2006
  
• What Did Ian McEwan Do? Nothing wrong, say the big-shot novelists.
  Jack Shafer Dec. 8, 2006
  
• How To Speak Republican … … or Democratic.
  Jack Shafer Dec. 7, 2006
  
• The Wall Street Journal Gets Small Making sense of the publisher's preview of the redesigned paper.
  Jack Shafer Dec. 4, 2006
  
• Chronicle of the Newspaper Death Foretold The newspaper industry knew it was doomed 30 years ago.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 30, 2006
  
• Hatfill v. Hatfill The bio-warfare scientist and his dueling lawsuits.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 28, 2006
  
• Post Exodus, Part II … as long as I'm on the subject.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 22, 2006
  
• The Post Exodus What it means for political journalism.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 21, 2006
  
• The New York Post Perv Patrol Nobody beats Murdoch's paper on this sordid beat.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 20, 2006
  
• Bus Plunge Mop-up The readers conduct their post-mortem.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 15, 2006
  
• The Rise and Fall of the "Bus Plunge" Story What killed this former New York Times staple?
  Jack Shafer Nov. 13, 2006
  
• Beat Sweetening: The Nancy Pelosi Edition The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post slather calculated praise on the new speaker.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 10, 2006
  
• Bully in Search of a Pulpit Making sense of Eli Broad's ambition to own the Los Angeles Times.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 9, 2006
  
• Baquet to O'Shea Tribune installs its guy at the Los Angeles Times. What's next?
  Jack Shafer Nov. 8, 2006
  
• The Drip, Drip of Exit-Poll Leaks The New York Observer appears to have been first.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 6, 2006
  
• Democracy for Dummies How Oprah and other infotainment programs encourage the mentally tardy to vote.
  Jack Shafer Nov. 2, 2006
  
• Love Me, I'm a Journalist A profession's romance with itself.
  Jack Shafer Oct. 26, 2006
  
• If You Don't Buy This Newspaper … We'll shoot your democracy.
  Jack Shafer Oct. 23, 2006
  
• Having Climbed Out Onto a Limb That Cracks … How should a newspaper crawl back?
  Jack Shafer Oct. 13, 2006
  
• Newsbooks The triumph of a journalism genre.
  Jack Shafer Oct. 11, 2006
  
• The Bloomberg Lesson How a fledgling news organization got big while others shrank.
  Jack Shafer Oct. 5, 2006
  
• Dehyping Identity Theft The New York Times finally sees reason.
  Jack Shafer Sept. 28, 2006
  
• My Favorite Magazine Stop Smiling.
  Jack Shafer Sept. 27, 2006
  
• Anthrax for the Memories The Washington Post's "rowback."
  Jack Shafer Sept. 26, 2006
  
• The Men Who Would Own the L.A. Times Geffen. Burkle. Broad. Who'd be the worst owner?
  Jack Shafer Sept. 21, 2006
  
• The Times Thinks Outside the Browser Finally, a readable online newspaper.
  Jack Shafer Sept. 19, 2006
  
• The Hewlett-Packard Mobius Strip Thinking through the press' role in the weird "pretexting" scandal.
  Jack Shafer Sept. 13, 2006
  
• Curvature of The Spine Suffering through Marty Peretz's warped new blog.
  Jack Shafer Sept. 12, 2006
  
• Front Page for Sale Newspapers go back to the future.
  Jack Shafer Sept. 7, 2006
  
• Shadows and Blog The New Republic's Lee Siegel is guilty, but of what?
  Jack Shafer Sept. 6, 2006
  
• Nicotine Madness The stupid drug story of the week.
  Jack Shafer Sept. 1, 2006
  
• The Great Press War of 1897 The New York Times' Adolph Ochs won. Or did he?
  Jack Shafer Aug. 30, 2006
  
• Friday Hash Terrorist TV and a First Amendment warning: If I blogged, it would read like this.
  Jack Shafer Aug. 25, 2006
  
• Forbes' Female Trouble So what if career women are divorces waiting to happen?
  Jack Shafer Aug. 23, 2006
  
• His Girl Friday What Time magazine's new publication date means.
  Jack Shafer Aug. 21, 2006
  
• No JonBenet Apologies Necessary The press needn't regret its coverage of the case.
  Jack Shafer Aug. 17, 2006
  
• More Mythical Numbers The GAO debunks the official human-trafficking estimates.
  Jack Shafer Aug. 16, 2006
  
