Happy birthday Lidka and Kristof
Webber filled with Polish Tastes ... Sunday with bisons and memories like no other ;-)
6:2 model in the familia loves all things New Amsterdam -- Smitten kitchen – Fearless cooking from a tiny NYC kitchen.
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Writing Clearly Is Harder Than It Looks: Francine Prose
“The
simplest definition may be best: To write clearly means that another
person can understand what we mean. Someone (not us) can figure out what
we are trying to say. Of course, an intelligent seven-year-old could
point out the problems with this.”Why The Novel Matters
Slavic Scenery
MEdia Dragon broke last week the blogger barrier as over 666,666 visitors of biblical proportions - touched the timeless bohemian links to stories that might matter ....
MEdia Dragon broke last week the blogger barrier as over 666,666 visitors of biblical proportions - touched the timeless bohemian links to stories that might matter ....
From the Bill of Rights to Leonard Cohen songs to 'Westworld,'
these works inspired a billionaire to help journalism
(Editors’ Note: I’m devoting today’s media roundup to a single
topic: One person’s view of the challenges to journalist and his attempts to
help.)
When Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, his new
employees were curious as to his views about the value of journalism,
particularly the work they do.
Bezos chose to speak in the language of stories, something the
journalists understood.
When he said he loved the obituary of a bouncer from
Washington’s 9:30 Club, the journalists saw that as appreciating strong
writing, feature work, personalities — and perhaps a respect for aspects of
local news. When Bezos said he liked a no-nonsense explainer about Syria’s
conflict, journalists saw support for contextual work and for coverage,
often expensive, of the world beyond America’s borders.
I’d asked Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, a fixture at
journalism conferences in recent years and an increasingly prominent funder of
several journalistic initiatives, if he’d be willing to illustrate his interest
in journalism in terms of literature, philosophy and pop culture.
Newmark liked the challenge, mulled over five selections and
spoke to me earlier this week about his picks and what they signified.
“Each of these pieces speaks of my own sense of mission, what I
should be doing in my life,” Newmark says. “These are the things that matter to
me … ultimately, they’re a call to action.”
(Note: Some readers blame Craigslist for hastening the decline
of newspapers’ classified industry, but I’d argue that other companies such as
Monster already had been moving in, serving people better, and the decline was
inevitable. Additionally, Newmark has been one
of the most serious funders at trying to prepare journalism for the
future.)
With that out of the way, let’s hit the list:
1. The Bill of Rights
The first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution mattered to
Newmark growing up in Morristown, N.J., a teenager on the humble side of town.
Those amendments were a set of values, like Sunday School or civics lessons,
and a promise of sorts for someone who would become a college scholarship kid.
“By then, I had a sense of what I was about,” Newmark says. The
Bill of Rights, to him, is all about fairness and respect and less directly
about opportunity. “The Bill of Rights tries to create level playing ground for
us” — regardless of creed, race, socioeconomic status.
It fueled his focus on freedom of the press, once he recognized
America needed a trustworthy press to protect democracy. Once he grew rich, it
was the basis for his efforts to fund journalism efforts.
2. Songs by Leonard Cohen (including “Anthem” and “Democracy”)
Cohen, the Bard of Montreal, grew up a strictly observant Jew
and a writer, and only belatedly a poet, singer, world wanderer and deep
believer in meditation. He entered Newmark’s world in 1988. The Cohen song that
hooked him wasn’t “Hallelujah,” which has become everyone’s
anthem, or “Suzanne,” the song interpreted by Judy Collins
that put Cohen on the map.
“I think I heard the album, ‘I’m Your Man,’ which spoke to me
pretty directly,” he says. Other albums followed, such as 1992’s “The Future,”
which included “Anthem.”
“Anthem” is a song about hope amidst darkness. It includes
lyrics such as: “There’s a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”
After the 2016 election, this idea — the future is imperfect but no setback is
a reason to give up — struck
a chord.
“It spoke to me, saying, ‘I need to speak out. I need to do
something,’” he says. ”Sometimes I’ll do that directly, or sometimes I’ll go
through back channels.” It’s something, he says, he has to do.
Cohen’s “Democracy,” written in the aftermath of Tiananmen
Square, is as fresh as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in New York’s outer
boroughs. “Democracy will come not through laws or governments, but through a
fresh wind, a hole in the air,” Shelagh
Huston wrote in 2016 for Quartz.
A few lines from the song:
Precisely, Newmark says.
“It prophesizes that something is going to happen,” he says. “A
higher power is saying I’m no big deal, but I’ve got to stand up and I’ve got
to be stubborn about it.”
3. This quote from Marshall McLuhan
The quote, from McLuhan’s book "Culture
Is Our Business," is probably a half-century old, given publishing
lead times, but it is as relevant as the latest article about Russian influence
in the 2016 elections, Newmark says.
“Whenever I try to read McLuhan, it goes over my head. Most of
McLuhan, I don’t get," he says. "But danah boyd posted this quote —
and it hit me like a lightning bolt.”
In Newmark’s view, McLuhan is describing what is happening, with
both civilians and military trying to manipulate your view of the truth — of
what is truth, what are facts. “It intensifies a sense of mission,” says
Newmark, who funds boyd’s Data and Society Group, the Tow Center at Columbia
University and fact-checking efforts (including one at Poynter.)
“The idea is that we are in the middle of the Information War —
I can fund the groups helping do the job (fighting disinformation), and they
are force multipliers, and they can be more effective than I could ever be
alone.”
Which leads us to…
4. Bandwidth, by Eliot Peper
Here’s a sentence from this fast-paced novel’s description:
“Like everyone else, Dag relies on his digital feed for everything—a feed that
is as personal as it is pervasive, and may not be as private as it seems.”
Welcome to 2018. There are a number of good books on this topic,
but Newmark salutes the book’s focus, its blunt description of the power of
people who control platforms.
"You can manipulate a person by manipulating a person’s
feed," he says. "You can tell a person what to believe, and maybe
tell a person what to do."
5. Westworld
Newmark’s appreciation of this began decades before the HBO
adaptation. The self-described “old-school nerd” was absorbed in Michael
Crichton’s heavily researched, multilayered story, which he wrote and directed
for a 1973 film starring Yul Brynner.
“It’s the best treatment of what machine-consciousness would be,
and how would the vast majority of humans treat them,” Newmark says.
“Westworld” recognizes a new dimension for tech, journalism and
policy: As machines became conscious, they become people, Newmark says. How
should we help them get their human rights recognized?
It’s not a predominant topic in the rush to artificial
intelligence, but it should be, he says.
“We need to think about this now, because if one is going
to think of machine-people as people, we need to speak now.”
On all these issues — bringing different people into journalism,
adding consciousness to tech issues, improving fact-checking and the battle against
disinformation — Newmark is taking on a bigger role after years of study.
I try, he says, “to
practice what I preach.” 
