News Reporting
Author: Smita Kheria Illustration: Davide Bonazzi
News reporters may sometimes require the use of copyright material, such as short textual extracts or clips from video footage, to report current events. There is an exception to copyright for news reporting that allows reporters to make use of others’ work under certain circumstances.
In order to report current events, the reporter may use copyright materials to provide information to the public in relation to the respective events.
This is allowed under the following conditions:
1) The material used is not a photograph 2) The purpose is really for reporting current events 2) The use of the material is fair 3) The use of the material is accompanied by sufficient acknowledgement
For example, the illustration above shows several people working together on a newspaper. In order to produce the current issue, they want to draw upon a variety of different sources such as books, magazines, newspapers, film stock and the internet. Sometimes, they will be able to publish ideas and information set out in these sources without copying the expression used to convey such ideas and information. For instance, if a reporter reads an official document containing an explanation by a minister of a new government policy or sees a video footage of a football match where someone runs on the pitch and strikes a player then she can report these events in her own words, without use of any copyright materials. But sometimes the reporter may want to tell the public of the exact words used by a source or show a film clip in order to provide information on the current event in a clear or authoritative manner. Then, reporters may need to use excerpts from books, magazines, films, broadcasts or online content. This exception is aimed at protecting the role of the media in informing the public about matters of current concern.
The criteria needed for using the exception are explained in more detail below:
1. You have not used a photograph
You cannot use photographs protected under copyright for reporting current events without obtaining the permission of the respective copyright owner. The exception applies to use of all other types of copyright materials, but not photographs.
2. Your reason for using the material is genuinely for the purpose of reporting a current event
You can use copyright materials other than photographs if the purpose is really for reporting current events. The exception is not limited to any particular type of event and can thus extend to a wide array of current events no matter whether they occur in the field of politics, popular culture, sports, natural phenomena, and so on.
The event itself must be current. What constitutes a current event is interpreted liberally. It includes recent occurrences, in the sense of recent in time, which are of real interest to the public. It also includes past events if they continue to be matters of legitimate and continuing public interest. An example would be the use of material pertaining to a past meeting between politicians which is of current public interest because it may influence the voting behaviour at the next elections.
The news reporting exception can be used if the reporting of the current events is intended for public consumption. For example, news that is tailored for exclusive use by a certain group of individuals for private commercial purposes would not be acceptable.
3. Your use of the material is fair
You can use copyright material for the purpose of reporting current events provided your use of material is fair. There is no legal definition of what is fair or unfair; it is at the court’s discretion based on the individual facts of the case and the purpose for which the material is being used (see: ‘Legal language’ below). However, there are guidelines which you need to consider.
First, is or would your use of the copyright material be in commercial competition with the copyright owner’s exploitation of the material? Are you really using copyright material to report on current events or are you pursuing another purpose? It would be unfair if your work is a substitute for the probable purchase of authorised copies of the original material, or if it severely devalues the original material. For example, a verbatim passage of a memoir or a politician’s diary entry can be used in a news article if it is essential for the content that is being reported on because it serves an additional purpose by rectifying an error or inaccuracy or by highlighting a new perspective and engaging in political discourse. However, it cannot be included if the passage simply is to make the article more colourful or attractive or appealing to the readers and bring resulting commercial value. Ask yourself: Is there a compelling need to use the copyright work for the purpose of reporting the current event? Would the use unreasonably prejudice the commercial interests of the copyright owner?
Second, has the material that you want to use already been published or disclosed to the public? Even though copyright material that has not been available to the public, such as material that has only been made available confidentially, can be used, you should bear in mind that this could make your assertion of the news reporting exception very difficult unless there is some legitimate and continuing public interest in making such use. Therefore, ask yourself: Is it really necessary to use the previously undisclosed copyright material for the purpose of reporting the current event? If the material used is already available to the public, such as historical material, then also you must ask yourself: Is it really necessary to refer to these materials in order to report the current event? For example, reprinting historical correspondence dealing with nuclear reactors which have just had a core melt-down would be relevant in order to report on the current event. However, reprinting historical personal correspondence of a public figure simply because they have recently died would not necessarily be relevant.
Third, what is the amount of copyright material used and what is its importance? A substantial amount of the material can be used provided that it is not excessive and only what is needed to report the current event is used. If an excessive amount or the most important parts of the material are used to further commercial interests, although it was not necessary for reporting the current event, then such use would be unfair. Ask yourself: Is it really necessary to use the amount of material and the type of material for the purpose of reporting the current event?
4. Your use of material is accompanied by sufficient acknowledgement
Finally, you must include an acknowledgement to identify the creator of the work and the title of the material. It is the author who should be identified and not the owner of the copyright. Alternative forms of identification such as the television transmission of a company logo can suffice if the author of the television programme is accustomed to identifying itself by that logo. However, it is not enough to make a simple reference in a newspaper article to the fact that the story originates with another newspaper.
This requirement does not always have to be observed. The author must be clearly identified for all copyright materials used unless you are using sound recordings, film or broadcasts and it is impossible to give credit to the creator for reasons of practicality or otherwise. The requirements for ‘impossible’ are considered strict and you must be able to show that you made reasonable efforts to identify the author.
Legal language:
This is a quote taken from a book on Copyright and Designs, which explains the relevant considerations for determining whether a copyright work has been used fairly for the purpose of reporting current events. The quote has received support in a legal case ( Ashdown v Telegraph Group Ltd [2002] Ch. 149) as being a helpful summary:
‘It is impossible to lay down any hard-and-fast definition of what is fair dealing, for it is a matter of fact, degree and impression. However, by far the most important factor is whether the alleged fair dealing is in fact commercially competing with the proprietor’s exploitation of the copyright work, a substitute for the probable purchase of authorised copies, and the like. If it is, the fair dealing defence will almost certainly fail. If it is not and there is a moderate taking and there are no special adverse factors, the defence is likely to succeed, especially if the defendant’s additional purpose is to right a wrong, to ventilate an honest grievance, to engage in political controversy, and so on. The second most important factor is whether the work has already been published or otherwise exposed to the public. If it has not, and especially if the material has been obtained by a breach of confidence or other mean or underhand dealing, the courts will be reluctant to say this is fair. However this is by no means conclusive, for sometimes it is necessary for the purposes of legitimate public controversy to make use of “leaked” information. The third most important factor is the amount and importance of the work that has been taken. For, although it is permissible to take a substantial part of the work (if not, there could be no question of infringement in the first place), in some circumstances the taking of an excessive amount, or the taking of even a small amount if on a regular basis, would negative fair dealing.’
Laddie H, P Prescott and M Vitoria, The Modern Law of Copyright and Designs (Butterworths, 3rd ed. 2000) at [20.16]
Legal references:
The law on reporting current events in the United Kingdom is found in Section 30(2), (3) of the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988, which you can read here:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/30
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There are two exceptions to be aware of, one specifically for criticism and review and a more general exception for quotation. Both exceptions apply to all types of copyright material…
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Reporting the News
Selections from nieman reports, louis m. lyons, product details.
About HUP eBooks
$65.00 • £54.95 • €60.00
ISBN 9780674366749
Publication Date: 01/01/1965
Belknap Press
Media Requests: [Email Address]
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- SOCIAL SCIENCE: General
- About This Book
- Table of Contents
Harvard University Press has partnered with De Gruyter to make available for sale worldwide virtually all in-copyright HUP books that had become unavailable since their original publication. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. More about the E-ditions Program »
Reporting the News springs out of a successful experiment famous among newspapermen the world over, the Nieman Fellowships at Harvard University. All told, more than 300 newsmen have been awarded a year’s respite from the daily pressures of their work to read, write, reflect, participate in seminars, and take any courses they choose.
The book begins with a major introductory essay by Louis M. Lyons, who as a Boston Globe reporter was one of the original Nieman Fellows in 1938–39 and then was Curator of the Fellowships for the next twenty-five years, until his retirement in 1964. It contains fifty-one outstanding articles from Nieman Reports , the quarterly publication of the Nieman Fellows, which Lyons edited for seventeen years. He has grouped these articles in seven parts, entitled “A Responsible Press,” “Role of the Press,” “Newsmen at Work,” “The Writing,” “Foreign Affairs,” “Government and the Press,” and “Books and Men.”
Six of the reprinted pieces are by Louis Lyons himself. Many are by other former Nieman Fellows, including such distinguished journalists as Edwin A. Lahey, Christopher Rand, Anthony Lewis, Clark R. Mollenhoff, and Irving Dilliard. But the company of authors is not confined to Nieman Fellows. There are sparkling pieces by A. J. Liebling, Edward R. Murrow, Zechariah Chafee, Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, Clifton Daniel, Mark Ethridge, Theodore Morrison, Richard L. Neuberger, and many others.
On-the-scene articles show foreign correspondents at work in Moscow, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and the Congo, other newsmen at work in Washington and on Broadway, in Mississippi and Little Rock. A few sample titles: “Free Press and Fair Trial,” “Fewer Papers Mean Better Papers,” “Crusading in a Small Town,” “Can a Yellow Rag Change Its Color?” “Why Should News Come in Five-Minute Packages?” “Editorial Writing Made Easy,” “The Built-in Bias of the Press,” “The Reporter in the Deep South,” “The Thalidomide Story,” “Newspapermen and Lawyers,” “How Best Prepare for Newspaper Work?” “The Business of Writing,” “Congo: Reporter’s Nightmare,” “Managing the News,” “The Newsmen’s War in Vietnam,” “Censors and Their Tactics,” and “Why Diplomats Clam Up.”
Mr. Lyons in his introductory essay, written with charm, humor, and insight, makes characteristically tart observations on journalism and tells the history of the Nieman Fellowships as no one else would be in a position to do.
Here, for the professional newsman, student of journalism, and those who have only a hazy or fictionalized notion of what goes on inside the newspaper business, is a completely authentic book about the press—its role in society, its techniques, and its excitement.
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- On NPR’s Morning Edition , Serhii Plokhy, author of The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present , described Ukraine’s repeated efforts to break free from Moscow .
- The Economist spoke with Klimat author Thane Gustafson about how Europe will cope if Russia cuts off its natural gas .
- After news broke of his upcoming retirement, Washington Monthly considered the “practical erudition” of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, author of The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics .
- At Wired , The Myth of Artificial Intelligence author Eric Larson warned of the danger of optimizing machines and proposed an alternative: “creatively adequate” AI .
- At the Washington Post , Healthy Buildings coauthor Joseph Allen provided ten vital updates to our COVID playbook for 2022 .
- At the Los Angeles Times , Jim Downs, author of Maladies of Empire: How Slavery, Imperialism, and War Transformed Medicine , delved into the history of epidemiology that must inform public understanding of the current pandemic .
- Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? author Alexander Keyssar spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the dark lessons for democracy of the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol .
- In conjunction with the American Historical Association ’s annual meeting, during the month of January we’re offering a 20% discount plus free shipping on select recently-published history titles. Order form »
- On C-SPAN’s Q&A , The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment coauthors Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick argued that the United States must get its “Constitutional house in order”—and stop chronically misinterpreting the amendment .
- At the Washington Post , Global Health Security author Lawrence Gostin analyzed the legality of President Biden’s federal mandate requiring COVID-19 vaccination or testing in private businesses .
- The Irish Times spoke with Thane Gustafson, author of Klimat , about the “climate change reckoning” facing Russia —as Vladimir Putin avoids attending the COP26 international climate change conference in Glasgow.
- At the Washington Post , read To Live and Defy in LA author Felicia Viator on how judicial edicts on language in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse—barring use of the term “victims” for the men killed but allowing “looters,” “rioters,”, and “arsonists”—parallel decisions in a 1942 case in Los Angeles that became a flashpoint for the original “Zoot Suit Riots.”
