by Tracy McNamara and Brent Cunningham

Editor & Publisher
E&P is a new contender in the world of media criticism. The magazine has been around a long time as a trade publication, but only recently began to improve its coverage. Then E&P was bought by AdWeek, and the pace of change increased. A quick redesign and a weekly cover story were only external signals. Worthy of any journalism review was the fourteen-page analysis of the impact of an African-American top editor on the city of Tallahassee - and the fallout following her firing. Other efforts are more erratic, but interim editor Bill Gloede said plans will include a more substantial redesign and reporting that is "analytical and thoughtful" as well as timely.

Nieman Reports
By tackling some of the less predictable issues in journalism - spotlighting the transportation beat, for example, or the superficial coverage of poverty - Nieman Reports stakes a claim to the title of no-frills media critic. Rather than try to solve journalism's many problems, Nieman Reports examines them and shows how others have dealt with them. The result is a blend of critical and utilitarian coverage mostly devoid of scolding. Although the how-I-got-the-story pieces sometimes border on the self-congratulatory, they also allow NR to include the social ramifications of what journalists do. An example of this approach at its best is Claudia Glenn Dowling's essay in the Winter '98 issue on how she balanced the roles of reporter-protector-advocate-friend while doing a story on how a family's violence affects its children.

Media Studies Journal
This is more a forum for discussion than a critical journal. Nearly everything is first-person, but the editors get the right people for it; often people who were involved in whatever issue is being dissected: Seymour Topping on covering the Chinese civil war, Jeffrey Toobin on coverage of the OJ trial, Linda Deutsch on court coverage. Tends to have a historical bent - the winter issue on the presidential race included four historical pieces - but that does provide context.

EXTRA (www.fair.org)
A strong editorial voice dominates Extra, promoting the ideology of FAIR, the media watch organization behind the liberal publication. Still, Extra - both in print and on the Internet (www.fair.org) - has moved away from covering ideological issues to rebuttals on specific stories in the media.

Media Monitor
Aim, the other side of the spectrum from Fair, is only on the Web, where it supports Accuracy in Media, the conservative watchdog group. More of a newsletter than a newsmagazine, the timely Internet publication often strays from media criticism to denouncing the current political climate - last month's issue included a defense of Linda Tripp. (www.aim.org)

Obsessed Observations
Media-obsessed is the only term to describe two New York weeklies - the salmon-tinted, snooty New York Observer and the rowdy, low-down, opinion-ridden New York Press. Each is besotted with the personalities and performance of news people. Vide: Observer columns "Off the Record" and "The Transom" and Press owner Russ Smith's near-endless weekly rant, "Mugger."

The Nation
The voice of the Left contains a fair amount of media criticism, primarily through guest essays in its Media Matters column and signed editorials by Eric Alterman. These are wide-ranging assaults on everything from the oppression of the Nigerian press to the failure of the press elite to aggressively cover Clinton pal Vernon Jordan. It all comes from a distinctly Nation point of view.

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