Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Nov. 17, 2017 5:00 a.m. ET Less than a year after Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei launched the media startup Axios with plans to upend the way news organizations deliver stories and advertising, the company is plotting a major expansion of its newsroom. To fund the expansion, Axios has raised $20 million, according to Axios co-founder…
Going beyond search, the internet giant is promoting a single result over all others, and many are contentious, improbable or laughably incorrect Google handles 90% of the world’s internet searches, and it increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions. Here’s how the algorithms are—and aren’t—working Google became the world’s go-to source of information…
MTV MTV’s short-lived animated series Clone High USA, which premiered 15 years ago this month, is one of those brilliant cult TV classics, like Arrested Development or Freaks and Geeks. The premise of the show, which was created by Chris Miller and Phil Lord, is honestly best described in its theme song: “Way way back in the…
Many publishers believe consumers would pay more attention to online ads if they were just better. Now Fusion Media Group is acting on that sentiment: It is trying out a new system that rewards advertisers that make the most engaging ads by giving them bonus impressions. The Univision-owned digital media company, whose 12 sites include…
Illustration by Jim Cooke/Deadspin/GMG Earlier this week Deadspin published a story about how SB Nation team sites’ traffic accounts for the vast majority of the network’s total traffic, even though the people who staff these sites are primarily paid low monthly stipends or nothing at all. The story detailed, among other things, how a Vox…
Depending on who’s defining it, to whom, and why, SB Nation is either a popular website best-known for puckish, irreverent coverage and such whimsical projects as Jon Bois’s 17776, or a sprawling network of “team” or “fan” websites, each tightly focused on a particular topic, like the New York Mets or professional boxing. In either…
Yesterday, the BBC revealed that actor Jodie Whittaker would be taking over for Peter Capaldi as the lead in the network’s long-running scifi program “Doctor Who.” Whittaker, already a veteran of TV-drama at 35, will become the first woman to play the role of “The Doctor” in the character’s 54 history of onscreen and offscreen appearances….
On July 2, President Donald Trump tweeted out a video showing himself, as he had appeared in a 2007 WrestleMania event, attacking a person whose head had been replaced with the CNN logo. Two days later, CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski wrote an article about the origins of the video and the anonymous Reddit user who…
Advisers who represent what remains of Gawker Media Group in bankruptcy are exploring whether they can bring a viable lawsuit against Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire who helped finance Hulk Hogan’s successful legal battle against the publisher. Gawker on Tuesday asked a bankruptcy judge for permission to subpoena Mr. Thiel to obtain information upon…
We—along with Cesar, who works at the deli counter—would like to extend our congratulations to our friend Peggy Noonan, who has just been awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. On Ronald Reagan, and other matters. It was almost exactly a year ago that a Florida jury returned a $140 million verdict that sent Gawker…