Journalism

I'm an 84-year-old man on Social Security with original Medicare and Mutual of Omaha gap insurance. My insurance premium was raised from $262 to $363 a month, a 39% jump. After all my monthly expenses, I have just $240 left. What can I do in the event of another increase in my premiums? If you've had your current Medicare supplement plan for years, it's not surprising that you've seen your costs steadily rise, says Steve Zaleznick, senior Medicare advisor at PlanPrescriber, a Maynard, Mass.-based online provider of Medicare education and plan comparison tools.

William C. Cox Jr., the patriarch of the Bancroft clan that controlled Dow Jones & Co. for 105 years and sold it to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in a decision sparking a family feud, died Wednesday at his home in Hobe Sound, Fla., according to his daughter, Ann Bartram. He was 82. The cause was complications from diabetes. Cox was at the center of a protracted family dispute that ultimately led to the sale of New York-based Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal, to News Corp.

ABC News is going back to school. The network announced Wednesday that it was opening five college campus bureaus in September at journalism schools around the country. The multimedia bureaus will be staffed by undergraduate and graduate journalism students who will report stories for the news division's online offerings, as well as its broadcast news programs. ABC News will provide mentoring and stipends for the bureaus' student staffers, as well as the video and editing equipment to produce their stories.

"The thing we try to do first and foremost is watchdog journalism, and everything comes under that line. " Thus did L.A. Times editor and self-proclaimed "chief cheerleader" Davan Maharaj describe the paper's approach to investigative reporting in a panel discussion titled "The L.A. Times and Accountability Journalism" at the Festival of Books on Saturday. In the past year, Maharaj said, "We took on the county assessor's office, a scandal at the county jails, poor fire-response times among LAFD paramedics, poor regulation in recycling" -  and, he quipped, "every aspect of Lindsay Lohan 's interface with the police.

The list of freelance writing gigs on Craigslist goes on and on. Trails.com will pay $15 for articles about the outdoors. Livestrong.com wants 500-word pieces on health for $30, or less. In this mix, the 16 cents a word offered by Green Business Quarterly ends up sounding almost bounteous, amounting to more than $100 per submission. Other publishers pitch the grand opportunities they provide to "extend your personal brand" or to "showcase your work, influence others." That means working for nothing, just like the sailing magazine that offers its next editor-writer not a single doubloon but, instead, the opportunity to "participate in regattas all over the country."

The Voice of San Diego office has the trappings of many newsrooms -- messy desks, glowing computers, journalists hunched over phones. But something about the mood seems a little off. Where's the anxiety? Why isn't anyone trolling those websites that obsess about the latest layoffs in the news business? Where are the sidelong glances when someone gets stuck too long in the editor's office? All of that was missing when I visited the Voice of San Diego ( www.voiceofsandiego.

Having been born to one of the most famous couples of this century--America's greatest modern writer, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his talented flapper wife Zelda Sayre--Scottie Fitzgerald was thrust a heavy mantle, particularly as their only child. Add to that the heady cocktail of parental alcoholism, prescription drug abuse, numerous failed suicide attempts and schizophrenia. Talent and tragedy were genetically passed on to Scottie as surely as her blond hair and blue eyes. Until now, very little was known about the Fitzgeralds' daughter beyond her school days.

PHOENIX - I write this column with a headache. I went to a meeting of the SABR Analytics Conference here Thursday night. The throbbing may never stop. SABR stands for Society for American Baseball Research. It is basically an organization that turns a child's game into calculus. A huge room at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on the downtown campus of Arizona State was nearly full, so my cynicism must be misplaced. Picture a room with Billy Beane and 300 of his closest friends.

Re "Will Variety ink Finke?," Opinion, Oct. 14 Stephen Randall does a disservice to Daily Variety when he casts it as a cozy little house organ for Hollywood executives. During the Silverman family's ownership from 1905-87, Variety exposed the mob's attempted takeover of Hollywood by frontman Willie Bioff. Under longtime editor Thomas M. Pryor, for whom I worked for 15 years, it continued to expose shady financial dealings, payola and inflated grosses. It advocated responsibility in a business often without scruples.

