All posts by media-man

Journalism, News-tech

Hoopings

I love basketball. I love watching it, and in my youth (columns A and B above, row 2), I loved playing it.

I wasn’t good. My only skill was shooting the ball, which I did flat-footed from the nether regions of the court called “outside” or “downtown.” I hit about half of those shots if nobody guarded me, which was most of the time, because I was a slow white guy who stood 5′ 9 1/2 inches on a tall day, with “alligator arms” that were two inches less than that. But I did have that shot, so when sides were chosen for pickup games, I’d be in the middle of the pack, which was good enough for me.

Playing at that low level still conditioned me to maintain a steady interest in how the game was played. This went through my years in North Carolina (’65 to ’85, with a break for New Jersey from ’69 to ’74), the Bay Area (’85 to ’01), Santa Barbara (’01 to now), Boston (’06 to ’13), New York (’13 to ’25) and Indiana (’21 to now). I went to countless Duke, Knicks, and Warriors games, plus the occasional Lakers, Harvard, Celtics, and Hoosiers games. I’ve watched a lot of games on TV, of course. (Caught the Pistons being creamed by the Cavs last night.) And I listen to half a dozen basketball podcasts in addition to the many hoops channels on SiriusXM.

So I got to thinking this morning about how much the five positions in the game have changed, both in how they are played and what they are called. Guards, forwards and centers have turned into points, shooters, wings, bigs, and numbers, among other labels. So, with artistic help from ChatGPT, I created the chart above. It’s my own thinking at a moment in time, and subject to improvement and debate. So let’s have both. A pickup game. Fun exercise with no losers.

Journalism

Here’s a new database for local news research, from Syracuse University and Rebuild Local News

If you’re trying to get a handle on evidence from academic research about the state of local news, it’s hard to know where to start. The research is scattered — across disciplines from political science to economics to computer science; across universities; across paywalled journals. To some extent, it’s part of the academic job description to overcome those siloes. But they’re major practical barriers for other audiences — policymakers, funders, working journalists — interested in building an evidenced-based case about the local news crisis and potential solutions.

To solve this problem, Syracuse University and Rebuild Local News teamed up last fall to build a curated, accessible local news database. Their Local News Research Hub formally launches this Thursday, May 21. “Our collective purpose is to provide a central, reliable home for data-driven insights into the changing media landscape,” the team states.

Joshua Darr, director of the Local NExT Lab and associate professor at Syracuse University, credited Democracy Fund’s literature review with laying the groundwork for an expanded, searchable database. The hub comprises about 170 studies total, including the 45 “artifacts” covered in that literature review, along with more than 120 new entries. Among these are peer-reviewed articles, dissertations, books and book chapters, and working papers.

“This is not only bridging academia to news practice or to policymaking,” Darr said; the team made a concerted effort to be multi-disciplinary in building the hub. They plan to continue updating the database, and are accepting submissions of additional research for inclusion.

The hub is searchable by discipline, research topic, and study type. Disciplines include Communication, Computer Science, Economics, Political Science, Public Health, Public Policy, and Sociology; research topics include Business Models, Community Connection, Economic Impact, Polarization, Print, and Voter Turnout and Engagement, among others. Each article in the database includes an AI-generated summary (vetted by at least two human researchers) that’s split into three components: a one-sentence Key Finding, a Study Description, and Practitioner Implications. These brief summaries are intended to help make the database useful and legible to audiences outside academia.

Here, for instance, is what comes up when you filter for communication studies on nonprofit local news.

Matthew Baker, Rebuild Local News’ first director of research, envisions supporters of local news policy as “power users” of the hub. (In beta, he said he’s already found it useful for his own day-to-day work, from gathering talking points to writing papers.) But he also hopes the database can be an entry point for people newer to local news as a civic priority. “Having something in one place, I hope, will also act as an attractor to newer users — people who are in adjacent spaces, or even legislative aides,” he said. “So I’m hoping that over time, it will serve to generate increased interest and attention on the fact that we do have relatively rigorous research that demonstrates that there is a crisis, but more to the point, the impact of that crisis.” He thinks the hub can open up the conversation around local news research and surface areas for exploration beyond individual academics’ research priorities.

