daring-rss

Fun and interesting list overall (via Kottke), but #7 caught my attention:

Walking speed on the streets of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia has increased 15% since 1979. (“Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I.”)

Not sure what made the researchers pick those three cities, but in my experience they’re the only three cities in America where people walk at a reasonable clip.

(Sidenote: #1 on Hendricks’s list was an item claiming that Firefox and Chrome users tend to be happier and more satisfied employees than Internet Explorer or Safari users, because they’re the sort of non-conformist thinkers who install third-party web browsers rather than use the system default. As if the inclusion of “Internet Explorer” weren’t hint enough that one should be skeptical of this claim, the cited source is an article from 2016, and the study only applied to people with jobs as customer service agents. Chrome has 66 percent market share for desktop browsers today — pretty sure using it doesn’t make one a non-conformist.)

 ★ 

Fun and interesting list overall (via Kottke), but #7 caught my attention:

Walking speed on the streets of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia has increased 15% since 1979. (“Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I.”)

Not sure what made the researchers pick those three cities, but in my experience they’re the only three cities in America where people walk at a reasonable clip.

(Sidenote: #1 on Hendricks’s list was an item claiming that Firefox and Chrome users tend to be happier and more satisfied employees than Internet Explorer or Safari users, because they’re the sort of non-conformist thinkers who install third-party web browsers rather than use the system default. As if the inclusion of “Internet Explorer” weren’t hint enough that one should be skeptical of this claim, the cited source is an article from 2016, and the study only applied to people with jobs as customer service agents. Chrome has 66 percent market share for desktop browsers today — pretty sure using it doesn’t make one a non-conformist.)

Read More 

The New York Times:

While his presidency was remembered more for its failures than for its successes, his post-presidency was seen by many as a model for future chief executives. Rather than vanish from view or focus on moneymaking, he established the Carter Center to promote peace, fight disease and combat social inequality. He transformed himself into a freelance diplomat traveling the globe, sometimes irritating his successors but earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

 ★ 

The New York Times:

While his presidency was remembered more for its failures than for its successes, his post-presidency was seen by many as a model for future chief executives. Rather than vanish from view or focus on moneymaking, he established the Carter Center to promote peace, fight disease and combat social inequality. He transformed himself into a freelance diplomat traveling the globe, sometimes irritating his successors but earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Read More 

My thanks to Junjie for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Due, their excellent reminder app for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I first linked to Due back in 2010, writing this short post:

I’ve been trying this $3 app for a few days and digging it — a
convenient, low-friction way to set short-term reminders and
timers. Sort of like Pester but for iPhone. Focused and
thoughtful design.

A lot of apps have come and gone since then. But Due has thrived. I never would have expected it when I penned the short blurb above, but here we are at the very end of 2024 and I’ve been relying upon Due for 14 years and counting. I started using it then and haven’t stopped. Due has long held a permanent position on my iPhone’s first home screen. And for several years now, Due has been available, with seamless iCloud syncing, on the Mac.

You might ask why use Due instead of Apple Reminders. For me the answer is simple. Due’s conception and presentation of “reminders” works for me and my way of thinking in a way that Apple Reminders does not. I have tons of to-do items in Reminders. But for a certain type of recurring and one-off tasks that I want to be reminded about at a certain time, they go in Due.

For example, our trash gets picked up on Monday and Thursday mornings. So I have recurring Due reminders to take out the trash every Sunday and Wednesday night. I don’t want these in my calendar. I just want them in Due, and Due makes sure I see notifications at 9:00pm every trash night. Due’s intuitive snoozing options make it easy to postpone one of these by a day during weeks when trash pickup is delayed by a holiday. I also keep my reminders related to Daring Fireball’s weekly sponsors in Due — posting the new sponsor’s ad at the start of the week, and writing my thank-you post at the end of the week — which reminders were quite meta this week.

It turns out, that brief blurb I wrote about Due 14 years ago was meaningful to the success of Due. Reading Junie’s remembrance about that post made me sit up a bit straighter, I’ll admit. I’ll accept some small measure of credit for discovering Due back then, but Due is so good, so distinctively original and useful, that I firmly believe its success was inevitable. Go check it out.

