Free Republic

Freshman Rep. Katie Hill resigned Thursday in the wake of multiple controversies, including engaging in at least one sexual relationship with a campaign staff member. Conservative website Red State published intimate photos of the California Democrat on Oct. 18 after they were leaked to the site, sparking a debate about inappropriate relationships and “revenge porn.” Hill should not have engaged in a relationship with a subordinate while holding public office, and thus should shoulder the blame for that choice. Nonetheless, there’s little the public can do about her personal choices other than to call for her resignation. There may be...

Springer Publishing, one of the world’s leading publishers of Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) books and journals, issued an announcement this week that 64 different professional articles, primarily in the medical field, had been retracted. It turns out that the vaunted peer review process, designed to ensure that multiple sets of experts evaluate the quality of the work before it hits the presses, had fallen apart. The peer reviews in some cases were found to be “highly suspicious” with bogus email addresses and questionable credentials. Springer confirms that 64 articles are being retracted from 10 Springer subscription journals, after...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc will eventually sell the Time Inc magazine unit and could buy holdings in its core entertainment category, Gordon Crawford, managing director of its largest shareholder, said during a presentation this week. "Time Warner just spun off their cable division, they are going to sell their print division, they are going to spin off AOL and they're just going to be Warner Brothers, HBO and the Turner Networks," said Crawford, managing director of The Capital Group.

Battered by a one-two punch of declining readership and ad pages, Newsweek magazine is getting an extreme makeover this year that will include a large circulation reduction, deep cuts in operating costs, and a new effort to attract advertisers by concentrating on an elite audience. According to The New York Times, executives at Newsweek say the retooled magazine will focus on being a "thought leader" that focuses on telling readers how to think about news, rather than telling people what happened in the last week. The plan, similar to the editorial outlook espoused by The Economist magazine, is aimed at...

The Doctor's World Recent disclosures of fraudulent or flawed studies in medical and scientific journals have called into question as never before the merits of their peer-review system. The system is based on journals inviting independent experts to critique submitted manuscripts. The stated aim is to weed out sloppy and bad research, ensuring the integrity of the what it has published. Because findings published in peer-reviewed journals affect patient care, public policy and the authors' academic promotions, journal editors contend that new scientific information should be published in a peer-reviewed journal before it is presented to doctors and the public....

If it's allowed to stand, an FCC ruling will feed media merger mania BY BILL CLINTON "It's your money," says President Bush when he promotes tax cuts. I disagree with his tax policy but admire his spin. The same argument applies with greater force to whether big media conglomerates should be allowed to control more television and radio stations: "It's your airwaves." The American people own the bandwidth that broadcast media companies use to deliver programs to our TV and radio sets. Because the space on that bandwidth is limited, the Federal Communications Commission regulates who has access to our...