Friday, January 17, 2025

Special Edition

(Note: Regular subscribers, scroll to below the links for today's newsletter.)

Welcome, readers of Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside, and Richmondside who are looking for the rest of the ten-part series, “Who Killed Betty Van Patter?” Just click on the links below to read each part.

(Photo courtesy of the Baltar family)

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Friday Mix

Today is a little different as we are partnering with three excellent publications in the East Bay, Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside, and Richmondside. We also have a special selection of links from Leslie below that focus on the oligarchs surrounding Trump.

I’ve always wanted this newsletter to serve as a community space and a place where conversations can begin. Today’s edition is an example of what I mean by that.

LATEST HEADLINES:

  • Supreme Court says TikTok can be banned in the US, leaving its future in limbo (CNN)

  • Israeli Cabinet at Odds Over Cease-Fire Deal, Delaying Vote (NYT)

  • The Shock of a Gaza Ceasefire Deal (New Yorker)

  • Deportation at ‘light speed’: How Trump’s crackdown could unfold (WP)

  • Trump will 'put measures in place' to stop TikTok ban, top adviser says (BBC)

  • Insurers’ Rule Change Puts California Homeowners on the Hook for L.A. Fire (WSJ)

  • Firefighters make significant gains against wildfires around Los Angeles (AP)

  • The long-term trends that sparked L.A.’s catastrophic fires (WP)

  • First US congestion pricing scheme brings dramatic drop in NY traffic (Financial Times)

  • Democrats' crisis of the future: The biggest states that back them are shrinking (AP)

  • Donald Trump made lots of big promises on the campaign trail about what he would do if he won. But he has already walked back some of those commitments, from lowering the costs of groceries to ending the war in Ukraine "in 24 hours." [HuffPost]

  • China response key to crude oil after new sanctions on Russia (Reuters)

  • The global "youth scarcity" crisis (Axios)

  • California left scrambling on Google journalism deal after UC Berkeley backs out (Politico)

  • Journalists’ Union: California Should Renegotiate State’s Newsroom Funding Deal With Google (KQED)

  • Naps can help improve your cognition. Here’s how to take a better nap. (WP)

  • Robotic insects could someday aid in mechanical pollination (TechXplore)

  • OpenAI’s AI reasoning model ‘thinks’ in Chinese sometimes and no one really knows why (TechCrunch)

  • Waymo’s journey shows the path ahead for AI agents (Financial Times)

  • Google’s Gemini AI just shattered the rules of visual processing — here’s what that means for you (Venture Beat)

  • Nursing Home Told Man Playing Accordion For Them Is Billy Joel (The Onion)

LESLIE’S LINKS:

  • I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers (Guardian)

  • Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Sprint to Remake Meta for the Trump Era (NYT)

  • The GOP Rivalry That Could Spell Big Trouble for Trump (Politico Mag)

  • ‘Everyone’s trying to kiss the ring’: Trump’s inauguration devours corporate cash, smashing records (Politico)

  • A Euphoric Tech Industry Is Ready to Celebrate Trump and Itself (NYT)

  • Trump floats adding Los Angeles aid to reconciliation bill (The Hill)

  • Canada sends Trump ‘message’ with retaliatory tariff talk (The Hill)

  • Republicans in North Carolina Are Treading a Terrifying Path (NYT)

TODAY’S ARCHIVAL VIDEO:

The Ronettes - Is This What I Get For Loving You. 

This black and white video is a classic.

(Image: Wikipedia)

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Thursday, January 16, 2025

Truth on the Run

NOTE: Watch Joe Biden’s farewell address, in which he warns against the rise of a “tech-industrul complex” and an oligarchy of billionaires that threatens our democracy. It’s about 17 minutes in length.

Three years ago, on the occasion of its 15th anniversary Politico published the opinions of various experts on the question, “Is the Media Doomed?”

None of them came up with a definitive answer but perhaps that’s because they were asked the wrong question. For one thing, which forms of media are we talking about anyway?