- On ABC Radio National’s All in the Mind , Memory Speaks author Julie Sedivy described what goes on in the multilingual mind .
- On the Bloomberg podcast Balance of Power , Global Health Security author Lawrence Gostin discussed the legal issues surrounding the New York City vaccine mandate for city employees .
- Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, coauthors of The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment , spoke with the Wall Street Journal about “the amendment that remade America” —by becoming the basis for every claim against a state government for violating individual rights.
- Tony Jack, author of The Privileged Poor , spoke with Inside Higher Ed about the vital importance of mentoring relationships and strategies for expanding opportunities for student–teacher connection .
- Lapham’s Quarterly published “Ambushing Geronimo,” an excerpt from Samuel Redman’s Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology .
- At Time , The Future of Money author Eswar Prasad touted cryptocurrency’s “bright” future— if governments can help manage the risks involved .
- On the podcast BBC History Extra , The Horde author Marie Favereau described daily life in the Mongol empire .
- Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, author of The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics , spoke with the New York Times about the role of politics at SCOTUS (and when to curtail his own role there).
- In the New York Times , Tomorrow, the World author Stephen Wertheim called for Americans to end the “imperial presidency.”
- Lawrence Gostin, author of Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future , spoke with CNN’s Erin Burnett about full FDA approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine —and the slew of vaccination mandates he hopes will follow.
- Ugly Feelings , Our Aesthetic Categories , and Theory of the Gimmick author Sianne Ngai spoke with the Scandinavian art review Kunstkritikk about why, in a world that is wrong, art needs to embrace error .
- At Foreign Policy , Time’s Monster author Priya Satia called on Afghan “heirs of partition” to reckon with South Asia’s colonial past in order to chart a sustainable future for their country .
- Contributing to the Los Angeles Review of Books series “Antiracism in the Contemporary University,” Fugitive Pedagogy author Jarvis Givens unearthed the long roots of antiracist teaching .
- Stephen Wertheim, author of Tomorrow, the World , argued at the Washington Post that Americans must come to terms with loss in Afghanistan —or risk repeating the same mistakes again.
- As delta variant cases surge, Lawrence Gostin, author of Global Health Security: A Blueprint for the Future , argued in the Washington Post that the Biden administration still has powerful as-yet-untapped, fully legal methods to further drive up United States vaccination rates .
- On PBS’s The Open Mind , The Future of Money author Eswar Prasad explained how cryptocurrencies are impacting the future of markets and global stability .
- Time published an excerpt from Patricia Sullivan’s Justice Rising on how Robert F. Kennedy shaped his brother’s response to the Civil Rights Movement .
- At the Washington Post , Indentured Students author Elizabeth Tandy Shermer unpacked the purposeful policy choices of the 1960s that established the student loan industry rather than truly solving cost problems at colleges and universities .
- The Guardian profiled The Black Atlantic , Against Race , and Darker than Blue author Paul Gilroy, calling him the “most vital guide to our age of crisis.”
- At the Atlantic , William Sturkey, author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White , looked back at the life and legacy of civil rights leader Bob Moses .
- Tom Zoellner discussed his National Book Critics Circle Award–winning Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire on The Majority Report with Sam Seder .
- On the Bloomberg podcast Stephanomics , The Future of Money author Eswar Prasad discussed the “fundamental threat” posed to central banks around the world by Bitcoin and its digital brethren —and the threat to personal privacy posed by alternative, government-sponsored digital currencies.
- In the New York Times , The Future of Money author Eswar Prasad made the case that cash money will soon be obsolete —which is why an increasing number of nations are experimenting with central bank digital currencies.
- From Rebel to Ruler author Tony Saich was interviewed by the New Yorker about the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party —and the roots of Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism.
- O. Carter Snead’s What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics inspired a National Review analysis of comedian Bo Burnham’s Netflix special Inside .
- On PBS’s Amanpour & Co. , Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew drew a direct line between the Vietnam War and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol —and weighed in on the Biden administration’s new strategy to counter domestic terrorism.
- Daphne Brooks, author of Liner Notes for the Revolution , spoke with Ms. Magazine about the legacy of pioneers in Black feminist sound .
- On CNN’s GPS , China’s Good War author Rana Mitter’s spoke with host Fareed Zakaria and fellow regional experts Elizabeth Economy and Jiayang Fan about the centennial of China’s ruling party—and what lies ahead for the global superpower ( Part I | Part II ).
- At History Today , Stella Ghervas, author of Conquering Peace , considered whether nationalism is still Europe’s dominant political ideology .
- In the New York Times , Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet , discussed Washington’s innovative solution to, not meetings that should have been emails, but “letters that should have been meetings.”
- On his podcast Science Clear + Vivid , Lessons from Plants author Beronda L. Montgomery discussed with actor Alan Alda the surprising ways plants connect, communicate, and collaborate .
- At Noēma Magazine , read Time’s Monster author Priya Satia on Winston Churchill’s problematic legacy .
- Bonnie Honig, author of A Feminist Theory of Refusal , spoke with The Nation about “disaster patriarchy” and how feminism offers the best way to make sense of the post-Trump moment .
- Talking Points Memo published an excerpt from Orville Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner’s Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court on how the Roberts court laid the groundwork for 2021’s “all-out assault on voting rights.”
- Priya Satia, author of Time’s Monster: How History Makes History , wrote at Al Jazeera about Palestine and the myths of British imperial benevolence .
- Amid debates over anti-racist curricula in K–12 schools, Fugitive Pedagogy author Jarvis Givens highlighted, at the Atlantic , the Black teachers who since the nineteenth century have been deeply engaged in the work of challenging racial domination in American schools .
- In the Washington Post , Eswar Prasad, author of the forthcoming The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance , exploded five popular myths about cryptocurrency .
- Stylist published an excerpt from Beronda L. Montgomery’s Lessons from Plants on how the common counsel “bloom where you’re planted” ignores how plants, in their attempts to flourish, actively participate in and transform their environments .
- Tacky’s Revolt author Vincent Brown spoke with the Boston Globe about what an eighteenth-century rebellion can teach the twenty-first century about dismantling racism .
- ProMarket published an excerpt from Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, and Simon Bunel’s The Power of Creative Destruction on barriers to entry as a source of income inequality .
- The New Republic explored how Unbound and Finding Time author Heather Boushey, along with Jared Bernstein and Cecilia Rouse, are shaping the Biden administration’s ambitious economic policy .
- At Boston Review , Democracy by Petition author Daniel Carpenter considered how the path of the “citizens’ petition,” first sent to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in 2013, proposing a ban on menthol cigarettes recalls a lost political tradition in which the complaints of any citizen could get a hearing publicly in Congress.
- Fast Company published an excerpt from Erik Larson’s The Myth of Artificial Intelligence on the “technological kitsch” that threatens to take over Silicon Valley .
- Beronda L. Montgomery, author of Lessons from Plants , discussed plant memory, senses, and communication with UK gardening columnist Jane Perrone on Perrone’s podcast On the Ledge .
- William Sturkey, author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White , described at the Atlantic how racism entrenched in the historical record has obscured understanding of past Black American lives—and how advances in technology and new scholarly approaches are helping historians rectify the issue .
- With the deadline for the 2021 FAFSA looming, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, author of the forthcoming Indentured Students , wrote at the Washington Post about the unfairness and complexity at the heart of the American system of financial aid for higher education .
- As part of their series Spoken Dialogues , Rolling Stone hosted Daphne Brooks, author of Liner Notes for the Revolution , and Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America , for a genre- and generation-spanning conversation on Black sound and performance .
- At the Atlantic , The End of Adolescence coauthors Nancy Hill and Alexis Redding unpacked the economic reasons modern young adults seem slow to “grow up.”
- In the New York Times , Eswar Prasad, author of the forthcoming The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance , considered what the rise and fall of Chinese fintech giant Ant Group means for financial innovation in China .
- At Time , Priya Satia, author of Time’s Monster: How History Makes History , analyzed the Biden administration’s planned withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan .
- In the wake of the killing of Duante Wright by police after a traffic stop in Minnesota, Traveling Black author Mia Bay spoke with Car & Driver about the continuing strictures placed formally or informally on Black freedom of movement .
- At the Washington Post , How Girls Achieve author Sally Nuamah underscored how the killing of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio, by police fits a common pattern in which Black girls are perceived to be more dangerous than their age-peers from other racial backgrounds—and are punished at higher rates and more severely for relatively minor infractions.
- A New Yorker feature informed by Beth Lew-Williams’s The Chinese Must Go explored recent violence against Asian-Americans in the context of the largely-forgotten purges from the United States of Chinese and Chinese-descended Americans .
- At USA Today , Why We Act author Catherine Sanderson made the case that doing the right thing is socially contagious—even for police .
- On Artforum ’s web series “Artists On Writers | Writers On Artists,” Liner Notes for the Revolution author Daphne Brooks spoke with poet/singer/songwriter Jamila Woods about archives as wellsprings, the lifeworlds of Black women and girls, and what it means to practice care in all its many registers .
- The Education Trap author Cristina Viviana Groeger discussed with Jacobin how education as a solution for inequality is a “useful myth” for elites jealously guarding money and power .
- David Alan Sklansky, author of A Pattern of Violence: How the Law Classifies Crimes and What It Means for Justice , argued at Time that how we define “violent crime” in the United States shapes who gets punished—and who doesn’t .
- Andy Horowitz’s Katrina: A History, 1915–2015 was recently named winner of the Bancroft Prize ; Nicole Fleetwood’s Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration and Tom Zoellner’s Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire won National Book Critics Circle Awards in the categories of criticism and nonfiction, respectively.
- Lessons from Plants author Beronda Montgomery discussed the evolutionary and adaptive genius of vegetation with Queer Eye ’s Jonathan Van Ness on his podcast Getting Curious .
- Tae-Yeoun Keum, author of Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought , explored how philosophy might embrace supposedly manipulative mythmaking for liberal ends in a conversation with BLARB: The Blog of the Los Angeles Review of Books .
- (3/18/21) Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America , spoke with Dissent about deindustrialization, the care economy, and the living legacies of the industrial workers’ movement .
- (3/17/21) At the Wall Street Journal , Jake Rosenfeld, author of You’re Paid What You’re Worth: And Other Myths of the Modern Economy , explored the practical difficulties of paying workers based on performance .
- (3/12/21) At the New York Times , Daphne Brooks, author of Liner Notes for the Revolution , uncovered the secret history of women writing album liner notes .
- (3/3/21) Thirty years after the fateful attack, Felicia Angeja Viator, author of To Live and Defy in LA , argued in the Washington Post that Los Angeles police officers’ brutal beating of Rodney King illustrates how public shock and anger cannot be assumed, on their own, to translate into meaningful reform .
- (02/28/21) Healthy Buildings coauthor Joseph Allen spoke with Bloomberg Opinion about the costs of remote work—and the playbook that can help businesses reopen safely .
- (02/25/21) Jezebel published an excerpt from Daphne Brooks’s Liner Notes for the Revolution on the shift in the center of American music from Bob Dylan to Beyoncé Knowles .
- (2/12/21) The Education Trap author Cristina Viviana Groeger made the case in Dissent that educational systems can just as easily reproduce inequality as mitigate it .
- (2/2/21) Out of the Ordinary author Marc Stears spoke with Prospect about how artists and writers healed a divided nation during the twentieth century—and how their current counterparts can do it again .
- (1/30/21) At Foreign Policy , Bronwen Everill, author of Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition , explained the global context in which Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad operated (Canada was only one possible destination).
