Yesterday Fresh Air did an interview with Robert Draper, who has covered Charlie Kirk. And this section on Draper's relationship with Kirk said a lot to me about modern access journalism, and the soft coverage we've seen in the wake of Kirk's death.

today on The Broadside: how a rock from western NC is key to making basically every semiconductor in the world…and why it’s important to know where all the raw materials we need for our stuff actually comes from. featuring @edconway.bsky.social www.wunc.org/podcast/the-...

Here’s I wrote about gamergate 11 years ago. Almost nobody major in the media got what this was or why it mattered. “Eh, it’s just nerdy Online Drama.” The difference now? The cluelessness remains, fewer publications & reporters—& gamergate took over the country. www.huffpost.com/entry/anita-...

“What the sustained quoting of dehumanizing language makes exceedingly clear is that newsrooms are not in the habit of reflecting on past coverage, particularly when it comes to critiques of how they covered immigrants, foreigners, or foreign policy.“

This week, The Broadside tackled… what else? The Belichick effect. Big thanks to @scottdochterman.bsky.social and @themhartman.bsky.social for explaining the money-sucking machine behind college athletics. And why winning may not matter when you can’t lose in college football.

I'm starting to look into how inflammation is being misused by MAHA types in a way that very much distracts from chronic illness-inflammation problems people actually have. If you're an academic, doctor, immunologist etc with thoughts on this, please be in touch at [email protected]

say what you will about the merits or downsides of an entire publication devoted to liberalism, the dominant ideology of Western polities…but it’s just sloppy journalism to equate liberalism with “the left”. also note that the only place Semafor uses “the left” is in its headline and lede…

this is literally just racism

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

i distinctly remember a decade+ ago when all the creative jobs started going out the window being told to “learn to code”

“The studies imply estimated [Gaza] life expectancy has fallen by more than 35 years, to ~ half the pre-war figure. In percentage terms…bigger than…during China’s Great Leap Forward; in absolute terms it is similar to the one in the Rwanda genocide” www.economist.com/interactive/...

Adopt a station allows you to donate to your local public radio station: Here's the North Carolina list. adoptastation.org/northcarolina

To state the obvious, Western journalists, writers, and filmmakers need to talk more about our colleagues being murdered in Gaza and the West Bank. You can do it from pure self interest if you want: every journalist murdered with impunity is a precedent which is headed in your direction

wow a quintessential example of ID verification data weaponized, there have been other breaches but this feels exactly targeted at the women it was supposed to protect

a hard but essential read. I’m so glad we could run this piece from Tyler, and at the same time when so many are warning of mass starvation in Gaza. as Dr. Adil Husain told @tylerfromtexas.bsky.social “This is a man-made starvation.”

feels like a particularly meaningful week to do a collab with PBS North Carolina. today on the Broadside from @wunc.org: the lore & facts on the Devil’s Tramping Ground, a bare patch of earth in Chatham Co. that’s been associated with rumors of the occult for centuries www.wunc.org/podcast/the-...

I started listening to NPR when we moved to NC in 1998 and my dad would have it on in the car on morning commutes to school. we moved here here from Canada & were big on the CBC, so listening to & supporting public media in NC, too, was a no brainer.

Due to the rescission of federal funding, North Carolina Public Radio is facing a major budget shortfall (roughly $800k). @wunc.org is the largest nonprofit newsroom in the state but also home to national programming. If you care about quality journalism, please give what you can www.wunc.org/donate

“Since AFP was founded in August 1944, we have lost journalists in conflicts, we have had wounded and prisoners in our ranks, but none of us remembers seeing our colleagues die of starvation.” The AFP news release has been released in French. Below is an English translation via Google translate.

We have a @lopatto.bsky.social piece on the hacker who breached Columbia and acquired Zohran Mamdani's college application. It's not great for NYT to be using hacked materials originating from an anime Nazi but this part especially stuck out to me. www.theverge.com/cyber-securi...

this is North Carolina service journalism

Great thread on the value of public media in state government coverage, particularly in #ncpol #ncga where there are three of us (two backed by a grant from the now-defunded Corporation for Public Broadcasting) keeping tabs on everything at the state capital for audiences from Murphy to Manteo

Public media is one of those wildly imperfect, flawed, muddled institutions of American life that is far more beautiful and fortunately far tougher than people realize.

