To save and reignite democracy, you have to change the economics of media, a 785-part thread.
But seriously, here are the front pages from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 6th largest circulation newspapers in the U.S. today. Can you see what's missing from all of them?
In print you won’t see a single opinion piece on the front page. (Except for a tiny Krugman plug in the bottom right corner of the NYT) Now look at their respective websites.
Every time I teach my class about the media & aviation I get the same commentary about the media perception. It all looks like opinion and they can't tell the difference. News orgs have done a phenomenally bad job at actually separating reporting and opinion.
What this says to the reader is that factual reporting is on the same level of importance as commentary. It's not. That's why it's usually the back two pages of the A section and not on the front page.
But we live in an era where engagement (or derogatorily clicks) are part of the economics of media, so we get blood pressure raising or view confirming opinion pieces alongside hard news that's on the front page because it's the most important thing you need to know today.
There are PLENTY of external forces that try to erode institutions, but institutions also erode themselves from the inside.
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I am pleased to report that with 25 years of reflection, I have always been me. June 1997: 7th grade English class project was to publish your own magazine, fake ads and all. Before there was @theaircurrent. Before there was FlightBlogger. There was SpaceWorld.
@theaircurrent Oh yeah, we had a website. It’s not there anymore. (I checked) All “published” a month before Pathfinder and Sojourner landed on Mars.
I’ve just started going through about 8 big boxes of stuff from my childhood that arrived last week from Boston. A whole lot of airplane photos that are now only good with 20 years of nostalgia attached. Grainy ACA 328Jet at Logan anyone?
The rumblings of a ~300 airplane Airbus deal date back to fall 2020, but all indications at that point suggested it would wait until after the U.S. presidential election. It was clear that the Max was a pawn in the geopolitical game. theaircurrent.com/china/737-max-…
In the closing days of the Trump administration, U.S. policy underwent a major shift that largely derailed China's own move toward cultivating a home-grown commercial aircraft capability to fly alongside Boeing & Airbus. theaircurrent.com/china/chinas-c…
In the opening months of the Biden Administration, the relationship between the U.S. and China got its first face-to-face test. It didn't go well. theaircurrent.com/china/us-china…
We need to stop for moment and take stock of the abject evisceration of the Russian commercial aircraft fleet and airline market that is currently taking place.
Prior to the sanctions, Russia had one of the most active domestic aviation operations, a global highlight in an otherwise ailing airline market with the two-year pandemic. The market was actually ABOVE 2019 levels of traffic last summer.
Both Airbus and Boeing have announced suspension of parts and services to the Russian fleet, effectively cutting off maintenance support to Russian airlines. Local airlines have some capability to service their own, but they will quickly become paperweights.
A lot of folks are going to be watching Downfall this weekend, the new @netflix documentary on the 737 Max. I had a chance to be a part of the film, offering technical & historical context drawn from my time reporting on Boeing. I wanted to share some additional reading.
Today is a very special day for my family, one I've had marked on my calendar since I was a kid.
On March 12, 1921, four Ostrower brothers aged 9 to 15 arrived with their mother, Sara, at Ellis Island. They had left a tiny village in what is today Ukraine in search of a better life. They were eager to leave a Europe ravaged by World War I and rapidly rising antisemitism.
Sara and her sons arrived in New York on the SS Savoie 100 years ago today. She was exhausted, unstable and reeling from the journey to reset her entire life after World War I.