• Marty Peretz's Word Power Ultramontane. Chiliastic. Irredentist. Revanchism. And more!
  Jack Shafer Aug. 4, 2006
  
• So, You Bought the New York Observer Unsolicited advice for new owner Jared Kushner.
  Jack Shafer Aug. 1, 2006
  
• How To Find a Meth Dealer The states establish search engines for your shopping convenience.
  Jack Shafer July 31, 2006
  
• Stupid Drug Story of the Week The mothball menace.
  Jack Shafer July 28, 2006
  
• How the New York Times Makes Local Papers Dumber That's only a slight exaggeration.
  Jack Shafer July 27, 2006
  
• The Best Writers at the New York Times They write better by writing shorter.
  Jack Shafer July 25, 2006
  
• Pfft Goes the Methedemic The press underplays news of reduced meth use, plus the "Stupid Story of the Week."
  Jack Shafer July 21, 2006
  
• Who Are All These Bloggers? And what do they want?
  Jack Shafer July 19, 2006
  
• How To Write a Hit Article The New York Times "Shamu" essay shows the way.
  Jack Shafer July 13, 2006
  
• Nick Denton, Publicity Cat How the Gawker Media guy reaps so much media attention.
  Jack Shafer July 11, 2006
  
• Bush or Keller? Who do you trust?
  Jack Shafer July 7, 2006
  
• Completely Dugg, Then Totally Buried The news aggregator's love-hate relationship with me.
  Jack Shafer July 3, 2006
  
• Digg Me or Bury Me Using (or is that exploiting?) a people-powered news aggregator to attract hits.
  Jack Shafer June 30, 2006
  
• Projectile Voting Do election-night predictions reduce voter turnout?
  Jack Shafer June 28, 2006
  
• The (Ongoing) Vitality of Mythical Numbers Does ID theft really cost $48 billion a year?
  Jack Shafer June 26, 2006
  
• The Incredible Shrinking Newspaper Newspapers are dying, but the news is thriving.
  Jack Shafer June 24, 2006
  
• Phar-Fetched "Pharm Parties" Real or a media invention?
  Jack Shafer June 19, 2006
  
• Stupid Drug Story of the Week USA Today takes the prize.
  Jack Shafer June 16, 2006
  
• A Meth Test for the Press How will it respond to a nonhysterical new study?
  Jack Shafer June 14, 2006
  
• Yes to Nocera What I like about the New York Times business columnist.
  Jack Shafer June 12, 2006
  
• Wen Ho Ho Ho Lee Gets Last Laugh Gauging the fallout from the legal settlement.
  Jack Shafer June 7, 2006
  
• The Master of Disaster David Von Drehle vs. the catastrophe clichés.
  Jack Shafer June 6, 2006
  
• Disaster by Numbers If the earthquake doesn't kill you, the clichés will.
  Jack Shafer June 1, 2006
  
• The Times Hypes ID Theft Even the Associated Press knows better.
  Jack Shafer May 30, 2006
  
• Doggy Style Eric Boehlert's book Lapdogs beats the press.
  Jack Shafer May 25, 2006
  
• The Bill and Hillary Code What's the New York Times trying to tell us?
  Jack Shafer May 23, 2006
  
• Annenberg's Ticket Out of Hell Dead almost four years, he's still rehabilitating his image.
  Jack Shafer May 22, 2006
  
• Howell Raines, Press Critic A very fishy memoir.
  Jack Shafer May 18, 2006
  
• Auto-Editorial Stimulation The magazine-anniversary problem.
  Jack Shafer May 16, 2006
  
• More Meth-Mouth Misinformation It's everywhere, it's everywhere!
  Jack Shafer May 12, 2006
  
• A.M. Rosenthal (1922-2006) Ugly genius.
  Jack Shafer May 11, 2006
  
• The Public Editor as Duffer The dreadful Byron Calame.
  Jack Shafer May 9, 2006
  
• What's the Story, Morning Glory? The Washington Post takes another bad drug trip.
  Jack Shafer May 4, 2006
  
• Bush's Chamber of Secrets How they'll prove to be his undoing.
  Jack Shafer May 3, 2006
  
• Fighting Words Bush vs. the press vs. Bush.
  Jack Shafer May 2, 2006
  
• Why Plagiarists Do It Because they can.
  Jack Shafer April 26, 2006
  
• Advice for Paranoid Reporters How to report stories when the government is out to get you.
  Jack Shafer April 25, 2006
  
