🎧 Summer Series Episode 3: Airline Crash Edition | On the Media | WNYC Studios

Listened to Summer Series Episode 3: Airline Crash Edition from On the Media | WNYC Studios

This summer we revisit some of our most important Breaking News Consumer Handbooks. Episode 3 in this mini-series is Airline Crash Edition.

When a commercial plane goes down, media speculation ensues. With the help of The Atlantic's James Fallows, we give you some tips that can help you comb through the coverage.

🎧 Summer Series Episode 2: Military Coup Edition | On the Media | WNYC Studios

Listened to Summer Series Episode 2: Military Coup Edition from On the Media | WNYC Studios

This summer, we're revisiting some of our favorite Breaking News Consumer Handbooks. Episode 2 in this mini-series is Military Coup Edition.

Back in the summer of 2016, Turkish putschists shut down highways, attacked government buildings and took broadcasters hostage, world media outlets struggled to provide sober reports of the coup. During the chaos, some listeners told us on Twitter that they’d appreciate an OTM Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Coup Edition. Coups are especially tricky to report on because they're mainly about perception and narrative. Plotters and the government are both trying to establish dominance, and misreporting can determine whether the attempt succeeds or not.

Naunihal Singh, author of Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, says the first step for a successful military coup is to take control of radio and tv broadcasters. From there, they can literally and figuratively control the narrative.

Brooke spoke to Singh about how to understand coups through the media, and how to understand whether an attempt will succeed or fail.

Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Military Coup Edition

🎧 Summer Series Episode 1: US Storm Edition | On the Media | WNYC Studios

Listened to Summer Series Episode 1: US Storm Edition from On the Media | WNYC Studios
This summer we revisit some of our Breaking News Consumer's Handbooks. To mark the ramping up of hurricane season, the first episode in this mini-series is the US Storm Edition.

For media professionals, hurricanes offer the very best kind of bad news because the story arc is predictable and invariably compelling. In this summer series revisiting some of our Breaking News Consumer’s Handbooks, we examine the myths, misleading language, and tired media narratives that clog up news coverage at a time when clarity can be a matter of life and death.

Brooke speaks with Dr. Robert Holmes, National Flood Hazard Coordinator for the U.S. Geological Survey; Gina Eosco, a risk communication consultant; and Scott Gabriel Knowles of Drexel University, author of The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America.

🎧 The value of rituals in a digital world | ABC Radio National

Listened to The value of rituals in a digital world from ABC Radio National

Are rituals still needed in a world mediated through digital devices?

We tend to think of rituals as solemn ceremonies, usually associated with religion. But rituals exist in our everyday life, as a way of helping us to make sense of the world. They can be communal or solitary. But how are they changing as we become increasing digital? Can rituals still have power and relevance in a world mediated through digital devices?

Guests
Michael Norton – Professor, Harvard Business School
Vanessa Ochs – Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Member of the Jewish Studies Program, University of Virginia
Viktor Lysell Smalanning – Ritual designer
Alexandra Samuel – digital columnist for JSTOR Daily and regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal
Nicolas Nova – Associate Professor, Geneva School of Art and Design

Transcript

A fascinating topic in general, but there are some interesting tidbits that the IndieWeb movement could pick up as transitional rituals within its workflow. Similarly, while some of the jargon helps to identify group membership, we still need to do a better job of simplifying it to make it easier to have a broader membership. The episode actually brings up the idea of UI and designers taking ritual into account in our daily lives.

What types of rituals can we create to help mark the leaving behind of the old social world and becoming a fully fledged member of the indie web by registering one’s own domain and having one’s own website? Perhaps a ritual to celebrate not only this but the addition of standards like Webmention, Micropub, and Microsub? In some small sense, this is what we’re celebrating in the use of displaying buttons (or badges) on our sites.

This is definitely worth listening to again and brainstorming ideas for extending the concept. Perhaps at an upcoming IWC??

hat tip: Aaron Davis

🎧 Is Online Dating Destroying Romance? | Crazy/Genius | The Atlantic

Listened to Is Online Dating Destroying Romance? by Derek ThompsonDerek Thompson from Crazy/Genius | The Atlantic
Two sociologists debate the merits of online dating and discuss their research on the history of romance in America.

