From the former chief economist of the FCC, a remarkable history of the U.S. government’s regulation of the airwaves
Popular legend has it that before the Federal Radio Commission was established in 1927, the radio spectrum was in chaos, with broadcasting stations blasting powerful signals to drown out rivals. […Learn More]
From the author of the award-winning The Master Switch, who coined the term “net neutrality”—a revelatory, ambitious and urgent account of how the capture and re-sale of human attention became the defining industry of our time. Ours is often called an information economy, but at a moment when access to information is virtually unlimited, our attention has become the ultimate commodity. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of efforts to harvest our attention. This condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century’s growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention. […Learn More]
Matt Drudge has been labeled everything from “the Walter Cronkite of his era” to a “dangerous menace” and the “country’s reigning mischief-maker.” Political tastes aside, no one disputes Drudge’s influence: a single link from his website, The Drudge Report, has the power to move news cycles, shape front pages, and send television producers into a desperate scramble. […Learn More]
An Epidemic of News Deserts and Ghost Papers
Ghosting the News tells the most troubling media story of our time: How democracy suffers when local news dies. From 2004 to 2015, 1,800 print newspaper outlets closed in the US. One in five news organizations in Canada has closed since 2008. One in three Brazilians lives in news deserts. The absence of accountability journalism has created an atmosphere in which indicted politicians were elected, school superintendents were mismanaging districts, and police chiefs were getting mysterious payouts. […Learn More]