TWO FROM ESCHATON

New Krugman essay:

New Year's Resolutions

For the press, that is...

During the 2000 election, many journalists deluded themselves and their audience into believing that there weren't many policy differences between the major candidates, and focused on personalities (or, rather, perceptions of personalities) instead. This time there can be no illusions: President Bush has turned this country sharply to the right, and this election will determine whether the right's takeover is complete.

But will the coverage of the election reflect its seriousness? Toward that end, I hereby propose some rules for 2004 political reporting.

Click here.

And news media critic Eric Alterman in the Nation:

Washington Goes to War (with Howard Dean)

addam Hussein may be out of his spider hole, but Washington's real enemy is still at large. His name: "Howard Dean"--and nobody in America poses a bigger threat to the city's sense of its own importance. New Republic writer Michelle Cottle returned from maternity leave to find Washington fit for a "Tarantino-style blood bath," with the Democratic front-runner cast as a "paleoliberal...a heartless conservative...too naïve to beat Bush...too politically cynical to trust...a Stalinist...[and] a neofascist [who] kills babies and drinks their blood."

Alterman just can't help bashing Ralph Nader toward the end of the essay: apart from that bit of snobbery, it's a pretty good read.

Click here.

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