Interestingly no discussion of satisficing.

🎧 Analysis, Parapraxis, Elvis, Season 3 Episode 10 | Revisionist History

Listened to Analysis, Parapraxis, Elvis, Season 3 Episode 10 by Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

"The one song The King couldn’t sing."

Elvis Presley returned from his years in the army to record one of his biggest hits, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” But he could never quite get the lyrics right. Why? Revisionist History puts the King of Rock and Roll on the couch.

I expected Gladwell to circle back around to the opening song about beating the dog, but he left us hanging…

🎧 Strong Verbs, Short Sentences, Season 3 Episode 9 | Revisionist History

Listened to Strong Verbs, Short Sentences, Season 3 Episode 9 by Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

"She was Joan of Arc, Madame Curie, and Florence Nightingale--all wrapped up in one."

One long, hot afternoon on Capitol Hill, in the summer of 1991, the most powerful man in Congress took on the most powerful person in American science. Science won. What does it take to end a reign of terror? The science fraud panic of the 1990s, part two of two.

🎧 The Imaginary Crimes of Margit Hamosh, Season 3 Episode 8 | Revisionist History

Listened to The Imaginary Crimes of Margit Hamosh, Season 3 Episode 8 by Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

"Epidemics of fear repeat themselves. The first time as tragedy. The second time as farce. Margit Hamosh? Definitely farce."

What was it that Margit Hamosh did? What was her alleged fraud? I have been going on and on about this case for a good 20 minutes now, and I haven’t told you. Do you know why? Because we didn’t know.

It pains me to think of all these wasted hours over minutiae.

🎧 CNN's Lanny Davis Problem | On the Media

Listened to CNN's Lanny Davis Problem from On The Media | WNYC Studios

Did they err? Or did they lie?

Six weeks ago, CNN broke a blockbuster story: According to several anonymous sources, President Trump had advance knowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting. It was a potential smoking gun, until one of those sources — Lanny Davis, attorney for Michael Cohen — recanted.

Beyond that headache for CNN, there was another. The original article had claimed, "Contacted by CNN, one of Cohen's attorneys, Lanny Davis, declined to comment." Depending on how you understand the word "comment," and depending your general disposition, that claim could be technically true or woefully, mendaciously disingenuous. Bob spoke with Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi about the implications — and dangers — of this latest media mishap.

🎧 Fallout: Apocalypse now, then, and later | On the Media

Listened to Fallout: Apocalypse now, then, and later from On The Media | WNYC Studios

End-of-times narratives themselves are nothing new; only the means have changed. While once a few horsemen and a river of blood were enough to signal the dusk of man, apocalypse now requires the imaginations of entire atomic laboratories — or roving squads of special effects crews. This week we look through a few recent highlights from the genre: from a 1980's made-for-TV spectacle, to a new piece of speculative fiction documenting a hypothetical nuclear conflict with North Korea.

1. Jeffrey Lewis [@ArmsControlWonk], author of "The 2020 Commission Report," on what we might say to ourselves after a devastating war with North Korea. Listen.

2. Marsha Gordon [@MarshaGGordon], film studies professor at North Carolina State University, on the 1983 film "The Day After," which imagines a massive nuclear strike in the Midwestern U.S. Listen.

3. Anne Washburn, playwright, on "Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play," in which she imagines American cultural life after a devastating nuclear event. Listen.

4. Andrew Fitzgerald [@magicandrew], chief digital content officer at Hearst TV, on what journalists, seven years ago, thought about the prospect of covering the end of the world. Listen.

🎧 Summer Series Episode 4: Tectonic Edition | WNYC | On The Media

Listened to Summer Series Episode 4: Tectonic Edition from On The Media | WNYC Studios

This summer we are revisiting some of our favorite Breaking News Consumer Handbooks. Episode 4 in this mini-series is Tectonic Edition.

