Today I’m reprinting my very first Substack post from November 2021.
Welcome to my daily news commentary. I’ve been publishing these for years at Facebook (aka Meta) but am moving to Substack as of today.
I’ve been a journalist for 50 years, writing and editing at Rolling Stone, Salon, Wired Digital, Mother Jones, California, New York and many other publications. I’ve also authored or co-authored four books and taught journalism at Stanford, U-C Berkeley and San Francisco State. I co-founded the Center for Investigative Reporting in 1977 and was executive director there for many years.
Perhaps this new platform will allow me to connect with a larger audience, because that is why in the end I write:
To connect.
***
The news headlines this week are dominated by the global climate change summit at Glasgow, the biggest city in my immediate ancestral past. My mother was born in the nearby village of Eaglesham, ten miles to the south, in 1915.
Her father was a tool and die maker at the locomotive factory in Glasgow. He migrated to the U.S. to take a job advertised by Ford Motor Company in Detroit, and that's how I came to be born in the Motor City just after World War Two.
My grandfather was good with his hands. I'm not. (I can't even type properly.)
The only things I can wrangle like a tool and die maker are words.
***
For anyone paying close attention to the news, these are days of high anxiety. In conversations with numerous friends, I am sensing that watching the cable TV news shows is only making everything worse.
In that context, I should explain that what I try to do every day. I sort the headlines, aggregating them into a virtual news show.
I started doing this at the urging of various friends who are fed up with the existing newscasts, especially in broadcast formats.
Most days I scan a dozen or so of the major newspapers and news services to collate any the stories that are important for informed people to know about. If there is a summary to go with the headline I include that, but it is not necessary to track down the actual article unless you want to follow the links.
The philosophy here is to snack on the news, not gorge on it. I'd rather spend the bulk of my own time on music, film, books, art and with friends virtually and physically. As opposed to developing a news addiction.
It is possible to be a serious person without being an unhappy one -- at least I hope so. While we need to know what is going on, we don't need to obsess on it. So I'll gather the crap into one long list so you don't have to.
HEADLINES (1 minute read)
Supreme Court rejects Alabama’s bid to use congressional map with just one majority-Black district (NBC)
Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks, insurers as he built real estate empire (AP)
FTC and 17 states sue Amazon on antitrust charges (CNBC)
Hunter Biden sues Rudy Giuliani, attorney Robert Costello for "hacking" laptop data (CBS)
California governor signs law requiring gender-neutral bathrooms in schools by 2026 (CNN)
Biden urges striking auto workers to 'stick with it' in picket line visit unparalleled in history (AP)
As government shutdown looms just days away, no agreement is in sight (WP)
Congress is moving into crisis mode as time runs short to avoid a government shutdown (AP)
Money for Ukraine at Center of Senate Bid to Avert Shutdown (NYT)
Congress faces ticking shutdown clock (The Hill)
Is the Hollywood writers’ strike over? The provisional deal explained (Guardian)
The WGA strike might be ending, but Hollywood’s bigger problems aren’t (CNN)
Little-noticed result of the Hollywood strikes: a blow to political campaigns (Politico)
‘Are You OK?’ San Francisco Residents Say They Most Certainly Are. (NYT)
Trump warned that media organizations he believes are “corrupt and dishonest,” like NBC News and MSNBC, will “pay a big price” if he returns to the White House next year, and questioned whether they deserve “free” access to U.S. airwaves. [HuffPost]
Michael Wolff’s ‘The Fall’ is a dishy look at the decline of Fox News (WP)
War has arrived in Crimea (Economist)
Hungry and exhausted Armenian families jammed roads to flee homes in the defeated breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the United States called on Azerbaijan to protect civilians and let in aid. (Reuters)
In the age of AI, computer science is no longer the safe major. (Atlantic)
CIA Builds Its Own Artificial Intelligence Tool in Rivalry With China (Bloomberg)
AI girlfriends are ruining an entire generation of men (The Hill)
LLMs are surprisingly great at compressing images and audio, DeepMind (VB)
Signal’s Meredith Whittaker: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’ (TC)
Historians Reveal Original Draft Of Constitution Included 593 Mentions Of Spiders (The Onion)
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