Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
And here's a grim article about the effects in Alaska of cutting
funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/us/politics/public-broadcast-cuts.html?unlo
cked_article_code=1.hE8.G7xQ.9T04Cmr0Znse&smid=url-share
  

    

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will go all-digital at the end of
the year. 

"For the past three years, the AJC has worked to transform the
newspaper, which traces its origins back 157 years, into a modern
media company, investing millions in new reporting capabilities and
technology. That strategy has centered on an ambitious goal to reach
500,000 paid digital subscribers."

https://www.ajc.com/business/2025/08/ajc-to-move-to-fully-digital-publication-
phase-out-print-dec-31/
  

    
I see less and less point to print newspapers. We still subscribe to
our local daily (and the Sunday Times), but every time they raise
the rates or the carrier forgets to deliver, I have to wonder,
"why"?
  

    
These move by newspapers to all-digital are probably good for
forests (even tree plantations absorb some carbon from the
atmosphere), and make sense for the business.

It's no longer a strain to imagine the US going the way of China in
terms of internet surveillance and access, though. So even aside
from nostalgia or preference for reading the news on paper, this
makes me uneasy.
  

    

Before this year, I would have largely agreed with you, Ari.
  

    
I agree, but I also think that ship has sailed - we'll need to fight
surveillance overtly. Somewhat depressing to realize no progress
will be likely made to change things over the next few years.
  

    
There is still something uniquely satisfying about opening a full
sheet newspaper to scan all the various stories.  We do get the
Sunday Santa Rosa Press Democrat, but alas we canceled because it is
too expensive.

I have to go with books for reading print on a page, which I do
every night before retiring.  But as we all know, reading with
reflected light (paper and kindle) is quite different than reading
with generated light (glowing screens on laptops, monitors pads and
phones).
  

    

Despite many grim predictions to the contrary in the Aughts, print
books seem to be doing great! I don't keep up with book industry
news, but can say anecdotally that there are now three or four
excellent independent small bookstores within a 20-minute walk of my
building in Brooklyn. One of them is just blocks away.

When I moved here in 2001, the only nearby bookstore was the Barnes
& Noble about 25-30 minute walk away (depending on walking speed;
and just 10 minutes by subway). The first independent bookstore was
a 40-minute walk.
  

    

Soo much news about news in the past week, and mostly very
"concerning," to use a favorite word of the remaining big
newspapers.

Before getting into that, I want to share a quote from an essay by
Filipe de la Hoz in Flaming Hydra. He's teaches at the NYU j-school,
and is also a civic reporter for a local community news site called
Epicenter (itself a really interesting story.

In this portion of his essay (and please read the whole thing), he
explains why legacy media remain so crucial to reporting the news:



"Say what you will about the New York Times, and I certainly have a
lot of problems with it, few other papers have the bandwidth and
resources, for example, to painstakingly report out the story of a
botched U.S. Navy Seal incursion into North Korea that ended with
special forces gunning down a boatful of civilians and sinking their
bodies into the ocean. Though it is helpful to be able to dedicate
reporters to protracted investigations that may or may not pan out,
that's just the beginning. 

"To do this type of work effectively, publications also need
security teams, cybersecurity tools, the ability and willingness to
defend against legal threats, attempted boycotts, and so on. This is
only really possible at scale, and so at the risk of pissing off
some of my dear co-writers here, I think journalism needs something
like the big legacy outlets in addition to our smaller projects
(which can also act as a bit of a check on the bigger outlets, as
our Jonathan Katz did in March, when he scooped everyone on the
story of Sen. Katie Britt misrepresenting the story of a trafficking
survivor in her State of the Union response)."

https://flaminghydra.com/tomorrows-journalists/
  

    

Whups, actual journalism work intervenes. More soon.
  

    
I think most ecosystems rely on a complex weave of big and little
systems. There is a lot of thinking as though only the big
ecosystems matter - the Walmarts, the NY Times, etc. And, they do
for the reasons you state, Emily (at least in the case of the NY
Times). But, having smaller, more nimble organizations, or simply
smaller places trying different ideas, is also vital. 

And, yet, jumping back up a few replies, I treasure the small,
independent bookstores in ways that I don't treasure their mega
cousins. On the very rare occasion I order a book from Amazon, it
feels like a failure to me. My local independent can order just
about anything (other than Amazon imprints) for me. I do miss the
fun of huge B&N stores, but by the time they were disappearing from
the ecosystem, they didn't actually seem to hold a large variety of
books - just a wide variety of book-related stuff and some books.
  

    
In a gut-wrenching capitulation to the Trump administration, CBS
News last week announced that its ombudsman (having one was a
condition of approval for the Paramount-Warner Bros merger) will be
a longtime, pro-MAGA conservative policy wonk and operative, who
heads a conservative think tank that has long had it in for the
so-called "liberal media". 

There is also talk that Bari Weiss, who is far from an even-handed
information broker, will become news director. 

It's going to feel weird to write off CBS News, but that feeling
proves I'm getting old. Millions of people probably barely know that
CBS News exists, at this point.
  

    
Bari Weiss? oi.
  

    
Hi all. Been a bit ill so fell behind on posting about the state of
the news. 

This morning I'm reading a new piece by David Kurtz in Talking
Points Memo: "Trump's Retribution Requires a New Way of Covering
Bogus Criminal Cases."

https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/p/trumps-retribution-requires-a-new?
r=2690ey

(The link is via The Daily Blast podcast - I think it's a gift-type
link.)

Kurtz's key point is that reporters can't cover this Comey
indictment in the way federal cases have been covered ever since the
Watergate-era. I'll let him explain since he does it so well:

"The key thing to remember is that we're already well beyond the
event horizon in the corruption of the Justice Department. If
federal judges, having dispensed with the presumption of regularity
in the functioning of the government, no longer give the Justice
Department the benefit of the doubt in court, then we shouldn't
either.

"The implications of that shift are enormous, but too many editors
and producers are not fully grappling with them yet.

...

"The incremental drip-by-drip news coverage of criminal cases,
especially in public corruption cases -- a highly competitive news
environment that rewards the best access and quickest trigger
fingers -- now does a public disservice. Continuing to cover bogus
prosecutions in the traditional ways gives a veneer of legitimacy to
what should be framed instead as illegitimate retribution, abuse of
power, and public corruption in its own right."



It's dismaying to me that a decade into Trump's rise to power in the
US, major news outlets (including MSNBC's field reporters, as
opposed to its commentators) and a good many of the next-biggest
tier of outlets, are still ineffectively reporting on how he - writ
large to include everyone involved - are using the regulatory, legal
and administrative systems in such bad faith.

A few weeks ago (an eternity), I helped write a story on the
response/debunking, by 85 scientists and other experts, to the
Energy Department's bogus "state of climate science" report. That
report was created solely as cover, however thin (and it's nearly
transparent), for rescinding the legal basis for regulating carbon
pollution. 

What struck me as we prepared this story was how good it felt to
simply call things by their real names:

- The five people who prepared the report have long histories as
prominent climate deniers. 
- They are extreme outliers in the wide world of climate and
environmental science. 
- The used several very common reality-denial debate tactics to try
and prove their points. 
- The scientific proof -- the lived-experience proof -- that
carbon emissions are air pollution is even stronger now than when it
was established at the federal level nearly two decades ago.

We - I and my colleague Sharon - got to do this in plain terms
because our story was for DeSmog.com, which has spent 20 years
calling climate disinformation by its real name. 

This is starting to happen widely now in terms of public health and
vaccine coverage, for obvious reasons, but in mcuh climate,
environment and energy coverage it remains hit-or-miss.