Freeform

Where is our new world?

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Fixing the environment is not just an technological problem, though everyone would prefer it is. It is also a political, psychological, sociological, economic system, and spiritual problem. But it’s simpler than that. It comes down to how we think. Those values so deep you don’t even know they’re there. A big one is that we … Read more

Writing with AI is not writing

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Bugs, dogs, dinosaurs, neighborhoods, cities, countries, civilizations, planets, and, now, human creativity: They live, they die — fast, slow, brutally or gently. Generative AIs like ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, and Jasper are bringing plenty of violence and speed to the demise of writing. Or perhaps just a way of writing. Words, sentences, paragraphs, stories — making … Read more

Article in Nieman Lab: What a 2004 experiment in hyperlocal news can tell us about community voices today

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In 2004, a team of Medill School of Journalism grad students thought they could use the internet to fix what was wrong with it. But with increasing social isolation, rising partisanship, and newspapers’ ongoing woes, it seems that the problems have gotten worse, not better. Perhaps that’s why Google launched an experiment in local, user-generated storytelling: Bulletin.

America, don’t put out the damn paper

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The cost of stopping goes up as the American machine churns more and more rapidly. But what happens when an entire nation starts living paycheck to paycheck? When hundreds of millions of people think, “If I stop, I die.”