• Anonymice Devour Times Plus: Has NYTimes.com gone tabloid?
  Jack Shafer April 21, 2006
  
• Trial by Newspaper The New York Times and the Duke rape case.
  Jack Shafer April 20, 2006
  
• The Mouth vs. the Bully The Olbermann-O'Reilly feud.
  Jack Shafer April 18, 2006
  
• I'm Canceling My Times Subscription Why you should, too.
  Jack Shafer April 4, 2006
  
• I Agree With You, Completely Honest. Just read my piece.
  Jack Shafer April 3, 2006
  
• Make All Mistakes Twice In defense of Washingtonpost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady.
  Jack Shafer March 28, 2006
  
• Thanks for That Subpoena! The legal maneuver that may—unintentionally—end up expanding reporters' rights.
  Jack Shafer March 24, 2006
  
• How Not To Report About Meth The Washington Post shows the way.
  Jack Shafer March 21, 2006
  
• Productivity Madness The press swallows $3.8 billion worth of junk economics.
  Jack Shafer March 21, 2006
  
• Judith Miller's New Excuse The former Times reporter tells Vanity Fair the "slanderous" bloggers destroyed her.
  Jack Shafer March 17, 2006
  
• A Gitmo for Journos Who besides the New York Times could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act?
  Jack Shafer March 15, 2006
  
• O'Connor Forecasts Dictatorship Why didn't the American press chase the story?
  Jack Shafer March 14, 2006
  
• Bill Keller in Chains Commentary's case for prosecuting the Times under the Espionage Act.
  Jack Shafer March 9, 2006
  
• The New Atlantic Monthly Unsolicited advice for James Bennet, the magazine's incoming editor.
  Jack Shafer March 8, 2006
  
• Methamphetamine Propaganda The government and the press are addicted.
  Jack Shafer March 3, 2006
  
• The New New Republic A prayer for Franklin Foer, the magazine's incoming editor.
  Jack Shafer March 1, 2006
  
• Byron Calame's Tweezers The New York Times public editor frets and sulks over employee discounts.
  Jack Shafer Feb. 27, 2006
  
• TV's Aryan Sisterhood They know only one hair color: blonder!
  Jack Shafer Feb. 21, 2006
  
• NSA Scoop or Just Bad Writing? Rereading The Cell. Also, Porter Goss is full of it.
  Jack Shafer Feb. 15, 2006
  
• Sympathy for Bill O'Reilly Why is the Times' Nicholas Kristof picking on him?
  Jack Shafer Feb. 10, 2006
  
• Attention Deficit Disorder? Stop me if you've read that headline before.
  Jack Shafer Feb. 9, 2006
  
• PBS's Worst Show—Now on Fox Don't want to watch The Journal Editorial Report? Fox doesn't want you to, either.
  Jack Shafer Feb. 3, 2006
  
• Bob Edwards' Big Goof His Murrow biography packages Good Night, and Good Luck's fib as fact.
  Jack Shafer Feb. 2, 2006
  
• This Ain't Nightline Ted Koppel's embarrassing debut as a Times columnist.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 31, 2006
  
• Not Just Another Column About Blogging What newspaper history says about newspaper future.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 28, 2006
  
• Posters vs. the Post Lessons from the Post.blog meltdown.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 24, 2006
  
• Snyder Broadcasting Fellow journalists! Do not fear the tiny owner of the Washington Redskins!
  Jack Shafer Jan. 21, 2006
  
• This Is Your County on Meth Another bogus survey from the National Association of Counties.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 20, 2006
  
• How To Cover a Kidnapping It isn't that easy.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 13, 2006
  
• The Carroll Kidnapping What information should reporters suppress? And for how long?
  Jack Shafer Jan. 11, 2006
  
• The Perpetually Perfervid Peretz The New Republic co-owner practically begs me to reprint an old column.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 9, 2006
  
• KurtEichenwald.com: The Back Story How a reporter's source came to design his eponymous Web site.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 6, 2006
  
• "Who Is Jack Abramoff?" Don't ask the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 5, 2006
  
• Risen vs. Risen Or, book standards vs. newspaper standards.
  Jack Shafer Jan. 4, 2006
  
• Mencken's Millions Exactly how many words did the Sage of Baltimore write?
  Jack Shafer Jan. 1, 2006