- (1/23/21) Engadget published an excerpt from Frank Pasquale’s New Laws of Robotics on how the promise of faster, cheaper, and more efficient medical diagnoses generated by algorithmic intelligence can also serve as a double-edged sword , potentially cutting off access to cutting-edge, high quality care provided by human doctors.
- (1/22/21) Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America , spoke with WGBH (Boston, MA)’s Innovation Hub about the serious consequences of America’s loss in manufacturing and concurrent gain in health care as prominent job sectors .
- (1/20/21) At the Institute of Art and Ideas site iai news , The Education Trap author Cristina Groeger explained how the American K–12 education system compounds existing inequalities .
- (1/18/21 for both) On CNN’s AC360 , Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe discussed what happens now that more than eighty individuals face federal charges from their actions during the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol . Belew also spoke with the New Yorker about the decades-long build-up to the riot .
- (1/23/21) Marc Stears, author of Out of the Ordinary: How Everyday Life Inspired a Nation and How It Can Again , spoke with the Economist about Orwell, Priestley, and the politics of the ordinary .
- (1/21/21) Philip Coleman, coeditor of The Selected Letters of John Berryman , discussed the poet’s work and legacy on the Irish radio program Books for Breakfast .
- (1/19/21) At a live online event hosted by Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello on the eve of the 2021 presidential inauguration, Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution , discussed political violence in early America .
- (1/18/21) William Sturkey, author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White , wrote in the Washington Post about Hiram Revels, a Mississippi minister who in 1870 became the first Black man elected to the United States Senate .
- (1/14/21) In The New Republic , American Apocalypse author Matthew Avery Sutton traced how the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol revealed the “darkest nightmares” of white evangelical America .
- (1/11/21; 1/13/21) On MSNBC’s The ReidOut , Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew unpacked how the pro-Trump mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 fits into America’s legacy of lynching . On CNN’s AC360 , she and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe described to Anderson Cooper the prior planning involved in the attack. And with NPR’s Code Switch , Belew analyzed the symbols of white nationalism that made it inside the building .
- (12/29) Stephen Wertheim, author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy , spoke with Vox about the irony that military superiority has made America less safe .
- (1/7) On NPR’s All Things Considered , Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew analyzed the domestic terror events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 —“an attack on our democracy and its institutions.”
- (1/4) Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? author Alexander Keyssar spoke with the Christian Science Monitor about the “wild week ahead” for American politics.
- At Foreign Affairs , China’s Good War author Rana Mitter described “the world China wants” going, at last, into 2021.
- Aaron Griffith, author of God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America , argued at Christianity Today that advocating for the prioritization of COVID-19 vaccination for incarcerated people could save many lives—and is the Christian thing to do .
- On the National Constitution Center podcast We the People , The Living Presidency author Sai Prakash considered the question of whether sitting presidents can pardon themselves .
- Dominique Kirchner Reill, author of The Fiume Crisis , recounted at Zócalo Public Square how, in 1920, charismatic populist Gabriele D’Annunzio “destroyed Christmas.”
- Lapham’s Quarterly published an excerpt from Mahmood Mamdani’s Neither Settler nor Native on the Supreme Court decisions that created “Indian Country.”
- On WAMU’s 1A , Burning the Books author Richard Ovenden considered the danger of deliberate destruction of documents by Trump administration officials on their way out the door .
- Benjamin Francis-Fallon, author of The Rise of the Latino Vote , explained in the Washington Post how 2020 election results affirmed decades-old political divisions among the American voters frequently lumped together as “Latinos.”
- Jon Butler discussed God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan on the First Things Podcast .
- Literary Hub ’s “Raise UP Reading List” ( #RaiseUP ), created in conjunction with University Press Week 2020 , includes Racism in America: A Reader along with other new works on the timely subjects of climate change, racial justice, and voting rights.
- (10/27) Frank Pasquale, author of New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI , spoke with Commonweal about what robots can’t do .
- (10/19) Stephen Wertheim, author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy , spoke with Teen Vogue about America’s rise to superpower status—and subsequent decline .
- (10/22) On the WGBH (Boston, MA) podcast The Scrum , Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? author Alexander Keyssar traced the long history of failed attempts to reform or eliminate the electoral college—and warn of how little guidance it would actually provide in a close, hotly contested election .
- (10/21) On NPR’s All Things Considered , Why We Act author Catherine Sanderson analyzed what gives those who witness injustice the moral courage to speak up .
- Rana Mitter, author of China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism , discussed China and the global order on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week .
- Stephen Wertheim, author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy , argued in the New York Times that America has “no reason” to be so powerful .
- The Guardian published an excerpt from Frank Pasquale’s New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI .
- On NPR’s Throughline , unpacked the rushed, fraught, and imperfect process that resulted in today’s highly controversial system .
- On MSNBC’s The Last Word , Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew analyzed how Donald Trump’s “stand back and stand by” comment during the first Presidential debate highlights a larger plot to subvert democracy .
- The September 2020 issue of Artforum features an in-depth conversation between Nicole Fleetwood and Rachel Kushner , as well as a project statement from Professor Fleetwood in which she introduces some of of the artists featured in Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration : Tameca Cole , James Hough , Mark Loughney , and Jared Owens .
- Andy Horowitz, author of Katrina: A History, 1915–2015 , spoke with WBUR (Boston, MA)’s On Point about the structural issues that affected America’s recovery from the now-legendary hurricane—and what more needs to be done .
- At Time , Freedom: An Unruly History author Annelien de Dijn traced how the definition of “freedom” split between political liberals and conservatives .
- The documentary film based on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century can now be streamed on Netflix .
- Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution , made the case at USA Today that presidential candidate Joe Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris for Vice President strengthens the odds that a future Biden administration’s cabinet will look “like America.”
- At Zócalo Public Square , Victoria de Grazia, author of The Perfect Fascist , described why the oversimplification of the term “fascism” in recent public discourse is dangerous .
- As the 2020 hurricane season moves into full swing, Katrina: A History, 1915–2015 author Andy Horowitz spoke with WWNO (New Orleans, LA)’s Coastal Desk about the storm’s lessons for the Gulf Coast .
- Bloomberg Businessweek checked in with The Color of Money author Mehrsa Baradaran for a report on rapper and activist Killer Mike’s longstanding support of the #BankBlack movement .
- Alexander Keyssar, author of Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? , spoke with WBUR (Boston, MA)’s On Point about the endurance of the problematic fixture of American democracy .
- At the Washington Post , Tom Zoellner, author of Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire , (re)introduced the forgotten holiday “August First Day,” which commemorates Britain’s passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1834 —legislation that marked the beginning of legal freedom for 800,000 enslaved people across its many colonial holdings.
- Atomic Doctors author James L. Nolan, Jr., spoke with Inside Edition about the discovery of his grandfather’s role in helping to build the atomic bomb .
- At the New York Times , Alexander Keyssar, author of Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? , delineated the white supremacist beliefs propping up the electoral college .
- Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness , argued in the Boston Globe that “words aren’t enough” from companies that claim to support the Black Lives Matter movement .
- At The Hill , Shields of the Republic author Mira Rapp-Hooper warned that in order to protect American and European security, the Senate must block the Trump administration’s planned drawdown of American troops from Germany .
- William Sturkey, author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White , explained in the Hattiesburg American how the 1910 Confederate monument at Forrest County Courthouse, Mississippi, pays tribute to “a past that never was.”
- ARTnews featured an in-depth interview with Nicole Fleetwood, author of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration , and artists Tameca Cole, Russell Craig, and Jesse Krimes, whose work is featured in the book .
- Mehrsa Baradaran, author of How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money , contributed to the New York Times special project on inequality, “The America We Need,” with a fiery critique of the neoliberal myth that profit incentives produce the best outcomes for society .
- Lapham’s Quarterly published “How Is a Disaster Made?” , excerpted from Andy Horowitz’s Katrina: A History, 1915–2015 .
- In an American Prospect essay lauded by Senator and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau originator Elizabeth Warren , Adam Levitin and Susan Wachter, coauthors of The Great American Housing Bubble , argued that changes proposed by the Trump administration to radically ease mortgage lending standards will undermine the Dodd-Frank Act and lead to future financial crises .
- At Dissent , Marking Time author Nicole Fleetwood analyzed James Hough’s painting How Big House Products Makes Boxers through a lens clarified by a pandemic disease that disproportionately puts at risk the lives of the incarcerated .
- Priya Satia, author of the forthcoming Time’s Monster: How History Makes History , wrote at Slate about George Orwell’s stint as a police officer in colonial Burma—and how his belief that policing and incarceration are the essence of oppression can be used today to interpret reactions to the Black Lives Matter movement .
- In a feature profile, The Chronicle of Higher Education declared Theory of the Gimmick author Sianne Ngai to be the “most influential literary theorist of her generation.”
- William Sturkey, author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White , discussed with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer what to do about Confederate (and non-Confederate) statues and monuments as their, in many cases, outright racist histories are finally acknowledged .
- On Bloomberg Businessweek , Tacky’s Revolt author Vincent Brown traced active resistance to enslavement across the British Empire—and how a history of enslavement still marks Black people for victimization today .
- In a wide-ranging interview, Sianne Ngai, author of Theory of the Gimmick , spoke with The Nation about Puff Daddy, the Fyre Festival…and capitalism’s shiny broken promises .
- Mehrsa Baradaran, author of How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money , argued at The American Prospect that the American ideals of justice (and peace) for all cannot be realized until America’s racial wealth gap—in areas including housing, banking, and income—is conquered .
- On The Modern Art Notes Podcast , Marking Time author Nicole Fleetwood explicated how imprisoned individuals create art in an attempt to resist the brutality and depravity of American incarceration .
- Writing with Keisha N. Blain, Tom Zoellner, author of Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire , wrote at The Guardian about the history of “establishment thinking” that frames change—like that proposed by Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police activism—as inherently dangerous .
- Elizabeth Hinton, author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America , argued in the New York Times that George Floyd’s death resulted from a “failure of generations of leadership” ; at Boston Review , she explicated the historical context behind the ongoing “Minneapolis Uprising.”
- At USA Today , Why We Act author Catherine Sanderson and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Cornell William Brooks analyzed Floyd’s murder and explored how to encourage bystander action when an ethical response is often personally risky .
- On the Australian radio program Uncommon Sense , John Keane, author of The New Despotism , discussed how anti-democratic practices by despotic governments are sweeping the world .
- Black Agenda Report spoke with Joshua Bennett about Being Property Once Myself and the idea of Black Studies as an “ecological critique.”
- Literary Hub published “On the City of Florence’s Struggle to Get Back Dante’s Body,” excerpted from Guy Raffa’s Dante’s Bones: How a Poet Invented Italy .
- Discover Magazine published an excerpt from Catherine Sanderson’s Why We Act on the “bystander effect”—and how to overcome it .
- At Foreign Policy , Mira Rapp-Hooper, author of Shields of the Republic: The Triumph and Peril of America’s Alliances , explained how the COVID-19 pandemic is hardening U.S.–China competition .
- Samuel Zipp, author of The Idealist , spoke at length with Rorotoko about Wendell Willkie’s quest to build one world .
- Tacky’s Revolt author Vincent Brown spoke with the Boston Globe about conceiving of slavery not as a neutral socioeconomic framework but an ongoing military conflict .
- At Bloomberg Law , Power after Carbon author Peter Fox-Penner, writing with Olena Pechak and Matthew Lillie, considered whether artificial intelligence will increase or decrease power grid efficiency .
- From Here to There author Michael Bond spoke with CBC Radio’s The Spark about navigation as an “essential survival skill” ; Wired published an excerpt from the book on why humans “totally freak out” when they get lost .
