Category Archives: Journalism

Online Journalism Blog→ How to (not) write about numbers

2025-09-30 Image by Andy Maguire | CC BY 2.0 If you’ve been working on a story involving data, the temptation can be to throw all the figures you’ve found into the resulting report — but the same rules of good writing apply to numbers too. Here …›

BuzzMachine→ The nation is lost

2025-09-22 In this terrible time, what disappoints and angers me so about my own field of journalism — to which I have devoted 50 years of my life — is its refusal to recognize fascism, to even use the word so as to explain it, and to judge Trump …›

BuzzMachine→ Len Tow

2025-08-12 We have lost a most generous soul. I have lost a benefactor, mentor, and friend. Leonard Tow died Sunday at age 97.  Len held a PhD in economic geography from Columbia and taught at Hunter and Columbia before deciding to leave for business …›

BuzzMachine→ Whither Colbert? Whither democracy

2025-07-18 Like every sane American, I am outraged that CBS/Paramount/Ellison Inc. canceled — in the true meaning of the word — Stephen Colbert, capitulating to Trump in the rapid Orbanization of American media. Here I propose what I hope come …›

BuzzMachine→ The Times’ Mamdani vendetta

2025-07-04 The Times has it out for Zohran Mamdani. The record is clear. It is time to examine receipts.  The latest attack on him is journalistically unconscionable, and so is the editors’ reaction to legitimate criticism. In a story played by its …›

BuzzMachine→ Here we go again

2025-02-06 In an endless game of lobbyists’ Whac-A-Mole, it’s a new year and here is new legislation trying to save the news. Except it’s not new. First, from Oregon, comes a rehash of bad legislation written by newspaper hedge-fund lobbyists, v …›

BuzzMachine→ The whole world is whining

2025-01-21 For 25 years now, the Edelman PR company has issued its Trust Barometer. This year, it’s all about grievances. It’s Festivus every day, the world around. Six in 10 people in the survey “hold grievances against business, government, and th …›

BuzzMachine→ It’s the racism, stupid

2024-11-09 Every current and common explanation for the reelection of Donald Trump — whether inflation or immigration, culture wars or campaign tactics, blaming Harris or Biden or the party — elides its true and root cause: racism.  The U …›

BuzzMachine→ How Fucked Are We? Very.

2024-11-06 Nevermind every other theory or tactical complaint about what happened in this election. Kamala Harris did everything she possibly could to win. The fault is not hers.  The fault is in our nation. We must come to the realization that Ameri …›