Here is an extensive selection of articles, essays, and commentary WJC has written over the years for news outlets and scholarly journals.

• Dayton retrospective, 30 years on: Ending war in Bosnia
  (The Hill, November 14, 2025)
• A look back at polling troubles of 2024
  (The Hill, November 4, 2025)
• What’s with Trump and small countries? The case of Switzerland and the 39% tariff
  (RealClearPolitics, August 21, 2025)
• Remembering Netscape and the internet’s ‘big bang’ moment, 30 years on
  (The Hill, August 9, 2025)
• More likely than not, Nick Ut of AP took the ‘Napalm Girl’ photo
  (RealClearPolitics, June 29, 2025)
• How Trump could make a more rational, fact-based critique of the polls
  (The Hill, May 7, 2025)
• Remembering New Century Network, a failed media response to the emergent digital world
  (X, April 28, 2025)
• The lasting impacts of the 1995 terrorist bombing at Oklahoma City
  (The Hill, April 16, 2025)
• Remembering 1995, the year of the internet
  (The Hill, February 27, 2025)
• 30 years on: Debating the legacies of O.J. Simpson ‘trial of the century’
  (The Hill, January 24, 2025)
• Now Trump is suing pollsters
  (The Hill, December 23, 2024)
• Parting judgments about the election polls of 2024
  (X, December 5, 2024)
• Better but not stellar: The polls in 2024
  (The Conversation, November 15, 2024)
• Pollsters largely accurate in projecting close Trump-Harris race
  (The Hill, November 6, 2024)
• The close election that ended in a rout: A look back at 1980
  (The Hill, October 31, 2024)
• The entertainment value of pre-election polls
  (Fortune, October 29, 2024)
• Surprises, outliers, oddities: What to look for in campaign’s closing days
  (The Hill, October 21, 2024)
• No antidote for wayward polls: A look back at an experiment in ‘shoe-leather’ reporting
  (The Conversation, October 8, 2024/ Nieman Lab, October 21, 2024)
• Watching CNN’s poll in a high-stakes election for survey-takers
  (The Conversation, October 2, 2024)
• The most striking off-target predictions in presidential elections this century
  (The Hill, October 1, 2024)
• Kamela E. Dewey?
  (The Hill, August 21, 2024)
• Recalling the last landslide
  (The Hill, August 15, 2024)
• Tempering talk of a Trump ‘landslide’
  (The Hill, July 17, 2024)
• Navigating a political firestorm: Recalling Nixon’s ‘Checkers’ speech
  (The Conversation, July 8, 2024)
• Initial reactions to 1960 presidential debate at odds with dominant narrative
  (The Conversation, June 26, 2024)
• Time to retire laziest cliche in election polling
  (The Hill, April 17, 2024)
• Why 1948 is no template for 2024
  (Fortune, April 5, 2024)
• Murrow wasn’t first journalist to challenge Joe McCarthy’s red-baiting ways
  (The Conversation, March 1, 2024)
• The insights early pre-election polls can offer
  (The Conversation, February 12, 2024)
• Often in error but seductive still: Why we can’t quite election polls
  (The Conversation, October 6, 2023)
• What the ‘Dewey defeats Truman’ polling failure can teach us as 2024 approaches
  (The Messenger, September 12, 2023)
• The Smithsonian hangs an incomplete portrait of a decisive war
  (The Messenger, August 12, 2023)
• Watergate’s ‘gift of the gods’: The surprise disclosure of Nixon’s tapes, 50 years on
  (The Messenger, July 14, 2023)
• What polling’s past may tell us about Trump’s summertime lead over rivals
  (The Messenger, July 1, 2023)
• 2022 midterm polls: More spotty than spectacular
  (The Conversation, November 17, 2022)
• With memories of embarrassments still fresh, pollsters face big tests in 2022 midterm elections
  (The Conversation, October 24, 2022)
• Misfires and surprises: Polling embarrassments in recent U.S. presidential elections
  (American Behavioral Scientist August 29, 2022)
• Woodward and Bernstein didn’t bring down a president in Watergate — but the myth they did lives on
  (The Conversation June 14, 2022)
  

