Media

It’s beginning to look a lot like 1971.

For this baby boomer, the current mixture of popular culture and an unpopular foreign war brings back memories. Memories of an odd-numbered year before a presidential election, when Hollywood moved left -- and the country moved right in reaction. And it was over-the-top anti-war protesters who cemented the conservative majority.

The war back in ‘71, of course, was in Vietnam. In that year, most Americans had concluded that the war was a failure, at… more

Should we in the media be virtuous? That is, should we consciously set out to do good -- and to be good? The American people, especially the young, say "yes." And yet most in the media say "no" -- for various reasons that are worth exploring.

Needless to say, most journalists, like most people, wish to think of themselves as virtuous. But still, it is not the normal language of journalism to speak of virtue as a goal.

For news reporters, the… more

Coll, a writer for the New Yorker and a former Washington Post managing editor, takes over next month as the new head of the nonpartisan public policy institute. He's following the footsteps of other journalists turned policy wonks, such as Walter Isaacson, the former Time magazine editor who runs the Aspen Institute, and Strobe Talbott, a former Time journalist who was Bill Clinton's deputy secretary of State and now presides over the Brookings Institution.

Q. How did you come to… more

Last week, I got a phone call from a television news producer who asked me what Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s extramarital affair revealed about the nature of Latino political leadership. I told her I’d agree to be interviewed on air only if we could explore what Bill Clinton’s dalliances said about white people or Jesse Jackson’s fling with an aide told us about black activists. Dumbfounded, she asked if I could refer her to someone else.

Remember two short years ago, when… more

It’s tough to imagine what Gen. Harrison Gray Otis -- the bellicose press baron with the steely gaze and a speaking voice once likened to "that of a game warden roaring at seal poachers" -- would make of his family’s recent decision to sever the last of its ties with the Los Angeles Times.

The 19th-century publisher, were he looking down upon this vale, couldn’t be too happy that his descendants have walked away from the paper he built. At… more

I was going to write about the grisly death of the Senate immigration bill, but there was other news that was just as senseless and inane: Paris mania.

If there’s one thing more annoying than our all-pervasive cult of celebrity, it’s the righteous handwringing over what it means for the soul -- let alone the brain -- of our nation. In the last few weeks, a bevy of commentators, television journalists and intellectuals have launched a mini-revolt against the tyranny of… more

Until a few years ago, America’s elementary and secondary schools generally escaped our national obsession with lists. Almost every week another ranking of best communities, most beautiful people or top hospitals is published.

But in 1998 Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post, began publishing a list of "The 100 Best High Schools in America." The ranking is based on "The Challenge Index," a measure developed by Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews. The list, published annually the past… more

Michael Moore’s new documentary, Sicko, which opens tomorrow, is coming along just in time to get credit for launching a national debate on health care. But the irony is that the biggest single factor in the renewed push toward national health insurance is coming not from Moore’s advocacy but from the Iraq war, which Moore loathes so much.

Without a doubt, "Sicko" will have an impact. House Democrats, for example, held a mock hearing in which Moore and Sicko were the… more

Gulp. That was my initial reaction last week when I read about the publisher of the Pasadena Now website having hired two reporters to help cover the Pasadena City Council -- from nearly 9,000 miles away, in India.

I mean, come on, what’s next? An L.A. business column that’s composed on the cheap in Mauritius?

No wonder that more and more economists -- including some, such as former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder, who once were free-trade purists -- are beginning… more

Who’s sorry now? Lots of people these days are rushing to the cameras, claiming to be misunderstood -- but none of them seems truly regretful.

Saying that one is sorry, of course, is just the beginning. Those who are genuinely apologetic know that repentance is a stern taskmaster. According to Catholic doctrine, for example, "contrition" is "a sorrow of soul and a hatred of sin committed, with a firm purpose of not sinning in the future."

In other words, if you are… more