News commentary

Auf   Wiedersehen

Columbia Journalism Review · Bill Grueskin · last updated

The year’s most worthy laurels and most dreadful darts, from your departing columnist.

It was around ten months, or seventy thousand words, ago that the Columbia Journalism Review launched Laurels and Darts. This was actually something of a relaunch: its predecessor, Darts & Laurels, had been on a ten-year hiatus. I’m now about to take off for several months, to embark on a special project that will keep me away from CJR headquarters. (More on that later.) So, like the Sound of Music brood, I am here to tell you so long and farewell. Out of mercy, I will do so with words and not song.

Setting out on this column, we established a few ground rules. We wouldn’t go crazy over errant headlines or tweets, we’d stick mostly to news coverage (rather than editorials or op-eds), and we’d try to ensure that we’d regularly include stories that hadn’t crossed everyone’s radar. We also encouraged readers to send in nominations; to the many of you who did, thank you.

Doing these columns has left me encouraged, enthralled, amazed, and—more than once—really pissed off. There is a lot of excellent, courageous reporting out there, and then there are some journalists who do not do, shall we say, consistently good work. Here are a few of the highlights and lowlights:

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here today, more tomorrow

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