It’s a fair assumption that human societies will always have some sort of media if only because we have always had them. The earliest forms probably involved cave drawings and fireside story-telling sessions.

The ways news travels in a pre-literate society — by word of mouth — persists even in the most highly techno-societies. Think about it — when you hear some news from a friend it often has more veracity than from a venerated news source, right?

And in today’s environment, “media” encompasses a far broader swath of sources than the ones like Politico) that I aggregate daily, because these are primarily traditional journalism outlets that normally adhere to the professional standards that we journalists hold dear.

But information circulating via Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat and other social media now reaches more people than these traditional outlets. Disinformation spread by Trump and his allies, Musk. QAnon, and other extremist sources attract a huge audience as well.

Inside this cacophony, what exactly is “media” anymore?

Maybe that is another operative question.

The most common query I get from readers and friends is whether they can trust this or that source of information. Skepticism even with the New York Times seems to be at an all-time high, and not just on the right.

Maybe it is our ability to trust that we need to be worried about. With so many competing points of view, optimists profess that the truth will win out. But whose truth exactly are we talking about?

Whether a story is strictly true or not is of major interest to us journalists, but I’m not so sure that is always the case for our audiences. A good story — as long as it is mostly true — may be more satisfying to many than that which can strictly be proved to be so. Speculative pieces often prove to be exceptionally popular.

Maybe the question Politico should have posed is not so much about media but a much larger matter.

Is the truth doomed?

(I first published this three years ago in January 2022.)

HEADLINES:

  • Joe Biden warns ‘oligarchy is taking shape in America’ in farewell address — President sounds alarm about growing power of ultra-wealthy before handing presidency back to Trump (Guardian)

  • President Biden's full farewell address (CNN)

  • Israel, Hamas agree to ceasefire deal (WP)

  • How the Biden and Trump teams worked together to get the Gaza ceasefire and hostages deal done (CNN)

  • Trump says he'll use Gaza deal momentum to expand Israel's regional ties (Reuters)

  • Pam Bondi Grilled During Confirmation Hearing: Five Key Moments (WSJ)

  • Bondi says she won’t play politics as attorney general, doesn’t rule out probes of Trump adversaries (AP)

  • Trump’s election interference case may be closed, but it still matters for America’s future (The Conversation)

  • Core CPI rises less than forecast as inflation pressures ease slightly in December (Yahoo)

  • Core inflation rate slows to 3.2% in December, less than expected (CNBC)

  • The conflicting inflation report (Axios)

  • Trump considers executive order hoping to ‘save TikTok’ from ban in U.S. law (WP)

  • Banning TikTok is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step (ACLU)

  • What to know about RedNote, the Chinese app that American TikTokkers are flooding (NPR)

  • What Happened When an Extremely Offline Person Tried TikTok (New Yorker)

  • FDA bans red dye No. 3 from foods (AP)

  • Live L.A. fires updates: Crews make progress against blazes amid ‘particularly dangerous’ red flag warning (LAT)

  • Washington Post Employees Plead for a Summit With Jeff Bezos — In a letter, more than 400 employees asked Mr. Bezos, the company’s owner, to meet, saying they were “deeply alarmed” by recent decisions at the paper. (NYT)

  • Global experts propose new plan for diagnosing obesity outside of BMI (AP)

  • Remembering Matilda, the last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade (Al Jazeera)

  • Women-centered Celtic society unearthed in 2,000-year-old cemetery (WP)

  • ‘I’m literally Joan Baez right now’: gen Z women relate to Bob Dylan’s toxic situationship (Guardian)

  • R.E.M. taught Gen X it’s better to fade away than to burn out (WP)

  • As Gen Z job applicants balloon, companies are turning to AI agent recruiters (TechCrunch)

  • Nearly all Americans use AI, though most dislike it, poll shows (Axios)

  • Walgreens To Begin Keeping Most Valuable Employees Behind Glass (The Onion)

TODAY’s VIDEO:

The Real Bob Dylan: An Intimate Look with Louie Kemp

(Thanks to John Jameson for today’s video.)

