Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
“Just by a quick show of hands, has anyone heard of a D.A.O. or an agent before?” asked Jonathan Mohan. He was in his mid-twenties and wore a beige Bitcoin T-shirt. As if to scratch my head, I halfway raised my right arm. A dozen others raced up past mine. Forty or fifty of us…
What Happens When the Media Ignores You This morning, a couple hundred graduate students began their studies at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. I was asked to offer opening remarks about “the state of the media.” Below is an excerpt of that speech. I’d like to talk to you today about what that world looks like…
For the black community in Chicago and elsewhere, Johnson Publishing Company represented a certain kind of hope. The company’s magazines, most notably Ebony and Jet, gained prominence during the struggle for civil rights — Jet published graphic photos of the murdered black teenager Emmett Till that helped intensify the movement — and made it their…
Secret FBI rules allow agents to obtain journalists’ phone records with approval from two internal officials — far less oversight than under normal judicial procedures. The classified rules, obtained by The Intercept and dating from 2013, govern the FBI’s use of national security letters, which allow the bureau to obtain information about journalists’ calls without going to a…
In his forthcoming book, “The Voyeur’s Motel,” acclaimed journalist and nonfiction author Gay Talese chronicles the bizarre story of Gerald Foos, who allegedly spied on guests at his Colorado motel from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s. But Talese overlooked a key fact in his book: Foos sold the motel, located in Aurora, Colo., in…
» FRIDAY UPDATE: Weekly newspaper publisher Mark Thomason says he was called in Friday morning to submit to a drug test, which is one of the conditions of his bond. Had he failed the test, Thomason said, there were deputies waiting to take him into custody. ‘Retaliation for use of the Open Records Act will…
Raymond Williams said, “A difficulty arises with the whole concept of masses … There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.” (H/T Jay Rosen) Part I of this comic reveals what happens when the news industry treats people as masses (aka “the audience”). It’s a categorical error. When newsrooms…
Facebook planted a flag Wednesday, declaring that the site will give greater weight to material posted by your friends and deemphasize content published by businesses and media outlets. The social network approached the issue with a rare bit of candor, stating that the change to its News Feed will likely hurt traffic to external websites….
As I taught, I lived in a locked compound under complete surveillance: Every room was bugged, every class recorded. I scribbled down conversations as they happened and buried my notes in a lesson plan. I wrote at night, erasing the copy from my laptop each time I signed off, saving it to USB sticks…
Photo: AP The Reuters Digital News Report is co-sponsored by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and is available online at digitalnewsreport.org. Reuters is launching their 2016 Digital News Report at the Tow Center this afternoon. Click here for the livestream. Check back later for Emily Bell’s presentation of Tow research on the close relationship…