@trenthead

Company documents show that the social network’s employees repeatedly raised red flags about the spread of misinformation and conspiracies before and after the contested November vote.

Sixteen months before last November’s presidential election, a researcher at Facebook described an alarming development. She was getting content about the conspiracy theory QAnon within a week of opening an experimental account, she wrote in an internal report.

Scare stories on "left-wing illiberalism" display a familiar pattern.

The media has tremendous power to shape public opinion. Reporters and editors should not just be aware of their ability to spread moral panics. They should be terrified of it.

A high-flying German media giant is ahead on digital media but seems stuck in the past when it comes to the workplace and deal-making.

Mr. Döpfner, who once described himself “a mixture of aesthete and carpet salesman,” is an enthusiastic deal-maker who stands 6-foot-7. Under his leadership, Axel Springer has had elaborate holiday parties, including a disco night in 2018 that included 10 D.J.s, 512 disco balls and a joint performance by the Village People and company board members. His dance moves at one party left an impression on the company’s slacks-wearing partners at Politico. He also owns one of Germany’s leading collection of female nude paintings.

Until late this summer, I worked as a senior producer at a company that made podcasts for clients and media partners. I quit, in part, because I saw how far my ideas could go without my name attached

When you buy into the myth of the singular genius, it becomes unseemly that a brilliant writer might need an equal partner in an audio producer to coherently package and adapt their thoughts for a new medium.

Poet Saeed Jones used to consider himself a longtime fan of the comedian. But Chappelle’s new Netflix special “The Closer,” which fixates on gay and trans people, feels like a stab in the back.

That’s the gag, Dave. I thought when you got free, if you decided to come back to us, you’d find a way to help us feel more free too. I believe that’s what laughter does. It loosens us up, helps us shake ourselves free. But watching you spew bullshit just as hurtful as the words those men hurled at us last weekend, I didn’t feel like I was being set free. I felt like I’d just been stabbed by someone I once admired and now he was demanding that I stop bleeding.

Patricia Highsmith’s diaries and notebooks chart her early work and love life.

5/15/48: Please try to notice if every artist isn’t ruthless in some way. Even the sweetest of characters have done something, generally because of their creative life, that to the rest of the world is inhuman. Some cases are more obvious, others may be more concealed. I know mine exists, my cruelty. Though where I cannot precisely say, for I try always to purge myself of evil.

Far-right extremists are robbing the West of the officials who protect community health.

Shortly after, board member Michael Nicosia resigned, writing in a letter that he could not, “in good conscience, continue to serve as a member of the Board of Health alongside Dr. Bukacek.” Board members came to expect that Bukacek would shoot down any public health proposal. “Every initiative or anything we tried to do, Annie fought against,” says Robinson. “And I said, ‘This is ridiculous — we have to fight our own fellow board members to manage the COVID situation?’ ”