Guardian column nominated for award

My online media column for The Guardian has been nominated for a Syracuse University Mirror Award for the second straight year.

The categories have been changed around a bit since last year. This time I’m in the category of “Best Commentary — Digital,” along with Eric Alterman of the Center for American Progress, Megan Garber of the Columbia Journalism Review, Rachel Sklar of the Huffington Post, Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher and Clive Thompson of Wired.

The awards will be presented in New York City sometime in June.

Hard times for the Times

In my latest for The Guardian, I take a look at Mark Bowden’s exceedingly tough Vanity Fair profile of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Bowden may be right in arguing that Sulzberger is not up to the job. But given the implosion of the newspaper business, would better leadership have made all that much difference?

The ties between journalism and community

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that a new survey showing that people don’t make much of a connection between their local newspaper and civic life gets it exactly backwards. In fact, folks have lost interest in journalism because they’ve lost interest in democracy. For newspapers and Web sites to succeed, they’re first going to have to re-establish a sense of community.