- Sai Prakash, author of The Living Presidency , argued in the Wall Street Journal that SCOTUS must strike down state laws constraining the choice of Electoral College voters .
- In the Washington Post , Battling Bella author Leandra Ruth Zarnow contrasted the FX television series “Mrs. America”’s treatment of Bella Abzug to that of series protagonist (and conservative) Phyllis Schlafly .
- At First Things , Virtue Politics author James Hankins warned of the dangers of relying too heavily on “imprudent expertise” when making political decisions .
- Kino Marquee, the producers of a documentary based on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century , announced they will be screening the film online starting on May 1 .
- Why We Act author Catherine Sanderson wrote at Psychology Today about the social challenges of calling out poor behavior —such as Vice President Mike Pence’s choice to visit the Mayo Clinic without a face mask.
- Capital and Ideology author Thomas Piketty spoke with Democracy Now! and New York Magazine ’s “Intelligencer.”
- The New York Review of Books published an excerpt from Nicole Fleetwood’s Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration along with selected art from the book.
- At Harvard Business Review , Joseph Allen and John Macomber, coauthors of Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity , explained the factors that make an office building “healthy” in an era of respiratory pandemics .
- Wired published an excerpt from Christopher Wanjek’s Spacefarers on “how space tries to kill you.”
- On WBUR (Boston, MA)’s Here & Now , Stewards of the Market author Mitchel Abolafia explained the Federal Reserve’s recent actions to support the U.S. economy .
- At The Hill , legal scholar and The Living Presidency author Sai Prakash responded to Donald Trump’s statement, “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total.”
- Why We Act author Catherine Sanderson spoke with KQED (San Francisco, CA)’s Forum about the “bystander effect” and how to be more brave in the face of wrongdoing .
- At USA Today , Healthy Buildings coauthor Joseph Allen considered the question of whether there is COVID-19 in your car .
- Via Instagram, Nicole Fleetwood discussed Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration with Dr. Cheryl Finlay from Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College’s AUC Art Collective .
- Peter Fox-Penner, author of Power after Carbon , wrote at the Boston Globe about the “green opportunity” that can be discovered within the COVID-19 crisis .
- Mehrsa Baradaran, author of How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money , spoke with WBUR (Boston, MA)’s On Point about what can be done during and after the COVID-19 pandemic to save America’s small businesses .
- At the Washington Post , Out of My Skull coauthor James Danckert explained how to conceive of boredom not as a problem, but as a cognitive tool .
- Unbound author Heather Boushey argued in an American Prospect roundtable that COVID-19 has liberated massive public spending…but Americans must beware of austerity demands from the government once the crisis passes .
- Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution , wrote at Time about the Founding Fathers’ understanding that a strong central authority is needed in times of crisis—when state governments won’t, or can’t, coordinate on their own .
- Healthy Buildings coauthor Joseph Allen, writing with Juliette Kayyem, argued in USA Today that scientific projections are converging, and a national plan is necessary in order to successfully battle the pandemic .
- At War on the Rocks , Mira Rapp-Hooper, author of Shields of the Republic: The Triumph and Peril of America’s Alliances , considered what U.S.–China relations will look like after the pandemic .
- Healthy Buildings coauthor Joseph G. Allen explained at the Washington Post why you—yes, you!—need to wear a mask .
- James Hankins, author of Virtue Politics , wrote at Quillette about Black Death–era social distancing —including efforts among the wealthy to seek refuge in relatively untarnished rural areas.
- At the Washington Post , Animal City author Andrew Robichaud considered what the popularity of Netflix’s “sordid human drama” Tiger King says about Americans themselves .
- Capital and Ideology author Thomas Piketty spoke with Bloomberg TV’s Balance of Power about how the coronavirus pandemic will have a lasting impact on the economy .
- At BBC Science Focus , Christopher Wanjek, author of Spacefarers , made the case for dreaming bigger (or rather, further) than Mars when considering the future of human space colonization .
- Mehrsa Baradaran, author of How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money , considered at The American Prospect how responses to the COVID-19 pandemic should inform America’s ongoing challenges in areas like public health and climate change .
- At American Heritage , Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution , explained Washington’s foresight in crafting his Cabinet into a vitally important governing tool .
- John Eastwood, coauthor of Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom , spoke with the Washington Post about how researchers of boredom are responding to pandemic-related mass self-isolation measures .
- At the Washington Post , The Idealist author Samuel Zipp considered Wendell Willkie’s ideas about internationalism in light of current panic over porous borders and pandemic illness .
- Capital and Ideology author Thomas Piketty spoke with The Nation about confronting mass inequality during a global pandemic .
- Healthy Buildings coauthor Joseph G. Allen wrote at the Washington Post about the relatively small risk to end-users of COVID-19 borne by shipped packages and grocery items ; at USA Today , he (writing with Marc Lipsitch) warned of the greater risk—and advised on what to do— if someone in your home is sick with (presumed or confirmed) COVID-19 .
- Michael J. Graetz, coauthor of The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It , spoke with The Hill about how the current financial crisis could be easier to recover from than the Great Recession — if policymakers play their cards right.
- Adam Levitin, coauthor of The Great American Housing Bubble , argued in the New York Times (writing with Satyam Khanna) that the best way to stanch economic bleeding from COVID-19 shutdowns is to enact a temporary national moratorium on small business debt collections .
- Ben Buchanan, author of The Hacker and the State , spoke with The Diplomat about “the new normal of geopolitics.”
- Capitalism, Alone author Branko Milanovic argued at Foreign Affairs that, rather than widespread illness, the “real danger” of the current international COVID-19 response is “social collapse.”
- Sir Peter Gluckman, coauthor of Ingenious: The Unintended Consequences of Human Innovation , discussed unforeseen consequences of technology —including the faster spread of infectious disease—on the New Zealand radio program The Sunday Session .
- On the podcast Health Care Rounds , Exposed author Christopher Robertson discussed American health insurance, or lack thereof, during the COVID-19 pandemic .
- Jim Downs, author of the forthcoming (January 2021) Maladies of Empire: How Slavery, Imperialism, and War Transformed Medicine , wrote at the Atlantic about past “epidemics America got wrong” due to government inaction or delay .
- On the Harvard Law School podcast Deep Background , Richard J. Lazarus, author of The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court , considered the question, suddenly relevant to millions of Americans, of where public health stops and individual liberty begins .
- As borders close and international air travel precipitously declines, Samuel Zipp, author of The Idealist , recounted the tireless efforts of Wendell Willkie, the “last internationalist,” on ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live .
- On KPFA’s About Health , Shaken Brain author Elizabeth Sandel, MD, described how concussions occur, symptoms, the best treatments, and potential long-term consequences .
- At USA Today , Joseph G. Allen, coauthor of Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity , explained the new-to-many concept of “social distancing” ; at Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge , he weighed in on how the COVID-19 pandemic will change business practices .
- At the Chronicle of Higher Education , Michelle Miller, author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology , advised on how to get courses “online in a hurry.”
- Tony Jack, author of The Privileged Poor , described to WAMU’s 1A what widespread campus closures mean for lower-income students .
- Felicia Angeja Viator, author of To Live and Defy in LA , spoke with Music Journalism Insider about how gangsta rap changed America .
- As many Americans settle into their couches and others attempt to triage competing demands from work and family, Daniel Milo, author of Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society , spoke with CBC Radio’s Ideas about when to push back against “the tyranny of the exceptional.”
- Thomas Piketty discussed Capital and Ideology with Fast Company , who also published an excerpt from the book.
- On WBUR’s Here & Now , Richard Lazarus, author of The Rule of Five , recounted the tale of environmental lawyer Joe Mendelson, whose successful 2007 case, Massachusetts vs. Environmental Protection Agency , laid the groundwork for many of former President Obama’s climate policies .
- What Stars Are Made Of author Donovan Moore introduced readers of BBC Science Focus to the astronomic genius of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin .
- At Knowable , Tom Siegfried, author of The Number of the Heavens , reported on the current state of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence .
- As coronavirus panic grips the nation, Joseph G. Allen, coauthor of Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity , argued in the New York Times that your building can make you sick or keep you well .
- Benjamin Francis-Fallon’s The Rise of the Latino Vote informed a Mother Jones analysis of the popularity of presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders among Latinx voters during the 2020 Super Tuesday primary .
- Tony Jack, author of The Privileged Poor , was interviewed for a New Yorker feature on the way programs like Prep for Prep, which helps low-income New York City students get into selective private schools, obscure deeper inequalities in the system .
- On the National Constitution Center podcast We the People , Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution , discussed how Washington conceived of civic virtue, honor, and public service both as a general and as president .
- Talk Radio’s America author Brian Rosenwald explained on Texas Public Radio’s The Source how conservative talk radio—no longer even attempting to be fair and balanced; instead explicitly partisan—transformed American politics .
- On CNN’s GPS , The Great Reversal author Thomas Philippon explained to Fareed Zakaria why prices in America are so high .
- “How North Korean Hackers Rob Banks around the World,” excerpted from Ben Buchanan’s The Hacker and the State , was published at Wired .
- Richard J. Lazarus, author of The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court , wrote at Bloomberg Environment about the thusfar inept manner in which the Trump administration has sought to dismantle Obama-era environmental protection .
- The Privileged Poor author Tony Jack was interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education for their feature “How to Make College a Better Bet for More People.”
- Thomas Piketty discussed Capital and Ideology on the BBC World Service program Newsday and at Times Higher Education .
- On the PBS News program Amanpour & Co. , Unbound author Heather Boushey explained who the U.S. economy isn’t working for .
- At the Washington Post , Ben Buchanan, author of The Hacker and the State , debunked common myths about cyberwar ; on the CBS News podcast Intelligence Matters , he unpacked the potential effect AI technologies may have on the geopolitical dynamics among nations .
- Christopher Robertson, author of Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done about It , explained on the podcast The Week in Health Law why why cost exposure is a terrible rationing mechanism for health care .
- On the Planet Money (NPR) series The Indicator , Capitalism, Alone author Branko Milanovic discussed two factors that contribute to increasing global inequality: the increasing prevalence of “timecard capitalists”—individuals who earn both high capital income and high labor income ; and “assortative mating,” the trend in which people with the same socioeconomic backgrounds increasingly marry each other .
- Capital and Ideology author Thomas Piketty debated how unfair societies can learn from their mistakes—and whether inequality is ever in the public interest —on the Economist podcast The Economist Asks .
- Juan Du, author of The Shenzhen Experiment , spoke at length with the South China Morning Post as she toured the “instant city.”
- Protocol published “How the NSA Hacked International Mobile Carriers,” excerpted from Ben Buchanan’s The Hacker and the State .
- Harvard Magazine featured an in-depth profile of Vincent Brown, author of Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War .
- Capital and Ideology author Thomas Piketty warned New Statesman of “another economic crash.”
- At Zócalo Public Square , Unbelievers author Alec Ryrie detailed how European atheism existed in practice before it existed in theory .
- At Foreign Affairs , Mira Rapp-Hooper, author of the forthcoming Shields of the Republic , advised on how best to save America’s decaying alliances .
- Vincent Brown, author of Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War , spoke with WNUR (Chicago)’s This Is Hell! about the fundamentally international nature of slavery—and how to understand both the American origin story and American race relations today within the context of that global capitalist model .
- At Rorotoko , City on a Hill author Alex Krieger unpacked the American inclination toward aspirational approaches at community and city-building .
- At STAT , Christopher Robertson, author of Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done about It , analyzed whether the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate soundbite “no more copays, no more deductibles” really represents radical health care reform .
