Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Alphabet Inc.’s Google has agreed to meet with a group of publishers next week at four of its global offices to discuss their concerns about its preparations for Europe’s forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation, according to people familiar with the matter. Some publishers have been critical of Google’s stance on the sweeping new data-protection law…
When I was about 30, I was hired to be an editor at The Wall Street Journal. There was no good reason for this. I was a pretty good writer, and I knew the rules of grammar and was in general interested in a lot of stuff. But nothing on my résumé would have pointed…
Some employees in a Wells Fargo WFC +0.15% & Co. unit that handles business banking improperly altered information on documents related to corporate customers, according to people familiar with the matter. The behavior again raises questions about Wells Fargo’s risk-management practices and controls. The bank has been sanctioned in recent months by federal regulators for problems in these areas…
I’ve got a great idea for a start-up. Want to hear the pitch? It’s called the 75 Cent Dollar Store. We’re going to sell dollar bills for 75 cents — no service charges, no hidden fees, just crisp $1 bills for the price of three quarters. It’ll be huge. You’re probably thinking: Wait, won’t your…
Many web publishers have been jilted by Facebook. Now they are quickly falling hard for Apple News. They just hope that this new love leads to new revenue. After a shaky start which led many in the media world to doubt whether Apple was serious about the product (the Wall Street Journal reported in 2016…
Horseshoe crabs are sometimes called “living fossils” because they have been around in some form for more than 450 million years. In this time, the Earth has gone through multiple major ice ages, a Great Dying, the formation and subsequent breaking up of Pangaea, and an asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs and most of…
Illustration: Jim Cooke This is the story of how corporate raiding, complacency, excess, and incompetence are gutting a media company that matters to tens of millions of people. It’s not a novel story, and perhaps not even scandalous by the standards of corporate opulence: A shark-obsessed boss, millions wasted on consultants, and an executive who…
I could only have seen it there, on the waxed hardwood floor of my elementary-school auditorium, because I was young then, barely 7 years old, and cable had not yet come to the city, and if it had, my father would not have believed in it. Yes, it had to have happened like this, like…
If I get addicted to vaping, I thought, in March, I will always remember this Texas strip mall. I was walking out of a store called Smoke-N-Chill Novelties, in Southwest Austin, holding a receipt for $62.95 and two crisp, white shrink-wrapped boxes. I got into the driver’s seat of a rental car and began to…
Google disclosed how it will help publishers obtain tracking consent from users during a call last week with the IAB Europe GDPR Transparency and Consent steering committee, and its approach could spell trouble for media and ad tech companies. The consent gathering tool, called “Funding Choices,” is in beta with some DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP)…