Farhi is the Washington Post's former media reporter. He left the paper at the end of 2023 after nearly 36 years as a staff writer, during which he also covered business, politics and general assignment features. He has also been a senior contributing editor to the American Journalism Review and now contributes to the Atlantic, the Athletic, the Daily Beast, and Columbia Journalism Review. He has been a frequent commentator on TV and radio about the media industry.
Articles by or about Paul Farhi
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The appointment of a new inspector general isn’t typically the sexiest local-news topic, but it may have been the hottest story going this summer in Baltimore County. Amid suggestions of political favoritism and backroom deals, the county executive pushed out the incumbent inspector. Intense media coverage ensued. The Baltimore Sun and its upstart competitor, The Baltimore Banner, published dozens of news stories and editorials. The Baltimore Brew, a scrappy digital news site launched in 2010, scored a few...
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As Hurricane Helene ravaged the mountain communities of western North Carolina last fall, Blue Ridge Public Radio remained a beacon in the storm. With power knocked out throughout the region, the organization turned to portable generators to keep its two stations on the air. For days during and after the deluge, BPR was the only source of lifesaving news: weather updates, road closures, potable water locations. BPR now confronts a different kind of calamity. Ele...
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Donald Trump won the 2024 election with one of the smallest popular-vote margins in U.S. history, but in news deserts – counties lacking a professional source of local news – it was an avalanche. Trump won 91% percent of these counties over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, according to an analysis of voting data by Medill Journalism School’s State of Local News project. While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news...
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During 152 years of publication, the Cairo Citizen covered the Illinois town’s boom years, its long, grinding decline, its near-death from floods, its tumultuous racial history and its high-school championships and homecoming pageants. Launched just after the Civil War as the Cairo Bulletin, it published through the heyday of the steamboat, the railroad and the interstate. It didn’t survive Facebook. When the paper folded in 2020, there wasn’t much in the way of civic mourning....
Projects Paul Farhi has worked on.