Thrilled to see this out in the wild, co-authored w/ @ppopiel.bsky.social @sydneyforde.bsky.social @theine.bsky.social, with terrific editorial support @theconversation.com @democracyeditor.bsky.social from start to finish. theconversation.com/a-paramount-...

D.C.'s Go-Go Museum is asking for donations to remain open, citing rising costs and shaky funding www.wusa9.com/article/news...

Colorado mountain lake view, about 9600 feet altitude.

I see a lot of utility for AI, but I’ve stopped using it entirely. It gets things wrong. It’s glib. And AI sorts information and people into preset hierarchies. It’s this latter point that’s giving me the most pause. The current iteration of AI is also a social engineering project.

Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are asking Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for answers after more than a dozen people died in immigration detention, as the department rushes to expand.

Many thanks to Tona Hangen for this review in the Journal of American History of LFTU, which highlights the central tensions of the book: academic.oup.com/jah/article/...

An over abundance of things to do, some of it quite interesting, but all I actually want is to sit down and read German hermeneutical philosophy and pre-war social theory for the next six months.

Trump admin cancels special ed grant to UNC-CH to train future Pre-K teachers across NC It's part of the U.S. Department of Education's crackdown on grants promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. #nced www.wunc.org/education/20...

I don’t really understand why I live out here, but walking around in Colorado nature is pretty remarkable.

Feels like this week signaled the permanent reorientation of legacy media industries. There's no sustainable business model to "fire successful talent to obtain ephemeral political points with no tangible dividend."

There’s a delicious cookie calked Leibniz that I brought back from Europe. Next time I go, I’m gonna keep an eye out for Spinoza rugelach.

Thinking tonight about how PBS preemptively fired its DEI staff to appease Trump, and they still lost their money. 

Feels like a good historical juncture for Bluesky to allow users to make their content “private.”

Major new piece from David Ben-Merre (Buffalo State) and Manu Chander @profchander.bsky.social (Georgetown), in epilogue of David's excellent new book "O: Apostrophic Ghosts and the Disappearing Acts of Lyric Poetry."

In the wake of massive federal funding cuts to #publicbroadcasting by the #Trump administration, guest host Dr. Ben Zdencanovic is joined by Professor Josh Shepperd in this episode of then & now to discuss the complex historical development of #NPR and #PBS. Listen here! tinyurl.com/4j6jt9cn

I talked with @joshshepperd.bsky.social recently about how public media developed and the role it filled especially in its early years. Became more relevant more quickly than I hoped.

Hurt my back today so I ate a chip burger and you know what? My back feels a little better.

One of my favorite Colorado phenomena is when we get up high enough that the clouds are lower than the mountains. About 10,000 foot altitude here.

I have just done a quick analysis of what the US media landscape would look like should Paramount SD's bid to takeover Warner Bros. Discovery go ahead. Paramount SD's market share would sore from ~10% of the $223B market to 26%. 1/

SAVING CAMPUS & COMMUNITY RADIO HISTORY 🎙 At June's National Campus & Community Radio Association conference, #InternetArchive’s Jennifer Waits, Asst. Curator for the #collegeradio collection in DLARC, shared her work. ▶️ Watch her talk.

Today’s mountain view - a moose battle in Roosevelt National Forest. Very rare to witness. About 8200 foot altitude.

"The vague and subjective criteria of having a story that includes 'good talkers' ... end up favoring experts and guests with experience within and connections to white institutional spaces," writes @lauragarbes.bsky.social. current.org/2025/09/how-...

Many congratulations to Laura Garbes (University of Minnesota) on the publication of her pathbreaking sociology of the culture, idealism, and contradictions of public media. Out today on Princeton University Press.

Today’s mountain view - Maroon Bells, and a big hike in the rain.

A student asked about the effects of public broadcasting cuts, and so I sent her two items that @joshshepperd.bsky.social had posted recently. Despite the ways social media can suck, I really am grateful for good people doing good work and sharing it on here.

Reading books is becoming an act of resistance.