- At Politico , Revolutionary Constitutions author Bruce Ackerman roundly critiqued Trump impeachment defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz’s use of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial as an relevant example .
- Martha Nussbaum spoke with The Nation about The Cosmopolitan Tradition —and whether the so-called “retreat of liberalism” is an academic fad .
- Supriya Gandhi, author of The Emperor Who Never Was , discussed Mughal prince and philosopher Dara Shukoh with The Wire .
- On WBUR’s Radio Boston , Brandon Terry, coeditor of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. , discussed what the “righteousness” Dr. King taught and practiced means to today’s battles against injustice .
- At the Atlantic , India’s Founding Moment author Madhav Khosla compared Indians’ current struggle with questions of ethnic, religious, and ultimately, national identity , with their experience before and during Partition.
- Beyond Test Scores author Jack Schneider argued in the Denver Post that rather than relying on published scores or simplistic color coding when choosing schools, parents would do well to consider meatier questions about teacher engagement and whether they are supported by school administration .
- Christopher Robertson, author of Exposed: Why Our Health Insurance Is Incomplete and What Can Be Done about It , argued at CNN Opinion that political wrangling over healthcare policy has focused too heavily on who gets covered and not enough on the quality of coverage —at prices affordable enough that those who are “covered” can actually seek the care they need.
- On KPFA’s Against the Grain , Accounting for Slavery author Caitlin Rosenthal discussed slavery’s place within the development of American capitalism .
- An excerpt from James Hankins’s Virtue Politics , on Machiavelli’s “war on virtue,” was published at Spectator USA ; on the Quillette podcast, Hankins explained what Renaissance humanists can teach today’s politicians about statecraft .
- At Smithsonian , Ai Hisano, author of Visualizing Taste: How Business Changed the Look of What You Eat , detailed the history of federal regulations governing, not the nutritive value or safety, but the appearance of foods .
- Animal City author Andrew Robichaud’s research was central to Maclean’s feature on the nineteenth-century moral revolution in North America in the conception of humane behavior towards animals .
- On Texas Public Radio’s The Source , Testosterone coauthor Rebecca Jordan-Young unpacked how myths about the hormone’s relationship to masculinity have shaped American culture .
- Branko Milanovic, author of Capitalism, Alone , discussed which varieties of capitalism will prevail over time on The American Interest ’s podcast.
- A Washington Post Magazine feature on the resurgence of stoicism among Silicon Valley techbros was informed by Donna Zuckerberg’s Not All Dead White Men .
- Tom Siegfried, author of The Number of the Heavens , wrote at Knowable about the new tests that could verify Einstein’s general theory of relativity—or prove it to be significantly flawed .
- At Time , India’s Founding Moment author Madhav Khosla explained the political unrest in India following the promulgation by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of a new citizenship law that treats Muslims differently from those of other religions .
- Nautilus published an excerpt from John Johnson Jr.’s Zwicky on the (not so humble) astrophysicist’s discovery of supernovas .
- At the Atlantic , Mary Sarah Bilder, author of Madison’s Hand , took a close look at James Madison’s use of “high crimes and misdemeanors” versus “maladministration” in the constitutional grounds for presidential impeachment .
- On WFHB (Bloomington, IN)’s The Interchange , Juliana Spahr, author of Du Bois’s Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment , considered the revolutionary capacity of literature .
- David Perlmutter, author of Promotion and Tenure Confidential , explained in the Chronicle of Higher Education why it’s hard to operate “outside the box” in academe .
- In the Boston Globe , City on a Hill author Alex Krieger described the city’s new “gilded age.”
- At the Washington Post , The Rise of the Latino Vote author Benjamin Francis-Fallon detailed the origins of the concept of a singular “Latino vote” in the 1960 “Viva Kennedy!” campaign .
- Françoise Baylis, author of Altered Inheritance , spoke with CBC Radio’s Information Morning about Chinese twins Lulu and Nana, the first humans to be born with the help of CRISPR technology .
- The Great Reversal author Thomas Philippon explained to Marketplace ’s David Brancaccio how increases in lobbying against competition and poor regulatory oversight led to higher prices for consumer goods and utilities in the United States compared to Europe .
- On Texas Public Radio’s The Source , Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History , discussed the forces that propelled Big Tobacco to its height of popularity and the role of citizen activism in its eventual downfall .
- Branko Milanovic discussed Capitalism, Alone on the Slate podcast The Gist .
- At Scientific American , Tom Siegfried, author of The Number of the Heavens , introduced the multiverse—a concept with a longer history than one might think .
- Talk Radio’s America author Brian Rosenwald recounted on WGBH/PRI’s Innovation Hub how conservative talk saved AM radio, influenced American politics, and changed our political reality .
- At the Atlantic , historians David W. Blight ( Race and Reunion ; American Oracle ), W. Fitzhugh Brundage ( The Southern Past ; Civilizing Torture ), and Kevin M. Levin ( Searching for Black Confederates ), criticized the University of North Carolina’s recent decision to pay the white nationalist group Sons of Confederate Veterans $2.5 million to relocate and house the statue “Silent Sam.”
- At the Guardian , Katrina Karkazis, coauthor of Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography , explained the science behind why testosterone levels cannot be used to assign people to a male or female identity .
- At Foreign Affairs , Capitalism, Alone author Branko Milanovic compared the two types of capitalism—“liberal meritocratic” (exemplified by the United States, Western European nations, Japan, and a few others) and “state-led, political” (exemplified by China) —that jostle for world domination.
- At Aeon , Author Unknown author Tom Geue considered un-authored Roman literature and the transcendence of mere individuality .
- Joshua Bennett, author of Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man , spoke with the BBC World Service program The Compass about the role of poetry in bringing humans and non-human animals closer together .
- On the Fox Business program Mornings with Maria , The Great Reversal author Thomas Philippon compared European with American business practices .
- As America’s 2020 general election approaches, MarketWatch spoke with The Great Reversal author Thomas Philippon about increased calls for antitrust action .
- Rorotoko interviewed David Courtwright about The Age of Addiction .
- On the Lapham’s Quarterly podcast The World in Time , Eugene McCarraher, author of The Enchantments of Mammon , discussed the history of capitalism as a tale of predation .
- In the New York Times , William Sturkey, author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White , criticized the University of North Carolina’s recent $2.5 million payment to a neo-Confederate organization for the acquisition and housing of the Confederate statue “Silent Sam.”
- The Tablet published an excerpt from Eric Nelson’s The Theology of Liberalism , on John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice as “Jewish heresy.”
- In the New York Times , Industry of Anonymity author Jonathan Lusthaus reminded holiday shoppers that Eastern Europe hosts the “Silicon Valley of cybercrime” —and its entrepreneurs are watching.
- Globalists author Quinn Slobodian wrote at The Nation about “after-globalization” twenty years after protests disrupted the WTO meeting in Seattle .
- Thomas Philippon, author of The Great Reversal , explained on the FOX Business program WSJ at Large how America’s once highly competitive free market became dominated by large companies whose behavior disadvantages individual consumers .
- Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History , described to Marketplace ’s David Brancaccio how, during an era when American companies sought to increase their international competitiveness, grassroots nonsmokers’ rights groups forced consideration of anti-smoking regulation in the workplace .
- Popular Science published an excerpt from Antony Adler’s Neptune’s Laboratory on the mid-twentieth-century effort to design and build “an undersea utopia” —even as, far above, astronauts were taking their first steps on the moon.
- Following a new FBI report showing a marked increase in hate crimes against Latinos, The Injustice Never Leaves You author Monica Muñoz Martinez unearthed the nation’s “forgotten” history of anti-Latino violence on WBUR (Boston, MA)’s Here & Now .
- On the Yahoo!Finance program On the Move , Unbound author Heather Boushey discussed why economic inequality in the United States is at its highest level in 50 years .
- On the Yahoo!Finance program On the Move , The Great Reversal author Thomas Philippon critiqued the idea that America’s ostensibly “free” markets are in fact functioning for the benefit of consumers and workers .
- Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History , described to the Columbus Dispatch how vaping companies’ marketing efforts have closely followed those of Big Tobacco ; she also discussed the hazy financial future of the vaping industry on CheddarTV .
- Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew spoke with NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday about leaked emails in which Trump administration lackey Stephen Miller seemingly encouraged far-right website Breitbart to promote white supremacist ideas .
- A Washington Post story about a conservative talk show host in Colorado who claims he was fired after expressing disapproval of Donald Trump was informed by discussion with Brian Rosenwald, author of Talk Radio’s America .
- At #AsiaNow , the blog of the Association for Asian Studies, Elisabeth Köll, author of Railroads and the Transformation of China , discussed the country’s extensive high-speed rail network—which is faster, cheaper, and more futuristic than anything offered by the creaky Amtrak system in the United States .
- At The Guardian , The Great Reversal author Thomas Philippon made the case that the increasingly iron grip of monopolistic corporations now costs American households an estimated $300 per month .
- On the Oxfam podcast From Poverty to Power , Capitalism, Alone author Branko Milanovic talked with London School of Economics Professor and Oxfam strategic adviser Duncan Green about solutions for global inequality .
- Sarah Seo, author of Policing the Open Road , wrote in the New York Review of Books about what “car culture” can teach us about newer policing—and surveillance—technologies .
- Rajiv Sethi, coauthor of Shadows of Doubt , spoke with the Santa Fe Institute podcast Complexity about the biases in attention and cognition that lead to unfair outcomes on the streets (and online) —and strategies that show promise in offsetting these outcomes.
- On Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time , What Remains author Sarah Wagner described how the determination of military families—and new technologies—have kept alive the effort to bring home the remains of Vietnam-era soldiers .
- On WAMU’s 1A , Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis, coauthors of Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography , discussed how an accurate scientific understanding of the hormone can affect efforts to reshape the Western definition of masculinity ; Literary Hub published an excerpt from the book on the tenuous link between the hormone and violent behavior .
- The Great Reversal author Thomas Philippon explained to the Verge podcast The Vergecast how, in certain markets like healthcare, technology, and air travel, consolidation has resulted in much higher prices for Americans over time .
- Françoise Baylis, author of Altered Inheritance , spoke with Crux about the moral questions (from a Catholic perspective) surrounding the use and further development of CRISPR technology .
- In the New York Times , Gravity’s Century author Ron Cowen described how Albert Einstein’s 1919 discovery of the general theory of relativity made him the first “science superstar.”
- An excerpt from Sarah Wagner’s What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War was published at Lapham’s Quarterly .
- Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid coauthors Luke Fernandez and Susan Matt wrote at BLARB , the blog of the Los Angeles Review of Books , about the limitations—cultural, psychological, neurological—of recent tech company innovations in artificial emotional intelligence .
- Donna Zuckerberg, author of Not All Dead White Men , spoke with Vox about why the alt-right loves ancient Rome .
- At the New York Daily News , City on a Hill author Alex Krieger unpacked the idea of the “American Dream” —on the occasion of the grand opening, in the New Jersey Meadowlands, of a “destination” shopping mall of the same name.
- Capitalism, Alone author Branko Milanovic spoke with WBUR (Boston, MA)’s Here and Now about recent civil unrest across the globe, attributing it in part to a feeling among the poor of being excluded from the political and social life of their countries—and, increasingly, denied a fair shot at those countries’ income growth .
- At STAT , David Courtwright, author of The Age of Addiction , explicated the interaction between biology and economics—limbic capitalism—that supports today’s vaping and prescription opioid industries (and their associated addictions) .
- At BBC News, Not All Dead White Men author Donna Zuckerberg and Antigone Rising author Helen Morales detailed the long history—dating back to the ancient Greeks—of harassment of women by intimidated men .