After an earthquake struck Nepal in April of 2015, the post-disaster media coverage followed a trajectory we'd seen repeated after other earth-shaking events. We put together a template to help a discerning news consumer look for the real story. It's our Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Tectonic Edition. Brooke spoke to Jonathan M. Katz, who wrote "How Not to Report on an Earthquake" for the New York Times Magazine.

Breaking News Consumer Handbook

Understanding how news is reported and the good and bad of it can certainly help one be a better consumer of it. This episode was quite enlightening about how disaster reporting is often done wrong.

🎧 Face the Racist Nation | On The Media | WNYC Studios

Listened to Face the Racist Nation from On The Media | WNYC Studios

An investigation into the media's coverage of white supremacist groups.

For more than a year, Lois Beckett [@loisbeckett], senior reporter at The Guardian US, has been showing up at white nationalist rallies, taking their pictures, writing down what they say. And she finds herself thinking: How did we get here? How did her beat as a political reporter come to include interviewing Nazis? And what are the consequences of giving these groups this much coverage?

In this week's program, we revisit this deep dive into what the news media often get wrong about white supremacists, and what those errors expose about the broader challenge of confronting racism in America.

1. Elle Reeve [@elspethreeve], correspondent for VICE News, Anna Merlan [@annamerlan], reporter for Gizmodo Media’s special projects desk, Vegas Tenold [@Vegastenold], journalist and author of Everything You Love Will Burn, and Al Letson [@Al_Letson], host of Reveal, from The Center for Investigative Reporting, on the pitfalls and perils of covering white supremacist groups. Listen.

2. Felix Harcourt [@FelixHistory], professor of history at Austin College and author of "Ku Klux Kulture," on the history of the Ku Klux Klan in the press in the 1920s. Listen.

3. Anna Merlan, Elle Reeve, Al Letson, Gary Younge [@garyyounge], editor-at-large for The Guardian, and Josh Harkinson [@joshharkinson], former senior writer at Mother Jones, on how individual identity impacts reporting on discriminatory movements. Listen.

4. Ibram X. Kendi [@DrIbram], professor of history and international relations at American University and author of "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America," on the enduring myths surrounding the perpetuation of racist ideas and whose interests these misconceptions serve. Listen.

A stunning story and solidly great reporting. I heard the end of this on the radio a few weeks ago and circled back to listen to it a second time. I hope all journalists working in politics take a close look at it.

I particularly liked the Ibram X. Kendi portion of the interview and am ordering his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which was a National Book Award Winner.

🎧 “Malcolm Gladwell’s 12 Rules for Life” Season 3 Episode 7 | Revisionist History

Listened to “Malcolm Gladwell's 12 Rules for Life” Season 3 Episode 7 by Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

"Crucial life lessons from the end of hockey games, Idris Elba, and some Wall Street guys with a lot of time on their hands."

Revisionist History wades into the crowded self-help marketplace, with some help with from a band of math whizzes and Hollywood screenwriters. It's late in a hockey game, and you're losing. When should you pull your goalie? And what if you used that same logic when a bad guy breaks into your house and holds your entire family hostage? We think the unthinkable, so you don’t have to.

Why one should be a bit more disagreeable and “pull the goalie”.

Pulling the Goalie: Hockey and Investment Implications on SSRN.

🎧 “The Hug Heard Round the World” Season 3 Episode 6 | Revisionist History

Listened to “The Hug Heard Round the World” Season 3 Episode 6 by Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History

"Q: Was there a period where you felt you had something to prove? A: The first 45 years of my life."

Sammy Davis Junior was one of the world’s greatest entertainers for the better part of half a century. He was black. But he thought the best way to succeed in the world was to act as if he wasn’t. Did we judge him too harshly?

I’m always astounded by some of the finer points that Gladwell comes up with. Taking a look back at this bit of history has a wonderfully enlightening idea. I was near tears at the end of the Roast segment.

I can also certainly relate to the idea of changing myself so as not to be an “outsider”.