“Reading skills have been lost. Only a small minority of Americans now have the ability to read and understand a book—book-reading now is the purview of the personality type drawn to endurance sports—which means most of us are functionally illiterate for democratic purposes.”
Ronan Farrow's book excerpts deliver
Another excerpt from Ronan Farrow’s upcoming book, “Catch and Kill,” is out today on The New Yorker’s website. In this part, Farrow details how a private spy who manipulated actress Rose McGowan in service of Harvey Weinstein was unmasked.
The first excerpt, released on Monday, was a chilling account of how Farrow was stalked by two operatives working for the Israeli private intelligence agency Black Cube while he was working on a story about Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct.
Part three of this series will be released Wednesday. Farrow’s book is due out Oct. 15, and early accounts say it's a must-read.
All the newsletter that's fit to print
I’ve already mentioned this a couple of times before, but I continue to be impressed with The New York Times’ special “Impeachment Briefing” newsletter. It typically comes out in the late afternoon or early evening. Not only does it link to Times stories, but it includes original reporting. For instance, Monday’s newsletter included newsletter writer Noah Weiland’s quick three-question Q&A with Lara Jakes, who covers the State Department, as well as linking to stories from other outlets.
It keeps you up to date on the latest impeachment doings in five minutes.
Good news for people who love news
Good news. One of the better TV news shows is being renewed.
Axios, DCTV and HBO have renewed “Axios on HBO” for 2020 and 2021 with 12 episodes for each season. The rest of Season 2 returns at 6 p.m. Oct. 20 for four consecutive Sundays on all HBO platforms.
“One of the things that drives ‘Axios on HBO’ is the reporters who are super experts, super interested in what they’re reporting on and deeply, deeply sourced and (have a) connection in a niche sort of way,” O’Neill told me. “We don’t have to do the generalities and tell people what they’re about to see, what they’re seeing and what they just saw. They can just jump right into it with these informed journalists
FBI viewed more positively; deep partisan divide over ICE – Despite historically low levels of public trust in the federal government, Americans across the political spectrum continue to overwhelmingly express favorable opinions of a number of individual federal agencies, including the Postal Service, the National Park Service, NASA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC
South Park offers mocking 'apology' to China over episode that criticises free speech policies - ABC News
She's everywhere you look
Katie Couric in January 2018. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Katie Couric is seemingly everywhere these days: Instagram, Netflix, National Geographic and Twitter, where she tweets often to her 1.7 million followers. Later this week, she launches her podcast “Next Question.”
She will receive the 2019 Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism at the Poynter Institute’s annual Bowtie Ball in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Nov. 2.
Over the weekend, Couric was profiled by The New York Times’ Kate Dwyer. Couric’s instinct to embrace social media goes back to her days of anchoring the “CBS Evening News.”
“I remember when I was at CBS, during the Gulf oil spill, I wanted to take questions from Twitter on the evening newscast because sometimes, when you cover these stories every day, you lose sight of some very simple questions,” Couric told the Times. “And I suggested it, and I remember the vice president of the news division said it was ‘beneath the anchor of the CBS News to take questions from the Twitter,’ and I remember thinking, ‘If you have an ability to interact with real people — the viewers who you’re trying to serve — why wouldn’t you do that?’”
She remains as active as ever on as many social network platforms as possible.
“I don’t want to use the ‘relevant’ word, but it’s just wanting to continue to have a voice, and I think that’s what everybody really wants,” Couric said.
There’s plenty more to Dwyer’s piece in the Times, including Couric’s time at the “Today” show and the Matt Lauer controversy, so check it out.
Earth and Space Science News (EOS) – “Climate change isn’t just captured by thermometers—grapes can also do the trick. By mining archival records of grape harvest dates going back to 1354, scientists have reconstructed a 664-year record of temperature traced by fruit ripening. The records, from the Burgundy region of France, represent the longest series of grape harvest dates assembled up until now and reveal strong evidence of climate change in the past few decades. Science with Grapes As far back as the 19th century, scientists have been using records of grape harvest dates to track climatic changes. “Wine harvest is a really great proxy for summer warmth,” said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York not involved in the research. “The warmer the summer is, the faster the grapes develop, so the earlier the harvest happens…”
New Cybersecurity and Privacy Law in NY Affects Employers in NY and Beyond
TAKEAWAYS
- Regardless of their location or size, employers that receive, collect or otherwise possess private information about New York residents must comply with the New York Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security Act (“SHIELD Act”)
- Even employers with no New York employees may trigger coverage based on information collected through their online hiring processes.
- Employers with such data must adopt cybersecurity data safeguards that comply with the provisions of the SHIELD Act and are subject to notification requirements in the event of a data breach…”
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- Why Some People Become Lifelong Reade
- The Atlantic – “They can be identified by their independent-bookstore tote bags, their “Book Lover” mugs, or—most reliably—by the bound, printed stacks of paper they flip through on their lap. They are, for lack of a more specific term, readers. Joining their tribe seems simple enough: Get a book, read it, and voilà! You’re a reader—no tote bag necessary. But behind that simple process is a question of motivation—of why some people grow up to derive great pleasure from reading, while others don’t. That why is consequential—leisure reading has been linked to a range of good academicand professional outcomes—as well as difficult to fully explain. But a chief factor seems to be the household one is born into, and the culture of reading that parents create within it. The size of the American reading public varies depending on one’s definition of reading. In 2017, about 53 percent of American adults (roughly 125 million people) read at least one book not for school or for work in the previous 12 months, according to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Five years earlier, the NEA ran a more detailed survey, and found that 23 percent of American adults were “light” readers (finishing one to five titles per year), 10 percent were “moderate” (six to 11 titles), 13 percent were “frequent” (12 to 49 titles), and a dedicated 5 percent were “avid” (50 books and up)…”
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