Link Salad, the Postmodern Newsroom Edition
-- Keeping Up With the Times - Gabriel Snyder, WIRED, Feb. 12, 2017
"ONE OF THE ANXIETIES I heard throughout the Times is that they can get the journalism absolutely right, execute the technology perfectly, and still not find the hundreds of millions it costs every year to line the walls with Pulitzers. While other media companies collapse or implode-witness the once-proud Tribune Company’s devolution into national punch line “Tronc”-there is unease over the possibility that when (or if) the Times emerges from its digital rebirth, it might be scarcely recognizable. Even Sulzberger admits to long-term doubts for the industry, though, he says, “We feel like we’re closer to cracking the code than anyone else.”"
-- Welcome to Veles, Macedonia, Fake News Factory to the World - Samanth Subramanian, WIRED, Feb. 15, 2017
"At best, Boris’ English is halting and fractured-certainly not good enough to turn out five to 10 articles about Trump and Clinton every day for weeks on end. Fortunately for him, the election summoned forth the energies of countless alt-right websites in the US, which manufactured white-label falsehoods disguised as news on an industrial scale. Across the spectrum of right-wing media-from Trump’s own concise lies on Twitter to the organized prevarication of Breitbart News and NationalReport.net-ideology beat back the truth. What Veles produced, though, was something more extreme still: an enterprise of cool, pure amorality, free not only of ideology but of any concern or feeling about the substance of the election. These Macedonians on Facebook didn’t care if Trump won or lost the White House. They only wanted pocket money to pay for things-a car, watches, better cell phones, more drinks at the bar. This is the arrhythmic, disturbing heart of the affair: that the internet made it so simple for these young men to finance their material whims and that their actions helped deliver such momentous consequences."
"ONE OF THE ANXIETIES I heard throughout the Times is that they can get the journalism absolutely right, execute the technology perfectly, and still not find the hundreds of millions it costs every year to line the walls with Pulitzers. While other media companies collapse or implode-witness the once-proud Tribune Company’s devolution into national punch line “Tronc”-there is unease over the possibility that when (or if) the Times emerges from its digital rebirth, it might be scarcely recognizable. Even Sulzberger admits to long-term doubts for the industry, though, he says, “We feel like we’re closer to cracking the code than anyone else.”"
-- Welcome to Veles, Macedonia, Fake News Factory to the World - Samanth Subramanian, WIRED, Feb. 15, 2017
"At best, Boris’ English is halting and fractured-certainly not good enough to turn out five to 10 articles about Trump and Clinton every day for weeks on end. Fortunately for him, the election summoned forth the energies of countless alt-right websites in the US, which manufactured white-label falsehoods disguised as news on an industrial scale. Across the spectrum of right-wing media-from Trump’s own concise lies on Twitter to the organized prevarication of Breitbart News and NationalReport.net-ideology beat back the truth. What Veles produced, though, was something more extreme still: an enterprise of cool, pure amorality, free not only of ideology but of any concern or feeling about the substance of the election. These Macedonians on Facebook didn’t care if Trump won or lost the White House. They only wanted pocket money to pay for things-a car, watches, better cell phones, more drinks at the bar. This is the arrhythmic, disturbing heart of the affair: that the internet made it so simple for these young men to finance their material whims and that their actions helped deliver such momentous consequences."