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News market fails to be as lousy as ProPublica hopes
Said one director of investigative journalism outfit ProPublica when it launched (my itals): ProPublica may help lead the way to crafting new approaches addressing the market failure that seems to be taking hold in some segments of publishing, and that threatens a real loss to the health of our democracy. Market failure, eh? Looks like…
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ProPublica’s flabby Al Hurra investigation
Its takedown of feeble, US-funded news channel Al Hurra sounds like soft target city. The promised revelation?
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Wealth, leisure and the attention economy in the 18C
A while back, Clay Shirky (Gin, Television and Social Surplus) invoked 18C England in arguing that gin was the enabling – and stupefying – technology of rapid urbanisation. Television, he argued, played the same role in – presumably, he doesn’t really elaborate – the suburbanisation of the US in the second half of the 20C.…
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Media deathlock: newspapers, politics and David Davis
David Davis‘ decision to resign as a Conservative MP to re-contest his seat is one of the more extraordinary political decisions of our time. The fact that a former newspaper editor of the old right (Kelvin MacKenzie) may be his only competition only adds to the strangeness. To me, it’s like watching a mutual embrace…