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MARK JURKOWITZ

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Hit men

George Kimball's Four Kings KO's the last golden era of boxing
At least one passage in Four Kings will get George Kimball cursed out in local bars.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | October 02, 2008

Table manners

In blackjack experience teaches, intuition sustains
My first blackjack experience came as a newly minted college grad.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | April 29, 2007

The AIDS story

On an ever-worsening subject
This story originally appeared in the December 9, 1986 issue of the Boston Phoenix .

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | January 05, 2007

Trailblazer Steve Smith brings newspaper transparency to a whole new level
Even in an era of buzzwords such as media “transparency” and “interactive dialogue” (between news consumers and news producers), what’s happening at the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, is pretty strange stuff.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | June 21, 2006

The incredible shrinking newsroom

Herald cuts
As the fiscal year ends over at the Boston Herald , there’s serious anxiety at One Herald Square.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | June 21, 2006

Your ombuddy

Once the most thankless job in journalism, the lowly ombudsman is now poised to be a star
Part internal-affairs cop, part complaint department, American news ombudsmen are truly a unique breed.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | June 19, 2006

The media’s worst nightmare?

Howard Cooper is quickly making a name for himself as the city’s go-to guy for libel
Many of those familiar with his work tend to see him as the real deal — a passionate, sincere, and surprisingly idealistic advocate who is no fun to face across the aisle.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | June 07, 2006

Assembly-line Investigations

‘Team 5 Investigates’ is blurring the lines between investigative reporting and, well, just reporting
The May 24 “Team 5 Investigates” story had many of the elements of classic journalistic sleuthing.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | June 06, 2006

Stop whining and do your job

The White House and the media are not supposed to get along, stupid
A president with a history of antipathy toward the media complains openly about the “knee-jerk liberal press.”

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | May 28, 2006

Glossed over

The magazine racks are filled with dying publications — but why is the glossy’s forecast not nearly as gloomy as newsprint’s?
One sign of how the magazine business is doing these days is a three-month-old Web log called “Magazine Death Pool.”

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | May 17, 2006

Liberty or Death

Pat Purcell’s sale of CNC adds a mysterious new player to the media market
“You bet we’re alive — and kicking!” declared the headline on Herald owner Pat Purcell’s feisty message to readers on Monday.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | May 11, 2006

Listing forward

Sometimes a media critic just wants to herd a few cats
Like anyone who works a specific beat — sportswriters and political writers come to mind — media critics acquire lots of impressions, opinions, and stray observations that never actually make it into print, and yet they are worth musing over.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | May 03, 2006

Blue (-Eyed) Devils?

The perfect storm of race, class, and sex makes the alleged Duke rape tale perfect fodder for the ‘justice’-obsessed media
Once the sensational Duke University rape case — with its irresistible brew of race, class, and sex — triggered the predictable media circus, an equally predictable chorus of earnest-sounding criticism began to roll in.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | April 26, 2006

Won’t get fooled again

With reports of Iran-war drums beating, how will the media react this time around?
Seymour Hersh’s April 17 New Yorker article, which reported that a “messianic” Bush White House was contemplating regime change and tactical nuclear strikes to pre-empt Iran’s bomb-building program, landed with its own explosive power last week.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | April 25, 2006

Invading Iran

Sy needs to fill in the blanks
Few investigative reporters have compiled the track record or amassed the career longevity of the notoriously cranky Seymour Hersh — who these days is churning out national-security scoops for the New Yorker .

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | April 13, 2006

Muckrakers in the outfield

It’s time for baseball — and all sports — to be covered just like any other multi-billion-dollar business
Last week was an important moment in the history of American journalism.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | April 05, 2006

High noon at the Herald

If Purcell sells off the suburbs, what will happen to his big-city tab?
Pat Purcell’s speech last Friday at a UMass Boston conference on ethnic media was auspiciously timed.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | March 30, 2006

Let it bleed

When a pretty Boston woman is murdered in New York, the Boston dailies go to war
The horrific New York murder of 24-year-old Imette St. Guillen pitted the city’s two major dailies against each other in ways that reflect the strengths and weaknesses, as well as the editorial philosophies, of the two rivals.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | March 22, 2006

Numbing carnage

Once an upbeat hit, Bush’s Iraq show has jumped the shark
On the morning of March 8, viewers had their first sip of coffee to a grisly sight on the news shows: grainy video of roughly two-dozen dead Iraqis lined up in a makeshift morgue, many of them apparently bound and strangled.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | March 15, 2006

Little Red ’Net

The battle for Internet freedom will not end with China
February 15 was a squirmy day for officials at Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco.

By: MARK JURKOWITZ | March 10, 2006

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