 ★ 

My thanks to Junjie for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Due, their excellent reminder app for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I first linked to Due back in 2010, writing this short post:

I’ve been trying this $3 app for a few days and digging it — a
convenient, low-friction way to set short-term reminders and
timers. Sort of like Pester but for iPhone. Focused and
thoughtful design.

A lot of apps have come and gone since then. But Due has thrived. I never would have expected it when I penned the short blurb above, but here we are at the very end of 2024 and I’ve been relying upon Due for 14 years and counting. I started using it then and haven’t stopped. Due has long held a permanent position on my iPhone’s first home screen. And for several years now, Due has been available, with seamless iCloud syncing, on the Mac.

You might ask why use Due instead of Apple Reminders. For me the answer is simple. Due’s conception and presentation of “reminders” works for me and my way of thinking in a way that Apple Reminders does not. I have tons of to-do items in Reminders. But for a certain type of recurring and one-off tasks that I want to be reminded about at a certain time, they go in Due.

For example, our trash gets picked up on Monday and Thursday mornings. So I have recurring Due reminders to take out the trash every Sunday and Wednesday night. I don’t want these in my calendar. I just want them in Due, and Due makes sure I see notifications at 9:00pm every trash night. Due’s intuitive snoozing options make it easy to postpone one of these by a day during weeks when trash pickup is delayed by a holiday. I also keep my reminders related to Daring Fireball’s weekly sponsors in Due — posting the new sponsor’s ad at the start of the week, and writing my thank-you post at the end of the week — which reminders were quite meta this week.

It turns out, that brief blurb I wrote about Due 14 years ago was meaningful to the success of Due. Reading Junie’s remembrance about that post made me sit up a bit straighter, I’ll admit. I’ll accept some small measure of credit for discovering Due back then, but Due is so good, so distinctively original and useful, that I firmly believe its success was inevitable. Go check it out.

Read More 

Kagi founder and CEO Vlad Prelovac joins the show to talk about the business of web search, the thinking behind Kagi’s own amazing search engine, and their upstart WebKit-based browser Orion.

Sponsored by:

Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

Memberful: Monetize your passion with membership. Start your free trial today.

 ★ 

Kagi founder and CEO Vlad Prelovac joins the show to talk about the business of web search, the thinking behind Kagi’s own amazing search engine, and their upstart WebKit-based browser Orion.

Sponsored by:

Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.

Memberful: Monetize your passion with membership. Start your free trial today.

Read More 

Via Jason Snell (back in October), who points first to this thread on Mastodon where a few of us posted about our preferences for the fonts we use for writing, and then describes this fun “tournament” from Typogram that lets you pick your favorite monospaced coding font from 32 choices. One limitation is that the only options are free fonts — some of my favorite monospaced fonts aren’t free and thus aren’t included (e.g. Consolas, Berkeley Mono, or Apple’s SF Mono). Another limitation is that some of the fonts in the tournament just plain suck. But it’s really pretty fun.

It’s also a good thing I procrastinated on linking to this for two months — it’s improved greatly in the weeks since Snell linked to it. The example code is now JavaScript, not CSS, which is a much better baseline for choosing a programming font. And there are some better font choices now.

I highly recommend you disable showing the font names while you play, to avoid any bias toward fonts you already think you have an opinion about. But no matter how many times I play, I always get the same winner: Adobe’s Source Code Pro. My second favorite in this tournament is IBM Plex Mono. The most conspicuous omission: Intel One Mono.

 ★ 

Via Jason Snell (back in October), who points first to this thread on Mastodon where a few of us posted about our preferences for the fonts we use for writing, and then describes this fun “tournament” from Typogram that lets you pick your favorite monospaced coding font from 32 choices. One limitation is that the only options are free fonts — some of my favorite monospaced fonts aren’t free and thus aren’t included (e.g. Consolas, Berkeley Mono, or Apple’s SF Mono). Another limitation is that some of the fonts in the tournament just plain suck. But it’s really pretty fun.

