Jack Shafer, the often-irreverent media critic for Slate.com, offers some theories for why murders at Ivy League schools get so much press coverage.  His column’s headline: “Murder Draped in Ivy. Why the press can’t get enough of Harvard or Yale…

The Columbia Journalism Review takes note that media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post says the media are free to call Sarah Palin’s “death panel” comment just plain wrong.

Kurtz was asked about the comment Monday during his online Q&A:

Portland, Ore.: Is there a…

The networks are feeling pressured by the White House to televise presidential press conferences live, reports media writer Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. Maybe that’s because they are being pressured, Kurtz suggests in a column titled “The Prez, The Press, The…

July 22 press conference/New York Times photo

Americans are increasingly tuning out when President Barack Obama goes on television to address them.

“Why has Obama become boring TV?” Felix Gillette of the New York Observer asks in his media column. He notes that…

Sarah Palin’s interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show this morning signals that she doesn’t intend to let the David Letterman jokes controversy fade away.

At least that’s the interpretation of Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik, who writes today that “this…

Dawn Majors photo

Media critic Jack Shafer has called out newspapers throughout the country — Bogus trend of the week: raising backyard chickens.

Shafer writes that newspapers keep reporting about an increasing number of people raising chickens in urban and suburban settings…

Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz says accusations of liberal media bias are sure to be fueled by a Brigham Young University professor’s  survey of 200 journalists.

Kurtz quotes from the survey:

“Most journalists were aware of influential blogs on both sides of…

Slate.com’s Jack Shafer writes in his media column that the New York newspaper strike of 1962-63 might offer a glimpse of life without newspapers. Shafer writes:

I avoid making predictions, because very few of my predictions have ever come true. I…

The ombudsman — readers’ advocate — for the Washington Post has tackled that question a couple times in recent days. The question also was the focus of a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which…

Has the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s coverage of the swine flu story been responsible? Would you characterize it as thorough, excessive or lacking?

The topic seems inescapable. Nationally, swine flu has been the top story on TV and radio news, and has…