Content Tagged “journalism”
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Get Lit
After America This Week ended in February, due to some sort of undisclosed falling out between Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, Racket News launched a new show with Matt Taibbi and Michael Tracey that pretty much ended in a disaster after five episodes. In a follow up move, Matt has dispensed with both Tracey and the news angle of the show and is instead concentrating on the literary classics portion that made his show with Walter such a success. On the new show, Get Lit with Matt and Brad, Brad Pearce is the second co-host to try and replace the pretty much irreplacable Walter Kirn.
The first episode is out, discussing Aristophanes’ 391 BC play Assemblywomen. It was decent entertainment and I learned some things, though I must say, like most who enjoyed ATW, I miss Walter. This seems to be the main theme in the comments to the video, at YouTube and Racket News at least. I am not sure that the concept alone will keep the show afloat. This is certainly better than the Michael Tracey disaster, but what made the literary discussions on ATW work was specifically the interplay between Matt and Walter and the audience seems to be well aware of this. Needless to say, Walter Kirn isn’t a fan of the new arrangements.
Man, I would love to know what happened between the two of them. It must have been brewing for a while, they both don’t seem like people who fly into drama mode at the drop of a hat. I bet there was some stuff going on behind the scenes for a while before something made the pot boil over. And the fact that they both maintain pretty much silence about the causes is either very professional or points at something more sinister.
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JCD is back!
It was very nice to hear John C. Dvorak again on the No Agenda show. It sounds like he has recovered well from his recent hospitalisation for a heart attack. He sounded very good! Actually, better than before.
Welcome back, John!
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JCD in Hospital
Ah, crap. I just listened to the latest No Agenda episode. Looks like John C. Dvorak is in hospital for a double heart bypass. The man has been one of my journalistic heroes ever since I decided to become a podcaster (and later also a professional journalist). He remains one of the great tech journalists, maybe the only great tech journalist, of our time.
Get well soon, John!
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America This Week Implodes
Last week, America This Week with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn ceased to exist. I still don't understand why this happened. Matt's explanation really wasn't an explanation at all.
All I can say is that I enjoyed this podcast immensely and I will miss it a lot, now that it is gone. I am not sure how I feel about the new direction for Racket News yet. But I do know that wherever Walter Kirn decides to get behind a microphone next, I will be there.
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Introducing “The Uncertain Times”
I’ve created a newspaper! It is inspired by old-school zines and a desire to go back to physical media. Because I can’t get a proper broadsheet printed like County Highway, I made it A4 so that everyone can print it out for themselves — I use Avery Zweckform 100 g/m² bright white paper for my copy. If you keep the content and presentation intact, you’re free to share the PDF or printed copies of it!
One of the reasons for me to create this was to teach myself print layout, and I think I did quite a good job for my first attempt. It was also a lot of fun to adapt my writing style to this project. The first issue comprises two pages on AI, Greenland and Minnesota and you can download it here. Check it out!
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Snow
Snow at EDDLWe woke up this morning to a world sheathed in white. It had snowed. As is kind of tradition here in western Germany, we didn’t get a white Christmas, but it snows at the very beginning of January instead. This has been going on for decades and it has actually snowed at the beginning of January every other year or so. Usually, when it snows here, it is at the start of January.
The press, of course, has been telling us for over 25 years now that kids will never see snow again. But this continues to be proven wrong for one generation after the other. When I look out my window right now, I see several kids happily building a snow man. It’s almost like most of these predictions are utter bullshit. 🤔
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What I’ve Been Up To
You’ve probably noticed that there hasn’t been much going on here lately. This is mostly because I’ve been working very hard behind the scenes to bring the website up to version 3.0, which includes a visual refresh for the site’s theme. I’ve also spent a week on the road, hosting a stage at the secIT 2025 conference as well as doing a lot of networking and sourcing for stories around the event.
I then promptly got the obligatory conference flu, which laid me out for about a week. I completely lost my voice for a few days and was also very tired, the combination of which prevented me from getting any work done. So naturally, there is now quite a backlog to get through.
The work on the new website version is still ongoing behind the scenes. This refresh is made up of three new colour schemes that took me a few weeks to nail down. There are also new features which had to be implemented and tested properly. That’s all finished now. But there is still a lot of work to be done, because I’ve had to touch every single piece of content on the site to change some code that has to do with a new, improved categorisation scheme that’s part of the new design. It’s a lot of work, but will be well worth it in the end. I hope I’ll have that completed soon, so that everyone gets to see the new version of the site that I’ve been working on. Until then, hang tight.