It’s also a good thing I procrastinated on linking to this for two months — it’s improved greatly in the weeks since Snell linked to it. The example code is now JavaScript, not CSS, which is a much better baseline for choosing a programming font. And there are some better font choices now.

I highly recommend you disable showing the font names while you play, to avoid any bias toward fonts you already think you have an opinion about. But no matter how many times I play, I always get the same winner: Adobe’s Source Code Pro. My second favorite in this tournament is IBM Plex Mono. The most conspicuous omission: Intel One Mono.

Read More 

My thanks to Mochi Development for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Jiiiii, their exquisitely well-crafted app for tracking anime. (Jiiiii — with five i’s — is the onomatopoeia for staring at something, commonly used in Japanese media.) With over 75 shows that aired this past season alone, keeping up with and discovering new anime can be hard, especially across several streaming services. Jiiiii makes that simple by giving you a single schedule to check as you await your favorite’s show’s next episode.

Unlike any other anime aggregation site, Jiiiii has a collection of beautiful native apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Vision Pro, making it the best way to keep up with anime on Apple devices. They even have a progressive web app in beta, that you can download on almost any other platform to get a similar experience.

The best part? No ads, no tracking, and complete privacy — all the benefits you’d expect from the indie husband-and-wife developers Dimitri and Linh Bouniol. (Dimitri streamed the entire development of Jiiiii to YouTube, and continues to do so every night.)

Catch up on anything you missed from the fall season, and get ready for the winter season’s new anime with Jiiiii, and never miss out on a show again.

 ★ 

My thanks to Mochi Development for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Jiiiii, their exquisitely well-crafted app for tracking anime. (Jiiiii — with five i’s — is the onomatopoeia for staring at something, commonly used in Japanese media.) With over 75 shows that aired this past season alone, keeping up with and discovering new anime can be hard, especially across several streaming services. Jiiiii makes that simple by giving you a single schedule to check as you await your favorite’s show’s next episode.

Unlike any other anime aggregation site, Jiiiii has a collection of beautiful native apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Vision Pro, making it the best way to keep up with anime on Apple devices. They even have a progressive web app in beta, that you can download on almost any other platform to get a similar experience.

The best part? No ads, no tracking, and complete privacy — all the benefits you’d expect from the indie husband-and-wife developers Dimitri and Linh Bouniol. (Dimitri streamed the entire development of Jiiiii to YouTube, and continues to do so every night.)

Catch up on anything you missed from the fall season, and get ready for the winter season’s new anime with Jiiiii, and never miss out on a show again.

Read More 

Another great Rickey Henderson remembrance, this one from Joe Posnanski:

I’d argue that no player in baseball history was ever more alive
than Rickey Henderson, which is why his shocking death just days
before his 66th Christmas hits so hard. Rickey played a cautious
sport with abandon. Rickey played a timid sport with flash. Rickey
irritated and thrilled and frustrated and dominated and left us
all wanting more.

“When we were kids,” his teammate Mike Gallego said, “we played in
the backyard emulating Pete Rose’s stance or Joe Morgan’s. I
believe Rickey emulated Rickey.”

Yes, Rickey was his own thing, entirely, completely, from the way
he crouched at the plate (“he has a strike zone the size of
Hitler’s heart,” Jim Murray famously wrote), to the way he slid
headfirst on the bases (he modeled his slide after an airplane
landing) to the way he held out virtually every spring (“You have
to say Rickey’s consistent,” Don Mattingly said during one of
those holdouts, “and that’s what you want from a ballplayer:
consistency”) to the way he referred to himself in the third
person (“People are always saying, ‘Rickey says Rickey,’” Rickey
said, “but it’s been blown way out of proportion”) to the joyful
confidence he exuded every time he stepped out on the diamond from
age 20 to age 44.

“You wanna throw me out today?” he would ask catchers the first
time he stepped to the plate. “Well, hang tight. Rickey’s gonna
give you that chance.”

