David Sedaris is a hugely successful humorist who has been pushed into a revealing literary mini-scandal after The New Republic ran a long article that concluded that his best-selling books, which he characterizes as factual, make notable use of fabrication.
MEDIA
I was abroad when the memoirs of Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, hit the news, so I missed his first disclosures about administration lies and the early attacks his book triggered. I've since caught up on several interviews -- he's an affable guy, like his ex-boss -- and read up on what his book says.
MEDIA
Faced with advertising declines, the news media are scratching for alternative revenue sources. They want their new money to have the same features industrial countries want in their alternatives to oil: That it be clean and renewable.
MEDIA
What exactly is a news ''consultant?'' You see them all the time on TV news, but what are they -- these ''consultants'' or ``analysts''?
MEDIA
Once, news was the hard currency people relied on to transact their broadest kind of community business -- the routine exchange of information and ideas about what is and what ought to be. Because the industry made its money by gathering large audiences with little in common except where they lived, journalism naturally sought out topics of wide interest and spoke with language and values that made some sense to everybody.
MEDIA
As traditional news outfits migrate online to become dot-coms, one of their biggest headaches is how to adapt to the sprawling new frontier of public comment.
