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One of the most important decisions made in a newsroom is story selection. The editors of the New York Times Sunday Magazine made a very interesting decision in choosing to run a lengthy story about the demographic collapse of Europe. Reporter Russell Shorto, whose work we’ve looked at before, examines various explanations for the low birth rates in Europe in his piece titled “No Babies?”
What do you know, I had no idea that Sen. John McCain was in the neighborhood. I didn’t see the security ‘copters buzzing around the mountaintop.
It’s a question that has been bugging me for a long time: What, precisely, is that sprawling “On Faith” site over at the Washington Post Online?
A few days ago, Terry looked at a few of the initial stories that came out of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life megastudy. In the comments, a few of you noted one particularly odd statistic from the survey. Here’s how Ed Stoddard of Reuters put it on the news service’s blog:
When one of the country’s most prominent evangelical leaders uses the word “fruitcake” to describe a leading presidential contender’s interpretation of the Constitution, you’re guaranteed to get headlines. You’re not guaranteed to get context.
When Time magazine broke the story about the alleged Gloucester High School pregnancy pact, the entire media world erupted. It’s been covered on all the cable news shows, papers nationwide and has even been covered by international media. It’s kind of odd that this story exploded at the same time J.C. Penney’s debuted their new teen sex ad to middle America.
Somewhere out there, a public-relations professional is smiling. Either that, or someone at ESPN reads BusinessWeek online and is a really fast worker.
Reporter Chris Serres of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune had an interesting, if evergreen, topic for a recent story. Using a recent hook, he wrote about the clashes that come from efforts to assimilate immigrants in the work place.
After one brief palate-cleansing look at decent stories on the same-sex marriage issue, we can now return to the mainstream media’s attack on defenders of traditional marriage. At this point, I’m not sure how inadvertent the biased stories are.