I don’t want to spoil a single word of the story Posnanski closes his piece with. Just be sure to read through to the very end.

See also:

From ESPN’s obit, by Howard Bryant and Jeff Passan:

He played his last game at 44 years, 268 days old Sept. 19, 2003,
for the Dodgers, and his stolen base total remains more than 1,000
ahead of the current active leader.

Here’s the list of career steals leaders among active players, led by Slarling Marte with 354 and Jose Altuve with 315. There are only four other active players with more than 200. Rickey had 1,406. Lou Brock is second place on the all-time list with 938 steals. So even if Marte (who is already 36 years old) or Altuve (34 years old) were to steal as many additional bases as Lou Brock did in his entire 19-year career — the guy who is second-place all-time — they’d still be well short of Rickey’s record. In the entire history of Major League Baseball there are only nine players who stole half of Rickey’s career number. But as FanGraphs’s Dan Szymborski observes, “The funny thing with Rickey is that you take away the stolen bases, he’s still easily in the top 10 for LF WAR all time.”

Also from ESPN:

Stories about Henderson were as legendary as his play, such as the
true story of him once framing a million-dollar bonus check and
hanging it on his wall — without first cashing it.

Last but not least, give a listen to this quick story from Giants great Will Clark, about a preseason game against Rickey’s Oakland A’s when the A’s coaches tried to give him the “don’t steal” sign. You know what Rickey did.

 ★ 

Another great Rickey Henderson remembrance, this one from Joe Posnanski:

I’d argue that no player in baseball history was ever more alive
than Rickey Henderson, which is why his shocking death just days
before his 66th Christmas hits so hard. Rickey played a cautious
sport with abandon. Rickey played a timid sport with flash. Rickey
irritated and thrilled and frustrated and dominated and left us
all wanting more.

“When we were kids,” his teammate Mike Gallego said, “we played in
the backyard emulating Pete Rose’s stance or Joe Morgan’s. I
believe Rickey emulated Rickey.”

Yes, Rickey was his own thing, entirely, completely, from the way
he crouched at the plate (“he has a strike zone the size of
Hitler’s heart,” Jim Murray famously wrote), to the way he slid
headfirst on the bases (he modeled his slide after an airplane
landing) to the way he held out virtually every spring (“You have
to say Rickey’s consistent,” Don Mattingly said during one of
those holdouts, “and that’s what you want from a ballplayer:
consistency”) to the way he referred to himself in the third
person (“People are always saying, ‘Rickey says Rickey,’” Rickey
said, “but it’s been blown way out of proportion”) to the joyful
confidence he exuded every time he stepped out on the diamond from
age 20 to age 44.

“You wanna throw me out today?” he would ask catchers the first
time he stepped to the plate. “Well, hang tight. Rickey’s gonna
give you that chance.”

I don’t want to spoil a single word of the story Posnanski closes his piece with. Just be sure to read through to the very end.

See also:

From ESPN’s obit, by Howard Bryant and Jeff Passan:

He played his last game at 44 years, 268 days old Sept. 19, 2003,
for the Dodgers, and his stolen base total remains more than 1,000
ahead of the current active leader.

Here’s the list of career steals leaders among active players, led by Slarling Marte with 354 and Jose Altuve with 315. There are only four other active players with more than 200. Rickey had 1,406. Lou Brock is second place on the all-time list with 938 steals. So even if Marte (who is already 36 years old) or Altuve (34 years old) were to steal as many additional bases as Lou Brock did in his entire 19-year career — the guy who is second-place all-time — they’d still be well short of Rickey’s record. In the entire history of Major League Baseball there are only nine players who stole half of Rickey’s career number. But as FanGraphs’s Dan Szymborski observes, “The funny thing with Rickey is that you take away the stolen bases, he’s still easily in the top 10 for LF WAR all time.”

Also from ESPN:

Stories about Henderson were as legendary as his play, such as the
true story of him once framing a million-dollar bonus check and
hanging it on his wall — without first cashing it.

Last but not least, give a listen to this quick story from Giants great Will Clark, about a preseason game against Rickey’s Oakland A’s when the A’s coaches tried to give him the “don’t steal” sign. You know what Rickey did.

