Reading list
Shortform reading
This is an incomplete list of the shortform reading (and listening and watching) I’ve been doing lately.
How Axios rebranded conservative ideology as objectivity
The biggest lie in media is the one that it tells about itself.
Billionaires Destroyed American News Media On Purpose
Earlier this week I met someone new and he asked me what I do for a living, and I said “I’m a writer,” and he said “Oh, what do you write?” This conversation happens often enough, and in virtually the same words, that I recognized right away where we were headed. I told him about Tabs and at that point although my new friend didn’t know it yet, we were already on a greased slide toward the moment where I would say: “…but these days I only write it once or twice a week, because the American news media has been systematically and intentionally destroyed by a handful of billionaires.”
Old Tricks, New Tech: How Legacy Media Capture Fuels Today's Digital Authoritarianism
This model of media capture has since become a case study in soft authoritarian control. Its blueprint rests on four pillars: the takeover of public media, the political capture of the media regulator, the deployment of state funds as leverage over editorial content, and the strategic acquisition of private outlets. This formula has been successfully exported—with variations—to other countries. ... Efforts to manipulate the media are nothing new; history is littered with regimes that sought to bend the press to their will. What distinguishes this modern form of capture, however, is the role of the private sector. Corporations reliant on government contracts or regulatory leniency buckled under pressure, buying up media outlets and turning them into mouthpieces of state propaganda. In the digital age, media capture is often coupled with digital authoritarianism, where governments and non-state actors collaborate to use technologies to conduct surveillance, restrict access to information, and distort the journalistic ecosystem with authoritarian-friendly outlets and campaigns of disinformation.
#extremism · #free-press · #free-speech · #media · #tech-industry
They're Literally Angry at Superman for Being Nice
How James Gunn's comments about "basic human kindness" triggered a predictable right-wing media meltdown.
The true solution, perhaps, is more solidarity and more sincerity.
Sorry Not Sorry: The Media's Hollow Year-End Ritual
But here's the real issue: This approach to accountability—treating it as just another year-end content opportunity—actively undermines actual media criticism. When media mistakes become cute confessional content, we lose the ability to have serious conversations about institutional failures and their real-world consequences.
Let's be clear: Getting things wrong in journalism isn't supposed to be endearing or worthy of celebration. It's supposed to be something you work to avoid, especially when your mistakes can shape public understanding of crucial issues.
What Are We Dune 2 Journalism?
But being a journalism grad student right now must feel like studying paleontology in the hopes that when you graduate you’ll find a job as a dinosaur.
Tim Burke's Indictment Is A Political Choice Disguised As A Legal Act
The government’s choice to prosecute Burke for doing what journalists do reflects an alarmingly sclerotic conception of what it means to do that work. It’s one that has serious implications for the future of an industry already in turmoil. The digital age will yield more Tim Burkes—people who have the skill to track down newsworthy information in the dustiest corners of the internet, and the opportunity to share it in order to better inform the public. The more reason they have to fear FBI agents knocking on their door, the likelier they are to stop, sigh, and close the browser window instead.
#hacking · #journalism · #law · #media
The Vice Media Collapse Was Entirely The Fault Of Incompetent, Fail-Upward Brunchlords
This, somehow, often gets distorted into the “unforeseen challenges facing modern online media ventures today” by a feckless press pretending to ascertain what went wrong without pissing off management.
When it comes to financing Vice journalism and keeping the lights on, the problem wasn’t the people doing the actual fucking work. Nor is it the costs of doing actual journalism. ...
But again, if you read most mainstream analysis of the Vice collapse, executive incompetence is either downplayed or simply nowhere to be found. Instead, the collapse of Vice, like most mismanaged modern U.S. media companies, is often left causation free, somehow the unfortunate, unforeseen consequence of ambiguous externalities in the thankless job of informing the public about factual reality online.