Archive: Author: Micah Sifry

MediaCloud search results for “gun” and “Black Friday” 11/25–12/3It’s been a roller-coaster of a week in America, bookended by mass shootings at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado and a social service center in California. Our brains and the media nervous system that feeds (on) them are more on edge than usual, it seems. The news from last Friday, that gun sales on Black Friday broke national one-day sales records, reverberated darkly. But reflecting back on the data, and how the media covered that news, I couldn’t help but notice something else: Giving Tuesday, which was founded just three years ago as a response to the mass consumerism of Black Friday and CyberMonday, has taken off like wildfire. It’s far...

Voting in New York’s multi-party system“This is the most confusing presidential election in my memory,” a young friend of mine said to me the other day. And yes, at first glance, things seem quite unusual, even for a year when both parties are having competitive primaries. After all, neither Donald Trump nor Bernie Sanders, who are each doing remarkably well right now in their respective bids for the Republican and Democratic nominations, seem at home inside those parties.Trump is a nominal Republican who was just forced to sign a pledge to back the Republican nominee (in the event it isn’t him), and the GOP establishment has to hope that he still doesn’t bolt to run as an independent. And Sanders...

Is it weird that both Andrew Golis and Jake Brewer bring up “sexual proclivities” while sharing Paul Ford’s fun New Republic article about Spotify’s long tail? And why can’t I leave comments on This.cm recommendations, Golis?...

At the risk of kicking a dead horse, I want to share a theory I have about how it all went bad at The New Republic between Chris Hughes, Guy Vidra and the staff. Keeping in mind that the staff meltdown may have been destined to happen, I wonder if things couldn’t have turned out differently, but didn’t, because of TNR’s internal culture of deference plus the odd way that email and chat has changed how magazine offices work.Here’s why I think things could have been different. Back in 1987, I was a junior staffer working for The Nation magazine, another journal of opinion, when the entire staff rose in revolt against its new wealthy publisher. The trigger was the...

The Albany capital districtTo my New York friends:If you are like me, you face a strange dilemma this Tuesday.You know our awful governor Andrew Cuomo is a manipulative, lying control freak, who shut down an investigation into corruption in Albany before it could finish its job (and prevented it from looking into anything touching his own administration), and, as The New York Times recently reported, who previously botched and then covered up his own mishandling of the Hurricane Sandy crisis. He’s nothing like his father, having recently declared that liberals are against any raising of taxes on the rich because that would be “confiscation.” I could go on…But I’m going to hold my nose and vote for him on the Working...

A few months ago, Significance Labs was little more than an idea with a beautifully designed home page, a home at Blue Ridge Foundation’s hub in Brooklyn, and the seed funding to back up a daring pitch: Why not build technology aimed directly at addressing the needs of low-income Americans? Now, after picking six fellows from a pool of 150 applicants, the Labs is showcasing some inspiring results: five promising examples of working civic tech tools that can demonstrably help the poorest among us.Unlike other start-up incubators, which seek to attract budding companies and then provide them with business development support aimed at helping entrepreneurs impress high-net-worth investors, Significance Labs focused on helping its fellows zero in on the needs...