Darr also thinks the database can be “useful for journalists making a case to nontraditional news funders,” including community foundations. “You have to make a case that’s not just ‘journalism is good, so we should employ journalists,'” he said. “It has to be much more of a nuanced argument about community health, community vibrancy, community economic success, and it’s a lot to ask each newsroom to show their own individual, unique impact in that way as they’re trying to build. That’s where I think academic research can have a positive effect on the ability to make that argument.” (Meanwhile, for other academics, he thinks “assembling a resource that makes writing lit reviews easier and exploring what’s been done may have a force multiplier effect on people wanting to do research on local news.”)

Baker pushed for a quantitative emphasis in the database — putting actual numbers like point estimates and effect sizes in the summaries wherever possible. Take the influential 2020 journal article by Pengjie Gao, Chang Lee, and Dermot Murphy looking at the impact of newspaper closures on public finance. In the database, the article’s summary leads with the numbers: “The loss of watchdog reporters in a city leads to cities having higher borrowing costs of 5-11 basis points and costs citizens roughly $650,000 per issue.”

While many academic articles underline statistically significant findings, that isn’t necessarily the most meaningful language for audiences trying to make nuts and bolts decisions about policy; a small, statistically significant finding on a 100-point scale isn’t as compelling or concrete as a measurable effect on interest rates or mortgage rates or taxpayer costs. Especially for a policymaker audience, Baker said highlighting numerical evidence helps “make the case that the juice is worth the squeeze.” Though the database is tilted toward quantitative research, Darr said that because there’s a divide in the research community between quantitative and qualitative research, he hopes the hub can help make each more accessible to the other. (Some local news researchers are working to better coordinate and standardize research approaches for measuring the health of local information ecosystems.)

The economic impact of local news loss is a major area of focus for Rebuild Local News because they see it as a powerful incentive for policymakers. That’s where a lot of the energy is in local news research these days, according to Darr, and the database backs that up; if you click one of the hub’s sample searches, “what is the economic impact of local news?”, more than half of the 23 related studies shown are from 2025, and only one predates 2020.

Darr said he’d like to see more research on some areas that are more difficult to quantify. “The thing we still kind of need to crack is the counterfactual,” he said. “I think a lot of the good that local news does is the stuff that it prevents from happening, and it’s hard to measure that.” That remains an important local news research challenge: “What would a community’s sense of itself look like without its local newspaper? We can look at communities where the local news has failed; we can look at communities that have both, but it’s hard to figure out a research design that gets at something as amorphous as that, but important as that, and that still varies local news.”

Darr encouraged feedback and additional research submissions for the hub. “This is not meant to be comprehensive; it’s meant to be collaborative,” he said. “The more people collaborating, the better.”

Adobe Stock

Climate

Trump cuts to weather data could make forecasts less reliable, warn experts

Use of AI is a valuable tool for weather prediction but only when it’s trained with ample data, experts say

As the US prepares for hurricane season and a summer of record-breaking heat, experts fear the Trump administration’s cuts to climate and weather data programming could make the federal government’s weather forecasts less reliable when they are needed most.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) late last year launched a suite of artificial intelligence-powered global weather forecast models which it said would improve “speed, efficiency, and accuracy”. In March, an agency official said those models are being trained with centuries of weather data.