Read More 

Craig Calcaterra, writing at Cup of Coffee:

To say this is a massive loss is about as big an understatement as
is possible. Henderson was the biggest and brightest star of his
generation. There may not have been any player in history who was
better at more things than Rickey Henderson was.

Henderson was, without question, the greatest leadoff hitter of
all time and the greatest base-stealer of all time. He, arguably,
possessed the greatest combination of power and speed of any
player in the history of the game as well. Perhaps the best
characterization of Henderson’s career came from Bill James who
once wrote that, “if you could split Rickey Henderson in two,
you’d have two Hall of Famers.” […]

In 1980, his first full major league season, Henderson broke Ty
Cobb’s 65-year-old American League record for stolen bases by
swiping 100 bags to Cobb’s 96. In 1982 he stole 130 bases,
breaking Hall of Famer Lou Brock’s all-time single-season record
of 118. Henderson’s 130 steals that year stands as the record to
this day. He would lead the American League in stolen bases in
each of his first seven full seasons and nine of his first ten.
He’d lead his league in steals in 12 seasons in all, the last of
which came in 1998 when he was 39 years-old.

On May 1, 1991, Henderson broke Brock’s all-time stolen base
record with his 939th steal and would go on to steal an astounding
1,406 bases before he retired. No player has come anywhere close
to Henderson’s mark in the three decades since he set it and many
doubt anyone ever will.

You have to be really good even to have had been on base that many times, to have had the opportunity to steal 1,400+ bases, let alone to have actually swiped them. He was amazing. He’s best known for his career base-stealing record, but Henderson — thanks to his speed, talent, competitiveness, and remarkable longevity — is also the career leader in runs scored. Scoring runs is how you win — you can make the case that no stat is more important in baseball, and Rickey (as everyone called him, including himself) scored more runs than anyone who ever played. Look at the names on the top 10 for career runs scored:

Rickey Henderson 2,295
Ty Cobb 2,245
Barry Bonds 2,227
Hank Aaron 2,174
Babe Ruth 2,174
Pete Rose 2,165
Willie Mays 2,068
Alex Rodriguez 2,021
Stan Musial 1,949
Derek Jeter 1,923

What a player, and character, he was. Rickey was the most exciting player I ever saw.

 ★ 

Craig Calcaterra, writing at Cup of Coffee:

To say this is a massive loss is about as big an understatement as
is possible. Henderson was the biggest and brightest star of his
generation. There may not have been any player in history who was
better at more things than Rickey Henderson was.

Henderson was, without question, the greatest leadoff hitter of
all time and the greatest base-stealer of all time. He, arguably,
possessed the greatest combination of power and speed of any
player in the history of the game as well. Perhaps the best
characterization of Henderson’s career came from Bill James who
once wrote that, “if you could split Rickey Henderson in two,
you’d have two Hall of Famers.” […]

In 1980, his first full major league season, Henderson broke Ty
Cobb’s 65-year-old American League record for stolen bases by
swiping 100 bags to Cobb’s 96. In 1982 he stole 130 bases,
breaking Hall of Famer Lou Brock’s all-time single-season record
of 118. Henderson’s 130 steals that year stands as the record to
this day. He would lead the American League in stolen bases in
each of his first seven full seasons and nine of his first ten.
He’d lead his league in steals in 12 seasons in all, the last of
which came in 1998 when he was 39 years-old.

On May 1, 1991, Henderson broke Brock’s all-time stolen base
record with his 939th steal and would go on to steal an astounding
1,406 bases before he retired. No player has come anywhere close
to Henderson’s mark in the three decades since he set it and many
doubt anyone ever will.