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Wednesday, January 15, 2025

The In-Between (Knowing and Not Knowing)


 (First winter carrot)

Sometimes I think the most important parts of being alive are the least dramatic. They happen in the in-between spaces. You know, those times before or after big events, when something deemed important hasn’t quite happened yet, or after it just did.

These are the times of anticipation, dread, relief, exhilaration or plain old boredom. You might call them the connective tissue that binds us to time as we float through space, or maybe it’s more the out-of-focus nature of those undocumented moments that make them so special.

I should probably get more specific here.

Recently, I had a health scare. It’s one of those things that happens with alarming frequency to people my age and each time it is scary. First, you have to undergo tests, some of which are invasive, which may be followed by procedures, which are decidedly more invasive.

There’s usually a period of waiting, of not-knowing what’s going on inside your body. In my case, my imagination fills the gaps with dreamt-up worst-case scenarios. “I better get my things in order. I should update my will. How will I break this news to my friends?” And variations on those themes.

During this most recent health scare, which involved my brain, the most bizarre vision I kept having was of an imaginary obituary of me. This happened just as I was trying to drift off to sleep. It seems that I’d written it the way I would wish it to be, only to quickly acknowledge that such an idealized summary of my actual life was unlikely to see the light of day in any reputable publication.

Still, as I grew sleepier, this rosy post-death scenario continued to include some sort of flowery memorial service, with all manner of touching tributes, tears and laughter. Oddly, I saw myself there, right in the front row, witnessing the whole gorgeous, bittersweet thing.

At this point, it occurred to me that it would be far nicer if we could all be at our own funerals just to hear those nice things before we’re gone. But then I woke up and berated myself for indulging in such a monumentally egoistic silliness in the first place.

***

Meanwhile, back in what we usually consider reality, my brain health scare came to a happy ending in my doctor’s office when I received an “all clear.” (For now.)

Afterwards, I firmly resolved to live the rest of my days much more mindfully, and much more conscious that each day could indeed be my last.

And one more thing. Maybe from now on I’ll try a little harder to be worthy of that good obituary.

HEADLINES:

TODAY’S ARCHIVAL VIDEO:

The Beatles - Live in Australia 1964 [Full Concert HD Remaster]. All black and white, you can hear the songs above the deafening screams. At least one fan faints.

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Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Whose Life Exactly?

Since I’ve worked for almost 60 years in the mixed worlds of journalism, Hollywood, academia, non-profit and private sectors, legacy and digital media, I often get questions about what happened during my long strange career.

It is rare that a week goes by that somebody doesn’t want to discuss something about the way it was in the 60s or 70s. I always try to comply with their requests, because I was a reporter for a long time and I know it’s frustrating when people resist such calls about what they remember.

Usually I’m willing to discuss pretty much anything except the identities of certain confidential sources or relationships that I pledged not to disclose. So that leaves a pretty wide latitude for conversation. 

Probably the most sought-after information is about my years at Rolling Stone and specifically the Patty Hearst stories.

Fifty years ago, Howard Kohn and I had three cover stories on the newspaper heiress’s kidnapping and apparent conversion to the cause of her kidnappers, the domestic terror organization calling itself the SLA. Publisher Jann Wenner labelled it the “scoop of the decade.”

Even mundane details of our own lives at that time seem to be of some interest and one Hollywood producer recently asked me, “Do you ever think about how amazing it is that you did all of that? That you lived through it?”

I answered, “Sometimes it feels like it was in fact someone else, not me.”

After we hung up, I stayed with that thought about it feeling like somebody’s else’s life, not mine. I suspect a lot of people feel that way about the distant past and the things that happened back then — things that may sound strangely exotic now.

Given that we grow and change throughout our lives it is kinda true, too, that many of us were pretty much someone else when we were younger. And speaking only for myself, I have no regrets about that.

But the other thing about the perspective of distance on those long-ago events — they shrink into a small piece of a much larger mosaic of people and places and what matters over, under and through time. 

