PositiveThe New York Review of BooksRodden, a political scientist at Stanford, shows convincingly...that Democrats would be at a disadvantage even if partisan gerrymandering were abolished. Neutral computer simulations still tend to give Democrats a smaller share of seats than Republicans would receive with the same share of votes ... Rodden’s analysis is particularly useful for understanding the choices facing today’s urban-based parties of the left, including the Democrats, as they try to overcome entrenched disadvantages ... Proportional representation isn’t yet an idea that most reform-minded Americans have considered. Rodden’s Why Cities Lose should start people talking about it.
Jill Abramson
MixedThe New York Review of Books\"For all its deficiencies, Merchants of Truth sheds considerable light on the news in this dark time; anyone who wants to understand what has been happening to journalism will learn a great deal from it ... Yet in writing her book, or perhaps not writing enough of it, Abramson has landed herself in an ethical controversy. Her critics have been hard on her, and it’s not surprising. A writer on lapses in journalism who becomes an illustration of the profession’s problems is like a preacher revealed to be a sinner. No one in the congregation will talk about anything else ... The major limitation of Abramson’s book is that it offers too reassuring a picture of journalism ... The picture of the news that Abramson provides is also too reassuring because it leaves out the radical transformation of the right ... Yet the truth about our truth-seeking media, as Abramson’s book rightly emphasizes, is that they are also profit-seeking; our merchants of truth operate not only under journalistic norms but also under commercial constraints.\
