Blogs

While writing for Reader's Digest for 48 years, there was never a question then of what it might cost to go to Baffin Island in northernmost Canada to write a story about the Eskimo artists there or to hire interpreters to see me through the Soviet Union in preparation for interviews for a story on Brezhnev. Those were the days. Read more...

I love Dhaka and I fear Dhaka. I have made good friends on previous trips, in 2002 and 2008. I’ve had life-changing experiences here—seen amazing photography, heard brilliant and inspiring lectures. I have learned to dart through honking and careering vehicles without hyperventilating. Or (so far) getting killed. But I must admit that many of the everyday sights still shock my bourgeois American sensibility. Read more...

The New York Times announced it will introduce a paid model for NYTimes.com. When I worked for the Times online, it was in the days when we took an image map of the front page of the paper. It's come a long way since then and now might be finally worth the extra dough. Read more...

Michael Kinsley must have embarked on his media criticism piece in the current issue of The Atlantic bereft of ideas when e writes that newspaper articles are "too long." Really? Write it short and readers would flood back to newspapers? Pity then all those misguided publishers in search of new platforms to peddle their wares. Read more...

When Reader's Digest went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy last summer, the supplemental pension I had been granted after 48 years as a writer for the publication was summarily discontinued as were some 300 other contributors. In this fragile economy, others in our profession will continue to be hard hit. The difference here is that Reader's Digest has been hurt less by bad business than by a business strategy gone off the rails. Read more...

On every continent, reporters in 2009 faced appalling dangers and took extraordinary risks. The Mexican journalist who reports on corruption knows he has a good chance of joining 57 journalists murdered since 2000, 12 in 2009 alone. The almost complete impunity enjoyed by criminals, terrorists and police who attack journalists adds to the feeling of hopelessness about the freedom of the press. Read more...