We’re members of a rapidly vanishing species – people who subscribe to a newspaper. But that’s somewhat misleading. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has become a rapid read for me; other than a few local news stories, most of the paper comes from two news services – the Associated Press and the Washington Post (the op-ed page is almost entirely columns from the Washington Post). I’ve stopped reading anything from the AP or the Washington Post, because they don’t cover news anymore. They cover narratives, and their stories should be labeled “opinion.” We also get the Wall Street Journal, but the Journal’s news pages have just about reached the level of an AP or Washington Post story. The editorial pages and their business news pages are still good.
As it turns out, we’re not alone. A study by the Reuter’s Institute has discovered the obvious: people are increasingly avoiding the news. When they do read it, they are trusting it less and less. The news media routinely wring their hands over the trust issue, taking some comfort in the polls that say trust is declining for all institutions. But they could do themselves much good by covering the news instead of publishing opinion articles masquerading as news.
Speaking of news media, Phoebe Smith and Michael Shellennberger at Public took a look at fact-checkers, including those who helped newspapers, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media stifle anything but the accepted orthodoxy during the COVID pandemic. And guess what the two independent journalists discovered? Read “Narcissism of the Fact-Checkers.”
Writing and Literature
Why Read John Milton? – Ed Simon at The Millions.
The Deep Humanity of Books – Alexander Lee at The Critic Magazine.
Ukraine
The God of war: The rise of religiosity and mysticism among those fighting on both sides of the conflict in the Ukraine– Fred Skulthorp at The Critic Magazine.
American Stuff
The new secession – James Piereson at New Criterion.
The American Indian Code Talkers Who Helped Revolutionize Cryptography and Win WWII –Sinclair McKay at CrimeReads.
Five years ago, after I retired, I was helping my former employer sort through the company archives. A merger was pending, and the new owner wasn’t interested in holding on to them. So, the files were being transferred to Washington University, and I had to sort through more than 100 years of stuff. The job was actually a lot of fun (for me). One section, however, was sobering -- the records and some artifacts from an explosion in 1947 in Texas City, Texas, including photographs which were taken to document the deaths and damage. The blast wasn’t the company’s fault; a ship nearby was taking on ammonium nitrate to bring to France for fertilizer. It’s still not known what happened, but the cargo caught fire, the ship exploded, and more than 500 people were killed. And it still ranks as the worst industrial accident in American history.
Life and Culture
Living to Die Well – Frank DeVito at Front Porch Republic.
What History Teaches Us About the Importance of Academic Freedom – James Huffman at Quillette.
Time-Travel with Care – Seth Lewis.
Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rated rivals – Steve Johnson at Financial Times. The evidence is piling up – green energy and related initiatives are often worse for the environment that the carbon-based energy they’re supposed to replace. This story focuses on how a lot of firms and mutual funds use ESG scores – and the real-world evidence isn’t good.
A Racist Smear. A Tarnished Career. And the Suicide of Richard Bilkszto – Rupa Subramanya and Ari Blaff at The Free Press.
The Culture of Transgression – Michael Lind at Tablet Magazine.
We see a growing number of stories about the growing conflict between the United States and China, most of which focusing on how interests are diverging. N.S. Lyons at The Upheaval argues something else – that the U.S. and China are not diverging; in fact, they’re growing more and more alike. See “The China Convergence.”
Faith
The Ascent of Adummin: Nothing to See Here, Folks – Clint Archer at The Cripplegate.
Why Your Conspiracy IQ Matters – Mike Duran.
‘Aints No More – Eric Geiger.
Technology-Mediated Ministry: How Far Is Too Far? – Heath Wollman at 9Marks.
Poetry
Medieval Scam Letter – Paul Freeman at Society of Classical Poets.
La Prière – Jourdan Thibodeaux and les Rôdailleurs
Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas by Ulisse Caputo (1872-1948).
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