Almanac: Milan Kundera on life
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
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.
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