Podcasts rich in detail and narrative are finding big audiences. But many of the stories they tell are misleading or inaccurate. How do we know? How do we vet? – Harper’s
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Quality Versus Opportunity Debate – A Predictable Oscars Ritual
The Academy’s perceived snubs—of actors such as Us’s Lupita Nyong’o and Hustlers’ Jennifer Lopez, along with directors such as Little Women’s Greta Gerwig and The Farewell’s Lulu Wang—are as unfortunate as they are predictable. And comments like Stephen King’s reveal a major reason why: Diversity is too often discussed as something separate from, or even in conflict with, artistic virtue. – The Atlantic
Is Amazon About To Take Over The Bestseller Book Business?
The conventional wisdom that now governs book publishing—that things are, for the first time in a long time, not that bad—is wrong. At the very least, it overlooks the fact that Amazon has spent the last decade accumulating yet more power and leverage, and that its ambitions have since moved past simply being the world’s largest bookstore. On Tuesday evening, The Wall Street Journal surveyed one of the most important recent developments in the industry: Amazon is finally publishing work by some of America’s biggest authors. – The New Republic
Canada’s “Prairie Castles” Are Disappearing
Grain elevators were once an icon of Canada’s west: often painted a bright boxcar red, they stood in towns across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. As the tallest structures in the vast landscapes, they were visible from kilometers away and were known as “prairie castles” or “prairie cathedrals”. – The Guardian
How Ubiquitous Public Surveillance Is Changing Our Understanding Of Human Behavior
“My colleagues want to better understand how people behave in the wild and how we can capture every-day behavior without asking people to self report … [because] that’s a very unreliable way of collecting data. What I’m seeing is just a very new landscape and regulations that are not ready.” – Vice
Reconsidering Alan Bloom’s “Closed Minds”
Re-reading Bloom, I am thunderstruck, because my inclination is to blame it all on social media and attendant technologies favoring vicarious experience. But Bloom’s 1987 narrative establishes an earlier start. He distinguishes my sixties’ generation from his eighties’ students, in whom tendencies that we initiated yielded a dead end. It may in effect be read as a tale of unwanted, unanticipated consequences. – The American Interest
National Archives Blurs Anti-Trump Protest Signs Of 2017 Women’s March In Exhibition
By blurring out details from protest signs in an image of the 2017 Women’s March, including the name of President Trump and references to the female anatomy — a decision the Archives publicly apologized for on Saturday — it has damaged the faith many Americans, particularly women, may have had in its role as an impartial conservator of the nation’s records. – Washington Post
A Group Of Musicians Relocate To A Failing Town To Create A New Culture. Townspeople Resist
The group wanted to Klein Jasedow provides a nearly perfect test case for a theory, popular within the classical music industry, which postulates that if we could just tweak the atmosphere in which the work is presented, we could unleash its universal potential. – Van
Jazz Saxophonist Jimmy Heath, 93
Mr. Heath’s saxophone sound was spare but playful, with a beaming tone that exuded both joy and command. But his reputation rested equally on his abilities as a composer and arranger for large ensembles, interpolating bebop’s crosshatched rhythms and extended improvisations into fulsome tapestries. – The New York Times
TikTok Is Killing The Radio Song-writer
What makes sense on TikTok might not make sense on the old platforms. TikTok distills music down to a brief snippet you can sing along to, or dance along to or perform a comic sketch to. Its needs are different, which is changing how professional songwriters working in studios around the world are thinking about their craft. – The New York Times