Archive
What the Amazon Purchase of The Washington Post Means
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Neil Irwin at the WonkBlog quells my fears of a corporate takeover:
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is buying The Washington Post. He’s paying $250 million, of his personal funds (we aren’t becoming part of Amazon, in other words, but rather employees of a stand-alone company that Bezos owns).
First things first: Nothing about Wonkblog changes, so far as we know. We’ll be here tomorrow, and the next day, and after the transaction closes in around 60 days, bringing you the latest news and analysis of everything that matters in the worlds of domestic and economic policy.
This was not a day any of us on the staff of the Washington Post saw coming. But it is also a shift into a form of ownership that makes a lot of sense given the realities of the business we find ourselves in. I anticipate that large quantities of brown liquor will consumed at the Post Pub tonight.
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In other news, I got my free trial of Amazon Prime in preparation for Breaking Bad next week.
NY Times Published “Rock Star” Picture of Boston Bomber 2 Months Ago and No One Cared
America’s Sweetheart, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
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Matt Taibbi (<3 ❤ <3!) posted a defense of The Rolling Stone cover that people suddenly care about:
But Rolling Stone has actually been in the hard news/investigative reporting business since its inception, from Hunter S. Thompson to Carl Bernstein to Bill Greider back in the day to Tim Dickinson, Michael Hastings, Mark Boal, Janet Reitman and myself in recent years.
One could even go so far as to say that in recent years, when investigative journalism has been so dramatically de-emphasized at the major newspapers and at the big television news networks, Rolling Stone‘s role as a source of hard-news reporting has been magnified. In other words, we’re more than ever a hard news outlet in a business where long-form reporting is becoming more scarce.
Not everybody knows this, however, which, again, is understandable. But that’s where the confusion comes in. It’s extremely common for news outlets to put terrorists and other such villains on the covers of their publications, and this is rarely controversial – the issue is how it’s done.
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook—
How Did Detroit Go Bankrupt? And Who Will it Hurt?
Detroit circa 1973.
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Matt Yglesias at Slate breaks down the (less) big city’s bankruptcy:
The basic reason Detroit needs to do this is pretty simple. In 1950 there were 1.85 million people in Detroit. In 1970, it was 1.5 million. In 1990, it was a million flat. By 2010, it was down to 710,000. When your city is shrinking like that, you end up with a tax base that’s inadequate to maintain the fixed infrastructure or to pay off pension costs that were incurred in more prosperous times.
Governing.com has an interactive map in the link showing all municipalities that filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection since 2010, along with local governments that voted to approve a bankruptcy filing: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/municipal-cities-counties-bankruptcies-and-defaults.html
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WaPo reports the progress on the bankruptcy filings:
The filing begins a one- to three-month process to determine whether the city is eligible for Chapter 9 protection and who may compete for the limited settlement money that Detroit has to offer. But it could be years before the city emerges from bankruptcy.
Also from WaPo, the impact on Detroit’s citizens:
Who gets hurt most?
Detroit is about $18 billion in debt, and will only be able to pay out a fraction of that in the short term. The two main groups of creditors arguing they’re entitled to that money are public employees and retirees, and bond holders. The investors are likely to make out better, since more of that debt is secured; the city will continue to pay water and sewer bondholders. Most of the pension debt has no similar backstop.
City residents will likely suffer a lack of anything other than the most rudimentary public services for a long time, but the impact is likely to be felt most keenly by those who lost a large chunk of the retirement they were counting on.
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Tl;dr The cultural relevance and economic output of Detroit are both underwater and will continue to die. None of the journalists have the balls to say so, but I bet some of them are thinking, “Maybe we should let it die.”
Where is Edward Snowden?
WaPo breaks down the latest Edward Snowden/NSA news.
U.S. charges Edward Snowden with espionage in leaks about NSA surveillance programs
Federal prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.
Where is Edward Snowden now? Specifically in Hong Kong? They don’t know.
But I have a guess.
The Giant Rubber Duck. Hong Kong.
It’s brilliant. C’mon.
Well, brilliant until it moves back to US. How much would that suck. If he fell asleep in the duck and wakes up back here.
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