On MSNBC this morning, I watched Elise Jordan’s focus groups from Green Bay, Wisconsin — the first after the nomination of Kamala Harris. I was honestly shocked that, after the start of this unprecedented presidential campaign by a Black and Asian-American woman, the first voices we’d hear would be from Trump voters. The next group was “right-leaning swing voters.” I was all the more shocked that all the voters in both groups were white. I debated whether to sermonize on this offensive lapse of judgment but instead went light, posting screen grabs of both groups on the socials and ..read more

The New York Times et al wish Joe Biden would go gentle into that good night. I wish mass media would instead. Here is a post from a thread: In this defensive New Yorker reaction to Joe Biden (finally) criticizing the press that has been criticizing him, Jay Caspian Kang shares an important insight about the falling power of the press. But I come to a different conclusion. Kang says that media are weakened and that’s what makes it easy for Trump and now Biden alike to attack them. I say what it shows instead is that as media realize they have lost the ability to set the agenda, their response ..read more

Here are two attempts to redraw the binary political taxonomies of today: In the FT, Gideon Rachman argues that after the “liberal false dawn” of Obama, “In the US and France, centrists and liberals are in full panic mode. Nationalist populism now looks like a permanent feature of Western politics, rather than a temporary aberration. The old left-right divide of the 20th century has given way to a new cleavage between liberal internationalists and populist nationalists.” Yet he offers a balm for the nerves: “But liberals should not panic. Dismantling American or French democracy would be no ..read more

This paper in Science on “managing extreme AI risks amid rapid progress” with 25 co-authors (Harari?) is getting quick attention. The paper leans heavily toward the AI doom, warning of “an irreversible loss of human control over AI systems” that “could autonomously deploy a variety of weapons, including biological ones,” leading if unchecked to “a large-scale loss of life and the biosphere, and the marginalization or extinction of humanity.” Deep breath. Such doomsaying is itself a perilous mix of technological determinism and moral panic. There are real, present-tense risks associated with A ..read more

I recently wrote an extensive analysis and criticism of a proposed California link tax, offering many alternatives. A state senator just proposed his own alternative — and it is even worse. Sen. Steve Glazer’s SB1327 would tax the collection of data for advertising by large platforms — onlyl those earning more than $2.5 billion in ad revenue — to support a job credit for local news organizations. Glazer calls this a “data extraction mitigation fee,” analogizing the collection of data to chemical companies polluting the land. Oh, please. I have many problems with this: Data are information an ..read more

It gives me no satisfaction to say this — indeed it fills me with trepidation for the nation — but The Times is broken.  I know some of you are thinking, “You only now realize this?” No, I’m only now saying it. I have been criticizing The Times for its willful credulity in the face of rising fascism and its bothsidesism, but also because it is the biggest and was the best we had and I wished it to be better. Now I come to wonder whether it can be.  The final straw is not just Politico’s report that Times Chairman and Publisher A.G. Sulzberger thinks he is entitled by birthright to i ..read more

In my paper on the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), I examine the history of newspapers’ hostile reception of new technologies and competitors, reaching back a century to the dawn of radio. NiemanLab published excerpts from the paper on the flaws in the legislation and alternatives. I thought some might enjoy other sections, including this one about the tactics newspaper publishes have brought to bear against intruders in what they claim as their turf: news. I also write about some of this in The Gutenberg Parenthesis. It’s a wonderful if in some ways appalling tale:  With ..read more

There is so much to parse in this Times column inspired by a paper examining alleged political leanings of large language models. First, the myth of a “center” is imposed on the machine as it is on journalism. That is an impossibility, especially when extremists weigh down the equation & move “center” by gravity downhill, towards them. Second, in its raw state the model reflects the collected corpus of digital content from those who had the power to publish. Thus, it will reflect that worldview; it is a reflection of that power. Imposing left/right/center on that says little about the mac ..read more

Regarding the supposed furor over #WokeGemini… If we saw generative AI as a creative tool, then I’d say imagining the founding of America with women & Black people at the table and the Catholic Church headed by Black women and Native Americans is a proper revision of history the way it should have been. The reaction to #WokeGemini says more about society than the tool itself; that’s what fascinates me about AI: its reflections. Right-wing columnists fear the anti-white machine programmed by commisars of what we used to call political correctness. And the extremist Murdoch media and pols h ..read more

I am coming to a conclusion I have avoided for my last three decades working on the internet and news: It may finally be time to give up on old journalism and its legacy industry.  I say this with no joy, no satisfaction at having tried to get newspapers and magazines to change, and much empathy for the journalists and others caught working in a dying sector and those who count on them. But the old news industry is gasping for air. I’m not suggesting performing euthenasia on what is left. Nor do I dance on the grave. In my time running a Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, now ending ..read more