  WJC and Woodward, 2022

• 50 years after ‘Napalm Girl,’ myths distort the reality behind a horrific photo of the Vietnam War and exaggerate its impact
  (The Conversation, June 2, 2022)
• What history reminds us midterm narratives shaped months before elections
  (The Hill, April 20, 2022)
• After a misfire in New Jersey, pollster offers remarkable apology for error
  (The Hill, November 12, 2021)
• Polling misfired in 2020 — and that’s a lesson for journalists, pundits
  (The Hill, July 26, 2021)
• Elections polls in 2020 produced ‘error of unusual magnitude’
  (The Conversation, July 20, 2021)
• Still a mystery why polls failed so markedly in 2020
  (The Conversation, May 20, 2021)
• Confronting the Bay of Pigs-New York Times suppression myth
  (The Conversation, April 2, 2021)
• Election polling faces a prolonged convalescence
  (Baltimore Sun, November 20, 2020)
• What polling could use now
  (The Conversation, November 10, 2020)
• Another polling embarrassment
  (The Conversation, November 4, 2020)
• A Q-and-A with a historian of election polls
  (The Conversation, November 3, 2020)
• How ‘Dewey defeats Truman’ election offers insight into 2020
  (Fortune, November 2, 2020)
• Why we are so enamored with elections polls
  (The Conversation, October 29, 2020)
• Five scenarios that could yet disrupt the campaign’s endgame
  (The Conversation, October 21, 2020)
• Poll-inspired cockiness and its hazards
  (The Hill, October 15, 2020)
• Epic miscalls and landslides unforeseen
  (The Conversation, October 14, 2020)
• Revisiting the first presidential debate
  (The Hill, September 28, 2020)
• Whatever happened to poll-bashing?
  (The Conversation, September 23, 2020)
• Tall tales about election polling
  (Baltimore Sun, September 11, 2020)
• Why polling failure is often journalistic failure
  (The Hill, August 30, 2020)
• The hazards of glide-path campaigning
  (The Hill, July 30, 2020)
• Pitfalls of political polling
  (Baltimore Sun, October 19, 2018)
• Quelques preuves seraient les bienvenues
  (Les Cahiers du Journalisme, January-March 2018)
• Hurricane wash-out
  (Crain’s NewsPro, October 2017)
• Woodward, Bernstein didn’t bring down Nixon
  (Baltimore Sun, June 13, 2017)
• Confronting the myths of the ‘Napalm Girl’
  (Baltimore Sun, March 31, 2017)
• The rise and fall of Netscape
  (Baltimore Sun, August 8, 2016)
• O.J. fervor and the ‘trial of the century’ myth
  (Baltimore Sun, June 9, 2016)
• The five media myths of Watergate
  (BBC News online, June 16, 2012)
• Story of the most famous seven words in U.S. journalism
  (BBC News online, February 10, 2012)
• Halloween myth of The War of the Worlds
  (BBC News online, October 29, 2011)
• William Randolph Hearst: Mythical media bogeyman
  (BBC News online, August 14, 2011)
• A dozen overrated: Twelve books not as good as their reputations
  (American Journalism 26, 1, Winter 2009)
• Lessons for American journalism from another time of upheaval
  (CBS ‘Outside Voices’ weblog, October 13, 2006)
• The grudging emergence of American journalism’s classic editorial: New details about “Is There A Santa Claus?”
  (American Journalism 22, 2, Spring 2005)
• American journalism’s exceptional year
  (Journalism History 29, 4, Winter 2004)
• Not a hoax: New evidence in the New York Journal‘s rescue of Evangelina Cisneros
  (American Journalism 19, 4, Fall 2002)
• Letter: Warmongering mythology
  (Washington Post, August 24 2002)
• You furnish the legend, I’ll furnish the quote
  (American Journalism Review, December 2001)
• Not likely sent: The Remington-Hearst ‘telegrams’
  (Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Summer 2000)
• A look back at a look ahead: How fared predictions for 20th-Century newspapers?
  (Editor&Publisher, December 25, 1999)
• “One of the fine figures in American journalism”: A searching reassesment of Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer
  (American Journalism 16, 4, Fall 1999)
• Nigerian dictator Abacha wrote book on press crackdowns
  (Freedom Forum, June 9, 1998)
• The new Afro pessimism
  (Hartford Courant, March 20, 1994)
• Refugees from Connecticut’s recession (First of a series)
  (Hartford Courant, December 6, 1993)
• Prospect of four-lane highway unsettles Amish in Pennsylvania
  (Hartford Courant, October 9, 1987)
• West Virginia haunted by Carbide toxic leak
  (Hartford Courant, December 27, 1985)
• The legacy of Bhopal (First of a series)
  (Hartford Courant, December 1, 1985)
• Nigeria’s military rulers impose ‘War on Indiscipline’
  (Associated Press, May 30, 1984)
• 46 sentenced to death in failed Cameroon coup
  (Associated Press, May 16, 1984)
• Political strife roils West Africa
  (Associated Press, April 9, 1984)
• Nigeria coup underscores fragility of civilian rule in Africa
  (Associated Press, January 4, 1984)
• Revolutionary regime takes hold in Upper Volta
  (Associated Press, November 26, 1983)
• Winner declared in Nigerian election five days after vote
  (Associated Press, August 11, 1983)
• Oil-rich Nigeria struggles to feed itself
  (Associated Press, June 19, 1983)
• Ivory Coast moves capital to ruler’s hometown in interior
  (Associated Press, May 10, 1983)
• Walesa appeal deepens despite being kept incognito
  (Associated Press, August 27, 1982)
• Focus on Geneva, world capital for disarmament talks
  (Associated Press, August 17, 1982)
• The ‘other’ Geneva arms talks
  (Associated Press, June 23, 1982)
• Native Poland not far from Pope’s thoughts during visit to Geneva
  (Associated Press, June 10, 1982)
• In Poland, 100 days of martial-law rule
  (Associated Press, March 23, 1982)
• Calm returns to Swiss cities after spasms of youth unrest
  (Associated Press, November 26, 1981)
• WHO overrides U.S. objections, approves baby-formula code
  (Associated Press, May 21, 1981)