exploring the intersection of
media, technology and global development.
i tell stories for a living.
Super mini cupcakes for @xtinasparkitup’s birthday dinner! From @bakedbymelissa in New York.
At age 14, Zach Sobiech found out he had a rare form of terminal cancer. So he decided to live the rest of his life to the fullest. He became a rock star. He died on May 20, 2013. The message Zach left behind is inspiring. This story is worth watching.
A teacher hugs a child at Briarwood Elementary school after a tornado destroyed the school in south Oklahoma City, Monday, May 20, 2013. A monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, flattening entire neighborhoods with winds up to 200 mph, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school.
(AP Photo/The Oklahoman, Paul Hellstern)
The D.C. city council approved more than $1 billion in tax breaks and other subsidies to developers over the past decade. At the same time, these developers donated millions of dollars in campaign cash. Officials say the subsidies spark revitalization. But who’s really benefiting? Our investigative team examined documents and analyzed tons of data. They pulled their findings into a five-part investigative series that features eye-opening numbers and cool interactive elements.
Check out the series here: Deals for Developers
Gary Pruitt, in his first television interviews since it was revealed the Justice Department subpoenaed phone records of AP reporters and editors, said the move already has had a chilling effect on journalism. Pruitt said the seizure has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists and, in the long term, could limit Americans’ information from all news outlets.
Pruitt told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the government has no business monitoring the AP’s newsgathering activities.
“And if they restrict that apparatus … the people of the United States will only know what the government wants them to know and that’s not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment,” he said.
A lawsuit has not been ruled out, but next moves haven’t been decided as of yet.
“Never become so enamored of your own smarts that you stop signing up for life’s hard classes. Keep your conclusions light and your curiosity ferocious. Keep groping in the darkness with ravenous desire to know more.” Melissa Harris-Perry outlines her life advice for graduates.
At Bloomberg, reporters could sit at their desks and use a keyboard function to see the last time an official of the Federal Reserve logged on. And the Justice Department obtained the records of The Associated Press from phone companies with no advance notice, giving it no chance to challenge the action. The absence of friction has led to a culture of transgression. Clearly, if it can be known, it will be known.
Breaking: Yahoo’s board of directors has approved a $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, according to reports by the Wall Street Journal.
In the Janet Borden gallery retrospective of Martin Parr’s photographs of life in the U.S., taken over the past twenty years, we see the relationship that color has to many of the more absurd aspects of American culture. Parr’s saturated photographs highlight just how flamboyant and loud this country can be. Click here to view a selection of the images: http://nyr.kr/11Fbai2
Cool time lapse video of the Washington Monument earthquake scaffolding construction project, from March 20 to May 13, 2013. Video shot from the roof of the Department of the Interior.
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP…. In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.
Gov’t obtains wide AP phone records in probe
In a statement from the Radio Television Digital News Association, Chairman Vincent Duffy said, “This unprecedented invasion of privacy involving confidential information is a blatant violation of basic rights afforded by the First Amendment.”
(via onaissues)
“Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex.
On April 27, I finished the three months of medical procedures that the mastectomies involved. During that time I have been able to keep this private and to carry on with my work.
But I am writing about it now because I hope that other women can benefit from my experience. Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.”
— Angelina Jolie on her decision to undergo a preventative double mastectomy
The best approach is to not try to write things that will go viral. No, the best approach is to write for just one person. Make an impact on just one person. Even better, make it so they can’t sleep that night unless they choose to make a difference for just one other person by sharing your message with them. The rest will take care of itself.
Sometimes you get the sense that these magazines’ cultural writers have very little experience with the entire American culture, and prefer to make their grand analyses based on what people they know in the gentrified parts of cities like New York and Los Angeles were talking about at brunch last weekend. The type of young person that magazine writers come across most frequently are magazine interns. Because the media industry is high-status, but, at least early on, very low pay in a very expensive city, it attracts a lot of rich kids. Entitled, arrogant, spoiled, preening — those are the alleged signature traits of Millennials, as diagnosed by countless magazine writers. Those traits curiously align perfectly with the signature traits of a rich kid. Have you seen your intern on Rich Kids of Instagram? If so, he or she is probably not the best guide to crafting the composite personality of a generation that fought three wars for you.
4259 days after Sept. 11, One World Trade Center now stands at full height of 1776 feet.
A truly striking photograph of One World Trade Center, which as we mentioned yesterday was topped with a spire to raise the structure to its full height — 1776 feet.
Moon Rise Time Slice…. This is a collage of 11 photos taken over 27 minutes and 59 seconds.