- John Danaher discussed Automation and Utopia and the prospect of a “world without work” on Newstalk Ireland’s Futureproof .
- At the Washington Post , Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid coauthors Luke Fernandez and Susan Matt analyzed smartphone culture’s impact on human psychology .
- Heather Boushey, author of Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do about It , warned in the New York Times that America’s most relied upon measure of economic progress, gross domestic product, fails to measure the reality of inequality —and gives us an increasingly dangerous false sense of security.
- At The Atlantic , The Great Reversal author Thomas Philippon explained that United States only pretends to have free markets —while economic monopoly dings American consumers at every turn.
- Eugene McCarraher, author of The Enchantments of Mammon , argued at Aeon that capitalism trades not in rationality and logic, but instead in a “most beguiling form of enchantment” —and it has remade the moral and ontological universe in its likeness.
- The Paris Review published “The Cult of the Imperfect,” excerpted from Umberto Eco’s On the Shoulders of Giants .
- In the Washington Post , Testosterone coauthors Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis laid to rest five commonly held myths about the controversial hormone ; on the BBC World Service program Newshour [at 45:00], Karkazis argued that sports organizations must rethink their regulations around T , which are based on a faulty understanding of its role in the body.
- Kimberly Clausing, author of Open , made the progressive case against protectionism in Foreign Affairs .
- A Washington Post feature on the newly revamped for-profit education plans of Edison Schools founder Chris Whittle was informed by a discussion with Education and the Commercial Mindset author Sam Abrams.
- Time published an excerpt from Dan Porat’s Bitter Reckoning: Israel Tries Holocaust Survivors as Nazi Collaborators .
- A New Yorker feature on the shift from theoretical to “data-driven” economics —and the associated impact on governmental policy—centers the work of Heather Boushey, author of Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do about It .
- On CBC Radio’s The Current , Altered Inheritance author Françoise Baylis clarified the difference between “germline” and “somatic” gene-editing and warned against making heritable changes to human genes .
- Vox interviewed David Courtwright, author of The Age of Addiction , about capitalism’s role in promoting unhealthy behaviors .
- On The Commonweal Podcast , The Rise of the Latino Vote author Benjamin Francis-Fallon debunked the myth that American Latino voters operate as a unified political bloc —rather, they are a variegated coalition with a diverse array of concrete interests.
- On Innovation Hub (WGBH/PRI), Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid coauthors Luke Fernandez and Susan Matt described how Americans’ opinion of solitude worsened, and tolerance for boredom plummeted , as “always-on” capacities increased and jobs became more repetitive.
- In the wake of Atatiana Jefferson’s death at the hands of a police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, just weeks after Amber Guyger was convicted of the murder of Botham Jean in Dallas, Shadows of Doubt coauthor Rajiv Sethi described on WBUR (Boston, MA)’s Here & Now what fuels the use of excessive force by police —and how to proceed when there are not just individual “bad apples” in law enforcement, but “bad orchards.”
- Brian Rosenwald, author of Talk Radio’s America , discussed with CNN’s Michael Smerconish whether Fox News, The Drudge Report , and conservative talk radio may finally turn against Trump .
- Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History , explained on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time how government subsidies and regulation changed public conceptions of cigarette smoking ; and PopMatters published an excerpt from the book.
- The GQ cover story “Voices of the New Masculinity” featured a conversation with Testosterone coauthor Katrina Karkazis about the science behind our conception of masculinity.
- At the Washington Post , Sarah Wagner, author of What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War , made the case that Donald Trump’s recent lurid description of grieving military families is another example of American leaders’ frequent invocation of military sacrifice to advance their political agendas (in this case, the withdrawal of U.S.troops from Syria).
- Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew gave Five Books her recommended reading on white supremacy .
- Branko Milanovic, author of Capitalism, Alone , spoke with ProMarket about avoiding plutocracy .
- At The Atlantic , Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History , called for regulations around marijuana cultivation, which currently favor well-connected corporate growers, to be rewritten to favor small, independent farmers—and especially farmers of color, as a form of reparations for the scourge in their communities of the War on Drugs .
- Jennifer Rothman, author of The Right of Publicity , warned in the San Francisco Chronicle that a recently signed California bill, ostensibly designed to aid student athletes, fails to protect their rights to use their own names and likenesses—and to bar others from doing so .
- Jiwei Ci, author of Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis , wrote at Foreign Affairs about the implications for the fragile U.S.–China relationship of an increasingly democratic “social state” in China quietly gaining strength under the radar of its authoritarian government .
- Eugene McCarraher, author of The Enchantments of Mammon , spoke with The Nation about myths and rituals of the market, the lost radicalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the rise of neoliberalism .
- On WAMU’s 1A , Ghetto author Daniel Schwartz unknotted the twisty linguistics of the term ghetto and analyzed how it has impacted the communities it’s been used to describe .
- Science News interviewed Tom Siegfried about The Number of the Heavens: A History of the Multiverse and the Quest to Understand the Cosmos .
- On WBUR (Boston, MA)’s Here & Now , The Cigarette author Sarah Milov discussed past efforts by the government to promote American tobacco domestically and around the world —and, in the wake of public health pushback, parallels with today’s debate over vaping.
- Talk Radio’s America author Brian Rosenwald discussed the 24-hour news cycle, the FCC’s late “fairness doctrine” (RIP), and today’s “partisan warriors” on The John Rothmann Show (AM 810 KGO, San Francisco, CA).
- An excerpt from Branko Milanovic’s Capitalism, Alone was published at ProMarket .
- A Texas Monthly cover story on “the battle to rewrite Texas history” featured The Injustice Never Leaves You author Monica Muñoz Martinez’s research into long-ignored incidents of racial violence.
- Thomas Philippon, author of The Great Reversal , explained to CNBC’s The Exchange why American markets are a mess—and getting worse .
- At BBC Science Focus , Zwicky author John Johnson Jr. introduced his subject: “eccentric…genius…and uncontained.”
- On Marketplace , The Cigarette author Sarah Milov described Juul’s response to the vaping scare—replacing its CEO and ending U.S. advertising, among other acts—as “strategically conciliatory” —and reminiscent of past gestures by cigarette manufacturers.
- Daniel Schwartz, author of Ghetto: The History of a Word , wrote at Time about the use of the term to describe heavily segregated urban areas in the United States ; Literary Hub published an excerpt from the book.
- Elizabeth Anderson, author of Value in Ethics and Economics , Danielle Keats Citron, author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace , and Emily Wilson, author of The Death of Socrates , have been named as 2019 MacArthur Fellows .
- An excerpt from T. H. Breen’s The Will of the People , “The Slow Build Up to the American Revolution,” was published at Literary Hub .
- At Vice , Sarah Milov, author of The Cigarette: A Political History , compared “the great American vape panic of 2019” to previous public outcry when, after years of litigation, the dangers of cigarettes were finally disclosed .
- On KUOW (Seattle, WA)’s The Record , The Public Option coauthor Ganesh Sitaraman described the role of government in providing Americans with universally accessible, low or no-cost services—and the variety of public options that could become available if only Americans can muster the political will for them .
- At STAT , Altered Inheritance author Françoise Baylis responded to announcements of successful germline gene editing by Chinese and Russian researchers, calling for “slow science,” deep reflection, and international dialogue among scientists about what constitutes the common good .
- Tony Jack, author of The Privileged Poor , spoke with KERA (Dallas–Fort Worth, TX)’s Think about the upper education challenges of students who are “book smart” but who may lack the socioeconomic class background to succeed on campus .
- Payal Arora, author of The Next Billion Users , discussed with Innovation Hub (WGBH/PRI) the origins of her research in starry-eyed development idealism—and how she pivoted when confronted with the all-too-human preferences of the people she was attempting to uplift .
- At Fortune , How the Other Half Banks author Mehrsa Baradaran considered the implications for the underbanked of Amazon’s new “Paycode” program, which will allow for cash transactions via a partnership with Western Union .
- Literary Hub published an excerpt from Françoise Baylis’s Altered Inheritance , “Will It Ever Be Ethical for Athletes to Edit Their Genes?”
- Global Competition Review interviewed Chris Sagers about United States v. Apple: Competition in America .
- Daniel Schwartz, author of Ghetto: The History of a Word , spoke with the Boston Globe about the “accumulated definitions” of ghetto , and how to unpack the use of the term today.
- On NPR’s All Things Considered , The Privileged Poor Tony Jack decried the minimally harsh sentencing of actress Felicity Huffman in the “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal .
- On the Yahoo! News podcast The Long Game , Brian Rosenwald, author of Talk Radio’s America , discussed how talk radio and cable news hosts have become the equivalent of party leaders on both the left and right —but without any of the accountability party leadership has traditionally faced.
- The Revolution That Wasn’t author Jen Schradie explained the “activism gap” in social media on the podcast The Politics Guys .
- On WBUR (Boston, MA)’s On Point , Branko Milanovic, author of Capitalism, Alone , discussed how to break the cycles of greed and inequality .
- In the New York Times Magazine ’s 2019 Education Issue, The Privileged Poor author Tony Jack recounted the the hardships he faced as a low-income college student —and how to change the inequitable systems still facing students today.
- Payal Arora, author of The Next Billion Users , spoke with the podcast Creative Next about the current and future uses of AI and digital tech in diverse places such as India, China, Africa, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia .
- African Catholic author Elizabeth Foster wrote at the Washington Post blog Made by History about the growing trend across the African continent toward decolonizing Catholicism .
- Nautilus published an excerpt from Lukas Rieppel’s Assembling the Dinosaur that traces the recent history of dinosaurs alongside that of American capitalism .
- On the Slate podcast The Gist , Talk Radio’s America author Brian Rosenwald considered Rush Limbaugh’s influence on the art of “hijacking political discourse.”
- Kate Eichhorn discussed The End of Forgetting on KQED (San Francisco, CA)’s Forum .
- At the Washington Post , Not All Dead White Men author Donna Zuckerberg critiqued the “debate me” culture popularized by Socrates and now prevalent on social media , arguing that in many cases, “the only winning move is not to play.”
- On the podcast EdSurge on Air , How We Teach Science author John Rudolph explained the downsides of the current approach to teaching the scientific method .
- Daniel Vaca, author of the forthcoming Evangelicals Incorporated , spoke with Slate about the decline of Christian bookstores .
- Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew explained to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria how disparate groups of neo-Nazis, skinheads, and Klansmen came together to form the today’s White Power Movement .
- Caitlin Rosenthal’s Accounting for Slavery heavily informed a New York Times Magazine interactive feature exploring the brutality of American capitalism via a hard look at the economy and culture of plantations .
- Literary Hub published an excerpt from Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis’s Fraud in the Lab , on the “Theranos effect”—when spectacular discoveries turn out to be too good to be true .
- Brian Rosenwald, author of Talk Radio’s America , spoke with WAMU’s 1A about the radio roots that shaped today’s GOP .
- Jezebel interviewed Emily Remus about A Shoppers’ Paradise and the early-twentieth-century origins of the “women like shopping” stereotype .
- A CNN.com report on past border violence victims’ descendants’ reactions to the El Paso shooting featured analysis from The Injustice Never Leaves You author Monica Muñoz Martinez.
- On Utah Public Radio’s UnDisciplined , Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid coauthors Luke Fernandez and Susan Matt considered which human emotions have been changed the most by recent developments in technology [at 09:50].
- Tony Jack, author of The Privileged Poor , spoke with the Boston Globe about the increasingly recognized phenomenon of financially disadvantaged college students skipping meals .
- The Wall Street Journal spoke with Gropius author Fiona MaCarthy on the occasion of the opening of the new Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany .
- At The Brains Blog , Why Free Will Is Real author Christian List made the naturalistic case for free will .
- An excerpt from Edward Baring’s Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy was published in Church Life Journal .
- On the Guardian technology podcast Chips with Everything , The End of Forgetting author Kate Eichhorn described the dangers facing young people who may find it difficult to distance themselves from their pasts —even long into the future.
- Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott discussed The Public Option with The American Prospect and WGBH (Boston, MA)’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagan .
- Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew explained the ideology behind the El Paso shooting on PBS NewsHour .
- Monica Muñoz Martinez, author of The Injustice Never Leaves You , analyzed El Paso in the context of past anti-Mexican and anti-Chicano violence on MSNBC’s The Beat and WBUR (Boston, MA)’s On Point .
- Elizabeth Foster, author of African Catholic , discussed with the Washington Post blog Monkey Cage how the Catholic Church responded to the decolonization of the continent .
- The Bloggers Karamazov interviewed Jonathan Paine about Selling the Story: Transaction and Narrative Value in Balzac, Dostoevsky, and Zola .
- In the New York Times , Bring the War Home author Kathleen Belew placed the recent mass shooting in El Paso, TX, squarely within the rising spate of terrorist acts resulting from white nationalism .
- On WNYC’s The Takeaway , Monica Muñoz Martinez, author of The Injustice Never Leaves You , responded to the El Paso shooting in the context of America’s dark—and under-recognized—history of anti-Mexican violence .
- Harvard University Press mourns the recent passing of Toni Morrison , author of The Origin of Others and Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination among other critically acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction; and of educator Vivian Gussin Paley , whose work in early childhood development informed and elevated a generation of classroom teaching.
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‘manifold glories of classical greek and latin’.
The digital Loeb Classical Library ( loebclassics.com ) extends the founding mission of James Loeb with an interconnected, fully searchable, perpetually growing virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin literature.
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A Conversation with Elizabeth Cobbs about Fearless Women
For Women’s History Month, we are highlighting the work of Elizabeth Cobbs, whose new book Fearless Women shows how the movement for women’s rights has been deeply entwined with the history of the United States since its founding. Cobbs traces the lives of pathbreaking women who, inspired by American ideals, fought for the cause in their own ways …
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The War in Ukraine: Updated Reading List
It is inconceivable to think that a year has passed since Russia first launched its devastating invasion of Ukraine. The following books shed light on the ongoing conflict and provide a better understanding of Ukrainian history as well as the complicated, intertwined pasts of both countries as the war continues. Recent titles published by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute also highlight the voices of Ukrainian writers through timely and harrowing narratives …
Ringing in the New Year with HUP’s 2022 Bestsellers
There is no better way for readers to usher in the new year than by looking back to the books that defined the last. For Harvard University Press, our 2022 bestsellers make up a diverse list of books across time and discipline. …
The Lecture: Bringing to India the Best and Brightest on Ideas and Issues That Matter
HarperCollins and Harvard University Press have a new collaboration: “The Lecture,” a series of talks by writers and thinkers from around the world brought to Indian audiences. The inaugural lecture, “Vivekananda, Guru to the World,” by Professor Ruth Harris …
A New Chapter for Harvard Book Store
Starting in the summer of 2023, for the first time in almost thirty years, Harvard Book Store will have two locations: the flagship store in Harvard Square, and a large new store in the Prudential Center in Boston. For University Press Week we wanted to show some bookseller love, so we reached out to Rachel Cass, General Manager of the Harvard Book Store, to see what’s planned for their exciting new location …
October 31 st marks John Keats’s birthday, and it is also the publication date of Susan J. Wolfson’s new book A Greeting of the Spirit: Selected Poetry of John Keats with Commentaries . We’d like to honor both by sharing Keats’s poem, “To Autumn” …
John Rawls: Speaking in a Shared Political Language
On the occasion of the anniversary of the publication of A Theory of Justice , Andrius Gališanka, author of John Rawls: The Path to a Theory of Justice , reflects on some of Rawls’s ideas on moral and political reasoning …
Celebrating University Press Week
In celebration of the tenth annual University Press Week, we are sharing the “famous last words” from ten of our most noteworthy books of the last ten years. This listicle represents the depth and breadth, not to mention the surprising variety, of titles we’ve published …
Also at the HUP Blog: View our recommendations for anyone seeking a better understanding of the complicated, intertwined pasts of Russia and Ukraine .
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Dozens of Museums and Universities Pledge to Return Native American Remains. Few Have Funded the Effort.
Reporting from local newsrooms, based on ProPublica’s “Repatriation Project,” has sparked a wave of apologies and commitment to returning ancestral remains.
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Doctors Warned Her Pregnancy Could Kill Her. Then Tennessee Outlawed Abortion.
A Tennessee mother wanted to end her high-risk pregnancy, but doctors feared prosecution.
by Kavitha Surana , photography by Stacy Kranitz , special to ProPublica , March 14, 5 a.m. EDT
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For more than a decade, a training program known as 911 call analysis and its methods have spread across the country and burrowed deep into the justice system.
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They called 911 for help. police and prosecutors used a new junk science to decide they were liars., how jessica logan’s call for help became evidence against her, ayude a propublica y the salt lake tribune a investigar las agresiones sexuales en utah.
Estamos reportando sobre las agresiones sexuales por parte de profesionales. Puede llenar nuestro formulario confidencial que incluimos a continuación para informarnos acerca de profesionales e instituciones de atención médica sobre los que piensa que deberíamos informar.
por Jessica Miller , The Salt Lake Tribune , y Adriana Gallardo , ProPublica, March 14, 7:05 a.m. EDT
94 mujeres alegan que un médico de Utah las agredió sexualmente. Esta es la razón por la que un juez desestimó su caso.
Cuando docenas de mujeres demandaron a su ginecoobstetra por agresión sexual, un juez dijo que el caso estaba bajo la ley estatal de negligencia médica. Mientras las mujeres apelan, los legisladores se están preguntando si esa ley debería modificarse.
por Jessica Miller , The Salt Lake Tribune , March 14, 7 a.m. EDT
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Are Colorado’s Efforts to Curb HOA Foreclosures Working?
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HOA Foreclosures Are a “Lose-Lose” Game for Coloradans, but These Lawyers Win Regardless of the Outcome
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New Mexico Has Lost Track of Juveniles Locked Up for Life. We Found Nearly Two Dozen.
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Reporting the News
Curiously, for a publication called a newspaper, no one has ever coined a standard definition of news. But for the most part, news usually falls under one broad classification -- the abnormal. It is human folly, mechanical failures and natural disasters that often "make the news."
Reporters are a newspaper's front-line eyes and ears. Reporters glean information from many sources, some public, such as police records, and others private, such as a government informant. Occasionally, a reporter will go to jail rather than reveal the name of a confidential source for a news story. American newspapers proudly consider themselves the fourth branch of government -- the watchdog branch -- that exposes legislative, executive and judicial misbehavior.
Some reporters are assigned to beats , or an area of coverage, such as the courts, city hall, education, business, medicine and so forth. Others are called general assignment reporters , which means they are on call for a variety of stories such as accidents, civic events and human-interest stories. Depending on a newspaper's needs during the daily news cycle, seasoned reporters easily shift between beat and general-assignment work.
In the movies , reporters have exciting, frenzied and dangerous jobs as they live a famous pronouncement of the newspaper business: "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Although a few members of the media have been killed as a result of investigations into wrongdoing, newspaper work for the great majority of reporters is routine. They are our chroniclers of daily life, sorting, sifting and bringing a sense of order to a disorderly world.
All reporters are ultimately responsible to an editor. Depending on its size, a newspaper may have numerous editors, beginning with an executive editor responsible for the news division. Immediately below the executive editor is the managing editor , the person who oversees the day-to-day work of the news division. Other editors -- sports, photo, state, national, features and obituary, for example -- may also report to the managing editor.
However, the best known and in some ways the most crucial editor is the city or metro editor . This is the editor that most reporters work for directly. The city or metro editor assigns stories, enforces deadlines and is among the first to see reporters' raw copy. Underneath the city or metro editor are other editors who report directly to him or her.These editors are called gatekeepers , because they control much of what will and will not appear in the next day's paper. Often working under the stress of breaking news, their decisions translate directly into the content of the newspaper.
Once an editor has finished editing a reporter's raw copy, the story moves to another part of the news division, the copy desk. Here, copy editors check for spelling and other errors of usage. They may also look for "holes" in the story that would confuse readers or leave their questions unanswered. If necessary, copy editors may check facts in the newspaper's library, which maintains a large collection of both digital and print reference materials, including past newspaper issues.
The copy-desk chief routes finished stories to other editors who fit local and wire service stories, headlines (written by the editor, not the reporter!) and digital photographs onto pages. Most newspapers do this work, called pagination , with personal computers using software available at any office supply store.
Before we see what happens to the electronic pages built by the copy desk, it will be helpful to understand how other divisions of a newspaper contribute to the production cycle.
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This study of reporters for two daily newspaper in "Southeast City" focuses on the key organizational process of recruitment, socialization, and control, especially as they relate to the problem of media bias. Biased news coverage is found to be the product of a series of organizational processes which are structured to avoid conflict between reporters and their superiors. The Implications of this picture of the reporter-organization relationship (a picture which is far different from the one which has been presented in other media studies) are briefly explored.
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How news happens, a study of the news ecosystem of one american city.
Who really reports the news that most people get about their communities? What role do new media, blogs and specialty news sites now play?
How, in other words, does the modern news “ecosystem” of a large American city work? And if newspapers were to die—to the extent that we can infer from the current landscape—what would that imply for what citizens would know and not know about where they live?
The questions are becoming increasingly urgent. As the economic model that has subsidized professional journalism collapses, the number of people gathering news in traditional television, print and radio organizations is shrinking markedly. What, if anything, is taking up that slack?
The answers are a moving target; even trying to figure out how to answer them is a challenge. But a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which takes a close look at the news ecosystem of one city suggests that while the news landscape has rapidly expanded, most of what the public learns is still overwhelmingly driven by traditional media—particularly newspapers.
The study, which examined all the outlets that produced local news in Baltimore, Md., for one week, surveyed their output and then did a closer examination of six major narratives during the week, finds that much of the “news” people receive contains no original reporting. Fully eight out of ten stories studied simply repeated or repackaged previously published information.
And of the stories that did contain new information nearly all, 95%, came from traditional media—most of them newspapers. These stories then tended to set the narrative agenda for most other media outlets.
The local papers, however, are also offering less than they once did. For all of 2009, for instance, the Sun produced 32% fewer stories on any subject than it did in 1999, and 73% fewer stories than in 1991, when the company still published an evening and morning paper with competing newsrooms. [1] And a comparison of one major story during the week studied—about state budget cuts—found newspapers in the area produced only one-third as many stories in 2009 as they did the last time the state made a similar round of budget cuts in 1991, and the Baltimore Sun one seventh as many. Yet the numbers suggest the addition of new media has not come close to making up the difference.
Indeed the expanding universe of new media, including blogs, Twitter and local websites—at least in Baltimore—played only a limited role: mainly an alert system and a way to disseminate stories from other places.
And this faster dissemination of news was tied to three other trends. As news is posted faster, often with little enterprise reporting added, the official version of events is becoming more important. We found official press releases often appear word for word in first accounts of events, though often not noted as such.
In the growing echo chamber online, formal procedures for citing and crediting can get lost. We found numerous examples of websites carrying sections of other people’s work without attribution and often suggesting original reporting was added when none was. We found elements of this in several major stories we traced.
