Stop Making Cents by Caity Weaver

This Caity Weaver story is inventive, densely clever in its structure, and consistently amusing, all hallmarks of her work. I think what impresses me most in this article about the persistence of a basically obsolete U.S. coin, though, is Weaver’s journalistic due diligence. As she makes clear throughout the piece, when someone makes an assertion she checks whether it’s correct and includes what she finds. After relaying the talking points from a one-man penny advocacy group, Weaver provides the immediate fact check instead of defaulting to the simpering “experts disagree” framing that crops up like a festering rash elsewhere in the newspaper, particularly in political coverage. Weaver’s colleagues covering the presidential election could — and should — learn from her example. This article is published by The New York Times Magazine.

The Media’s Demented Policy Illiteracy by Jason Linkins

What luck! Here’s an article that details exactly how poorly most of the news media is doing with that journalistic due diligence noted above. Writing for The New Republic, Jason Linkins offers specifics of political reporters’ ongoing bumbling of matters of policy, that is when they bother to cover it in any terms other than speculation on how voters will be swayed. This shortcoming is a genuine social ill at a time when one of the major candidates for the U.S. presidency doesn’t understand (or, to be more charitable, pervasively misrepresents) how tariffs work.