You have to be really good even to have had been on base that many times, to have had the opportunity to steal 1,400+ bases, let alone to have actually swiped them. He was amazing. He’s best known for his career base-stealing record, but Henderson — thanks to his speed, talent, competitiveness, and remarkable longevity — is also the career leader in runs scored. Scoring runs is how you win — you can make the case that no stat is more important in baseball, and Rickey (as everyone called him, including himself) scored more runs than anyone who ever played. Look at the names on the top 10 for career runs scored:

Rickey Henderson 2,295
Ty Cobb 2,245
Barry Bonds 2,227
Hank Aaron 2,174
Babe Ruth 2,174
Pete Rose 2,165
Willie Mays 2,068
Alex Rodriguez 2,021
Stan Musial 1,949
Derek Jeter 1,923

What a player, and character, he was. Rickey was the most exciting player I ever saw.

Read More 

Bezos can still be a hero in this story. But his only move is to sell.

Mike Allen, in the bizarre notes-hurriedly-jotted-on-a-napkin house prose style of Axios:

Kara Swisher, the popular podcaster and pioneering tech
journalist, is trying to round up a group of rich people to fund a
bid for the Washington Post, she told us.

One big problem: Jeff Bezos, the owner, has shown no interest in
selling.

Why it matters: Swisher — who started in the Post mailroom, and
became an early tech reporter at the paper (and later one of the
first at The Wall Street Journal) — believes the Amazon founder
will eventually want to sell, since the paper has become a
managerial nightmare.

Like many, Swisher thinks Bezos should sell since he has other
financial and personal interests — like space tech — that are
more important to him, and can conflict with his Post ownership.

“The Post can do better,” she told us. “It’s so maddening to see
what’s happening. … Why not me? Why not any of us?”

This would be an excellent outcome. Bezos should sell. These last few months should make clear to him that he should not own the Post. Swisher would be an excellent publisher. Her entire career has been focused on sharp, smart, good journalism.

One simple fact that’s been clear to me ever since I worked (as a designer in the promotions department) at The Philadelphia Inquirer in the late 1990s is that news publications need to be owned by people who are devoted to the core pursuit of journalism. The Inquirer was a world-class newspaper at the time. I played supposedly casual lunchtime softball with colleagues from across the company on Fridays, and only after a few weeks found out that around half the regulars in our group had won Pulitzer prizes. (It was a friendly game but we were all competitive bastards.) There was a stretch in the late 1980s when the Inquirer, under the leadership of editor Gene Roberts, won more Pulitzers than The New York Times and Washington Post. That culture, and the journalists, remained in place through the 1990s. But The Inquirer was owned at the time by Knight Ridder, a national conglomerate, and Knight-Ridder wasn’t in the newspaper business for the journalism. They were in it for the profits. Which, at the time, were quite lucrative. There was one quarter where word spread that Knight Ridder brass was pissed because The Inquirer’s profit margin for the quarter had dropped to 19 percent. 20 was the magic number. Newspapers were still minting money from the classified ads. Much of the great editorial and reporting talent at The Inquirer soon left for other publications, like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time magazine. It fell apart. Ownership matters.

There are many types of businesses a wealthy person can own as a mere hobby, in which the business can thrive under such ownership, simply by the owner allowing talented dedicated professionals to run the operation. A wealthy dilettante owner can help many such businesses, by providing the capital to hire great talent. Journalism is not one of those businesses. Profits are important because profits maintain independence and pay for talent. Investigative reporting is expensive. But independence is more important than anything, and there can be no true independence for a publication when the owner is not committed to the cause.

We see it with The Washington Post under Bezos, when he kiboshed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris so as not to antagonize Donald Trump. We see it with this shithead owner of the LA Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, whose latest dictum is for the paper’s editorial board to, I swear, “take a break” from writing about Donald Trump. Instructing a daily newspaper’s editorial board to take a break from writing about the incoming president of the United States is like telling a bar to take a break from selling beer. It’s the entire point of the establishment.1

We see it most clearly, perhaps, with Disney’s ownership of ABC News. Disney last week settled a bullshit defamation lawsuit with Trump, for $16 million, that they clearly should have taken to trial, choosing instead to embarrass and humiliate, rather than proudly stand behind, their own talent, George Stephanopoulos. As Josh Marshall eloquently argues, settling that defamation suit on those obsequious, cowardly terms made perfect sense for Disney. It wasn’t worth the risk to Disney’s brand and overall interests. But it was devastating to ABC News’s brand and reputation. The simple truth is that Disney’s core business isn’t journalism. Not even close. It’s not that ABC News’s journalistic integrity doesn’t matter to Disney. It’s that it’s just one small factor to Disney. Disney would fight tooth and nail to defend Mickey Mouse, but George Stephanopoulos’s face isn’t printed on t-shirts at Disneyland.

