Portrait of a journalist

The strange sub­theme of David Samuels’ New Yorker por­trait of John Coster-Mullen, a man obsessed with the truth about the first atomic bombs, is actu­ally journ­al­ism itself: Con­tinue read­ing

Democracy and the media go together like…

Ditchley ParkLike Jeff Jar­vis, Charlie Beck­ett, and Richard Sam­brook, I too was at Ditch­ley recently for a con­fer­ence on the media and demo­cracy. Present com­pany excep­ted, it brought together a fas­cin­at­ing and lively group of people (not always the case at conferences).

Sir Jeremy Green­stock, formerly Britain’s man at the UN and in Iraq (and someone who speaks in per­fect para­graphs), gives his impres­sions below (bold, ital­ics, and broken paras are me).

For the record, I’m more pess­im­istic about demo­cracy than about journ­al­ism — but I also think Google — the acci­dental mono­pol­ist — should step up to the plate and fund some inde­pend­ent con­tent resource (listen — that’s the sound of me not hold­ing my breath). Con­tinue read­ing

Marketing, General Motors and the news business

GM VoltDoes mar­ket­ing offer any insights into busi­ness prob­lems — espe­cially those of the news busi­ness? Most old school journ­al­ists would put mar­keters in with snake oil sales­men, but mar­keters can be savvy ana­lysts. Ignore them at your peril.

Here’s mar­ket­ing ace — and my old Dean from Lon­don Busi­ness SchoolJohn Quelch ana­lys­ing what went wrong for Gen­eral Motors: Con­tinue read­ing

Beyond Trust…

Fathers and SonsA new book, Bey­ond Trust picks up some of the issues raised in Can You Trust The Media?

Here’s Kevin Marsh, sid­ing with Andrew Gil­ligan, in view­ing the book as nihilistic:

Journalism’s jour­ney – in Pro­fessor Larry Sabato’s (1991) descrip­tion – from ‘lap­dog, through watch­dog to junk­yard dog’ with all that entails in loss of pub­lic trust is, in part at least, legit­im­ised by a strand of aca­demic think­ing. Pro­fessor Adrian Monck of City Uni­ver­sity Lon­don, con­cluded in his book Can You Trust The Media? (2008) that we were mis­guided even to think that we should. Con­tinue read­ing

Medical journalism: doctors warn of conflicting interests

PillsThe Brit­ish Med­ical Journal has a piece out — Who’s Watch­ing The Watch­dogs?* — about con­flicts of interest between med­ical journ­al­ists and big pharma.

Yes, med­ical journ­al­ism is not travel journ­al­ism. The art­icle begins:

Doc­tors should be wary of the increas­ing entan­gle­ment of med­ical journ­al­ists and the drug industry, warn Lisa Schwartz, Steven Woloshin, and Ray Moynihan.

Con­tinue read­ing