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“How can the power of algorithms be understood and, when called for, controlled? We are only starting to understand how these strings of computer code are shaping our view of the world. As researchers point out, inherent biases in algorithms can lead to startling discriminatory possibilities, with important consequences.
Investigative journalist Nick Davies on the myth of press freedom.
JOURNAL editors soon find out how collegiate their colleagues are when they try to find someone to review a paper. It is a lot of work but, as Mathieu O’Neil has discovered, sometimes an editor can wait months only to get back a useless paragraph.
Robert McChesney, a leader in challenging the corporate media's role in degrading democracy, carries on this fight with Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century. In the book, he makes an urgent and compelling argument for ending communication monopolies and building a post-capitalist democracy that serves people over corporations. You can obtain the book now with a contribution to Truthout by clicking here.
n 1998, Ralph Terkowitz, a vice president of The Washington Post Co., got to know Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who were looking for backers. Terkowitz remembers paying a visit to the garage where they were working and keeping his car and driver waiting outside while he had a meeting with them about the idea that eventually became Google. An early investment in Google might have transformed the Post's financial condition, which became dire a dozen years later, by which time Google was a multi-billion dollar company. But nothing happened. “We kicked it around,” Terkowitz recalled, but the then-fat Post Co. had other irons in other fires.
Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.
Clay Shirky has some some truths: "Maybe 25 year olds will start demanding news from yesterday, delivered in an unshareable format once a day. Perhaps advertisers will decide 'Click to buy' is for wimps.
Former newspaper editor David Boardman says too many newspaper companies and industry executives are fooling themselves by pretending that their business is better than it really is.
Newspapers are dead--or are they? A. H. Belo (NYSE: AHC ) , which runs and owns three metropolitan daily newspapers, has more than doubled its share price over the past year. It currently trades at 1.6 times its price to book value, and cash and cash equivalents account for about a third of its current market capitalization. Does A. H. Belo still offer good value at its current price?
Now that we all have publishing power, the mechanisms by which we share information are increasingly dictated by networked structures rather than institutional ones. And now that publishing has changed, production — including beat reporting — shouldn’t just mirror institutional structures of the past either.
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Early last week, Ken Silverstein — former Harpers editor and co-founder with Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch — quit Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media, citing management incompetence. By the end of the week, he went a step further, publishing a searing takedown of First Look on Politico.
Elina Makri is the co-founder of oikomedia.com, a networked digital platform designed to trace and connect journalists, fixers and media professionals around the globe.
It is far easier for the establishment to rule as long as they can keep the people thinking that they rule themselves. U.S. elections are a sham, and U.S. politicians are a disgrace. But as long as people can vote, they feel convinced that they can influence government.
The past 12 months have been an invigorating time for the newspaper media business. The next 12 are shaping up to be even better.
People will not need journalists to bring them news in the future, we have automated algorithms and social connections for that. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can start to build a better (and economically viable) model.
ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.
Some argue that the rise of the internet has destroyed — or severely crippled — journalism, but all it has really done is disrupted traditional mass-media business models.
While we're on the subject of journalists, Clay Shirky points out something funny about the way we discuss the future of print: We tend to talk as if there might be one.
The Roanoke Times, the local paper in my family home, is a classic metro daily, with roots that go back to the 1880s. Like most such papers, it ran into trouble in the middle of last decade, as print advertising revenue fell, leaving a hole in the balance sheet that digital advertising couldn’t fill. When the 2008 recession accelerated those problems, the Times’ parent company, Landmark, began looking for a buyer, eventually selling it to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Media Group in 2013. The acquisition was greeted with relief in the newsroom, as Buffett had famously assured the employees at his earlier purchases “Your paper will operate from a position of financial strength.” Three months after acquiring the Times, BH Media fired 31 employees, a bit over a tenth of the workforce.
Five years ago Clay Shirky wrote an eloquent blog post titled “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable.” His essential argument was that we were only at the very beginning of trying to figure out new models for journalism following the cataclysmic changes wrought by the Internet — like Europeans in the decades immediately following the invention of Gutenberg’s press. Along with a subsequent talk he gave at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, Shirky helped me frame the ideas that form the foundation of “The Wired City,” my book about online community journalism.
A soldier signs up in the knowledge that he might, one day, be obliged to take another human life; a nurse is sure to face the sight of blood and a police officer must be able to arrest a criminal suspect. Even in the apparently cushioned and glamorous world of the media there are certain dangers that come with the job. Some happily accept the risks, heading off to the front line of war zones, investigating corrupt networks or filming rioters at close quarters. But should physical and psychological harm be a threat even inside the newsroom?
Katharine Viner, deputy editor of the Guardian and editor-in-chief of Guardian Australia, gave the AN Smith lecture in Melbourne on Wednesday night. Here's her spee
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