As he often does, Dylan get this just right, albeit in another context:

The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last

***

Note: Howard Kohn and I will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Patty Hearst stories in Rolling Stone this summer with a reunion in San Francisco.

HEADLINES:

  • Judge Cannon paves the way for potential release of Part 1 of special counsel's report (NPR)

  • Trump appears desperate to keep Jack Smith’s findings under wraps (MSNBC)

  • A Wider War Has Already Started in Europe (Atlantic)

  • Russia Is Stepping Up Its Covert War Beyond Ukraine (Foreign Policy)

  • Weather service issues its most severe fire warning for parts of L.A. area as winds pick up (LAT)

  • Cal Fire air crews brace for more Santa Ana winds (NBC)

  • After Attacking L.A. Wildfire Response, Elon Musk Sends His Products to Help (NYT)

  • Who will rebuild Los Angeles? Immigrants. (WP)

  • US officials say Gaza ceasefire deal is in sight, the first sign of serious optimism in months (CNN)

  • Some Israeli soldiers refuse to keep fighting in Gaza (AP)

  • House GOP crafts bill to let Trump purchase Greenland (Axios)

  • Trump ally Steve Bannon vowed to "have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day," calling the tech billionaire a "truly evil guy." [HuffPost]

  • Hegseth could lead troops who'd face getting fired for actions he's done in the past (AP)

  • The Pressure Campaign to Get Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary (New Yorker)

  • Treasuries Selloff Ripples Through World Markets After Jobs Data (Bloomberg)

  • Cuts to Medicaid that could cause millions of Americans to lose health insurance are reportedly on a "menu" of possibilities for spending cuts circulating among House Republicans. [HuffPost]

  • Indian festival is expected to draw the world's largest gathering of humanity. (Reuters)

  • Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: "AI Agents Likely to Be a Multitrillion-Dollar Opportunity" (Motley Fool)

  • Biden’s sweeping new AI export controls cover most of the world (WP)

  • Adobe’s new AI tool can edit 10,000 images in one click (Verge)

  • Robotics adds 'significant boost' to labor force: RoboForce CEO (Yahoo)

  • AGI Is Coming In 2025. Schools Urgently Need A Strategy (Forbes)

  • Distressing Survey Finds Most U.S. Citizens Unable To Name All 340 Million Americans (The Onion)

TODAY’S ARCHIVAL VIDEO:

The Beach Boys- Shindig! (All Performances) When to be cool was oh so innocent, in black and white. 

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Monday, January 13, 2025

The Good Journalist

Over decades of teaching, appearing on panels and supervising reporting projects, one of the most frequent questions I have faced is how journalists remain objective while reporting our stories.

The answer is complicated. You might say that we don’t, and while you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, that is hardly the end of the story.

In the course of producing stories, we learn so much about the various people and institutions we cover that it isn’t humanly possible to avoid forming opinions about them.

So how do we keep our coverage fair despite this? One way to think about it is what you are asked to do when serving on a jury. If you have any bias toward the person on trial, you’re asked to put that aside and only take the facts as they are proved into account when making your judgment. 

Most journalists would make great jurors because they act like them on every story that comes across their desks.

In fully staffed newsrooms, we’ve traditionally also had systems in place to counteract any prejudicial statements that make their way into the early drafts of articles. Our colleagues, editors and fact checkers — and in big stores, our lawyers — act collectively as devil’s advocates to test and retest our assumptions and conclusions.

Unfortunately, much of what I’m describing is from the newsrooms of the past, which may no longer exist in many of today’s media organizations after waves of layoffs, buyouts and corporate takeovers.

But with or without those layers of support, the burden remains on every journalist to produce fair and balanced stories and above all else to get it right.

Because in the end, the truth is our best defense.

***

Traditionally, in newspapers, there was a strict line between the reporting we did in news coverage and the opinions expressed on the editorial page. 

One attempt to bridge this gap was to have the beat writers produce analysis pieces, which bridged the gap between reporting and opinion and were traditional journalism’s answer to the objectivity problem.

