Wednesday, December 08, 2021

Considering the challenges that face shuttered newspapers with decades or even centuries of material to preserve


Considering the challenges that face shuttered newspapers with decades or even centuries of material to preserve - Tedium – Dead on Archival: “…Newspapers and print journalism in general have been dying a slow death for more than 20 years now. While causes and the current state of the industry are very much in debate, there is little argument that print journalism is currently in a dire state. The Hussman School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill counted some 1,800 American newspapers that have closed since 2004. The corresponding loss of readership has been shocking, totaling nearly 50 million with unclear evidence whether those news audiences have moved online. For example, Nieman Lab examined the aftermath of The Independent, a British newspaper, choosing to close its print operations in favor of online-only distribution. 

When the paper made the decision in 2016, its print circulation was only 40,000, compared to more than 58 million online readers. However, those print readers accounted for more than 80 percent of the consumption of The Independent’scontent. The consequences of these closures have not been evenly distributed geographically in the U.S. California lost the most daily publications; New York and Illinois lost the most weeklies. 
More than 70 percent of closures were in metro areas that served hyperlocal communities, like suburbs and urban neighborhoods “where residents have historically relied on community weeklies to keep them informed.” Rural communities have seen closures too, of course, but surprisingly, only around 500 of these papers have closed or merged since 2004. The study went on to note that the vast majority of daily newspapers in America have a circulation of less than 15,000 issues. What happens when a newspaper closes really depends on where it happens. Most major cities still have at least one print publication but closure can be devastating in rural areas. The lack of information can have devastating effects too numerous to list here. However, John Oliver did a pretty great deep dive into the consequences of all this in 2016…”


  1. “The broadening of personhood to include some nonhuman entities is not so much a recent adaptation of an old legal concept as it is a return to an even older one” — Justin E.H. Smith (Université Paris Diderot) on the personalization of nature
  2. Making discussions of cosmopolitanism more cosmopolitan — short reflections from nine philosophers initiate a project to draw upon Chinese philosophical traditions in order to explore alternative understandings of the nature and future of cosmopolitanism
  3. Part of his legacy is the motivating of “a history of political philosophy that does not cleave to exclusionary conceptions of the discipline” — an appreciation of Charles Mills by Sophie Smith (Oxford)
  4. “Almost every person has reason to avoid subjection to digital recording whenever possible” — Elizabeth O’Neill (Eindhoven) on the “spectacular set of new threats” we face owing to the combination of digital recording, the internet, and artificial intelligence
  5. “Living in the now does not entail a refusal to care about the future, only a refusal to condition happiness and meaning on it” — John Martin Fischer (UCR) on a common insight of Stoicism and Buddhism
  6. “Just as we would be loath to dictate what art people must engage with, we should be wary of social pressures that decree what they can’t” — Erich Hatala Matthes (Wellesley) on consuming the art of immoral artists
  7. “Ten Propositions of Baruch Spinoza for Tenor and Piano” by British composer Michael Zev Gordon has been shortlisted for an Ivors award — you can listen to the 21-minute song cycle sets of texts from Spinoza’s Ethics at the link

 The End of Trust
The Atlantic
 The makers of EyeDetect promise a new era of truth-detection, but many experts are skeptical
WashPost
 Apple sues NSO Group over Pegasus spyware
WashPost
 The Car Key of the Future—is still in your pocket
NYTimes
 Locked Out of God Mode, Runners Are Hacking Their Treadmills
WiReD
 Sorry I'm late, my car had a 500 error.
twitter
 Israel and Iran Broaden Cyberwar to Attack Civilian Targets
NYTimes
 India to ban almost all private cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin in new clampdown
Euronews
 Dutch Tax Office algorithm targeted low-income households
Kees Huyser
 Crowd-Sourced Suspicion Apps Are Out of Control
EFF
 GoDaddy says data breach exposed over a million user accounts
TechCrunch
 He Leaked U.S. Missile Secrets. It Turned Into ‘a Dark Comedy of Errors.’
DailyBeast
 Amazon's Dark Secret: It Has Failed to Protect Your Data
WiReD
 The Zelle Fraud Scam: How it Works, How to Fight Back
Krebs on Security
 Wikipedia Tests AI for Spotting Contradictory Claims in Articles
New Scientist
 Apple, Facebook, privacy, voter turnout efforts, and differential privacy
Rob Slade
 Google hacking
Wikipedia
 Devious *Tardigrade* Malware Hits Biomanufacturing Facilities
WiReD
 The unbearable fussiness of the smart home
staceyoniot
 YANCV: Yet Another New CoVID Variant
Rob Slade
 Re: Unconsidered automatic filtering creates damaging side-effects
John Levine
 Re: Scammers impersonate guest editors to get sham papers published
Martin Ward
 CISA Should Assess the Effectiveness of its Actions to Support the Communications Sector
GAO Critical Infrastructure Protection
 Info on RISKS (comp.risks)