(Editors Note: This is a cautionary tale especially relevant to several San Diego County pseudo-media outlets who will go unnamed that run and hide with one, or no, source stories while sucking up independent journalism oxygen giving local journalism a bad name.) Hoodwinked, fooled, deceived, misled, bamboozled: those are just a few words to describe what a teenager did to a community journalist who has…
This article was originally published on Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative website and is republished here with permission. Richland County is nestled smack dab in the middle of north central Ohio. It’s a mostly rural enclave in the center of a state in the heartland of America. Richland is not a wealthy place. The median household income and the percentage of adults with college degrees are…
(“Pink slime journalism” is alive and not so well in North County San Diego. From pink slimy publications like the Valley Center Roadrunner/Escondido Something to the Vista Press to the Rancho Santa Fe Review to the Coast News to the Village News, beware what you read and see when it comes to online media presentations.) In late October 2022 – two weeks before Election Day…
I have no intention of quitting Twitter, the social media site that I’ve dutifully scrolled through nearly every day since I joined in 2009. I intend to stick around and watch this train wreck happen. The sight of Elon Musk getting his comeuppance will be at least as entertaining as the dozen or so accounts the algorithm masters in Twitterland have decided to send my…
California now features a first-in-the-nation law requiring social media companies to publicly post their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms, and report data on their enforcement of the policies. Social media companies through their Internet Coalition and other trade associations vigorously opposed the law authorized through AB 587. Court challenges are being considered, trade groups said. Gov, Gavin Newsom signed…
A few words on my personal situation. I’ve got good news and not-so-good news. Yesterday was “Doug Porter Day” in San Diego according to a proclamation from the County Board of Supervisors. I was recognized for my many years of journalism and activism. It was surreal to be in the Board’s space. Between cancer and covid, I don’t get out a lot these days and…
Baseball season has ended, my baseball season anyway since all I live for is watching multiple Major League Baseball games on numerous devices and screens. They call it the post-season for a reason. OK. While watching baseball games, I also dedicate a screen to scream at cable news while reading computer stuff about dotard and his disgusting criminal traitor regime. Not to get too far…
It is a story of corruption that will stay secret, politicians who will need fewer votes to win, even dangerous communicable diseases that will spread faster as our best scientists struggle to fight them. The story is the slow and painful demise of local newspapers, a story whose ending is not yet written but which — without bold intervention and strong reader support — could…
Mensch (Yiddish: מענטש mentsh, cognate with the German word Mensch meaning a “human being”) means “a person of integrity and honor”.[1] Highly savvy in the ways of journalism, and a brilliant analyst of the ways of the world, Bruce Kauffman was the very epitome of a mensch. He always was ready to lend an ear to a friend’s tale of joy or woe and help…
“For the first time media is the least trusted institution globally,” Edelman, the global PR and marketing firm concluded in its annual worldwide study on trust in institutions like the media, business and government. These international findings are in line with recent data coming out of the U.S. A 2016 Gallup poll reported that just 32 percent of Americans trusted the mass media, while an…