more money in trolling
I made this video for Instagram [in 2019] just over two years ago. It should probably be hosted here as well. Transcript: “what happens when there’s...
Category: journalism
Junk
I grew up when America was first discussing “junk food”: ready-to-eat foods that were filling, and tasty, but neither nutritious nor healthy. I feel like we’ve ...
China 2016, USA 2020
Christina Xu: Contrary to popular sentiment in the US, Chinese readers don’t blindly trust the state-run media. Rather, they distrust it so much that they don’t...
keeping the hamsters alive: clickbait and the information market
google just served me up the following “news” without knowing my full identity: this appears to be their default offering for an English speaker in ...
How North Koreans (and Cubans) read the state-sponsored newspaper
From the excellent blog Ask a Korean!, a very familiar account of how readers adjust to propaganda in order to eke out the truth: Take, for example, the war in ...
art/business/design/ideas/journalism/language/latin america/mental illness/movies & television/music/nature/people/play/power/technology/work
About a year of tweets, archived here for posterity.
I began this current journal, XSML, with the intent of reducing my own notes to extra small, XML-friendly updates. Increasingly, I have been drawn by the allure...
re: Egypt. Enough with the prattle about new media. It’s the economy, stupid. (And satellite TV.)
Here’s a headline you don’t want to miss, from January 18, 2007: MIDDLE EAST: Population growth poses huge challenge for Middle East and North Afric...
The separation of powers and personalities.
Yesterday I spent some time thinking about the differences between grifters and leaders and how the public stage beckons and rewards them both. So much so that,...
On friendly politicians and presidential character.
My parents just sent me a story in the Washington Post by Anne Kornblut that focuses on the personal slights and favors that underpin so much of our politics. I...
If you know any Italians, please forward this anecdote to them.
An anecdote that must be shared: Their favorite activity, however, seems to be holding joint press conferences. At one of their most memorable appearances toget...
A nail-biter, page-turner, on the edge of your seats drama… about cap and trade.
Ryan Lizza’s recent account of the birth and death of the most promising U.S. response to global warming is by far one of the best written thrillers I hav...
Right wing frustration over Colbert’s testimony to Congress is the best news I’ve heard this week.
Our society and economy would be much, much better off if debaters, especially on television, were able to call each others’ bluff with the simple use of ...
News as meat: raw vs. aged prime, ground vs. choice cuts.
Or, to fight commoditization, provide analysis. I pay to read The New Yorker because its reporters provide a service that is rare in the information marketplace...
Falsehoods being traded as facts, “irrespective of their validity.”
The problem with so much journalism: Mr. Loeb’s views, irrespective of their validity, point to a bigger problem for the economy: If business leaders have a suc...
Countering the real threat of fake news.
Short version: To counter the real threat of fake stories – e.g., “Right-Wingers Stand By Their Fabricated Mexican Drug Cartel Raid Story” – it̵...
For it before he was against it, finance journalism edition.
Ouch. Matthew Yglesias points out that Michael Lewis, now making mint by ridiculing banksters, only recently ridiculed their critics.
IT circa 1880: the newspaper.
News journalists and software developers are two branches of the same tree: information technology.
Is the web making journalism more effective and thus more pleasurable? Maybe.
Context transforms content. It’s not that people like reading at a computer, though many have more opportunities to do so in the modern workplace. It̵...
Journalists: your job is to speak truth to power. That’s it.
America would be a stronger, more democratic and far wealthier nation if our journalists asked questions as directly as the team of Frank Dohmen and Klaus-Peter...
On unsubscribing to BoingBoing, thanks to Google Reader, curiosity and time.
There was a time, before I always read MetaFilter and Andy Baio’s waxy.org/links, before I checked Jon Gruber’s Daring Fireball and Bruce Schneier&#...