Continue reading...
Climate

Waymo Reaching 11 Cities & 1,400 Square Miles As World Cup Approaches

The World Cup is fast approaching, and Waymo has been expanding its service in new cities while also growing its service areas in existing cities in anticipation of the biggest sporting event in the world. “The world’s largest 24/7 autonomous ride-hailing service just got bigger,” as the company wrote a ... [continued]

The post Waymo Reaching 11 Cities & 1,400 Square Miles As World Cup Approaches appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Judge In Australia Not Happy About Tesla Dragging Its Feet In Class Action Case

It took a lot longer than I expected, but there are class action lawsuits underway against Tesla in the US and Australia, and they just keep dragging on. In fact, in Australia, Tesla has been dragging things along so much that a judge there is losing his patience. This case ... [continued]

The post Judge In Australia Not Happy About Tesla Dragging Its Feet In Class Action Case appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Ancient lost ocean may have built Central Asia’s dinosaur-era mountains

Scientists have uncovered evidence that the vanished Tethys Ocean may have sculpted Central Asia’s mountainous landscape during the dinosaur era. Using decades of geological data, researchers found that distant tectonic activity linked to the ancient ocean appears to match periods of rapid mountain formation. Surprisingly, climate and mantle processes played only a minor role. The discovery could reshape how scientists understand mountain building across the planet.
Climate

The Importance of Conservative Leadership in Clean Energy

In this episode of Cleantech Talk, Scott Cooney talks with Britt Zwierzchowski Tisler, COO of the Conservative Energy Network, and Bradley Pischea, National Director of Land & Liberty Coalition (L&LC), a project of CEN. They discuss: Who the Conservative Energy Network is, why they came to the clean energy space. ... [continued]

The post The Importance of Conservative Leadership in Clean Energy appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Journalism, News-tech

SB Day

Coasting

I'm in Santa Barbara now, and it is typically perfect outside. Love living here, even though I mostly don't.

Talk about dumb

Last Thursday's post, titled Person Networks, was occasioned by outreach by a friend who urged me by email to join Intelligence.com, a slick new-ish thing with LinkedIn-like ambitions. Since then, others in my real-life circle of friends have received the same invitation. Turns out the invitations were not made with the permission of the putative source. Talk about dumb: the friend in question—the one who did not send the invite—is one of the world's top cybersecurity experts. He complained loudly to the company, which said it would stop. Meanwhile, their excuse to him for creating these fake emails was basically, "Even LinkedIn does it." The expert is wisely not on LinkedIn. Or on Intelligence.com, we presume.

Climate

Attacks On Wind Power Make No Sense — It’s Just Another Form Of Solar Energy

A vast and well-organized campaign is actively underway to suspend global wind energy discourse. The Financial Times calls it the US president’s “crusade against renewable energy.” WindEurope, who describe themselves as “the voice of the wind energy industry,” say attacks on wind power pose a “systemic risk to Europe’s security.” ... [continued]

The post Attacks On Wind Power Make No Sense — It’s Just Another Form Of Solar Energy appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Experts sound alarm as North America’s bees start swarm season unusually early

After record losses last year, beekeepers report a warm winter has led to bees ‘waking up earlier’ this year

After a series of record-breaking US heatwaves, the 2026 bee swarm season in North America has started 17 days earlier than last year, pushing beekeepers to adapt to a rapidly shifting season while raising new questions about how honeybees are responding to the climate crisis.

According to a new report published by Swarmed, a tracking network of more than 10,000 beekeepers, focused on safe and ethical honeybee relocation, this year’s unusually early swarm season follows several years of record colony declines worldwide.

Continue reading...
Climate

What To Expect as El Niño Approaches

Go behind the scenes with senior editor Corey Mitchell and reporter Bob Berwyn as they break down what to expect from the looming El Niño.

By Bob Berwyn

Scientists said this week that a developing El Niño is likely to amplify heatwaves, droughts and floods this year. But it’s not the biggest culprit of climate extremes. 

