New Safires and Cronkites Needed, Not Ranters: Noonan

(NEWSER) - The tributes are pouring in for Walter Cronkite:

• Howard Kurtz, Washington Post: His "passing, in the end, is the passing of an era, an era of black-and-white television, of mass audiences, of a slower time when the country waited for the headlines at 6:30 in the evening. No anchor—no journalist—will ever wield that authority again."
• Jim Poniewozik, Time: He "was so thoroughly and uniquely linked with the word 'trust' that it is tempting to say that the word should be buried with him."

Woman ordered to pay $2.5M for online defamation

(NEWSER) - In what could end up being very bad news for outspoken bloggers across America, a federal judge has decided that a blogger was not acting as a journalist when she accused an Oregon lawyer of acting unethically and illegally as a trustee in a bankruptcy hearing. The judge denied Crystal Cox's request for legal protections customarily offered to journalists, and a jury subsequently ordered her to pay $2.5 million for defaming lawyer Kevin Padrick and his company. More»

Calling a lie a 'lie' isn't the same as 'taking sides': Glenn Greenwald

(NEWSER) - Anderson Cooper has been using the word “lie” a lot in recent days while describing statements made by Mubarak and his regime. Despite the fact that the statements he’s describing are “factually false,” his liberal use of the word “lie” has gotten Cooper mocked and questioned by fellow journalists, writes Glenn Greenwald on Salon . Those critics have ultimately acknowledged that the statements he’s calling “lies” are, in fact, lies—but even so, they question Cooper’s “opinion-making” and wonder whether or not he should be “taking sides.” More»

A former Guardian editor shares some advice

(USER SUBMITTED) - Some 15 years ago, a British writer drummed up a list of "commandments" for journalists. Tim Radford, former science, arts, and literature editor at the Guardian, pulled together 25 thoughts in response to a question he asked himself: "What is the most important thing to remember about writing a story?" Answer: "To make someone read it." The Guardian shares his still-sage advice to would-be scribes. A sampling:

• The most important person in your life is your reader.

Journalists have always exercised judgment about stories, he argues

(NEWSER) - A deadly serious Keith Olbermann slammed critic Ted Koppel yesterday, charging that no journalist is truly unbiased and lashing the former Nightline host as a "false priest worshiping before the false god of utter objectivity." Even journalistic lions like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow exercised "significant" editorial judgment in story choice and presentation, Olbermann argued on Countdown , pointing out Cronkite's stinging comments on Watergate and the Vietnam War. He berated reporting by Koppel that failed to expose the holes in the Bush administration's justifications for the Iraq war, which included the production of weapons of mass destruction now known to be nonexistent. More»