Let us now praise famous men, James Agee said famously. Journalism certainly does that. Probably too much, especially in a public relations age when you can become famous for being famous.

There is nothing like reading something you have written aloud for finding and its infelicities. An article, maybe just a headline, may be perfectly

Once you think you"ve got the story, think again. Always think again. First, because you may have the story your sources want you to have. Second,

"Adeline Compton," a moving poem set to music, is prize-winning poet Djelloul Marbrook's homage to a memorable English girl who used to serve him air tea in painted tin cups in a gazebo in their boarding school many years ago while war raged across the world.

Any time you run into an expert who can"t tell you what he knows in plain, understandable language, he"s probably not as expert as he should be.

You could say that as far as the White House is concerned the war in Iraq has already been won, because the moneybags who supported Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have been stuffing the spoils of war into their carpetbags since Day One.

Problems of attribution, plagiarism and fraud are directly related to the state of the news business, indeed the state of publishing in general.

Theres a crucial difference between balanced reporting and insightful reporting. You can listen to this difference by tuning into the Yes Network and listening to color commentator David Cone

But journalism also enjoys special First Amendment privileges, because the Founding Fathers believed the republic would founder without an honest and protected Fourth Estate.

When you search the web using the key words forensic accounting and forensic economics you get the impression that it's all about litigation.

Whenever you read the lead or off-lead story in a newspaper, whenever a TV anchor interrupts newscast to bring you breaking news, you can be pretty sure the real story is living its secret life unnoticed.

I dont like trying to take in a whole museum in a single gulp. I invariably get intellectual reflux.

Nobody foresaw a postindustrial age in which industry would subside or go overseas and a service economy would emerge.

McClellan says the press didnt do its job. He says that no matter how he sliced it the press readily swallowed his daily servings of baloney.

One of the reasons I cherish The New York Times is its institutional eye for the easy-to-overlook and profound.