Journalism
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A Short History of Now
So there must be something to it. Watch how often people interrupt each other with “So—.” Also watch for speeches starting with “So—.” The first speaker I heard do that was Larry Lessig, one of the world’s best, back in the aughts. Which is why the Web is still for writers. All writers. The Longing is… Continue reading
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Thoughts
An important extinction. Overheard (between veteran unemployed journalists): “I’m not a has-been. I’m a still-was.” Because you’re the only one who might employ you. “DIY journalism” just got uttered in a call I’m on. Its the windows, mostly. I didn’t like Boeing’s 787 eight years ago, and still don’t like it now. That’s my response… Continue reading
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Talking Right
Great speech by David Brooks at a recent ARC conference in London. I read here that he was booed and heckled, but in the video one only sees smiles, warmth, and occasional laughs (e.g. to “At Chicago I had a double major in history and celibacy”). It’s a short, deep, and caring talk that comes from… Continue reading
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Lifting the Lid on Government Meetings
Twenty-sixth in the News Commons series. On the left is Tom Evslin, former CTO for Vermont. On the right is the golden dome atop Vermont’s capitol building. Underneath that dome, and in countless spaces in government bodies everywhere are meetings recorded in video. Reviewing or reporting on those meetings is a chore. Unless that is,… Continue reading
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Fire and Rain
Twenty-fifth in the News Commons series Southern California has two seasons: Fire and Rain. Rain didn’t begin this year until a few days after Fire ended apocalyptically, incinerating much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades. Now Rain is here, with the occasional atmospheric river flowing across the faces of hills and mountains whose beards were just… Continue reading
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What Works After a Disaster Happens?
When Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina, the Swannanoa River rose three storys above its shores, all but erasing the town named after the river, and leaving hundreds homeless. But the challenge for Swannanoa was not just recovery. It was regeneration. For that, Swannanoa’s residents formed new kinds of partnerships and problem solutions that could… Continue reading
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And Now the #HughesFire
Twenty-fourth in the News Commons series Eigth on the #LAfires 7:35 am January 23, 2024—It’s morning now. The Hughes Fire is 17% contained but no longer interesting. The Sepulveda Fire broke out last night along the 405 freeway. It stopped at forty acres, and doesn’t matter much now. Here’s the path of one fire helicopter… Continue reading
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The Blame Game
Twenty-third in the News Commons series Seventh on the #LAfires Disaster coverage tends to go through four stages: Live reporting. TV stations stop all advertising and go into round-the-clock coverage. Radio stations drop the feeds from elsewhere and go wall-to-wall with live reports. Newspapers drop their paywalls. Coverage by the best of them ranges from… Continue reading
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How Facts Matter
Twenty-second in the News Commons series Sixth on the #LAfires Facts don’t matter, or they matter much less than people think—Daniel Kahnemann Facts don’t matter. What matters is how much we hate the person talking—Scott Adams But facts do matter when life and death are on the line. Or when one is recovering from a… Continue reading
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What Are Stories?
Twenty-first in the New Commons series Fifth on the #LAfires Several generations ago, my pal Jerry Solfvin and I were cutting a hole between the ceiling joists of a rented house in Durham, North Carolina. This was our first step toward installing a drop-down stairway to an attic space that had been closed since the… Continue reading
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Aviation vs. Fire
3:22pm—Hats off to Miles Archer for the links below, one of which goes here— —showing all the aircraft and their paths at once. You can start here at https://globe.adsbexchange.com/, which is kind of your slate that’s blank except for live aircraft over the Palisades Fire: Meanwhile all the media are reporting one home loss, in… Continue reading
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The Los Angeles Media Dashboard
Twentieth in the News Commons series Fourth on the #LAfires That collection of tabs is my dashboard of major media that inform my writing about the #LAfires. There are tabs for five TV stations, one radio station, and one newspaper: KNBC/4 “4 Los Angeles” KTLA/5 “LA’s Very Own” KABC/7 “7 Eyewitness News” KCAL/9 “KCAL NEWS… Continue reading
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Los Angeles Fires and Aftermath
Nineteenth in the News Commons series Third on the #LAfires 6:50am Friday, January 10, 2025—I will now shift my blogging about the #LAFires from the kind of continuous coverage I’ve done for the last three days to what we might call coverage of coverage. Or something beyond that: shifting to a new kind of news… Continue reading
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The Redstream Media
To identify the microphones in that river, here’s Apple: That river began with the copious red pissings of Rush Limbaugh. Now eight Rushians comprise most of the News Commentary flow on Apple Podcasts, and much of the whole podcast watershed as well. (None are so skilled as Rush, but that’s another story.) It’s not much different… Continue reading
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Think Globally, Eat Here
Fifteenth in the News Commons series. This semester’s Beyond the Web salon series for the Ostrom Workshop and Hamilton Lugar School at Indiana University is themed Think Globally, Eat Here—Small Solutions for Big Tech Problems. I will give the opening talk, about the News Commons (subject of fourteen prior posts here) at noon (Eastern) next… Continue reading
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When Radio Delivers
Helene was Western North Carolina‘s Katrina—especially for the counties surrounding Asheville: Buncombe, Mitchell, Henderson, McDowell, Rutherford, Haywood, Yancey, Burke, and some adjacent ones in North Carolina and Tennessee. As with Katrina, the issue wasn’t wind. It was flooding, especially along creeks and rivers. Most notably destructive were the Swannanoa River and French Broad River, which… Continue reading
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Open-Source Journalism
Fourteenth in the News Commons series. The main work of journalism is producing stories. Questions following that statement might begin with prepositions: on what, of what, about what. But the preposition that matters most is with what. Ideally, that would be with facts. Of course, facts aren’t always available in the pure form that researchers call data.… Continue reading
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A Better Way to Do News
Twelfth in the News Commons series Last week at DWeb Camp, I gave a talk titled The Future, Present, and Past of News—and Why Archives Anchor It All. Here’s a frame from a phone video: DWeb Camp is a wonderful gathering, hosted by the Internet Archive at Camp Navarro in Northern California. In this post I’ll… Continue reading
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The Future, Present, and Past of News
Eleventh in the News Commons series. all experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades For ever and forever when I move. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in Ulysses News flows. It starts with what’s coming up, goes through what’s happening, and ends up as what’s kept—if it’s lucky. Facts take the same route.… Continue reading