Tuned In+News Media | 27 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Truth Vigilantes, Attack!

By James Poniewozik

Last week, New York Times public editor (the equivalent of an ombudsman) Arthur Brisbane wrote a blog post asking whether, in covering the campaign, reporters should challenge in the body of their straight-news stories statements by candidates that are dubious, distorted or outright false. Or as he put it—in a headline that generated unsurprising outrage from his commenters—“Should the Times Be a Truth Vigilante?”

My short answer, I say in my dead-tree TIME column this week (subscription required): yes. The longer answer: yes, but he did make a point that’s worth talking about.

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 103 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Mideast Meets Midwest in All-American Muslim

By James Poniewozik
TLC

One reasonable definition of a good TV show is one that makes you see something familiar in a new way. That was particularly the case for me with All-American Muslim, a reality show debuting on TLC Nov. 13 and the subject of my column in TIME this week (subscription required, so pony up the dough). [...]

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Tuned In+Television | 109 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Shooting to Kill

By James Poniewozik
cultunedin_1107

In my print TIME column this week, I take a look at the much-photographed and -videotaped death of Muammar Gaddafi.

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 145 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Terra Nova; Plus, What Is "Family TV," Anyway?

By James Poniewozik
FOX

In this week’s TIME comes my disappointed review (subscription required) of the two-hour pilot of Terra Nova, which premieres Monday. This is a good time to repeat the caveat that a review is not a prediction of ratings: I will be surprised if Terra Nova is not the highest-rated new-series debut of the season. It’s [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 152 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Femme TV, Cupcakes, and a Look at New Girl

By James Poniewozik
CBS

In this week’s issue of TIME (subscription required, but of course you have one, right?), I preview the fall TV season by looking—as several others have as well—at the many, many new shows this fall that have female stars or mostly female ensembles. It’s impossible to draw a single conclusion from so many different shows, [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 159 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Ten Years After; Plus, Showtime’s Rebirth

By James Poniewozik

I don’t have a piece in this week’s TIME magazine, but this issue, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is a sweeping enough undertaking that I wanted to point it out. Rather than fill out the issue with stories and essays by bloviators like me, the issue focuses on the first-person stories of [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 166 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Time of the Season

By James Poniewozik

For Labor Day weekend, this week’s TIME magazine includes our summer fall Arts preview. (Usual caveat: you need to subscribe to read the whole thing.) Because television must share space in it with the lesser arts, such as film, visual art and books, the TV section gets only a page in the magazine, and includes [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 188 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Trash TV

By James Poniewozik

This week in TIME magazine, accidentally but appropriately timed with a cover on the decline of Europe and coverage of the general lack of good economic news anywhere, I have a plus-sized column about cable TV’s hot genre with a fitting theme for the age of austerity: shows about making money off old junk. The [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 201 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Are These MTV's 30 Best Videos?

By James Poniewozik

This Dead Tree Alert is a bit of a cheat; there is no new issue of TIME magazine this week. But MTV turns 30 years old on Monday, and in the issue currently on newsstands, there’s a photo spread on 30 highlights from MTV’s 30 years on the air. And, for a bit more fun, [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 207 days ago

The Morning After: It's a Dog's Death

By James Poniewozik

I loved the pilot of Wilfred when I reviewed it some weeks back, and I enjoyed the second and third episodes that FX sent out at the same time. But the main concern I had with the show was that it had the potential to either be a rewardingly weird and dark show or a [...]

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Tuned In+News Media | 208 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: The Humbling of Murdoch; Also, On the Price of Dead Trees

By James Poniewozik

My column in the print edition of TIME this week is about this week’s travails of News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch, and how his empire has been rattled by the very forces with which he built it: tabloid gossip, political access and the sharp-elbowed pursuit of both. It includes a disclosure statement so long I [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 215 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Breaking Bad Breaks Back

By James Poniewozik

It may be Harry Potter day in the rest of the entertainment world, but here at Tuned In, it’s Breaking Bad weekend. The new issue of TIME carries my feature on the return of the AMC drama, including a set visit I made to Albuquerque last spring. (And no offense to the citizens of ABQ, [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 222 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Avenging Grace

By James Poniewozik

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, my column in this week’s TIME will seem familiar. It’s essentially my post from earlier this week on judge-and-jury Nancy Grace and the Casey Anthony trial, tightened to fit a page in the magazine, and updated to cover her reactions to the not-guilty verdict that night and [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 236 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: From Oprah to Olbermann

By James Poniewozik

My column in the dead-tree issue of TIME out today looks at the return of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, not so much from a review perspective but looking at Olbermann as the latest example of a media star leveraging his or her brand. Oprah launched the OWN channel, Glenn Beck is turning his show into [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 243 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Happy Father's Day, Louie!

By James Poniewozik

In this week’s TIME, I have a feature on Louis CK, whose amazing, idiosyncratic comedy Louie returns to FX next Thursday. The piece looks at the unusual financial and creative deal that he has for the show, and how that allows him to make a show that’s a more individual vision than just about anything [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 250 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: The Twimmolation of Anthony Weiner

By James Poniewozik

I’m writing on deadline for next week’s print TIME magazine, so in lieu of a fresh blog post right now, here’s the thing I wrote for this week’s print version of TIME, a.k.a., “My last thing I am writing about Anthony Weiner, I promise, I think.” My recent column places Weiner in the recent but [...]

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Tuned In+Tuned In | 264 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: High Manxiety

By James Poniewozik

My column in this week’s print TIME magazine reports from the upfronts on a trend I noted more briefly here after the fall-schedule announcements: the peculiar and specious trend of sitcoms about the “emasculated” modern man. It’s most blatant in new comedies like Last Man Standing, Work It, Man Up and How to Be a [...]

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Tuned In+306 days ago

Epic Win: HBO's Game of Thrones

By James Poniewozik

HBO’s fantastic (in more than one sense of the word) Game of Thrones debuts Sunday, and my review is in the new issue of TIME. It includes a few quotes from a long interview I did last month with author George R. R. Martin; I’m going to post the full (well, edited) interview in installments, [...]

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Tuned In+306 days ago

Electoral Sweeps: Trump Said to Plan Announcement of Prez Announcement on Apprentice

By James Poniewozik

According to Newsmax, Donald Trump will announce the next step in his political career on the season finale of his reality show. As did Jefferson and Churchill before him. Reports the conservative website, Trump will use the finale to announce a press conference a few days later, at which he will in turn announce his [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 320 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Dramalot

By James Poniewozik

After months of controversy, the miniseries The Kennedys finally debuts Sunday on Reelz Channel, which is probably way up there in your digital cable guide somewhere. (Try looking near Golf Channel En Español.) In this week’s TIME, I look at the history of political-football miniseries, as well as the eight hours of The Kennedys itself. [...]