This is the seventh in a series. Read Part One and Part Two and Part Three and Part Four and Part Five and Part Six.)
My years at Stanford teaching public interest journalism were terrific. I met many young journalists who’d grown up all over the world but shared the common goal to start a career in this very difficult profession.
It was becoming clear during this period that Google was not really a search company but a media company sucking up all the online advertising income it could find, while traditional media were in steep decline.
Facebook launched and it followed the same business path as Google, vacuuming up advertising revenue based on personal data users gave away freely in order to expand their social networks.
In 2005, I rejoined the private-sector fray, at a start-up called Keep Media, where we explored the new lexicon of content surfacing, categorization, and interactivity with user-created content.
The company, which was started by entrepreneur Louis Borders, rebranded itself MyWire, but eventually met the fate of most startups — extinction.
By this point, I was resigned to the undeniable fact that my “career” had devolved into chaos. Along the way, over the years, there had been too many other projects to list, but a few were teaching memoir-writing to boomers; acting as the interim managing editor for the Stanford Social Innovation Review; guest-editing at Business 2.0; working as an investigator for the victim families of 9/11; serving as interim editorial director at CIR; editing some investigative articles post 9/11 for The Nation; guest editing a special issue of BIG magazine and writing editorials and sitting on the Editorial Board of the San Francisco Examiner.
In the more distant past was a decade of screenwriting and consulting in Hollywood, plus 14 years of teaching at U-C, Berkeley's journalism school. For many years, I also traveled internationally and spoke at conferences, mostly about global environmental problems. During all this time, I tried to balance the journalistic requirement to remain aloof from direct activism with my penchant to be involved in my communities in every way possible. Not an easy act to master, and I don't think I did it all that well most of the time.
This long, unpredictable voyage has as much been a private search for my writing voice as a career, and finding ways to support my family, and therefore, to be a productive member of our society, as opposed to what else I might otherwise have turned into.
That same quest continues in this space, unabated. At this point, all I really wish to do is write.
(Tomorrow: The conclusion.)
HEADLINES:
U.S. Stalls Weapons Shipment to Israel in Bid to Stop Rafah Offensive (WSJ)
House quickly kills Marjorie Taylor Greene's effort to oust Speaker Johnson (ABC)
Biden Looks to Thwart Surge of Chinese Imports (NYT)
US weighs upgrade for Vietnam to 'market economy' status (Reuters)
Israeli Tanks Enter Rafah as Cease-Fire Talks Resume in Cairo (NYT)
On Campus and in Gaza, Chaos Threatens Biden’s Campaign (WSJ)
Peace starts with Palestine’s UN membership (Al Jazeera)
Russian missiles and drones struck nearly a dozen Ukrainian critical infrastructure facilities in a major airstrike, causing damage at three thermal power plants. (Reuters)
Scientists are starting to decode what sperm whales are saying (WP)
New York may become the first state to bar gun companies from selling pistols that can easily be converted into machine guns. The proposed law takes aim squarely at Glock. [HuffPost]
Georgia appeals court agrees to review ruling allowing Fani Willis to stay on Trump election case (AP)
Astronomers finally detect a rocky planet with an atmosphere (NBC)
Conservatives trashed NPR's new CEO for being 'woke.' But the truth is far more complex. (USA Today)
The name change for the Boy Scouts to Scouting America comes as the organization emerges from bankruptcy following a flood of sexual abuse claims and seeks to focus on inclusion. The president of the organization said that membership is at historic lows. [AP]
How climate change is raising the risks of another pandemic (WP)
OpenAI Is ‘Exploring’ How to Responsibly Generate AI Porn (Wired)
Impact of AI on Local News Models (Northwestern)
Biden touts new Microsoft AI center on site of Trump’s failed Foxconn deal (WP)
Google DeepMind’s Groundbreaking AI for Protein Structure Can Now Model DNA (Wired)
Trump Helps Pay Legal Bills With New Gig As CNN Contributor (The Onion)
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