A new window for pitching audio documentaries is now open! Read more about this opportunity and find out how to pitch at the link below ⤵️ This year I’m interested in getting more pitches from writers & journalists outside the audio world. So please share with your network of freelance friends!

The North Carolina Board of Elections has formally launched an effort to collect driver's license or the final four digits of social security numbers for more than 100,000 voters who did not provide the information when they registered. www.wunc.org/politics/202...

excellent analysis and a much more convincing one than "AI is taking the jobs" - also reflects what I'm seeing in my circles

this is why granting anonymity to a source has to be carefully considered & ethically sound. anonymity has been so weaponized by bad actors in the internet age that the bar for how & to whom journalists allow it is higher than ever. & that's on top of the fact that the NYT story was not a real story

this week on The Broadside from @wunc.org, an eye-opening, fascinating discussion with historian @kathleenduval.bsky.social about her Pulitzer-winning book about a millennium of Indigenous history on this continent. we covered so much & yet barely scratched the surface! www.wunc.org/podcast/the-...

irony is deceased and rotting 6 feet under.

Every part of this explanation sounds both rude to the people they’re getting rid of and doomed to fail. variety.com/2025/tv/news...

you've heard about the college kids who can't do anything without ChatGPT's help—but what about the students who oppose generative A.I. for myriad reasons and refuse to rely on it as a shortcut? well, I found and spoke with a few of them here: slate.com/life/2025/07...

Alaa went to get flour for his family. He came back wrapped in empty flour bags—shot dead by Israeli forces. In this heartbreaking essay, his sister Areej Almashharawi writes about famine, survival, and the cruelty of engineered hunger in Gaza. 🔗 www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1657...

“…pivoting to AI is not a business strategy. Telling journalists they must use AI is not a business strategy…becoming reliant on revenue from tech giants who are creating a machine that duplicates the work you’ve already created is not a smart or sustainable business move”

"Sayfollah 'Saif' Musallet was reportedly beaten by Israeli settlers while he was on his family’s farm in an area near Ramallah. "Another Palestinian man, 23-year-old Razek Hussein al-Shalabi, was fatally shot during the attack and was left to bleed to death." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Yet another reason why a robust public media is so vital!

As more journalists are driven out of their jobs, I keep hearing this drumbeat of "it's ok -- they can start their own newsletter or publication." Some can. But becoming your own business is a huge job, and will eliminate many talented reporters from the public sphere. Here's why. (1/5)

okay Your Idol is a banger about the power of toxic fandom, but maybe it also says something about this political moment

It's striking that Patrick Healy chose to only post this thread on X, and then the NYTimes PR team did not include alt-text for any of the screenshots. But fundamentally, Healy's defense of the article, including why a source with clear ideological views was granted anonymity, is terrible.

A thing that makes that Times story especially odious is that Zohran Mamdani's father was LITERALLY expelled from Uganda during Idi Amin's fascist effort to scapegoat Asian Ugandans as not really African www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Remember when the NYT forced Jazmine Hughes out of her job for signing an open letter against the war on Gaza *as a private citizen*? Interesting when journalistic ethics matter to them and for whom.

“scoop”? I don’t think that word means what you think it means

NEW: During this year’s legislative session in Texas, Elon Musk’s lobbyists and representatives publicly advocated for almost a dozen bills that would benefit his companies. All but three of his priorities are now slated to become law. By @lmcgaughy.bsky.social

on the latest episode of The Broadside from @wunc.org, the cost of crypto in Appalachia—and what might be taking its place now its gone bust. ft. reporting from @janesartwell.bsky.social, Diana Temple-Raston & the Click Here team, & @raleighreporter.bsky.social www.wunc.org/podcast/the-...

what a shame for materialists that dakota johnson can’t deliver a line in a way that implies she’s ever felt a human emotion

the data backs this sentiment up!

this is so much better than the last time we were all new yorkers

News organizations shouldn't be using the term "regime change" except to quote an official using the term. It's euphemism for "conquer." The debate isn't about whether the U.S. will "pursue regime change in Iran"; it's whether the U.S. will attempt to conquer Iran. 1/

i am BEGGING you before you pop off about paywalls to go to your local library's website and scroll through their digital resources. mine gives me access to NYT, WSJ, WaPo and if its linked with PressReader or a similar app, all the news magazines, sports, fashion, hobby etc. FOR FREE.