Say what you want (and there is much to be said) about the Ochs-Sulzberger family’s dynastic ownership and control of The New York Times Company, but whatever their faults, there can be little argument that nothing is more important to them than the Times’s core mission of independent journalism. If The New York Times had been faced with this same defamation lawsuit from Trump for the same reason (whether the word “rape” fairly describes the sexual assault he was found to have committed in E. Jean Carroll’s victorious civil lawsuit against him, in which she was awarded $88 million), they would not have capitulated as Disney did. The New York Times did not hesitate to strongly endorse Kamala Harris. Et cetera.

Even Rupert Murdoch exemplifies this. When News Corp cashed in and sold assets five years ago, Murdoch sold 21st Century Fox — the film and TV assets — and held onto the news assets. And the buyer was Disney, whose core business is aligned with those assets: entertainment. Murdoch’s News Corp, aptly named to describe its primary purpose, still owns The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, The Times and The Sun in the U.K., and more. And the Murdoch family, of course, owns a controlling share of Fox Corporation, the parent of Fox News. Say what you want about Murdoch too (and I would say, with no hyperbole, that he’s singlehandedly responsible for more of what’s gone wrong in the United States over the last quarter century than any person alive, including Donald Trump, whom I believe would never have even run for president, let alone become president twice, without the deeply pernicious and pervasive influence of Fox News), but he built and owns his news media empire because he believes in its core mission, as dastardly as his vision is for what journalism ought to be.

Good intentions aren’t enough. Disney, all things considered, has never wanted ABC News to be anything other than a bastion of quality TV-style journalism. Bezos, heretofore, has been a fine steward at the Post. But it’s easy to be a good owner of a good news outlet when times are normal. It’s when times are hard, whether financially, or more crucially, when truth speaks to malicious power, that it becomes essential for the owner to be in the game first and foremost for the mission of journalism itself. Those are moments of contention and conflict and risk, and like a don’s consigliere, a news publication in conflict with malicious power needs an owner with the stomach for war.

The Washington Post’s own illustrious history speaks to this. In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsburg leaked the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department’s internal secret history of the Vietnam War (which Ellsburg had helped write). Per The New York Historical:

The first article on the Pentagon Papers ran on the front page of
the Times on June 13, 1971. Two days later, the Nixon
administration sued, asking for an injunction to halt any further
publication of the papers. U.S. District Court Judge Murray
Gurfein issued a temporary restraining order — the first in U.S.
history that restrained the press prior to publication. […]

The court order was still in place on June 16, when the Washington
Post’s national editor, Ben Bagdikian, returned from Ellsberg’s
home in Boston carrying a partial copy of the Pentagon Papers. The
Post’s president and publisher Katharine Graham was faced with the
decision: to publish or not? Defying the court order carried
significant risk: the Washington Post Company had just gone
public, and reporting on the Pentagon Papers meant risking a
criminal charge that would imperil its $35 million stock offering
and put the paper’s financial future in jeopardy. A criminal
conviction would also give the FCC an excuse to strip the
Washington Post Company of the licenses to its lucrative
television stations, WTOP in Washington, D.C., and Florida’s WJXT.
Doing so would stand up for freedom of the press.

On June 17, reporters, editors, and lawyers gathered at executive
editor Ben Bradlee’s house to wrangle over the question of whether
or not to publish. Meanwhile, Katharine Graham was hosting a
farewell party for the paper’s departing business manager in her
stately Georgetown home. Interrupted in the middle of her
laudatory speech, she was summoned to the phone and asked to make
a decision that could, one way or the other, destroy her paper.
Though her lawyers opposed publication, her reporters and editors
argued that failing to publish would be “gutless” and erode the
Post’s credibility. Frightened and tense, as she later wrote in
her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Graham “took a big gulp
and said, ‘Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Let’s go. Let’s publish.”