Though the distinction between “analysis” and “opinion” was largely fictional, it was a useful fiction that newspapers employed successfully for many years.

Meanwhile, the ownership of the newspaper often held different opinions and loyalties on the major topics of coverage from the reporters and editors who provided that coverage on a day-in, day-out basis.

This led to a great deal of tension on occasion between the news staff and those in charge of the editorial pages. Anyone who ever visited the nearest bar to a big-city newspaper office knows exactly what I’m talking about.

(Recent examples include the endorsement controversies at the Washington Post and L.A. Times prior to last November’s election.)

When baby boomers — the largest generation ever to hit American workplaces — came onto the scene, we brought a new level of tension to the line between news and opinion — and the myth of objectivity.

For one thing, we were better educated than the older generation and many of us had been deeply affected by the civil rights and anti-war movements. We weren’t neutral at all on the biggest questions like racism or imperialism — we knew where we stood.

Furthermore, we didn’t like what we found of the culture inside most newsrooms, which was all too often misogynistic, racist, homophobic and more like an arm of the local police department than a force for truth.

At the same time, we found established reporters and editors who resisted all those entrenched prejudices and practices and challenged them at key moments. These were our heroes.

We also discovered that there were a few enlightened owners and executives in media who would support the type of crusading journalism we aspired to, so we worked for them whenever possible and joined in the great muckraking traditions that long have served as a counterweight to mainstream, by-the-books news mongering in America.

When it came to remaining objective, we knew we needed to stay open to following the facts to wherever they led, and that it was vital to act as our own devil’s advocate to counter the biases and prejudices we inevitably brought to the story.

In the end, to be a journalist you have to be able to present the truth as you discover it to be, not as you might wish it to be.

Once all of that was said, once you’d been as fair as you could possibly be during the process of gathering facts, it became completely appropriate on occasion to speak out when asked about the meaning of what we had found.

That’s how some of us came to be called “alternative journalists” or “new journalists” or “gonzo journalists.” Take your pick. Once our reporting was complete, we spoke out. 

That practice remains controversial to this day. But as my esteemed former Stanford colleague, Prof. Ted Glasser, once observed (and I paraphrase), “In the end, being a good citizen has to trump being a good journalist.”

Amen.

HEADLINES:

TODAY’S ARCHIVAL VIDEO:

Ronettes - "You Baby" (ultra clear video resolution) This classic black-and-white video captures the sexiest of the so-called “girl groups” of early rock n roll.

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Sunday, January 12, 2025

The Story Man

“Art is disagreement.” — Bob Dylan

There is a contradiction built into the work of any artist who achieves success. The artist wishes, needs to keep changing, while those celebrating the art really just want to celebrate the known. 

Such is the reality of Bob Dylan and his never-ending experiment. He hasn’t stopped changing or following his instincts, but his audiences have often had trouble keeping up.

Of course, in the commercial realm, he has one of those problems that is good to have — old songs that keep generating new revenue. The fans may want him to play them over and over, long after he has moved on. 

I admire Dylan the writer, the storyteller who can spin a good tale within the limited parameters of a song. Well, not so limited in some cases — among my many favorites are his impossibly long, soulful ballads that seem like they could go on and on forever.

Just like the man.

But I’m in awe of him as an artist and his unending commitment to his art. Not to mention his sheer life force — he has kept writing and singing into his eighties. And he never stops breaking new ground because that is what he’s always really been all about.

