Economics, technology, and how we think.
Chinese manufacturing giant Foxconn claims to be raising its wages and cutting overtime, and it seems fair to attribute at least some of that to NYT’s excellent coverage of Apple’s manufacturing there, which put some pressure on them. Elsewhere on the internet Jeff Jarvis explains why he insists that news become profitable, rather than relying on …
Continue reading “Question for Jarvis: How will we pay for NYT’s Foxconn coverage?”
I’m not a fan of paywalls and have written against the Times’ in particular, but this ad is fairly moving. It captures quickly and simply both in image and text why you should read The New York Times. Because there are unbelievably important things happening in the world, and because you need to expand your …
I’m in the middle of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. From Chapter 16: Nisbett and Borgida found that when they presented their students with a surprising statistical fact, the students managed to learn nothing at all. But when the students were surprised by individual cases – two nice people who had not helped – …
Nieman Lab – far and away the best resource for tracking the evolution of journalism – has a good post up the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership, and on what lessons journalism can learn from open source. Overall it’s characteristally excellent, but I have to take issue with this: Finding 4: * Open-source development is collaborative, …
In a lengthy new post, Clay Shirky hits on a point that I think doesn’t get mentioned enough: Here’s what the newspaper business sounds like: the modestly talented son of the founder can generate double-digit margins based on little more than the happy accident that there are people who like football and buy cars living …
At The Atlantic Tech David Wheeler has a piece on the decline of witty headline writing: In a widely circulated 2010 article criticizing SEO practices, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten made the same point by citing a Post article about Conan O’Brien’s refusal to accept a later time slot on NBC. The print headline: “Better …
One of the things I love about ProPublica, the relatively young investigative journalism nonprofit, is that it states as its focus “stories with ‘moral force.’” But what kind of journalism fits this category? Upton Sinclair? Nick Kristof? My fear is that if we drafted a list of what and who comes to mind, it would …
My friend and former colleague Andrea Zak comments on my post on Facebook’s news algorithms, over at her blog: This technology-induced bubble is particularly problematic in that it is human nature to accept facts and opinions that align with personal beliefs and disregard information that clashes. Exactly right. Just to complicate things a bit more, …
George Packer may not be right about Twitter, but he’s right on in his assessment of political journalism. In this blog post he calls out specific writers in specific pieces for focusing entirely on political performance and perception. Importantly, he puts this sort of empty journalism side-by-side substantive reporting on other issues in order to …
I may not own an NBA team, but since everyone and their grandmother seems to be weighing in on the future of news and journalism, I figured I’d share some thoughts. That’s a big part of what this blog is supposed to be about, after all. It’s not intended to be a unified theory and …
beyond the times 