Media
Story Stream
Watergate and the Media’s Addiction Problem January 28, 2025
All day is a long time. That’s both an observation and the name of a novel by David Sanchez. The book’s protagonist is a man named David who gets addicted to drugs and alcohol when he is young and eventually cleans up with the help of a community col...
Is Social Media More Like Cigarettes or Junk Food? January 23, 2025
In 1881, James Bonsack patented an automated cigarette-making machine, and, in the years that followed, smoking became much more prevalent in America. Parents and reformers grew worried about kids picking up the habit. “It is not uncommon, it is said...
The False Dichotomy of Progress vs. Reaction January 22, 2025
Vladimir Kontorovich and Eugene Kontorovich recently argue in the Wall Street Journal that America is going through a period of political “openness” regarding various deceptions that government, media, corporate, and education leaders have perpetrate...
Unquitting Social Media January 21, 2025
In 2013, I wrote a blog post titled “Why I Never Joined Facebook.” Social media had grown so ubiquitous that I felt obligated to justify my abstention; I pointed out that I didn’t need it because it didn’t solve any actual problems in my life. The po...
The Momfluencer Who Went to Jail January 20, 2025
As she faces the camera, Ruby Franke lowers her voice to a whisper. It’s as if you were there in the room with her, as if she were leaning in close to tell you her deepest, darkest secrets . . . or, perhaps, to reveal someone else’s.“Shari’s crying,”...
The End of the End of Men January 17, 2025
The patriarchy died in its sleep sometime during Obama’s first term. Or so goes the argument of The End of Men, a 2012 polemic that’s being revisited in the wake of the election. As Donald Trump aggressively courted young men on his way to victory, t...
Two Dad Memoirs and the End of Fatherhood January 16, 2025
In 2005 I married a man whose detailed thoughts about parenting, childcare and family life I knew very little about. We’d agreed that we wanted children—or, rather, I’d said I wanted a large family and he’d said, “well maybe not too large,” and we’d ...
Revolt Against Stoicism January 15, 2025
The benefits of Stoicism dominate the modern mental health industry. It is not just Daily Stoic that has gained significant traction on social media, but we see how this mindset has permeated more recent behavioral therapies, like CBT and REBT. Even ...
The Tiger Mother Roars Back January 14, 2025
In January 2011, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua was in the middle of her book tour, in her hotel room in Seattle, when an email came in from the future vice president of the United States.Her book—Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother—had just come out...
When the Fire Comes January 14, 2025
As the fires in Los Angeles continue to multiply, the closing sentences of Joan Didion’s essay “The Santa Ana” have begun to pop up in news stories and on social media. “Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse,” Didion wrote ...
The Sordid Scene January 14, 2025
A thirty-something indie rocker gallantly holds the hair back for his much younger girlfriend as she rails a line of coke off the coffee table in the opening moments of Matthew Gasda’s gleeful, scathing play Dimes Square. The pair flirt, bicker, talk...
"BACKBONE" by Karl Zinsmeister January 13, 2025
Middle America is in rebellion today. Ordinary people are objecting to bureaucratic coercion, manipulations of speech, redefinitions of sex and family, racial nostrums, strictures on economic freedom, and pressure to conform with new progressive narr...
My Survey of 16 Classic Works of New Journalism January 13, 2025
Journalism is changing rapidly—faster than at any point in my lifetime.Outsiders are breaking rules and shaking up the system. And insiders can’t ignore them anymore.They need to adapt, or die.Business as usual is no longer an option. Every week I se...
The Secret Life of James Dean January 13, 2025
In the spring of 1958, the book publisher Simon & Schuster shocked the New York–media world by erecting on Broadway between 46th and 47th Streets a 40-foot-high billboard with art by Andy Warhol to advertise a new novel. No publisher had ever promote...
It Can’t Just Be DOGE January 10, 2025
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to Washington will surely bring with it a renewed focus on the administrative state and its excesses. Exemplifying that effort is the much–media–maligned Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, headed by El...
How the New York Post Wins January 10, 2025
Explaining the New York Post to anyone who is not from New York is always difficult. This left-leaning city has a daily newspaper that is owned by a right-wing media tycoon and this newspaper’s politics, generally, aren’t aligning with the 68 percent...
Substack: The Next Big Thing? January 10, 2025
The media industry needs a savior. Maybe the entire knowledge economy does. Enter Substack, the newsletter platform that punches far above its weight in cultural impact, despite its mere $650 million valuation. Launched in 2017 by Chris Best, Hamish ...
Don’t Mourn the Fact-Checkers January 10, 2025
The Great American Vibe Shift, rapidly reshaping U.S. culture and politics, has landed at 1 Hacker Way—the gleaming Palo Alto headquarters of Meta. In a video this week, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced sweeping changes to content polic...
The 31 Most Anticipated Scripted TV Shows of 2025 January 08, 2025
The after-effects of media conglomerate cost-cutting and 2023’s labor strikes showed up in noticeable ways for TV viewers last year. Networks and streamers made fewer shows — the Peak TV era truly seems to have passed for now — and those that did mak...
How to Storm and Save an Ivory Tower January 07, 2025
Not until quite recently did American colleges cease being free expression zones. After University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom sounded the alarm with his bestselling The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and...
Why Is the Right Obsessed With Epic Poetry? January 07, 2025
In September 2023, the richest man in the world was daydreaming about the Trojan War. “I sometimes wonder if perhaps Rome was started by exiles from Troy,” Elon Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he had bought and swiftly renamed. His thought...
The End of Fun in the NBA January 03, 2025
The big power forwards and centers, wide as canyons in the shoulders and waist, used to bludgeon each other in the post like elephant seals. That was basketball once — Charles Barkley backing down defenders like a bulldozer, Shaquille O'Neal shatteri...
Inside the Plan to Teach Robots the Laws of War January 03, 2025
“There’s a lot of unemployed philosophers around,” the philosopher told me. “But how many of them want to go work for the military?” I’d reached out to Peter Asaro, who is also a professor of media at the New School and the vice chair of the Internat...
How Bad Is Bypassing Paywalls? January 01, 2025
A while back, I decided to keep track of every paywall I encountered in the course of my regular web browsing. After I blew by two dozen, I decided to stop. For a few weeks, I’d diligently jotted down publications I couldn’t read, but this record of ...
Mainstream Is Now Fringe, and Fringe Is Mainstream December 19, 2024
Last week, a cable news pundit struggled to understand the new media landscape. So he sought advice from his teenage son.He asked the youngster to name the most influential people in the world today.Can you guess the names he picked?...
