Dean Baquet: “The greatest crisis in American journalism is the death of local news . . . I don’t know what the answer is. Their economic model is gone. I think most local newspapers in America are going to die in the next five years, except for the ones that have been bought by a local billionaire.” – Fast Company
Author: Douglas McLennan
Best-Selling Big-Idea Books Riddled With Errors – Should They Be Better Than Random Tweets?
“The time has come for those of us who work in book-length nonfiction to insist that professional fact-checking become as inalienable from publishing as publicity, marketing and jacket design — and at the publisher’s expense rather than as a cost passed on to the author, who, understandably, will often choose to spend her money on health care. In the age of tweets, it cannot be the fate of the book to become ever more tweetlike — maybe factual, maybe whatever. The book must stand apart, must stand above.” – The New York Times
Upon Further Consideration: Maybe New Plans For LACMA Aren’t So Bad
Justin Davidson: “I, too, joined the scoffer’s chorus when the latest designs emerged in March, but the longer I’ve spent studying these paltry materials and pacing the site, the more promise I feel the project has.” – New York Magazine
A Crossroads For The Oregon Shakespeare Festival
The nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit repertory theater company is at a pivotal moment, with change at the top and challenges everywhere. It’s bringing in its first new artistic director in 12 years and preparing to start a search for a new executive director. It’s coming off a smoke-plagued 2018 season that ended with 26 outdoor performances either canceled or moved indoors, $2.3 million in losses and 16 layoffs. – The Oregonian
Comedy’s A Tricky Act. It’s All About The Context (And The Audience)
Comedy poses a threat to sovereign power not only because of its anarchic bent, but because it makes light of such momentous matters as suffering and death, hence diminishing the force of some of the judicial sanctions that governing classes tend to keep up their sleeve. – Commonweal
How Art Became Prestige Currency For The Rich
Michael Shnayerson’s new book, Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art argues that contemporary art, once a thing artists made and dealers tried (unsuccessfully) to sell, has become a form of fiat currency for the very rich. – Bloomberg
Bradley Cooper Talks About Music, Directing, And GaGa
“When Cooper talks about A Star Is Born being deeply personal, you can see why. It’s about art that crosses cultural lines, it’s about a love of music, and it’s about the conflict between art and fame, the way celebrity can box you in and interfere with artistic goals — like his desire to direct.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
Historically, Many Civilizations Have Collapsed. This Time Might Be Different
In the past, civilization often declined gradually. Also, sometimes the decline was good for some members of society as their rulers were overthrown. But we live in a much more interconnected world, and our fates are intertwined. – Aeon
Get Ready: Now We Have Virtual Celebrities (And They’re Popular)
Miquela Sousa, also known as Lil Miquela, is a fictional character created by a Los Angeles startup called Brud. Miquela has 1.5m followers on Instagram, where she shares pictures of her imaginary life and proclaims her support for LGBT rights and Black Lives Matter. In the past few years, the virtual model has become a veritable celebrity: starring in Ugg ads, interviewing artists at Coachella and collaborating with Prada. – The Guardian
Turns Out AI Machines Can Hallucinate (Or Are They Seeing Things We Can’t?)
Adversarial examples are like optical (or audio) illusions for AI. By altering a handful of pixels, a computer scientist can fool a machine learning classifier into thinking, say, a picture of a rifle is actually one of a helicopter. But to you or me, the image still would look like a gun—it almost seems like the algorithm is hallucinating. – Wired