Benevolent Dictators Aren’t.
Benevolent Dictators Aren’t.
Benevolent News Corporations Aren’t, Either
AUTHORITARIANS: Farrah Stockman shows why “benevolent dictators” aren’t. They can outperform democracies in short-term economic growth—at the cost of leaving chaos behind. Even Singapore, the poster child for a “good” authoritarian system, is now devolving into family feuds reminiscent of more dysfunctional countries like the Philippines.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/opinion/international-world/singapore-autocracy-democracy.html
TEARGAS TUESDAY: Don’t miss this graphically-beautiful investigation of the Portland protests of 2020, and how police overused tear gas (150 times in one hour?). Having seen the clouds of gas dispersing, I’m skeptical of potential impact on the Willamette river and Sauvie Island farmland. But the abuse of protestors was real. Police fired far too much gas, almost randomly at times, and the “CS” gas described here was far stronger than anything I’ve encountered before in Bolivia or Brazil.
The article:
The forensic video it is based on is here.
AN EXPLODED IPHONE: A beautiful essay on the information art of Sarah Sze:
EMPLOYMENT FILES: I started teaching journalism of the University of Oregon again. In 2016 I taught in the small Portland program, but now I am facing a long drive down to the main campus and journalism school in Eugene twice a week. Fortunately my students are worth the effort—switched on, well read, and verbal. The pressure is on to deliver quick lessons on feature writing style, because I have just 10 weeks total.
In class, we do close readings, breakdown one feature, look at structure, narrative, reporting, interviews, research, dialogue, characters, anecdote, language and style. Students have 10 weeks to study the form and produce a piece of reported feature writing of their own, through a series of draft and practice exercises.
I shared with them this clip from NPR, about the collapse of local news. They use the Eugene Register-Guard as the main example, but the pattern is national. Gannett Inc. took on huge debt to buy its main rival, claiming that an empire of two thousand small news publications would cut costs and save journalism. Now it is laying off reporters and selling anything it can, as fast as it can, to pay off the debt. Local news was already in decline, debt deals are making it all worse. The Register Guard has gone from 40 to six reporters under Gannett. News deserts leave us blind to corruption and undemocratic politics
The Fate of Local News:
Text version
ESCAPING THE CLASSROOM: Don’t tell the university, but I have another reason for teaching in Eugene. Some of the greatest trout rivers in Oregon meet in the city, and there is wonderful fly fishing less than 30 minutes from my classroom. When they offered me teaching in April, May, and early June, the absolute peak of the season, I pretended to be very busy and doubtful, claimed I had to check my calendar, and then said, Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!