The Sternberg Effect
Blog
How much oversight can an oversight board have if an oversight board has no real oversight?
We’re about to find out! Hello, Friday. Good to see ya. Programming note: Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, starts Sunday evening, so I will not be doing a newsletter on Monday. To those I’ve wronged over the past year, I am sorry; please forgive me. (Image via Getty) What happens when … Continue reading
Burying a very important story
News organizations suffer from news whiplash and it’s not great. Editors—line, desk and masthead—make hundreds of tiny decisions every day affecting any number of stories. Story assignments; guiding reporters through tricky reporting to actual copy editing; advocating for a reporter’s story, often jostling with other editors on when to publish and, arguably most important, where. … Continue reading
Cable TV's slow but fast spiral
Trapped in time, and they don’t know what to do. The bell is tolling for cable television. For years, TV networks looked down at the digital world, much like newspapers and magazines before them. Instead of embracing the changing environment, TV execs buried their heads in the sand, ignoring the power, if not potential, of … Continue reading
A new tool to tell you what websites do while you visit them
The Markup’s Blacklight can be a step towards better media literacy. Ever wonder what exactly is being tracked when you visit a website? There are plenty of tools and extensions that keep tabs on what websites do when you visit them; I use Ghostery, for example, to tell me what a website is doing under … Continue reading
How the political press should approach 2020
First, let’s get rid of the ‘both sides-ism.’ Democracy, the cliche goes, is messy. We are living in a dumpster, and journalism will be stress tested as much as any institution over the coming 6 weeks. As soon as it was announced that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died, the realization that Republicans would flash hypocrisy … Continue reading
I don't understand this whole TikTok thing
Someone help me! I can’t make heads or tails of the Trump administration’s focus on TikTok. (Image via Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post) I don’t understand how a sitting president can stick his nose into the operations of business. I don’t understand how the president could use his position to influence a business transaction, where the … Continue reading
DMCA notices in 2020 are weird
I finally got caught violating copyrighted material. It finally happened to me. After 24 years of being an online denizen, I got served a DMCA takedown notice. The offense? A tweet from 2018 (yes, there is basically no statute of limitations for online copyright) where I posted a video of my then four-year-old daughter adorably … Continue reading
Google gets grilled
Senators actually sounded like they understood digital advertising! In 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee summoned top executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter to ask them about their role in the 2016 election and what they were planning on doing for the 2018 mid-term election. At the time, I spoke with Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) about … Continue reading
The age of the whistleblower
And media’s role in getting the stories right. Yesterday, a whistleblower alleged that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was performing hysterectomies on Spanish-speaking women without their consent, and many didn’t even know what had happened. According to CNN: A whistleblower who previously worked at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia detailed a high … Continue reading
CNN's Jeff Zucker offered advice to then-candidate Trump right before a CNN-moderated debate
“You cannot be elected president of the United States without CNN.” We have a new entrant into media executive quotes about Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 election: “You cannot be elected president of the United States without CNN.” (Image via David McNew/Getty Images) Last week, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson aired a recorded conversation … Continue reading
19 years pass in the blink of an eye
How stories can help us make sense of the world A lot has happened in 19 years. Of course, that’s a loaded sentence, as you can pick any point in time and say the same. But we are here, now; not there, then. And our world has been shaped by what happened on that pristine … Continue reading
Should Bob Woodward have revealed the president's quotes earlier?
The ethics of journalism has some new questions. Yesterday’s media coverage (and I assume, coverage for the foreseeable future; or until the next crisis) of Bob Woodward’s book about President Trump presents us with some ethical dilemmas in media. One, the ethics of journalism: should Woodward have told the public what the president said privately … Continue reading
The marriage between Taboola and Outbrain is over before it started.
You’ll never guess why. The clickbait wedding of the year, between Taboola and Outbrain, has been called off. After a year of planning, including getting permission by the Department of Justice, the combined company which would have, on paper, approached Facebook and Google-like numbers in terms of reach (claiming the partnership would get content in … Continue reading
Trust in media continues to drop
How low can we go? Hello Tuesday that’s actually Monday, which is fine since most of us haven’t known what day it’s been since March. Hope you had a good weekend. A quick housekeeping note: the 6-year-old starts virtual school today, so timing of this newsletter may shift as we figure out the whole routine. … Continue reading
On anonymous sourcing, fake news, and the election
Looking at The Atlantic’s jaw-dropping piece from a different angle. A quick one today. Because it’s a Friday heading into a long weekend. Last night, The Atlantic dropped what, under a normal administration, would be a presidency-ending story: Donald Trump, according to multiple anonymous sources, doesn’t particularly care for the military. Some choice quotes: In … Continue reading
Unnecessary Journalism Phrases
- How about “lifeless body” when describing a dead person? Here’s a good (bad)...
- bobbymacReports: A growing number of stories with a growing number
- Alliterative Journalism Phrases
- Apologies on the lack of posts
- While not necessarily an unnecessary journalism phrase, friend...
- 50. Old Man Winter - 11/7/11
- Push The Envelope Submitted by unretrecissement and her...
- 49. A.M. in the Morning/P.M. in the Afternoon/Evening, at Night - 11/3/11
- 48. Emergency Situation - 11/2/11
- 47. Roll(ed)(ing) in his/her grave - 10/31/11