Journalism Joe Sacco Metropolitan: 192 pp., $29   Jerusalem Chronicles from the Holy City Guy Delisle Drawn & Quarterly: 336 pp., $24.95

What is wrong with the New York Post? Thursday morning, the tabloid newspaper's front page featured a huge photo of two young men with backpacks, with the giant headline: “Bag Men: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon.” In the online story, the pair's faces had big red circles around them. Yes, sort of like targets. Turns out, the young men had nothing to do with the blasts. Thursday afternoon, the Post backpedaled:  “Investigators have now cleared the two men whose pictures were circulated last night in an email among law enforcement officials, sources told The Post today.

Award-winning investigative journalism, in-depth analysis, reports and photography

The South Florida Sun Sentinel was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism Monday for its investigation of off-duty police officers who endangered the lives of citizens by speeding. The newspaper, owned by Tribune Co., started its investigation after an off-duty Miami police officer was pulled over by a Florida state trooper for driving 120 mph in fall 2011. The resulting three-part series, "Above the Law," found that accidents caused by officers driving at high speeds - in many cases when off duty - caused at least 320 crashes since 2004, killing or maiming 21 people.

It's hard to sum up one man's achievements in any article or post. It's even harder if that man is Roger Ebert, who in no particular order was critic, TV personality, social-media guru, blogger, scholar, screenwriter and advocate. Still, there are some very quantifiable ways that Ebert, who died Thursday at age 70, changed film and film journalism. That's true in very noticeable realms -- reviewing and supporting movies, and adding a remarkable voice to the criticism canon -- but in more subtle ones as well.

Big and beefy with a scraggly beard, Shane Smith looks more like an aging roadie than a thrill-seeking foreign correspondent or a budding media mogul. But Smith is both those things. Vice Media Group, the company Smith co-founded and is chief executive of, has gone from a single magazine aimed at tattooed teeny-boppers to a media empire with more than 30 offices around the globe, a large digital presence, a record label, an advertising agency and a book publisher. The closely held Vice is projected to hit nearly $200 million in revenue this year and has a valuation approaching $1 billion, according to people close to the company.

The longlist for the Orwell Prize , Britain's prestigious award for political writing, was announced Wednesday. Fourteen journalists and 12 books are in the running for investigations on subjects including Starbucks,  torture, death row and the lives of the super-rich.  The prize is awarded in two categories -- books and journalism -- for works that reflect George Orwell's ambition to "make political writing into an art. "  This means, as...

Even a new-age reading of the 10 Commandments would seem to make it quite clear: Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's computer files and text messages. But one news story in recent days suggests it's not quite that simple. New technology has supercharged the debate over what should be in the public domain but done nothing to clarify the answers.

The winners PUBLIC SERVICE The Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier BREAKING NEWS REPORTING The Seattle Times staff INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman of the Philadelphia Daily News, and Sheri Fink of ProPublica, in collaboration with the New York Times Magazine EXPLANATORY REPORTING Michael Moss and members of the New York Times staff LOCAL REPORTING Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee...

E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" is a runaway bestseller, a titillating tale of love, sex and bondage, and an inspiration to women around the world. Although James' publisher, Vintage, has steered clear of the fur-lined-handcuff business, it can reach out to her readers in other ways. Lo, "Shades of Grey: Inner Goddess (A Journal)," announced Monday. "Shades of Grey: Inner Goddess" is to be published May 1 and is a writer's journal, seeded with quotes and inspiration from James' trilogy.

PHOENIX - I write this column with a headache. I went to a meeting of the SABR Analytics Conference here Thursday night. The throbbing may never stop. SABR stands for Society for American Baseball Research. It is basically an organization that turns a child's game into calculus. A huge room at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication on the downtown campus of Arizona State was nearly full, so my cynicism must be misplaced. Picture a room with Billy Beane and 300 of his closest friends.