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) - 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)
