One of my many short-term jobs in the second half of my career was editor of an online prediction site, where users submitted their best guesses of what stock prices, sports scores or political polls would indicate at some fixed date in the future, usually days or weeks away.
I curated the submitted questions, wrote others, and reported the results. It was a fascinating experience in coordinating the "wisdom of the crowds," backed by venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road.
Among our partners were media companies, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. They saw the service as a novel way to gauge reader interest in various topics.
I didn't think much about it at the time, but what we were doing was part of a larger attempt by media outlets to shape their content to appeal to more people -- a kind of popularity contest for what used to be decided independently of any user feedback.
Since my earliest days as an online editor/producer, I'd used a similar technique -- opinion polls -- to survey our users on provocative questions. At the Netizen/HotWired in 1996, we staged regular polls about the presidential candidates that election cycle, for example.
But by far our most popular poll was when we asked "Do you prefer a Mac or a PC?"
The results were trending PC early on until a prominent Mac enthusiast got involved, which dramatically altered the results. This was an early opportunity for me to witness the power of online "influencers."
As part of rallying his troops, the Mac enthusiast attacked me as the editor of the Netizen, assuming for some reason that I was a PC-sympathizer, without verifying whether his assumption was true.
In fact I preferred Macs -- the only computers I had ever owned were Macs. (They still are.)
But the online environment made it easy to attack me or anyone else via email, or on bulletin boards and the like, without giving them a chance to respond. That of course was the opposite of the journalistic process I was accustomed to.
I didn't take the attack personally -- it was the first of many -- because it was clear to me that in the new age when everyone had an equal voice, this was how the game would be played. The problem of course was how would this affect journalism, which I felt was fundamentally about the search for truth.
For me the question became how to defend our journalistic standards from becoming just another endangered species.
A huge part of my mission from those days until now has been to try and counteract the excesses of online media by working to preserve and protect traditional journalists and our methodology. To me that's a vital step if we are to preserve the democratization process that has been going on in this country for 250 years.
Can one person make any discernible difference in something like this? IDK, but I'll probably die trying.
***
The news:
* $2.25 trillion plan expected to include $650 billion for roads, bridges, more -- The White House is expected to unveil a jobs and infrastructure plan that could form a cornerstone of the president’s agenda, two people said, describing hundreds of billions in spending on transportation, care for the elderly and disabled, the electric grid and other investments. (WaPo)
* Virus Origins Remain Unclear in W.H.O.-China Inquiry -- Far more work is needed to understand how the pandemic began, the report says, but it is not clear that Beijing will cooperate. “We may never find the true origins,” an expert said. (NYT)
* Biden’s first slate of judicial nominees aims to quickly boost diversity in federal courts (WaPo)
* The Arkansas legislature became the latest state to pass anti-transgender legislation, supporting a new bill that would prohibit doctors from providing minors with treatments, including puberty blockers, hormone therapies or any transition procedures. It's unclear whether Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) plans to sign it into law. The American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to take the issue to court if the governor signs. [HuffPost]
* California awarded over $221 million in no-bid contracts this year to UnitedHealth, a major contributor to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s re-election campaign. [CapRadio]
* Georgia sued for third time over voting restrictions as Delta, Coke face boycott calls (Reuters)
* School shooting plotters often are bullied, suffer from depression (AP)
* In bid to avoid jail, Proud Boys leader claims he was in contact with FBI years before Capitol riot (CNN)
* A single stuck ship stymied global trade for nearly a week. That raises fundamental questions about risks in the supply chain industry (NYT)
* Canada struggles to deport its last known Nazi suspect (WaPo)
* New York resident Sherry Vill said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) kissed her on both cheeks "in a highly sexual manner" without her consent during a tour of her flood-damaged neighborhood. Vill is the ninth person to publicly accuse the governor of sexual misconduct. Several Democrats have called on Cuomo to resign and he has refused. [HuffPost]
*
‘Lighting a fuse’: Amazon vote may spark more union pushes (AP)
* Everyone should have the retirement plan federal employees enjoy (NYT)
* The Supreme Court’s long-awaited case examining NCAA limits on compensating college athletes has clear implications for the sports world, but could also test U.S. antitrust law at a time of national debate about whether courts and lawmakers should do more to protect competition. (WSJ)
* ‘No Excuse Not to Be Vaccinated’ in Texas, Which Expands Eligibility to All Adults (NYT)
* Church membership in the U.S. has fallen below the majority for the first time in nearly a century (WaPo)
* More than a dozen states to open vaccines to all adults (AP)
* Many people returning to offices in the coming months face an end to one of the secret perks of working from home: the daily nap (WSJ)
* An environmental medicine professor is sounding the alarm on humanity’s rapidly declining fertility rates — and she says chemicals in plastics are largely to blame. Shanna Swan, professor of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, helped complete a major study in 2017 that discovered sperm count amongst men in Western countries has dropped by more than 50 percent over the past four decades, according to The Guardian. Last month, she released her book Count Down that dives into how and why humans are losing their ability to procreate. (Neoscope)
* Ravens stealing food from Anchorage Costco shoppers (BoingBoing/Twitter)
* Finance Whiz Predicts The Dow Will Open At 9:30 A.M. Tomorrow (The Onion)
***
[NOTE: The company referenced in this essay was called Predictify.com. It was the only time I was hired after answering a help wanted ad, in this case, on Craigslist.]
I've been lost in yesterday
I've spent all my life just dying
For a love that passed away
There's an end to all my sorrow
This is the only price I'll pay
I'll be a happy man when I go
And I can't wait another day
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