Recommended Reading: “Art is Disagreement — A Complete Unknown and the myths of Bob Dylan” (The Nation)

HEADLINES:

TODAY’S SONG:

Bob Dylan - I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You (Official Audio)

I'm sitting on my terrace, lost in the stars
Listening to the sounds of the sad guitars
Been thinking it all over and I've thought it all through
I've made up my mind to give myself to you

I saw the first fall of snow
I saw the flowers come and go
I don't think that anyone ever has ever knew
I've made up my mind to give myself to you

I'm giving myself to you, I am
From Salt Lake City to Birmingham
From East L.A. to San Antone
I don't think I can bear to live my life alone

My eyes like a shooting star
It looks at nothing here or there, looks at nothing near of far
No one ever told me, it's just something I knew
I've made up my mind to give myself to you

If I had the wings of a snow-white dove
I'd preach the gospel, the gospel of love
A love so real, a love so true
I've made up my mind to give myself to you

Take me out traveling, you're a traveling man
Show me something I don't understand
I'm not what I was, things aren't what they were
I'll go far away from home with her

I've traveled a long road of despair
I've met no other traveler there
Lot of people gone, lot of people I knew
I've made up my mind to give myself to you

Well, my heart's like a river, a river that sings
Just takes me a while to realize things
I've seen the sunrise, I've seen the dawn
I'll lay down beside you when everyone's gone

I've traveled from the mountains to the sea
I hope that the gods go easy with me
I knew you'd say yes, I'm saying it too
I've made up my mind to give myself to you

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Saturday, January 11, 2025

Big Man v. Big State

 

It may not be enough for incoming President Trump to lash out and take over some of our neighboring countries. He may be preparing for an internal conflict as well.

Scholars at the University of California, Berkeley, warn that Trump could be preparing to wage war against California, with its entrenched Democratic government and supposed progressive values.

According to the experts’ analysis, Trump may elect to escalate the federal-state conflict to unprecedented levels, using funding cuts, administrative pressure and political muscle to break the state’s will.

“After the election, (Gov. Gavin) Newsom made national headlines by calling a special legislative session to enact laws and financial allocations to “Trump-proof” the state. But as Newsom emerges as a national political opponent to the administration, and as he considers a 2028 run for the White House, Trump may have even more incentive to go to war.”

  • He could withhold emergency aid in the event of wildfires, earthquakes or floods. 

  • He could slash higher education funding for the state, or aggressively challenge the state’s influential climate and environmental standards. 

  • He could attempt to override the state’s protections for reproductive health care and undermine public health policies.

Of course, Trump loudly complain but then do none of these things, because California has by far the largest economy of any state — it accounts for 14% of the nation’s total economy— and any moves to destabilize it could have severe repercussions for the country overall.

So this is just one of the many scenarios that could await us under the new Trump presidency. Aides say he has prepared at least 100 executive orders to be issued on his first day in office.

HEADLINES:

  • Los Angeles has never seen this level of destruction: ‘Everything is burned down’ (LAT)

  • The Insurance Crisis That Will Follow the California Fires (New Yorker)

  • Trump may be planning a sharp, extended conflict with California, experts say (U-C, B)

  • Elon Musk's latest foray into politics: a live chat with Germany's far-right candidate (NPR)

  • President-elect Donald Trump is a convicted felon. Here are the rights he is set to lose (NBC)

  • Supreme Court seems likely to uphold law to sell or ban TikTok (WP)

  • Hiring Blew Past Expectations With 256,000 Jobs Added in December (WSJ)

  • Hot jobs surprise gives Fed breathing room (Axios)

  • Dow falls almost 700 points after blowout jobs report dashes hopes for more rate cuts (CNN)

  • Surging job market could prove costly for households and businesses as odds of quick rate cuts fade (AP)

  • Biden extends protected status for nearly 1 million immigrants (WP)

  • Do Russians Really Support the War in Ukraine? (New Yorker)

  • Earth records hottest year ever in 2024, breaching a key threshold (AP)

  • The Anti-Social Century (Atlantic)

  • US announces $25m reward for arrest of Venezuela's Maduro (BBC)

  • Timothée Chalamet returns to ‘SNL’ as host — and musical guest (AP)

  • Art is Disagreement — A Complete Unknown and the myths of Bob Dylan (The Nation)

  • This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Could Be the Best Investment of the Decade (Motley Fool)

  • Biden Wanders Into Flames (The Onion)

TODAY’s QUOTE:

“Art is a disagreement,” BobDylan writes in his most recent book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. “Money is an agreement.”

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