It has been a tumultuous week — media people around the world are mourning the loss of beloved David Carr, media columnist for the New York Times. He was 58 and died in the newsroom — a befitting end to one true champion of all journalism. David was a real journalist and his legacy will and should be — other journalists trying to do what he did so well all his: report with rigor and honesty, write with feeling and authenticity and and absolutely love the job. He shall remain in my memories for rest of my life.
Here are some stories you might want to read this weekend — they are examples of good journalism and great writing.
- Internet’s Original Sin: Advertising is what was Internet’s original sin, and it is why we continue to see the slow unraveling of the Internet spirit and surveillance as a default. The Atlantic wonders if we can put the genie back in the bottle and build a better web.
- Internet’s Hidden Science Factory: Jenny Marder for PBS reports on how Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has become a way for university researchers to recruit survey subjects. (Robert Reich offers an alternative view of Mechanical Turk and other part time jobs.)
- The invisible network that keeps the world running: BBC Future delves into the intricacies of the shipping industry logistics and shines light on the real reason behind rampant consumerism. It is also one of the reasons why our world is changing so fast.
- A conversation with writer Jonathan Franzen: Susan Lerner engages the author of The Corrections (which is the only one I read) and many other books in a discourse about writing, his views on the world, especially publishing. I admit I don’t know the politics behind his comments or the context. However, his views on social media and how it is being used by publishing community seemed rather smart. You be the judge.
- How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life: Internet amplifies and amplifies very fast. That is why it is import to think before you tweet! Justine Sacco is the poster child of the consequences of momentary lapse of reason.
- The Digital Future of TV Networks & the Original Series Crunch: How Netflix is morphing into something new and why all these Internet players are big challenge for the more traditional networks. It is not just Netflix as Amazon and others will play a major role in this ecosystem. Quite an astute analysis.
- The Brannock Device: What is that? It is that device which we use to measure our feet when buying shoes. It has a great little past and is now 90 years old.
Here is a link to a blog post I wrote this week: