Give It Away.3: Up with the dot.com bubble

 PART THREE

Early in 1996 as our workforce at HotWired expanded, we outgrew the original office, which was adjacent to Wired magazine, so we moved a block south to another converted warehouse at 660 Third Street.

For me, if the parallels from my time at Rolling Stone two decades earlier weren't already in my mind, they now became inescapable. From a window next to my desk at HotWired I could look directly into the office across the street at 625 where Howard Kohn and I had written our three-part series about Patty Hearst and the SLA (1975-6).

One of many similarities between the two companies was the almost constant stream of celebrities who wanted to visit us when they came to San Francisco. At Rolling Stone, it had been rock stars, of course, but also journalists, professors, actors and politicians.

HotWired was no different, but the visitors now included future billionaires like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, as well as virtually every other aspiring Internet entrepreneur on the planet. Also there were tech-savvy musicians like Brian Eno and politicians like Bill Bradley, a former Olympic basketball player and senator who was running for president. 

Among those who wanted to speak with me specifically were reporters from the Washington Post, Newsweek, the L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, NPR and the major TV networks. They marveled at the scene as I sprinkled web terms liberally into my sound bites, which made me sound like an expert.

But many of the reporters also confided to me that this whole scene made them uncomfortable because if the digital revolution succeeded it seemed likely to deep-six our profession. Not to mention what it would mean for our society at large.

I was hopeful they were wrong on both counts.

A quarter-century later, it’s clear my optimism was misplaced. The devastation to the media world is obvious for all to see. Just look around. So many newspapers have closed that in most cities it is a surprise to discover that one still exists. Exact figures vary but somewhere around 2,000 important newspapers have closed their operations since the Web started disrupting their business model circa 1994.

Old media companies couldn’t just “give it away”when it came to content. They needed the revenue from subscribers and sponsors and newsstand sales and classified ads to keep operating. One of the early harbingers of their doom was the overnight success of Craigslist, launched across town in 1995 by an unassuming fellow named Craig Newmark.

San Francisco newspaper executive Phil Bronstein reminded me many years later that I had warned him when Craigslist first appeared that he should try to get the Hearst Corp. to buy it. Apparently I said they they might regret not doing so later. That was a serious understatement.

TV and radio have suffered greatly from the digital revolution as well, losing audiences and advertising share. As have magazines. Book publishing has been decimated.

Meanwhile, the new media world has splintered into a thousand shards of digital sites catering to niche audiences and even more niche opinions. Losing the media industry was one thing. Losing our democracy is another. Fringe theories, conspiracy thinking, extremist movements have all flourished in the Digital Age, ultimately threatening our most precious freedoms in the process.

But that was not the story we envisioned back at HotWired in 1996.

At that moment, a stock market frenzy was making Internet millionaires out of 26-year-olds right and left. It was widely known that Wired, too, was preparing for its own IPO -- initial public offering — later that year. 

One of the documents I carried around with me as a reminder of where we headed was the Wired prospectus for potential investors. It described how Wired Inc. would help lead the rise of an Internet economy to become a global media empire.

No small part of that vision hinged on the efforts of our team at HotWired, since the kinds of multiples envisioned in the prospectus could never be generated by an analog magazine alone.

So at HotWired we were experimenting with a wide range of content strategies, including a search engine (HotBot), advertising models (the banner ad was a HotWired creation), the earliest web blogs (like Suck), interactive bulletin boards, audio programs (presaging podcasts) and digital video, which included a fledgling TV program called Netizen TV.

We also foresaw the future of interactive broadband video. We were involved with Microsoft and NBC when they created MSNBC with that in mind. I was among a small group of Wired execs who flew to New York during the negotiations that led to the cable network’s formation — we ate steak and smoked cigars and toasted a future we thought might include Wired and by extension each of us.

They were heady times.

For the first time in my working life, I held options to purchase shares in a company that would vest over time — four years to be exact. And as a vice-president, my holdings were large enough to potentially make me a modestly wealthy man in the process -- a prospect that had never even occurred to me before.

But hey, I’m getting ahead of myself in the story, which is much bigger than the fate of any one person. Back in 1996, pretty much anything still seemed possible. 

(To be continued.)

Recommended links (40):

1. What’s the likelihood of catching COVID from someone who’s asymptomatic? Doctors guess the likelihood is close to 1 in 20. (SFC)

2. North Korea claimed that the country's first COVID-19 outbreak began with patients touching "alien things" near the border with South Korea, apparently shifting blame to its neighbor for the wave of infections in the isolated country. (Reuters)

3. Coronavirus vaccines are being revamped for the fall. The updated versions will be tailored to fight omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which are gaining ground in the U.S., the FDA said. (WP)

4. Trump Group Pays for Jan. 6 Lawyers, Raising Concerns of Witness Pressure (NYT)

5. How Trump World pressures witnesses to deny his possible wrongdoing (WP)

6. Trump’s vulnerabilities for 2024 mount after new testimony (AP)

7. Why haven’t there been more Cassidy Hutchinsons? (Politico)

8. Taliban Splits Emerge Over Religion, Power and Girls’ Schools (WSJ)

9. At least 7,000 Afghans who were evacuated to the United Arab Emirates after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan last summer are still at Emirates Humanitarian City, a temporary refuge in Abu Dhabi, and none are sure whether they’ll be able to leave before departure programs are suspended in the coming weeks. [HuffPost]

10. American Father Reunited With Child Lost During Kabul Evacuation (WSJ)

11. Biden Vows to Back Ukraine ‘as Long as It Takes’ Despite Economic Toll (NYT)

12. At least 21 dead in Odessa region after Russian attack (WP, AP)

13. President Vladimir Putin has raised the stakes in an economic war with the West by signing a decree to seize full control of the Sakhalin-2 gas and oil project in Russia's far east, a move that could force out Shell and Japanese investors. (Reuters)

14. Shredded trees, dead dolphins and wildfires — how Russia's invasion is hurting nature (NPR)

15. "We're watching Russia wither before our eyes," former US defense chief says (CNN)

16. Patient and Confident, Putin Shifts Out of Wartime Crisis Mode (NYT)

17. Ukraine demands the seizure of Russian-flagged grain ship off Turkey (BBC)

18. UNESCO declares borsch cooking an endangered Ukrainian heritage (NPR)

19. Private Sector’s Role in Climate Fight Grows During War in Ukraine (WSJ)

20. The California State Assembly approved a bill allowing Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco to set up places where opioid users could legally inject drugs in supervised settings. (AP)

21. E.P.A. Ruling Is Milestone in Long Pushback to Regulation of Business (NYT)

22. The Supreme Court ends a disastrous term by gutting climate change rules (Edit Bd/WP)

23. Environmental justice advocates slam Supreme Court ruling (AP)

24. Is the Right to Same-Sex Marriage Next? (NYT)

25. Biden warns Democratic governors a GOP Congress would try to ban abortion nationwide (NPR)

26. On the heels of last week's landmark ruling expanding individual gun rights, the court threw out several lower court rulings that had upheld gun restrictions including bans on assault-style rifles in Maryland and large-capacity ammunition magazines in New Jersey and California. (Reuters)

27. Abortion, women’s rights grow as priorities: poll (AP)

28. The Wisconsin Supreme Court endorsed a blatant power grab by the Republican-controlled state Senate, using a case focused on technical bureaucratic matters to endorse a scheme to seize control of state boards and commissions by declining to confirm appointments from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. [HuffPost]

29. More Students Take Optional SAT and ACT, Hoping to Stand Out (WSJ)

30. Thousands of pilgrims started arriving in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabiay, among some one million Muslims expected to attend the 2022 haj pilgrimage season after two years of major disruption caused by the COVID pandemic. (Reuters)

31. Navy report: Multiple errors poisoned Pearl Harbor water (AP)

32. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a new state budget that includes a spending plan centered on gas refunds. (LAT)

33. California sets nation’s toughest plastics reduction rules (AP)

34. Smuggling Migrants to the U.S. Is Big Business (WSJ)

35. Facebook-owner Meta Platforms has cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30% this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees, as he warned them to brace for a deep economic downturn. (Reuters)

36. Retropolis: Emmett Till’s family calls for woman’s arrest after finding 1955 warrant (WP)

37. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has exposed a gap in socially-minded investing – a hands-off approach to geopolitics and human rights. Before Moscow sent troops into Ukraine, Sberbank, a Kremlin-backed bank already the target of international sanctions, enjoyed higher ratings for environmental, social and governance risks than some western lenders. (Reuters)

38. Zoroastrians confront depletion of their ancient faith (AP)

39. Study: Marker for current geological era found in Japan (NHK)

40. Nation Unable To Enjoy Baseball Without Dozens Of Pitchers Hitting .124 (The Onion)

Give It Away.2: Ground Zero of the Digital Revolution

 

Part Two

By the time I joined the HotWired team in late 1995, I'd already been working in media for almost 30 years, since I was a teenager. This was not necessarily a good thing in the eyes of my new colleagues, who were busily upending the analog media world I came from with a digital alternative they considered superior.

“Content wants to be free” was a standard rallying cry at HotWired, which was not yet two years old and was undergoing a massive growth spurt fueled by corporate advertising revenue.

Rather like a toddler in an American suburb.

But this toddler was hiring people almost as fast as it could; I joked to friends that its interviewing strategy was to lock the door behind candidates so they couldn't leave once they were inside. That didn't really matter because nobody wanted to leave -- if you were Gen-X and into creative media work in the mid-1990s, this is exactly where you wanted to be.

As for me, I was twice as old as them, and my career had been almost entirely in the alternative media, not the mainstream. From my days in the underground press to SunDance to Rolling Stone to the Center for Investigative Reporting and from New West to Mother Jones and public radio plus a dozen other stops along the way, I had pretty much remained outside of traditional journalism institutions.

But in those jobs I did adhere strictly to the values and standards of traditional journalists.

My new colleagues were early-stage writers and reporters and editors and designers and photographers and engineers and interface experts and audience research specialists and several other categories of workers, almost all of them in their mid-to-late 20s.

I was sort of like their uncool Dad.

They all used a techno lingo unfamiliar to me, with terms like web browser, domain name, interactivity, bandwidth, interface, pixels, TCP/IP, url, html, coding, style sheets, IP address, network domain and on and on -- so many strange words that I scribbled them down on a scrap of paper and kept it in my pocket exactly as I did with foreign language phrases when visiting non-English-speaking countries overseas.

After a few months, I finally got around to asking someone what all of these words actually meant. He smirked and quipped: "Don't worry what they mean; just sprinkle them liberally into your speech and your market value will triple."

As I pondered that, the daily political site my team produced called The Netizen began to flourish. We rapidly built a large audience during the early months of election cycle 1996, which attracted the interest of Wired's CEO, Louis Rossetto. 

He had a reputation as an articulate visionary but an extremely difficult boss; many employees seemed fearful of his ill-temper. He was a fierce advocate of libertarian political views, a lifelong Republican, pro-corporate and bluntly dismissive of leftist ideas, I was told.    

So when Rossetto first summoned me to a private meeting I really didn't know what to expect. Most of my previous work had appeared in left-leaning publications, and he probably assumed my politics were defined by that. Maybe he wanted to fire me.

From our very first meeting, however, the person I got to know was quite different from his image. He was smart and opinionated, true, but also quiet-spoken, thoughtful and happy to debate the issues of the day with me at great length. Most importantly, he was committed to remaining open-minded about how we covered those issues in The Netizen.

That kind of tolerance was essential if I was to remain part of the Wired organization, which I already knew I wanted to do. Louis and I quickly developed a mutual trust that allowed us to argue through the various sides of the issues we were covering and agree to disagree when we could not reach a consensus.

Meanwhile he never interfered in my actual editorial choices, though they repeatedly differed from what I know he would have preferred.

The ultimate test came when one of our cantankerous Netizen columnists decided to write a piece savagely critical of Wired itself. He decided to lambast the institution and everything it stood for in his daily column. 

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! This surely would be too much for Louis to handle, I thought.

As the hit piece was about to post, I was gathering up my family pictures from my desk to put in my briefcase since I'd soon be out of a job again. But first, as a courtesy to Louis I let him know what was coming. His response was shocking and refreshingly direct: 

"Let him rant!" 

We ran the piece unedited. My job was secure. 

For me, that moment confirmed that Louis Rossetto was truly committed to his principles, which started with free speech for everyone.

Looking back on that incident, I realize that by then dealing with bosses other people considered difficult was nothing new for me; after all, I'd studied under one the masters, Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone.  Others may have feared these men and their legendary outbursts, but I genuinely liked them and developed a deep fondness for both Jann and Louis that lasts to this day.

A few months after the “Let him rant” episode, Louis suddenly summoned me to his office again for an unscheduled meeting. Again, I assumed there must be bad news of some sort, but instead he surprised me by saying he wanted to move me to the top of the org chart as V.P. of Content Management for all of the websites in the HotWired network.

I was content producing The Netizen and hadn't sought this role at all but of course I agreed to it, especially because it came with a hefty raise. (And at home we had another baby on the way.) 

Throughout my so-called “career,” this sort of thing happened over and over. I started somewhere in the middle of an organization and the top person eventually tapped me to become one of the top bosses. It always came as a surprise to me; I never sought those positions.

But I almost always accepted them. In my new role at HotWired, dozens of people who used to be peers now reported to me, including my former bosses who were about half my age and now seemed traumatized by the change. I immediately set forth on a mission to implement their best ideas and forge collaboration between the somewhat fractious teams that made up the company's online network. 

If I was going to head up this brilliant, unruly band of revolutionaries, by acting as “the adult in the room” (as some of them called me), I was going to do it my way.

(To be continued)

Give It Away, circa 1995

 

PART ONE

During my long chaotic career as a journalist, I periodically landed at the bleeding edge of new media, including late in 1995.

At that time, I had been helping a small team launch the web-based magazine Salon.com in an architect’s office down by the Bay after leaving a high-level position at public media giant KQED as executive vice-president. 

I also was sort of looking for a new full-time job. 

So one afternoon, at the invitation of a former student at U-C Berkeley (where I taught investigative reporting for 14 years) I took a tour of the warehouse headquarters of the award-winning Wired magazine down in Soma.  I liked the feel of the office — it was open, casual, with lots of light rock music discreetly playing in some parts, and the occasional dog wandering around.

But the real attraction lay next door on the other side of a common kitchen area where HotWired was located. This was the online experiment created by Wired’s founders, and I knew it was already getting funding from some of the same corporations we had been unsuccessfully courting while I was at KQED.

HotWired’s headquarters presented a striking scene. Row after row of mostly 20-somethings were working on keyboards with large monitors perched on wooden doors balanced over sawhorses, with pink ethernet cables snaking everywhere, the Chili Peppers blasting overhead and a whiff of marijuana in the air. Two or three former interns of mine stood up to greet me and showed how they were designing content for a whole range of wild-looking websites.

The atmosphere of the place seemed to vibrate, pulsating with the beat. Right after I left the office, I made a call home to say, "I've just found the next place I want to work." 

Several weeks later a call came in from a HotWired executive half my age asking me if I’d like to become the producer of what would be the web's first daily political news site, branded “The Netizen.”

Although the starting salary was barely half what I'd previously been making, and I did have the needs of a new family at home to consider, I accepted the offer without hesitation and said I could start the very next day.

On that first day, I was introduced to a small staff of very young producers and designers with little or no journalism experience. But they were smart, technically savvy, highly motivated and ready to invent something cool.

I quickly hired two of the brightest former journalism students I knew from Berkeley to the team and set out to work with the head engineer, whom I knew from our work together at Mother Jones, and we set a crash course to launch The Netizen.

It took us something like 28 days. And our timing was perfect.

1996 was a presidential election year, so we hired three semi-experienced political writers as our correspondents and they fanned out across the campaign trail to cover the re-election effort of incumbent Bill Clinton and his Republican challengers, including the eventual nominee, Bob Dole.

I had insisted on complete editorial independence for the operation, which quickly attracted a very large audience among the early adopters then flocking to the web. Day after day we published smart, snarky takes from all sides of the political spectrum.

New ideas for features sprouted daily; we quickly added audio, polls, photos, and interactive tools. We were able to generate controversy almost without trying.

Email was still relatively new and the messages from readers that poured in upon publication included some that were outright abusive, often misogynistic or racist, which disturbed me and was a harbinger of bad things to come. But other than that, I loved the chaotic two-way communication cacophony of the web compared to the old “voice of God” broadcast model.

Free to say whatever they wanted to us and each other, readers blasted off at our writers in a way that traditional journalists would never have tolerated. Traditional journalists were used to being the last word on a topic, not the first. We even decided which “letters to the editor” were to be published weeks later, furthering our control.

But it was immediately apparent to me that those days were dead and gone. There was absolutely no censorship at The Netizen and we quickly rocketed into position as a leading daily political news source on the web.

Another thing that was gone was the ability to charge for the content. We just gave it away for free. This was a harbinger of very bad things to come indeed for the traditional journalism world I had been a part of over the previous three decades.

Honestly I didn’t know where this would all lead. It felt like I was sort of trying to help co-pilot a runaway rocket ship headed toward outer space. 

(To be continued.)

[NOTE: I first published a different version of this essay one year ago today on 6/30/21 on my personal blog and distributed it through Facebook. This is a new, updated version specifically for my Substack subscribers. It is the first in a series.]

***

TODAY’s NEWS LINKS (40):

1. NATO deal between Turkey, Sweden and Finland brings home wins for Erdogan — and a possible F-16 breakthrough (CNBC)

2. In Blow to Putin, Turkey Won’t Bar Sweden and Finland From NATO (NYT)

3. NATO deems Russia its ‘most significant and direct threat’ (AP)

4. U.S. to boost military presence in Europe as NATO bolsters its eastern flank (Reuters)

5. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of becoming “a terrorist” state carrying out “daily terrorist acts” and urged Russia’s expulsion from the United Nations. “We need to act urgently to do everything to make Russia stop the killing spree,” Zelenskyy said in a virtual address to the U.N. Security Council. [AP]

6. Russian forces struck at targets in the Mykolaiv area of southern Ukraine and intensified attacks on fronts across the country as NATO members met in Madrid to plan a course of action against the challenge from Moscow. (Reuters)

7. War in Ukraine is driving demand for Africa's natural gas. That's controversial (NPR)

8. Taliban, US Plan to Meet in Qatar to Discuss Freeing Frozen Afghanistan Funds (Bloomberg)

9. Sudan’s military strikes disputed region bordering Ethiopia (Al Jazeera)

10. Fearing outbreaks of religious violence, police in the Indian state of Rajasthan banned public gatherings and suspended internet services a day after two Muslims posted a video claiming responsibility for slaying a Hindu man. (Reuters)

11. The pandemic may have forever altered the economy, Fed Chair Powell says (CNN)

12. Affordable housing in California now costs $1 million per apartment to build. (Cal Today)

13. Gas lines and scuffles: Sri Lanka faces humanitarian crisis (AP)

14. Sri Lankan doctors and other medical staff as well as teachers will take to the streets today to demand that the government solve a severe fuel shortage at the heart of the South Asian country's worst economic crisis in decades. (Reuters)

15. A journalist says the Philippines is shutting down her critical news site (NPR)

16. Reporter shot to death in Mexico, the 12th journalist killed there this year (Guardian)

17. Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Highlights Legal Risks for Trump (NYT)

18. Trump’s had bad moments, but few worse than Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony (WP)

19. Allies of Trump have tried to intimidate people with knowledge of what was going on inside the White House around the time of the Capitol attack, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said at the conclusion of Tuesday's shocking Jan. 6 hearing. Cheney said the committee is considering how to respond to the apparent intimidation. [HuffPost]

20. Opinion | The Effing President Gets His Comeuppance — Trump (Politico)

21. A President Untethered — Trump (NYT)

22. Another American woman just stood up to protect democracy from Trump (CNN)

23. Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Should Be the End of Donald Trump

    Regardless of the legal obstacles to convicting the former President, the testimony of a former White House aide reconfirmed that Trump must never again be allowed anywhere near power. (New Yorker)

24. The People v. Donald Trump — The evidence for a possible criminal case against the former president is piling up. (Atlantic)

25. Chesa Boudin says he won’t rule out running again for San Francisco D.A., in his first interview since the historic recall. (SFC)

26. The nosedive in cryptocurrency markets has wiped out millions of dollars in funds stolen by North Korean hackers, digital investigators say, threatening a key source of funding for the sanctions-stricken country and its weapons programs. (Reuters)

27. New turmoil rocks crypto as court orders hedge fund to liquidate (Politico)

28. Breyer makes it official: He's leaving the Supreme Court on Thursday at noon (CNN)

29. For Many Women, Roe Was About More Than Abortion. It Was About Freedom. (NYT)

30. Tech Giants Pour Billions Into AI, but Hype Doesn’t Always Match Reality (WSJ)

31. EU countries clinched deals on proposed laws to combat climate change, backing a 2035 phase-out of new fossil fuel car sales and a multibillion-euro fund to shield poorer citizens from CO2 costs. (Reuters)

32. Most say nation on wrong track, including Dems (AP)

33. Surprise solar storm with 'disruptive potential' slams into Earth (LiveScience)

34. The shrinking of Lake Mead is exposing a wide range of wreckage — even bodies (WP)

35. Record heat across Japan (NHK)

36. The west must work with Russia to save the Arctic (Financial Times)

37. How India taught the world the art of collecting data (BBC)

38. 15 Years Ago, the iPhone Went On Sale (MacRumors)

39. The iPhone Turns 15 Today. Here’s How It Changed Us. (WSJ)

40. Antidepressant Medication Label Reminds Users That Pill Should Never Be Mixed With Long Look In Mirror (The Onion)

***

TODAY’s LYRICS:

"Give It Away"

Red Hot Chili Peppers

What I've got you've got to give it to your mamma
What I've got you've got to give it to your papa
What I've got you've got to give it to your daughter
You do a little dance and then you drink a little water

What I've got you've got to get it put it in you
What I've got you've got to get it put it in you
What I've got you've got to get it put it in you
Reeling with the feeling don't stop continue

Realize I don't want to be a miser
Confide w/sly you'll be the wiser
Young blood is the lovin' upriser
How come everybody wanna keep it like the kaiser

Give it away give it away give it away give it away now
Give it away give it away give it away give it away now
Give it away give it away give it away give it away now
I can't tell if I'm a kingpin or a pauper

Greedy little people in a sea of distress
Keep your more to receive your less
Unimpressed by material excess
Love is free love me say hell yes

I'm a low brow but I rock a little know how
No time for the piggies or the hoosegow
Get smart get down with the pow wow
Never been a better time than right now

Bob Marley poet and a prophet
Bob Marley taught me how to off it
Bob Marley walkin' like he talk it
Goodness me can't you see I'm gonna cough it

Lucky me swimmin' in my ability
Dancin' down on life with agility
Come and drink it up from my fertility
Blessed with a bucket of lucky mobility

My mom I love her 'cause she love me
Long gone are the times when she scrub me
Feelin' good my brother gonna hug me
Drink my juice young love chug-a-lug me

Eyewitness

 At yesterday’s Congressional hearing, the Jan. 6th committee heard from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson a set of remarkable details about Donald Trump’s role in the event, including his advance knowledge there would be violence, and his intense anger at being prevented from going to the riot himself.

When his security detail refused to drive him to the Capitol, according to Hutchison, a furious Trump tried to grab the wheel of his vehicle and also reached toward the throat of a Secret Service agent as if to choke him.

After Trump was forced to go back to the White House, in the dining room he threw his plate of lunch at the wall, breaking the plate and leaving ketchup dripping down the wall. Hutchinson helped the President’s valet clean up the mess.

In the days and weeks leading up to the riot, Hutchinson was both told directly by senior officials and overheard conversations that the crowd on Jan. 6th would be armed and dangerous. When the president was about to address the crowd that morning, many of the marchers refused to go through the metal detectors surrounding the vicinity of the stage because they were carrying weapons.

Those who did enter were disarmed and many weapons were confiscated by security officials. This angered Trump, who wanted the crowd to be allowed to keep their weapons for the assault on Congress. “They’re not here to hurt me,” he declared.

At yesterday’s hearing, the committee also heard more about the “war room” set up by Trump associates at the Willard Hotel to coordinate the events during the riot. And how some senior officials including Cabinet members resigned upon learning of Trump’s comment “Mike deserves it” when the mob was hunting Pence and chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” 

The overall legal impact of this hearing was to strengthen the evidentiary trail that Trump and certain of his top aides were involved in the planning and execution of the events of Jan. 6th. In the process, Cassidy Hutchinson emerged as one of the heroes from this sad, dark day in American history.

***

In brighter news, my grandson Oliver’s little league team won the district championship Tuesday night in San Jose with a convincing 18-0 victory so they now move on the sectional round next month. Ollie went 2 for 2 with a walk in the victory.

TODAY’s LINKS (38):

1. 'This is a bombshell': Trump aides left speechless by Hutchinson testimony (CNN)

2. How the Jan. 6 panel's star witness drew a roadmap for Trump’s culpability (Politico)

3. January 6 hearings: Trump urged armed supporters to storm Capitol - aide (BBC)

4. Trump’s fury on display at Jan. 6 hearing. Key takeaways from explosive day of testimony from former White House aide (CNBC)

5. What are 'mags,' and why did ex-Meadows aide bring them up at the Jan. 6 hearings? (USA Today)

6. Who is Cassidy Hutchinson, the surprise witness at Tuesday's Jan. 6 panel hearing? (NPR)

7. Did Cassidy Hutchinson Just Hand the Jan. 6 Committee Its ‘Smoking Gun’? (Politico)

8. The Most Damning January 6 Testimony Yet (Atlantic)

9. Federal Agents Seized Phone of John Eastman, Key Figure in Jan. 6 Plan (NYT)

10. Majority of Americans disapprove of SCOTUS Roe v. Wade reversal, poll shows (CNN)

11. California to vote on constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights (WP)

12. Democrats Weigh New Abortion Legislation After Roe v. Wade Overturned (WSJ)

13. Election 2022: Abortion is central in 1st post-Roe primaries (AP)

14. Gen Z is influencing the abortion debate — from TikTok (WP)

15. Battles over abortion shifted to state courts, as judges blocked statewide bans in Louisiana and Utah and clinics in Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas sued seeking similar relief. Meanwhile, New Mexico is shielding abortion clinics ahead of an expected patient surge. (Reuters)

16. Frustration, anger rising among Democrats over caution on abortion (WP)

17. U.S. Supreme Court takes aim at separation of church and state (Reuters)

18. Supreme Court sides with doctors challenging their convictions in opioids 'pill mill' case (CNN)

19. U.S. Urges New Tactic to Curb Putin’s War Machine and Lower Fuel Prices (NYT)

20. Russia, rejecting default, tells investors to go to western financial agents (Reuters)

21. Biden committed to 'transatlantic unity' in response to Ukraine invasion (NHK)

22. Russia bans Biden's wife, daughter from entry (ABC)

23. West’s Challenges in Tackling Russia Exposed at G-7 (WSJ)

24. Finland and Sweden poised to join Nato after Turkey drops veto (Financial Times)

25. China cuts quarantine time for international travelers in big step toward easing Covid controls (CNBC)

26. Biden aides seek to unlock Afghan reserves without enriching Taliban (WP)

27. 23 million Californians to get up to $1,050 in "inflation relief" checks (CBS)

28. Also hit by inflation? Your local taco truck (NPR)

29. Japan baked under scorching temperatures for a fourth successive day, as the capital's heat broke nearly 150-year-old records for June and authorities warned power supply remained tight enough to raise the specter of cuts. Climate change is driving this year's extreme heat and flooding, scientists said in a study. (Reuters)

30. The San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air quality in the country. (PBS)

31. Too shallow, few fish, unsafe water: Floating down the Indus River in a rubber dinghy (NPR)

32. War, Weather Endanger Global Food Supplies, Farm Leaders Say (WSJ)

33. An 8-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed a 1-year-old girl and injured a 2-year-old girl at a Florida motel, authorities said. The boy’s father left the gun holstered in his Pensacola motel room closet. After he left the room, his son found it and fired a round that passed through and killed the baby and struck the toddler. [AP]

34. Early human ancestors one million years older than earlier thought (Guardian)

35. The Most Interesting Moons in Our Solar System (Gizmodo)

36. Mars Has So Much Radiation, Any Signs of Life Would Be Buried Six Feet Under (ScienceAlert)

37. Reindeer Have a Special Eye Color Just for Winter (Atlantic)

38. Friends Always Trying To Set Up Single Woman With New Puzzle (The Onion)

Rational Coverage Of an Irrational World

When I was in college, like most of the other young men around me, the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam and fight in a war I didn’t believe in terrified me. And that prospect, which was far from imaginary, made some of very angry as well.

When I was a freshman, a small but insistent minority of students protested against the war and organized to convince more of us to join their ranks. At the same time, many students had been affected by civil rights marches led by Martin Luther King and wanted to do something about racism in our society.

Our the four years I was in school, the ranks of students willing to join the antiwar and civil rights demonstrations grew considerably until it felt like we were in the majority, though the math of the matter showed that wasn’t the case.

Other related movements emerged, led by the feminist, LBGTQ and environmental forces. Since most of us were still quite young, we probably underestimated how difficult it would be to achieve any of the fundamental changes we sought. In any event, we met plenty of resistance, which only made us angrier and more likely to demonstrate.

In my case, I read everything I could find about all of these issues and participated in strictly non-violent ways for a while, though as I was finding my role as a journalist, increasingly I covered the demonstrations rather than actually participated in them.

Our generation didn’t necessarily see a conflict between activism and journalism at first, although as we grew older and more experienced our attitudes evolved. By twenty years after my graduation, many media executives were actively prohibiting student journalists and young reporters from even attending demonstrations —to avoid any appearance of bias or conflict on contentious issues.

Those with my type of history were not happy about this but we gradually recommended that our interns and students and new hires make a difficult ethical choice. We told them if they wanted to be successful journalists they had to guard their credibility by not openly demonstrating. Otherwise they would be seen as partisans, which might end up limiting their career options.

In today’s world, the partisan divide feels much deeper and more fractious than it was in my youth. Even a casual glance through the daily headlines confirms that. So what can a young, sincere journalist do to cover these controversies, like abortion?

Trying to remain open-minded about something as emotional and deeply personal as abortion is going to challenge anybody. Hyperbole and extreme statements rule the airwaves. 

So yes it is a difficult time to be a young journalist. Sort of like in the 1960s. There is really just nothing easy about this career choice and never will be.

TODAY’s LINKS:

1. Supreme Court further erodes separation between church and state in case of praying football coach (CNN)

2. Does Hungary Demonstrate Our Authoritarian Future? American conservatives recently hosted their flagship conference in Hungary, a country that experts call an autocracy. Its leader, Viktor Orbán, provides a potential model of what a Trump after Trump might look like. (New Yorker)

3. 46 migrants were found dead inside a semitruck in San Antonio, with 16 more hospitalized, authorities say (CNN)

4. Supreme Court’s abortion ruling sets off new court fights (AP)

5. Green Day lead singer says he’ll renounce citizenship over abortion ruling (WP)

6. Louisiana judge temporarily blocks abortion ban after U.S. Supreme Court ruling (Reuters)

7. Pence leans in on abortion as other potential GOP candidates are more cautious (WP)

8. Zelenskyy joins G-7 summit as U.S. plans to send Ukraine new missile defense system (NBC)

9. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged Western leaders to supply anti-aircraft defense systems to his embattled nation as Russian forces assaulted Lysychansk, the last big city still held by Ukrainian troops in eastern Luhansk province. (Reuters)

10. Russia in debt default as payment deadline passes (BBC)

11. Russian missile strike hits shopping mall with more than 1,000 people inside, Ukraine says (NBC)

12. Missile Strike in Kyiv Rattles Residents After Weeks of Quiet (NYT)

13. NATO set to increase its high-readiness forces to over 300,000 in massive military buildup (CNBC)

14. Oil prices rise amid G7 talks on new Russian sanctions (Reuters)

15. The public hearings by the Jan. 6 committee may not change the minds of Trump's devoted followers, but they could stymie his efforts to delegitimize criminal charges that prosecutors may wind up filing against him. There is some evidence that the hearings are having a broad impact on the national conversation, S.V. Dáte writes.[HuffPost]

16. With violent rhetoric and election denial, podcaster becomes GOP force (WP)

17. Jan. 6 panel adds last-minute hearing Tuesday afternoon (NBC)

18. Afghanistan is reeling after 2 earthquakes in a week (NPR)

19. The Dutch government plans to build at least two new nuclear reactors in the coming years, at a time when more countries are closing existing plants than opening new ones. Nuclear power became taboo but it's the most efficient source of electricity, and given the impacts of fossil fuels and climate change, the Netherlands is taking another look. [HuffPost]

20. Families brace for changes to pandemic-era free school meals (AP)

21. Gas Stations Now Hold Up to $175 of Your Money When You Swipe (WSJ)

22. Incredible Virus Discovery Offers Clues About the Origins of Complex Life (SciTech Daily)

23. Navy Ship Found Off Philippines Is the Deepest Shipwreck Ever Surveyed (WSJ)

24. Authors are protesting Amazon's e-book policy that allows users to read and return (NPR)

25. Realistic Concept Art For New Luxury Condos Features Homeless Man Getting Arrested (The Onion)

    TODAY’s LYRICS

    “The Grass Is Blue”

    By Dolly Parton

    I've had to think up a way to survive
    Since you said it's over
    Told me goodbye
    I just can't make it one day without you
    Unless I pretend that the opposite's true

    Rivers flow backwards
    Valleys are high
    Mountains are level
    Truth is alive
    I'm perfectly fine
    And I don't miss you
    The sky is green
    And the grass is blue

    How much can a heart and a troubled mind take
    Where is that fine line before it all breaks
    Can one end their sorrow
    Just cross over it
    And into that realm of insensitive bliss

    There's snow in the tropics
    There's ice on the sun
    It's hot in the Arctic
    And crying is fun
    And I'm happy now
    And I'm glad we're through
    And the sky is green
    And the grass is blue

    And the rivers flow backwards
    And my tears are dry
    Swans hate the water
    And eagles can't fly
    But I'm alright now
    Now that I'm over you
    And the sky is green
    And the grass is blue
    And I don't love you
    And the grass is blue

 

The News

TODAY’s LINKS:

1. Americans Face New Abortion Landscape in Wake of Roe Decision (NYT)

2. Around the nation, demonstrators show support for abortion rights (NPR)

3. Roe’s Final Hours in One of America’s Largest Abortion Clinics (New Yorker)

4. Abortion Providers Confront New Landscape After Roe (WSJ)

5. Rep. Mary Miller: Overturning Roe v. Wade is a "victory for white life" (Axios)

6. Roe’s gone. Now the GOP wants to push further. (WP)

7. Abortion Pills Take the Spotlight as States Impose Abortion Bans (NYT)

8. Abortion ruling casts cloud over usual cheer at U.S. Pride parades (Reuters)

9. GOP gains ground on abortion, guns despite Democratic control (WP)

10. Pride parades march on with new urgency across US (AP)

11. Biden Signs Gun Bill Into Law, Ending Years of Stalemate (NYT)

12. The Supreme Court rulings represent the tyranny of the minority (WP)

13. Former Pence chief of staff says Meadows was "telling different audiences all sorts of stories" after 2020 election (CBS)

14. Russian missiles hit Kyiv as G7 summit begins in Europe (CNN)

15. Russia Unleashes a Missile Barrage, While Inching Ahead in Eastern Ukraine (NYT)

16. Russia Defaults on Foreign Debt for First Time Since 1918 (Bloomberg)

17. What’s the impact of a Russian debt default? (AP)

18. U.S. Held Secret Meeting With Israeli, Arab Military Chiefs to Counter Iran Air Threat (WSJ)

19. Biden announced a $600 billion global infrastructure program to counter China's clout (NPR)

20. Area Man Will Be Judge Of Whether Woman Actually True Baseball Fan (The Onion)

TODAY’s LYRICS

"Desperado"

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
You've been out ridin' fences for so long now
Oh, you're a hard one
I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin' you
Can hurt you somehow

Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She'll beat you if she's able
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet
Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can't get

Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

Don't your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's hard to tell the night time from the day
You're losin' all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you
(Let somebody love you)

You better let somebody love you before it's too late