And sometimes old stories that were already obsolete were posted or linked to after events had changed and the original news site had updated them.
These are some of the results of a close examination of the media covering Baltimore, MD, during the week of July 19-25, 2009.
Among the findings:
- The network of news media in Baltimore has already expanded remarkably. We identified 53 different news outlets that regularly produce some kind of local news content, a universe that ranges from blogs to talk radio to news sites created by former journalists. These are multi-platform operations that also make robust use of Twitter as a way means of dissemination. Twelve of those outlets did not produce any local content during the days studied. [2]
- Among the six major news threads studied in depth—which included stories about budgets, crime, a plan involving transit buses, and the sale of a local theater—fully 83% of stories were essentially repetitive, conveying no new information. Of the 17% that did contain new information, nearly all came from traditional media either in their legacy platforms or in new digital ones.
- General interest newspapers like the Baltimore Sun produced half of these stories—48%—and another print medium, specialty newspapers focused on business and law, produced another 13%.
- Local television stations and their websites accounted for about a third (28%) of the enterprise reporting on the major stories of the week; radio accounted for 7%, all from material posted on radio station websites. The remaining nine new media outlets accounted for just 4% of the enterprise reporting we encountered.
- Traditional media made wide use of new platforms. Newspapers, TV and radio produced nearly a third of their stories on new platforms (31%), though that number varied by sector. Almost half of the newspapers stories studied were online rather than in print.
- There were two cases of new media breaking information about stories. One came from the police Twitter feed in Baltimore, an example of a news maker breaking news directly to the public rather than through the press. Another was a story noticed by a local blog, that the mainstream press nearly missed entirely, involving a plan by the state to put listening devices on buses to deter crime. A newspaper reporter noticed the blog and then reported on the story, which led the state to rescind the plan.
- As the press scales back on original reporting and dissemination, reproducing other people’s work becomes a bigger part of the news media system. Government, at least in this study, initiates most of the news. In the detailed examination of six major storylines, 63% of the stories were initiated by government officials, led first of all by the police. Another 14% came from the press. Interest group figures made up most of the rest.
About the Study
The study examined the news produced by every local news operation we could identify in the city—from radio talk shows, to blogs, specialized new outlets, new media sites, TV stations, radio news programs, newspapers and their various legacy media websites. We identified 53 outlets that regularly produce some kind of local news content. We tracked every piece of content these outlets produced for three days during the target week. [3]
Then PEJ did a deeper, secondary analysis of six major story threads during the target week, charting the course of the story, where it started and how it grew, story to story, minute-by-minute. The six narratives were selected from among the biggest of the week to reflect a range of different kinds of stories, from breaking news about crime, to state government budget cuts to stories that clearly involved the use of new media. PEJ identified which stories contained new information or added new angles and which sources and people drove the narrative. And Twitter feeds about the news were tracked as well, to see who was using that technology to communicate. That analysis identified 10 additional outlets that passed information along and 15 outlets that offered Twitter updates on the major storylines of the week.
Those six major storylines are provided as detailed chapter narratives of their own in this study, allowing a reader to examine exactly how each story broke, the flow of each narrative through the course of the week, and the lessons it revealed about the news system in the city.
The six storylines included:
- The release of the governor’s plan to cut the state budget
- An announcement that a local university would help develop the swine flu vaccine
- A short-lived plan to put listening devices on buses
- The sale of a historic local movie house
- A shooting of police officers
- A combination of six different events that all concerned juvenile justice in the city
This study is only one attempt at trying to understand who is producing news and the character of what is produced. Additional reports could tell more. But this snapshot was in many ways a typical week—marked by stories about police shootings, state budget cuts, swine flu, a big international soccer game in town and a mix of fires, accidents, traffic and weather.
The array of local outlets within this snapshot is already substantial, and as times goes on, new media, specialized outlets and local bloggers are almost certain to grow in number and expand their capacity, particularly if the Sun and other legacy media continue to shrink. New outlets such as local news aggregators, who combine this increasingly mixed universe into one online destination, have cropped up in some other cities such as San Diego. There is a good deal of innovation going on around the country, much of it exciting and promising. But as of 2009, this is what the news looks like in one American city.
The Ecosystem
Of the more than four dozen outlets identified as producing original content about local events in Baltimore, there are four local TV stations, all with their own websites. There are five general interest newspapers: the Baltimore Sun, City Paper, Towson Times, the Washington Post and the Baltimore Times, which focused on African American culture, as well as two long-standing specialized papers—the Daily Record and the Baltimore Business Journal. There are also four general interest websites in town, from the Investigativevoice.com, a local watchdog reporting website started by former Baltimore Examiner employees, to BaltimoreBrew.com, a local news website produced mostly by former Baltimore Sun staffers. There are five local blogs, two of which focus on crime, one called Inside Charm City, a hyperlocal general interest blog produced by a single person. And there are more than 30 that exist inside the universe of the Baltimore Sun newspaper website.
Among more than three dozen radio stations operating in the Baltimore area, just a handful broadcast local news or talk. Those were identified on two commercial stations, WBAL and WCBM, and two public radio stations, WEAA and WYPR. [4]
That first level analysis found that, over those three days, these media produced 715 different stories about local events in the city. Those stories came from 41 different outlets. Twelve outlets produced nothing.
Local TV newsrooms produced more content than any other sector, an average of 73 stories per station (a total of 291 stories either in broadcast or on their websites out of the three day sample of 715). That was followed closely by newspapers. The five papers studied produced 186 stories during these three days, or 37 per outlet.
Yet the quantity of stories produced does not tell everything about their nature.
Some media were more locally focused than others. The media sector that devoted the greatest level of its coverage to local events was TV news. Fully 64% of the stories on the local 6 p.m. TV newscasts were about local matters. [5] By comparison, 53% of stories studied in Baltimore area newspapers were local. In talk radio, the majority of the segments were about national or non-local events (52%).
The new media content in new media, on the other hand, was highly local and mostly locally produced, though, as we will see, it was often brief and derivative of other news accounts. More than eight out of ten of the postings or stories (85%) were locally focused.
The level of original work also varied. Eight out of ten newspaper stories (80%) were straight news accounts written by local staffers.
In television, there was also less original content from staff reporters. Roughly a third the stories, 34%, were edited packages featuring correspondents doing the reporting (the TV equivalent of an original staff written story), and another 13% were anchors narrating a taped package that did not feature a correspondent from the field. But more than a third 36% were “anchor reads” and “tell stories,” often material from wire services.
In radio there was little of what would be considered reporting. Roughly half the segments were anchors doing monologues, and 38% of the segments involved the host interviewing a guest or a caller. There was no original reporting found, either in talk radio or in the news inserts and radio headlines that were produced during the periods studied (during the 7 a.m. drive time hour).
Looking at the topics covered, too, the news agendas of these outlets were strikingly different. The world one encounters differs dramatically depending on where one seeks his or her information.
On local television, for instance, fully 23% of stories studied were about crime, twice as many as other subject. [6] In newspapers (online and print) coverage of crime was almost matched by that of government and closely followed by business and education. On radio in Baltimore, by contrast, government was the No. 1 topic. New media was most often focused on government.
To go deeper, however, to see how the ecosystem moved, how information traveled from one sector to another, who initiated the news and who was first to transmit and frame the narratives that the rest of the media followed, the study also took a look at six of the major stories of the week more closely.
Six Major Storylines
1. The proposal by Governor Martin O’Malley to cut $300 million from the state budget, or about 40% of the total cuts he sought to make from the state’s $14 billion budget.
- 69 stories appeared across all the outlets studied during the week, only six of which came from new niche media. The Sun produced six in print (and six more online), but that was a fraction of the 49 it produced during a comparable week in covering the 1991 budget cuts.
- Fully 71% of all the stories were triggered by the governor’s statements. Just 7% were the result of press enterprise.
2. A shooting incident in which a 34-year-old Baltimore man, apparently high on the drug Ecstasy, terrorized two former female companions and then shot two city police while being wounded and apprehended himself.
- Despite at least five separate crime-oriented blogs in Baltimore, nearly all of the information on this story came from the Sun or local television. Aside from brief mentions on two of the blogs, the niche-crime outlets were silent.
- The mainstream press and the police department used Twitter extensively to update information.
3. The announcement that the University of Maryland, Baltimore had been selected as one of eight sites nationwide that would test the new H1N1 vaccine for the National Institutes of Health.
- Media enterprise was all but absent in covering this development tied to a larger national and world event. Nearly all of the reporting came from the initial university news release and the press conference held on campus.
4. The auction of the historic Senator Theater, an old movie house in north Baltimore that continued to fight for survival while defaulting on its loans.
- The press largely missed the story. Of the 15 identified stories that ran before the auction, only three raised the possibility of what ended up happening.
5. A plan by the Maryland Transit Administration to put listening devices on buses died a sudden and conclusive death once the press discovered it.
- The death in this case revealed the power and influence that the mainstream press still holds. The story was first reported by an online niche website but went unnoticed for days until a Baltimore Sun reporter picked it up. Then, within hours, MTA killed the plan.
- Then in the echo chamber of the Web, the broadest distribution of MTA’s plans came after the agency had already killed it. Ten of the 14 local stories (and another 12 reports outside of Baltimore) “revealed” the plan as a possibility being considered after it was already dead.
6. A series of different events intertwined and formed the biggest narrative of the week—framed by an investigation by the local newspaper—involving how the state and the city approached juvenile justice and incarceration.
- There were 78 published pieces on juvenile justice during the week. Of those, 68 came from traditional media outlets. And two news outlets – the Baltimore Sun and NBC Affiliate WBAL-TV—did almost all of the reporting. Others mostly picked up and reproduced their work.
1. According to Factiva, the Sun produced 23,668 2 stories on all topics from January 1 through December 31, 2009 and 34,852 in the same time frame in 1999 and 86,667 in 1991.
2. Three days of content was analyzed for the study. This included content from July 20, 22 and 24, 2009.
3. Early evening local TV newscasts were recorded and analyzed. For WMAR, WJZ and WBAL, we examined the 6 p.m. newscast. WBFF, the Fox affiliate, does not air news at 6 p.m., so we examined its 5:30 p.m. newscast.
4. A third commercial station, WJZ, could not be captured by PEJ.
5. This analysis examined the early evening newscasts of ABC affiliate WMAR, CBS affiliate WJZ, NBC affiliate WBAL and Fox affiliate WBFF
6. Add accidents (another 13%), and more than a third of all the coverage related to public safety—numbers that track closely with research on local TV that PEJ has produced over the years. And if one looked at the stories that led the newscasts, crime and accidents made up roughly six out of ten stories (58%). That number, incidentally, is also identical to that we found in a five-year study of more than 33,000 stories in local TV news examining 150 stations around the country. “We Interrupt This Newscast: How to Improve Local News and Win Ratings, Too.” Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 33.
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Anna Ross , The University of Melbourne ; Elizabeth Paton , University of Newcastle , and Michelle Blanchard , The University of Melbourne
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Randall S. Sumpter , Texas A&M University
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Professor of Education, University of Sydney
Senior Lecturer in Media Psychology, University of Salford
Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University
Executive Director, The University of Melbourne
Science Communication Researcher, Stellenbosch University
Manager Centre for Applied Risk Management (UARM) and Associate Professor Risk Management, North-West University
Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism, University of Oregon
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Vanderbilt University
Director, Center for International Media Law and Policy Studies, Indiana University
Assistant Professor of German Studies, Dartmouth College
Lecturer, School of the Arts & Media, UNSW Sydney
University of Cape Town
Associate Professor of Communication, Texas A&M University
Honorary Senior Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne
Research Fellow in Mental Health, The University of Melbourne
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