Today’s mountain lake hike

Josh Shepperd joins Money on the Left to discuss the research and activism that hastened the rise of public media in the United States.

Besides Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Vienna, or Rome, if you could recommend one great European city to visit, for food, architecture, art, and walking, where would you send someone?

Polling shows Zohran Mamdani leading with Jewish voters in NYC’s mayoral race. But the New York Times keeps framing him as “alienating” the community—while ignoring polls that say otherwise. 📊 Read @ahjohnson.bsky.social’s breakdown.

Thanks to the International Journal of Communication and Angela Xiao Wu (NYU) for this excellent review of my book. ijoc.org/index.php/ij...

Thrilled about the 2025-26 Leonore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellowship in Communication at @casbsstanford.bsky.social So excited to learn from and with the other fellows this year.

I am off teaching until at least August, 2026! And possibly longer. Time to write my memoir. Just kidding, going to write dry and depressing political economies of media to try to help address the world’s problems.

Y’all don’t even know how beautiful Chicago is today. Best city in the country.

I visited "You're Missing Out" - the podcast that discusses films on the National Film Registry - to talk about the aesthetics of WWII propaganda.

I curate the history series at public media's journal Current. We're looking for pieces on the history of NPR & PBS, educational, community, and affiliate stations. We accept academic articles repurposed for wide readership. Plus, we pay. Please circulate! current.org/series/rewind/

Israeli army database suggests at least 83% of Gaza dead were civilians Classified intelligence from May reveals Israel believed it had killed ~8,900 militants in Gaza, indicating a proportion of civilian slaughter with few parallels in modern warfare. www.972mag.com/israeli-inte...

Resonance (UC Press) is looking for humanities research across the following topics: Sound in Political Crisis, Sound and Social Justice, Experiments in Sound, Sound Archives and Preservation, and we're convening a permanent series that'll examine "Film and Cinema Sound" in 2026. Please circulate!

Has anyone taken the Interstate through South Dakota and visited the badlands? How is that drive?

My book, In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico, is out in November—and it has a cover! Couldn't be happier with @univnebpress.bsky.social. For more: www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978... 🗃️📚🏺🏛️🇲🇽

This is a canary in the coal mine. Humanities programs are highly endangered, even the departments with reputations for discipline-defining job placement are treading water. What’s tragic about the University of Chicago case is that cuts are almost certainly elective and ideological.

Delighted to have interviewed with WBUR's Meghna Chakrabarti "On Point." First half discusses the historical intricacies of the US public media ecosystem. Second half I tried to detail how the GOP rescission bill was designed to attack democratic media.

I'm closely interviewed for this Nieman Lab report that discusses how rural areas will be affected by loss of funding for local NPR reporting. We must not underestimate the importance of equal access to information - we're about to witness a seismic ideological shift in American sense of "place."

Four Al Jazeera staff, including reporter Anas Al Sharif, were killed in an Israeli attack on a tent for journalists outside the main gate of Gaza's al-Shifa hospital aje.io/onll19

At the Albertina Art Museum. A little boy encountered Kandinsky for the first time. His face turned, he yelled “no no no,” and started to bang his head against a bench. Now that’s an effective painting.

Bosch - “The Last Judgement.” A dream come true.

USA oscillated between apathy and downright hostility to public support for most of broadcasting's early decades. I take a look at what we can learn now from the educational idealists who kept non-profit broadcasting alive anyway. continuous-wave.beehiiv.com/p/half-a-cen...

Our recent analysis made a sectional front page of the print edition of the Denver Post!

Happy to share that my book, Digital Game Culture in Korea: The Social at Play, is now available on the Bloomsbury U.S. site! Thank you again to those who took the time to review and engage with the work! 🙏🏼 #syllabus #gamestudies #communication www.bloomsbury.com/us/digital-g...

Honestly guys if you're still paying for Spotify it's time to move on. You're literally paying for AI warfare: Spotify's Daniel Ek leads €600 million investment in AI military "defence" company share.google/8QTP4eriOoxd...