In the face of possible prison time — not only for her staff but for herself — and the risk of financial ruin for the paper and her family, Graham said, “Let’s go. Let’s publish.” Jeff Bezos didn’t even have the intestinal fortitude to allow the Post editorial board to publish an utterly unsurprising election endorsement. Katharine Graham, portrayed by Meryl Streep, was the hero of a great Steven Spielberg film, The Post. In a hypothetical sequel portraying the events that led to Trump’s second term, Jeff Bezos would be portrayed by the actor who played the cowardly lawyer snatched on the can by the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.

For those readers and viewers who enjoy and support Rupert Murdoch’s publications and channels for what they are, he is the best owner imaginable. He stands behind their work and their mission. His media outlets are his life’s work. ABC News doesn’t hold an iota of that value to Disney. The same is true for what The Washington Post means to Jeff Bezos. It’s obvious Bezos does care about the Post. But it’s also now obvious that he does not care nearly enough.

The Washington Post would hold such value to an ownership consortium led by Kara Swisher. Bezos can still be a hero in this story. But his only move is to sell.

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Zack Rosenblatt, Dianna Russini, and Michael Silver have written a devastating profile of the most dysfunctional franchise in all of U.S. pro sports, the New York Jets, whose dysfunction has a clear and obvious root cause: meddling idiot owner Woody Johnson (heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune). One example:

A few weeks later, Douglas and his Broncos counterpart, George
Paton, were deep in negotiations for a trade that would have sent
Jeudy to the Jets and given future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron
Rodgers another potential playmaker. The Broncos felt a deal was
near. Then, abruptly, it all fell apart. In Denver’s executive
offices, they couldn’t believe the reason why.

Douglas told the Broncos that Johnson didn’t want to make the
trade because the owner felt Jeudy’s player rating in “Madden
NFL,” the popular video game, wasn’t high enough, according to
multiple league sources. The Broncos ultimately traded the
receiver to the Cleveland Browns. Last Sunday, Jeudy crossed the
1,000-yard receiving mark for the first time in his career.

Coming into this season, the Jets had hopes of ending the
franchise’s 13-year playoff drought — the longest in the four
major men’s North American sports — and quieting years of talk
about the franchise’s dysfunction. Instead, this season has only
cemented the Jets’ reputation.

The fans of every other team in the NFL that is having a disappointing season — like yours truly — are all texting this story to each other today, with the same message: “At least we’re not the Jets.”

 ★ 

Zack Rosenblatt, Dianna Russini, and Michael Silver have written a devastating profile of the most dysfunctional franchise in all of U.S. pro sports, the New York Jets, whose dysfunction has a clear and obvious root cause: meddling idiot owner Woody Johnson (heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune). One example:

A few weeks later, Douglas and his Broncos counterpart, George
Paton, were deep in negotiations for a trade that would have sent
Jeudy to the Jets and given future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron
Rodgers another potential playmaker. The Broncos felt a deal was
near. Then, abruptly, it all fell apart. In Denver’s executive
offices, they couldn’t believe the reason why.

Douglas told the Broncos that Johnson didn’t want to make the
trade because the owner felt Jeudy’s player rating in “Madden
NFL,” the popular video game, wasn’t high enough, according to
multiple league sources. The Broncos ultimately traded the
receiver to the Cleveland Browns. Last Sunday, Jeudy crossed the
1,000-yard receiving mark for the first time in his career.

Coming into this season, the Jets had hopes of ending the
franchise’s 13-year playoff drought — the longest in the four
major men’s North American sports — and quieting years of talk
about the franchise’s dysfunction. Instead, this season has only
cemented the Jets’ reputation.

The fans of every other team in the NFL that is having a disappointing season — like yours truly — are all texting this story to each other today, with the same message: “At least we’re not the Jets.”

Read More