Jon Mitchell in The Daily Portal, “The storyteller’s calculus”:

I got the appeal. Writing news is such a rush. But I was always more interested in people’s reaction to the news than to the news itself. Real news, made-up stories, movies and albums, viral videos, it was all the same to me in this regard. I appreciate a good fact like any scientifically-minded person, but the collective psychic reaction to information – real or imaginary – was always the more important event to me.

I’m inclined to agree honestly – it’s not so much the individual facts of a story that are interesting so much as how they weave into what’s happened, what we know and feel, and how that impacts what’s going to happen next. This is true regardless of the topic, from basic human tales to more significant stories of world and politics. It’s the main reason on not really interested in the media insofar as it breaks news – more interested in how it analyzes it.

Zachary M. Seward in Quartz, “How Yahoo plans to make money on Tumblr: ads that don’t feel like ads”:

Creating high-quality native advertising is hard, which is why it wouldn’t be surprising if Tumblr also began to fashion itself as an ad agency, charging brands for advice on how to become the next Comedy Central on Tumblr. Indeed, the presentation to advertisers promises “best practices and content strategy support from the Tumblr team.”

I’ve previously written about how disappointed I am in Facebook and Twitter’s ad strategy, how they’re not being as innovative and creative with the information they have to provide value to potential clients. If this is the strategy Tumblr has, creating a platform then managing accounts for businesses to help them leverage that platform to reach their audience, I think that’s far more interesting than straight advertising.

Anton Sherwood on The Listserve, “Down with ‘capitalism’!”:

The word CAPITALISM, which means at least two very different things:

• A free market, in which private property and services are exchanged without anyone’s permission.

• Government benefits to existing businesses, including subsidies and regulations designed to prevent or discourage competition from new businesses.

Conservative politicians point to the first to gain approval for the second. Progressive politicians point to the second to scare you away from the first. Despite their rivalry for office, they share a vital interest in preserving the system, and thus in obscuring the difference between the two “capitalisms”.

So I’ve stopped using the word “capitalism”, at least on its own. For the first I say “free market” or “open market”. I haven’t quite decided what to call the second; it has been called “crony capitalism” and “neo-mercantilism”.

Honestly, the Listserve is often terrible – a lot of your standard “feel good” fare without a lot of depth. That’s kind of the nature of the beast. But about as often, interesting, thought-provoking bits come through.

The one question I would raise in response to Anton is whether or not the “crony capitalism” is really a separate ‘type’ of capitalism or if it’s just a feature of the “free market” capitalism. I’m wouldn’t be surprised if the function money plays always results in the type of glad-handing system we’ve ended up with.

Paul Krugman in The Conscience of a Liberal, “The Smith/Klein/Kalecki Theory of Austerity”:

What Smith didn’t note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Klein’s book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever – but her thesis really helps explain a lot about what’s going on in Europe in particular.

Honestly, it’s about time he connected the push towards austerity with Klein’s Shock Doctrine. It’s seemed fairly obvious to me the two were connected, and he’s hinted at similar issues before in arguing that the real reason for the push towards austerity is to dismantle the welfare state, not because it actually results in higher growth.

Jonathan Haber on Degree of Freedom, “xMOOC vs. cMOOC”:

The experience I just described made me realize that I like to be taught by a “sage-on-the-stage,” or, more particularly, by someone with way more expertise on the subject than I and my fellow students have who is also skilled and experienced at transferring this knowledge to others. In no way does this mean that xMOOCs are inherently superior to cMOOCs on the same subject. But it does mean that different options may be needed to meet the needs of people with widely varying strengths, weaknesses and preferences that make up their learning styles.

This is an interesting observation, given how much sage-on-the-stage gets blasted. As much as I kind of dislike xMOOCs, that model can be preferable to some people, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The problem with xMOOCs has a lot more to do with marketing/hype, and the host of problems that comes along with that, than merely its format.

John Hermann and Ben Smith of Buzzfeed, “The Media Doesn’t Own The Story Anymore”:

Under the old rules, a responsible citizen passed any potential bit of news he could find on to the professionals. The professionals collected tips, corroborated them, published the ones that panned out. Reporters could protect their readers from bad information – indeed, for reporters, the story was defined largely by what was kept from the public; for readers, the story was defined by the story. But now we should assume our readers and viewers see virtually everything that we see. We can no longer decide which rumors and scraps of information should be dignified with publication – a sufficiently compelling scrap of information, be it a picture of a man with a black backpack or an anonymous, single-sentence Reddit post from the scene of the crime, will become news on that merit alone.

Interesting change in the way the media tells the story – less about presenting facts and more about narrative.