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September 2, 2015 · 9:07 am

Journalism informed by history

By Christopher B. Daly

After a summertime hiatus, I want to revive this site. As ever, there is much to say about journalism, history, and the assorted other topics that show up here from time to time (NCAA, fossil fuels, etc.)

Today, I want to praise the NYTimes business columnist Eduardo Porter for his smart and effective use of history to inform what was essentially a political column about Donald Trump.

Porter begins with the premise that we all have our own histories and that our individual histories are entwined with the broader histories of our times. In Trump’s case, that personal history involved a coming of age at a very unusual period in American history — when the fraction of the foreign-born population was at an all-time low.

When Donald Trump was reaching adulthood in the mid-1960s, the United States was a less diverse place. By 1970, the share of the population born overseas had shrunk to 4.7 percent, the slimmest on record. Only about 0.4 percent of the population had been born in Mexico.

For a person of Trump’s time, that experience helps define a norm, against which all change is experienced as a deviation. Thus, for Trump and the slice of the population that is about his age (69, about the oldest possible slice of the baby boom), the last few decades represent a disorienting change in the composition of American society. Incidentally, there is nothing inevitable about his perception that such change represents a decline. He might see it as a plus. The fact that he interprets the change as a harm tells us a lot about Donald Trump as an individual. The times in which we live do not dictate everything about us; they just give us material to work with.

My only gripe with Porter’s column has to do with an issue that pervades the Times. Why won’t the paper include more links to source material? Most of the links in the online version link to other Times stories or to backgrounders prepared by the Times. In the Porter piece, it would make sense to link to the works of some of the experts he cites or to link to the Pew study he relies on. I suppose the paper is worried that readers will depart from the Times‘ site via links and never return. But I think that’s wrong. I think more readers would value the Times more if it included external links.

Besides, if the Times is going to write using a historical perspective more often, the writers will have to meet the standards that historians have for evidence. Footnotes anyone?

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September 10, 2013 · 9:27 am

Should the Internet be regulated?

By Christopher B. Daly 

And, if so, for whose benefit?

Those were some of the issues swirling in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington as lawyers argued over a case that could have far-reaching impacts on the future of Internet access and the Web.

On one side is the FCC, which is asserting that it has the power to regulate the Internet just as it regulates over forms of electronic communication like radio, TV, and telephone.

On the other side is Verizon, a major internet service provider (ISP), which says the FCC has never been granted that power by Congress and cannot just assert it because it wants to.

A major point of conflict: can ISPs be forced to treat all their customers the same when it comes to upload/download speeds, pricing, and the like? Or, are they free to devise their own pricing structures that penalize heavy users of bandwidth?

If the ISPs have that right, how would they use that power? Would they impose high rates on start-ups like Zipcar and end up thwarting innovation?

Here’s today’s version in the Times.

The takeaway:

Consumers could experience a significant change in the Internet if the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit strikes down the F.C.C.’s requirement, called the Open Internet Order.

Currently, companies that offer goods or services online do not have to pay anything to get their content to consumers. If Internet service providers started charging fees to reach customers more quickly, large, wealthy companies like Google and Facebook would have an edge, the F.C.C. says. The government argued that such a tiered service could cause small, start-up companies with little money to pay for their access — the next Google orFacebook, perhaps — to wither on the vine.

In any case, the added costs would be likely to be passed on to consumers.

The case, which is expected to be decided late this year or early next year, has attracted enormous interest. On Monday, telecommunications lawyers began lining up to get into the courtroom two and a half hours before the session was scheduled to start. The session was standing room only, with many others left to listen in an adjacent overflow room.

To be continued. . .

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May 31, 2012 · 10:31 am

The glass is half-empty AND half-full

By Christopher B. Daly 

In light of the recent announcement that the New Orleans Times-Picayune will scale back the frequency of its print editions, the following chart bears studying:

This chart was part of a recent presentation by Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins. (I got hold of it through Poynter.)

So, what’s the takeaway? If you extend those trend lines any further, you can see that the revenue won’t be there in the future to support a printed newspaper. If newspapers want to stay in the news business, they better have a plan to get out of the paper business.

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