Climate

Nuclear Imaginaries, Hydrogen Assumptions, And The Grid Reality Models Still Miss

An Energy Research & Social Science paper crossed my screen recently that put structure around something visible to anyone who has compared nuclear forecasts with build rates. Nuclear power has been projected to grow faster, cheaper and more broadly than it actually has, not once or twice, but across decades, ... [continued]

The post Nuclear Imaginaries, Hydrogen Assumptions, And The Grid Reality Models Still Miss appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Elon Musk Gets A Whole New York Times Article For Making Faces At A Chinese Luncheon

Ah, it’s the important stuff. Titans of industry are in China this week with Donald Trump to meet with the most powerful man in the world, Xi Jinping. Something is afoot. Maybe. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, what gets attention from one of the biggest newspapers ... [continued]

The post Elon Musk Gets A Whole New York Times Article For Making Faces At A Chinese Luncheon appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

EV Marketing Failure in USA — and a Honda & Auto Industry Financial Crisis

I just saw the following headline from the Wall Street Journal: “Honda’s Never Faced a Crisis Like This—and a Comeback Won’t Be Easy.” The subheading is as follows: “The Japanese automaker reported a $2.7 billion loss amid EV whiplash in the U.S., its biggest market.” My first thought was basically ... [continued]

The post EV Marketing Failure in USA — and a Honda & Auto Industry Financial Crisis appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Divers in Maldives resume search for Italian scuba divers who drowned in cave

Authorities previously suspended recovery operation for bodies of four divers believed to have died while exploring Vaavu Atoll cave

Divers in the Maldives have resumed their search for the bodies of four Italian scuba divers who drowned while exploring a deep underwater cave.

Due to rough weather on Friday, Maldivian authorities had temporarily suspended the high-risk operation to recover the bodies of the divers who, according to Italy’s foreign ministry, had “apparently died while attempting to explore caves at a depth of 50 metres (164ft)”.

Continue reading...
Climate

World Health Organization Must Prioritize Workers, Experts Say 

After Trump stopped funding the WHO, the agency retreated from occupational safety and health programs, putting millions of workers at risk as the planet warms, advocates contend. They hope its leaders change that when they meet next week.

By Liza Gross

Every year, hundreds of millions of people around the world suffer from workplace injuries or illnesses, and nearly 3 million die from job-related accidents or exposures. Climate change is making many jobs even more dangerous, exposing millions of workers to excessive heat and toxic wildfire smoke each year, yet the World Health Organization has not made worker health one of its core priorities. 

Climate

What the US Would Lose If It Eliminates the National Center for Atmospheric Research

“I think there's a great loss for the wrong reasons. There's no good reason for dismantling this or tearing it down,” a former NASA chief scientist says.

Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with former NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati.

Climate

Leapmotor Gets Bigger Avenue Into Europe — And Beyond

Following the theme of the week — Chinese EV producers expanding rapidly around the world — we have another story of a Chinese EV company opening up bigger pathways abroad. Stellantis and Leapmotor have had a partnership helping each other, and that’s expanding. Part of this is about expanding Stellantis’ ... [continued]

The post Leapmotor Gets Bigger Avenue Into Europe — And Beyond appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Sierra Club & Earthjustice Argue Against Illegal Coal Plant Extensions in Court

Washington, D.C. — Today, Sierra Club and Earthjustice presented oral arguments before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the legal challenge against the Department of Energy’s illegal application of Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. In May 2025, DOE claimed there was an “energy emergency” and forced the ... [continued]

The post Sierra Club & Earthjustice Argue Against Illegal Coal Plant Extensions in Court appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Iowa Waterways at Risk as EPA Allows More Toxic Waste from Coal Plants

DES MOINES, Iowa — The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rolling back protections that stop coal-burning power plants from dumping toxic wastewater—including arsenic, mercury, selenium, and lead—from coal ash waste landfills into U.S. waterways. The discharge of coal ash wastewater has been an issue at Iowa coal plants, including in Sioux City on ... [continued]

The post Iowa Waterways at Risk as EPA Allows More Toxic Waste from Coal Plants appeared first on CleanTechnica.