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Thursday, January 07, 2021

Is Substack The New Journalism?

 Almanac: Milan Kundera on life

“We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (courtesy of Rod Dreher) Continue reading Almanac: Milan Kundera on life at About Last Night.... Read more


In Many Countries, Losing Restaurants Means Losing Community

Diego Salazar, former chair of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, has had a longer quarantine than many people. Sure, he and his wife order takeout – and it tastes great, but “I’d realize I was still missing everything about what once made me love food: the people who create it and the ‘sobremesa’ — the limitless chat after desserts, the reluctance to leave the table, the delight in shared experience.” – The New York Times


The Year In Reading Of A Writer Who Died Far Too Young

Anthony Veasna So’s Year in Reading is a heartbreaker. The 28-year-old died suddenly at the beginning of December, but his essay for The Millions was nearly finished. “I did love Girl, Woman,Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Or maybe I loved knowing the characters of this kaleidoscopic novel. Maybe I need to record the lives of as many archetypal Khmer queers I can imagine.” – The Millions


Media Manipulation from WWII to today

There’s a place for the rogue journalist who refuses to be manipulated and managed by the military. A place that has been explored extensively by Australian journalist and war correspondent Wilfred Burchett.Continue reading 


The Argument Over Who Controls The New Digital Public Squares

The speech platforms are rather closer to a form of mass voluntary intellectual pornography: a marketplace that lauds the basest instincts, incentivizes snark and outrage, brings us to revel in the savage burn. – National Affairs



Tamed Estate: News’ and Nine’s PR and the plight of the (Liberals’?) media

Old media caps off annus horribilis 2020 with its traditional horrible week. Michael West, standing in for Michael Tanner, looks at the fall of Fairfax, PR masquerading as journalism, who guards the Guardian, Seven News’ calls for war with China and how Scott Morrison’s media team has the game sown up.

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JEFF DUNETZ: Five Almost Serious, Unknown Truths About The Political World Learned In 2020.


Is Substack The New Journalism?

“In its variety, the Substack corpus resembles the blogosphere. It is produced by a mix of career journalists, bloggers, specialists, novelists, hobbyists, dabblers, and white-collar professionals looking to plump up their personal brands. The company has tried to recruit high-profile writers, offering (to a select few) health-care stipends, design help, and money to hire freelance editors. In certain instances, Substack has also paid advances, often in the generous six figures, incentivizing writers to produce work without employing them.” The New Yorker



What It Takes To Revive A Dead Language

The obvious case of a language being brought back to full life is Hebrew, which was used in Jewish religious ceremonies and texts but hadn’t been a full-fledged spoken language for about two millennia when a conscious decision was made to revive it for use in what would become Israel. Yet there was a couple of key conditions present for Hebrew’s success that weren’t there in the case of, for instance, Irish. – JSTOR Daily


Music As Advocacy Storytelling

“The way Ian Urbina tells it, musicians and journalists are both storytellers — one using sound, the other leveraging words. That kindred connection is part of what led the 48-year-old to launch, about a year ago, his venture The Outlaw Ocean Music Project. As of early November 2020, over 400 musicians from more than 60 countries have translated his stories into music that is heard by millions globally on more than 200 music streaming platforms, including Spotify and Pandora, according to Urbina.” – San Francisco Classical Voice



Gizmodo – “When we ask who should take the rap for the decline of local news, most folks agree the blame partially lies on Google’s shoulders. The tech giant has spent the past decade systematically swallowing a larger and larger chunk of the digital ad market, diverting the dollars that outlets—particularly smaller outlets—desperately need. That’s not the only diversion that Google’s been doing. In an article published in the Washington Post this week, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the National University of Singapore described how they tried to figure out whether Google might be stymieing people hunting for local news on the company’s search engine. Close to 100,000 searches later, the team reported that, yep, it looked like Google’s engine defaulted to squashing struggling local outlets, and highlighting prominent national publishers in their stead. The team’s findings were published in the December issue of Nature Human Behaviour…”



The Acts Of Art And Creativity Censored In 2020

The year was terrible for global pandemic reasons, but also for brutality against artists, journalists, writers, playwrights, cinematographers, and more. How bad was it? “Civil rights were found to have deteriorated in nearly every country.” – Hyperallergic