joshuago’s Bookmarks

We have created an independent newsroom, located in Manhattan and led by some of the nation’s most distinguished editors, and staffed at levels unprecedented for a non-profit organization. Indeed, we believe, this is the largest, best-led and best-funded investigative journalism operation in the United States.

When a newspaper moves online, the bundle falls apart. Readers don’t flip through a mix of stories, advertisements, and other bits of content. They go directly to a particular story that interests them, often ignoring everything else.

An overview of the major problems facing journalism today, and an exploration of potential funding models.

Journalism students must understand how to build audiences by propagating their work on the Internet. They will have to be sufficiently entrepreneurial to leverage the openness of interactive publishing to ensure that they can build remunerative and satisfying careers. This means they'll have to establish themselves as experts in one or more specialties to build identifiable personal brands. They will be on their own to monetize those brands.

Health care heals, but it also kills. Someone who lacked insurance over the past few decades might have missed taking their Lipitor, but also their Vioxx or Fen-Phen.

Imperial collapse may come much more suddenly than many historians imagine. A combination of fiscal deficits and military overstretch suggests that the United States may be the next empire on the precipice.

The United States hopes to create a strong central government in Afghanistan -- but is such state building possible? Yes, and policymakers should look to Louis XIV and the development of France's ancien régime for guidance.

If the providers of information aren’t providing the basic explainers that turn people into customers for that information, they don’t deserve those customers and won’t retain them. If explanation is required for information acquisition, then the explainer comes “before” the informer as a pre-requisite. We typically have it the other way around.

How did Americans end up with a system in which employers pay for our health insurance? After all, they don't pay for our groceries or our gas.

If nerds can master such arbitrarily complex things as the Linux operating and the complete rules of D&D, why can't they learn the rules of social norms?