Were this to have happened across the pond, British pundits would have called it “dumb arse stupid”: Jim Romenesko reports on his website that “the Kansas City Star has told reporters Karen Dillon and Dawn Bormann that one of them has to leave the paper, and they — not management — have to decide who goes.”
Is an American photojournalist embedded with U.S. troops in a war zone first and foremost a journalist or an American? Is it clear-cut? Ever? How does one decide? Ah, questions, questions. But what about being a photojournalist or a human being? And what about running a page-one photo of a man about to be run over by a subway? These questions would seem much easier to answer.
It seems the Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s only remaining daily, is in danger of going the way of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, also owned by the NOLA Media Group, and publishing only three days a week. This is not good news.
To say the news media’s coverage of Monday’s Sandy storm was repetitious is an understatement. Associated Press photos have dominated front pages this week, and National Public Radio has all but forgotten there is anything else to cover in either the nation or overseas.
Romney’s binder “blunder” in Tuesday’s second U.S. presidential debate is memorable. Then there was his Libya “lie” that was immediately corrected by both Barack Obama and CNN moderator Candy Crowley. But while both incidents have received press coverage and airtime, what some in the media also have noted in the days following the Hofstra University debate has been the former Massachusetts governor’s bullying tendencies. “Romney Gives New Meaning to Bully Pulpit” and “Mitt the Naïve Bully” are two such articles.