The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday called on the Mexican government to investigate media reports of a rash of recent kidnappings  including one reported death  of journalists covering the drug war in the border city of Reynosa.

“As drug trafficking, violence, and lawlessness continue to spread, pervasive self-censorship is undermining Mexican democracy,” the New York-based Committee said in a statement. “We urge Mexican authorities to fully investigate the abduction of reporters in Reynosa and ensure that these crimes do not remain unpunished.”

Carlos Lauría, senior program coordinator, said the statement to high-level officials including President Felipe Calderón followed U.S. and Mexican news reports as well as independent telephone interviews with Mexican editors and reporters.

Read the complete story

Even in this age of bankrupt newspapers and atrophied newsrooms, giving away fully formed news stories for free is not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, it involves a shrewd sense of timing. Paul Steiger learned this lesson through trial and error over the past 18 months as he established ProPublica, a unique model for nonprofit public-service journalism, in which proper investigative stories about "abuse of power and failure to uphold the public interest" are offered free to whoever wants to print them.

It is, in effect, an investigative news outlet of 32 journalists without an actual outlet, save for a basic website, and already it has made it to the front page of just about every major U.S. newspaper and seen major journalistic successes, such as a recent expose about California's nursing regulator failing to revoke the licences of nurses who stole drugs from patients.

Read the complete story

Claire Murray's father Michael declined to be interviewed by the ABC this morning, saying he had an exclusive deal with the 60 Minutes program.

The WA Health Minister, Kim Hames has defended the family's right to sell their story despite receiving an interest free loan from the State Government. Dr Hames has offered the family of 24 year old Ms Murray an interest free loan of $250,000 so she can travel to Singapore for a live liver transplant.

"That money is going to be used to pay back interest free loan I guess is the point, and 60 Minutes has offered that money for an exclusive story which will help them pay off that amount of money, why wouldn't they take it when they've got to raise $250,000?" he said. A spokeswoman for Channel 9 says while a number of parties are understood to be negotiating with the family, 60 Minutes has not reached any agreement at this stage.

Or, second-best, after being in the Atlantic tribe, is at the Washington Monthly magazine. My first "paying" job in the magazine world was there*, and in the long years since I've been a devoted alumnus and reader. (*Charles Peters, the founding entrepreneur/crusader/editor, filed for Chapter 11 protection a day after I signed on -- a contingency he hadn't mentioned in our previous talks. Good preparation for the necessary adaptability of the journalistic life, and still a very fortunate break to have met him, from my point of view.)

Every two years or so the latest team of young staff editors wears out and drops in the traces has learned everything that Charlie Peters and his successor Paul Glastris have to teach them, and a new team is brought in. At least one such opening is in sight at the Monthly. Details after the jump. This will be a great opportunity for someone. For another time: why I think long-term career prospects are actually bright for people in their 20s or thereabouts just getting into journalism now.

I think we can all agree – can't we? – that journalists are not a particularly saintly crowd. Better known for bad language and heavy drinking than virtue, the only miracles grudgingly ascribed to us are the daily ones involved in pulling together enough facts and quotes to produce a story in time for the deadline.

Yet Roman Catholics may soon find themselves venerating a journalist – not some theologian or priest who contributed the occasional learned essay to a religious magazine, but a professional who earned his living from his writing and, indeed, won a prize for it. Manuel Lozano Garrido from Linares in the south of Spain worked for, among others, Associated Press.

Bishop Ramón del Hoyo López of Lozano Garrido's diocese of Jaen announced last weekend that the Vatican secretariat of state had set a date for the late journalist's beatification. It is to take place in his home town on 12 June.

Read the complete story

In it Ann explains why she endures the emotional toll of leaving her family to report of stories of human suffering like Hurricane Katrina and the Southeast Asian tsunami: because she believes that it is her job as a journalist to make people care about the world and its future. She credits her parents for inspiring her in her profession. Here is a brief excerpt:

"How do you keep doing what you do?” people ask me all the time. It’s a good question. Why is it I feel driven to cover these stories of human suffering, including Hurricane Katrina and the Southeast Asian tsunami, when it means leaving my husband and two children behind at home?

There are days when I wonder if I’m a bit traumatized by it all. But still, when these stories happen, I feel a call, an urgency, to report them because I know I can give voice to those who need to be heard. Not only do they deserve that, but you deserve it too.

Your knowing about what’s happening in the rest of the world gives you a chance to care, and it is that empathy that offers the greatest hope. You see, I believe journalism is an act of faith in the future. That might sound strange in this day and age when so much on TV seems scandalous or frivolous. But then, I am my parents’ child, living lessons that have guided me from the beginning.

I'm struck by how often Ira Glass's "This American Life" and Michel Lewis turn up, deservedly. Of local note, he singles out Mark Groubert's great piece in the LA Weekly on tracing the contents of a random box of stuff found on a Hollywood street, plus Amy Wallace's cover story for Wired on the dangers created by the anti-vaccine crowd.

LA Observed contributor Nancy Rommelmann earns a spot for her Reason story on the overreaction that can happen when adults catch teenagers sexting photos of each other There are several stories I hope to catch up with, probably led.

Read the complete story

Good point. For example, a week ago Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, gave an interview to the BBC that was widely described as a debacle. The main reason was that the BBC reporter asked Mr Jones whether he would concede that global warming since 1995 has not been statistically significant. Mr Jones replied: "Yes, but only just," and went on to note that there was a measured global warming of 0.12°C per decade since then, and that it tends to be harder to get statistical significance out of shorter time samples.

This led to a Daily Mail headline reading: "Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995." Since I've advocated a more explicit use of the word "lie", I'll go ahead and follow my own advice: that Daily Mail headline is a lie. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995; he said the opposite.

He said the world had been warming at 0.12°C per decade since 1995. However, over that time frame, he could not quite rule out at the traditional 95% confidence level that the warming since 1995 had not been a random fluke.

Read the complete story

James Lawson, who coordinated lunch counter sit-ins to desegregate Nashville in the 1960s, shared his lessons in movement-building with the School of Authentic Journalism during a question-and-answer session February 11 in Mérida, Yucatan.

His discussion of practical skills training and strategic networking in the civil rights movement reflected the current work of the School , which has also been shaped by lessons from the Highlander Center in Tennessee.

Replying to the question, “What is a leader?” Lawson said, “It’s important to use the device of not a handful of people carrying on the major tasks, but of deliberately increasing the numbers of people who learn all sorts of facets of the local struggle.”

Read the complete story

Jay Rosen points us to an article out of France that takes a stab at presenting what a modern internet-era newsroom should look like. The point that I find most interesting, that helped clarify a few different ideas for me, is that it splits "journalism" into three distinct categories, all of which have a role in the newsroom:

1. Reporters -- who go out and do first person reporting -- creating original stories, not just reposting rewritten wire copy. 2. Columnists -- who "start conversations and give stories another perspective."   3. Curators -- who "'cover' the news by sorting, verifying and editing live everything good existing on the web and in the media. They make link journalism, they make the news more accessible."

Read the complete story