The Literary Influences Of Superstar Musician David Bowie
David Bowie was more than a multi-platinum rock and roller. He was also one of the more literate composers in the business. In conjunction with a career retrospective in 2013 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Bowie issued a list of the one hundred books he considered the most important and influential.
Inside HBO Max, The $4 Billion Bet To Stand Out In The Streaming Wars
Bob Greenblatt, Kevin Reilly and Sarah Aubrey — the executives leading the charge for WarnerMedia’s ambitious HBO Max streaming venture — outline their vision for a global platform to compete with Netflix, Amazon, Disney and others in TV’s new frontier of the direct-to-consumer cavalcade.
Skin Cancer Prevention Campaign Painted Sunblock On All The Faces On Billboards Along A Main Highway
Peru has the highest UV radiation levels in the world. So to highlight the need for sunblock, agency McCann Lima partnered with 21 brands that advertise on the Panamericana Sur, the busiest highway linking Lima and the country’s beaches, to hijack their billboards with the addition of sunblock.
Secret Life Of An Anonymous Speechwriter To The Stars
I write speeches for people who can barely read their scripts because public speaking makes them nervous. The words that do not matter when I speak for myself are amplified when I put them in the mouths of others. Because as anyone knows, it’s not just the words that matter. It’s who says them, and when, and how.
‘It Was One Problem After Another’: How Woodstock 50 Fell Apart
Woodstock 50 had nearly every resource a festival could ask for: a storied brand name, financial backing from a multinational communications company, and agents eager to sign up their artists for sizable paychecks. But it turned into a slow-moving train wreck. Where did it all go wrong?
IKEA Let Customers Pay With Their Time Instead Of Currency
For the opening of the Swedish retailer’s new outpost in Jebel Ali, a large commercial port located on the harbor of Dubai, the brand wanted to encourage shoppers to journey to the new store by allowing them to use the time it took for them to get there as currency.
The Rise And Fall Of Delia’s, The Catalog That Ruled America
For a few years around the millennium, Delia’s and its direct-to-consumer catalogs were the hottest brand in the country. It was a glimpse of things to come. At its peak, 55 million copies were sent out to girls across the country every year.
Will The American Dirt Fiasco Change American Publishing?
What lesson are book publishers taking away from the controversy raised by American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins’ novel about a Mexican woman and her son seeking to cross the border? Will the furor change the way editors think about acquiring novels, or does the book’s sales success obviate those concerns?
Before Beauty Vlogging, There Were Renaissance ‘Books of Secrets’
So-called Books of Secrets were a new and wildly-popular literary genre during the Italian Renaissance. Written in vernacular Italian, they instructed an increasingly literate public in the pursuit of alchemy, making secrets previously circulated in Latin manuscripts amongst the educated elite more broadly accessible.
Russian Startup Wants To Put Huge Ads In Space
The first of StartRocket’s space-based ads could go up by 2021. The ads — a bit like skytyping, only in low-Earth orbit rather than in the atmosphere — would be visible only at night but could be seen from just about anywhere on the planet.
The 1968 Sci-Fi That Spookily Predicted Today
In John Brunner’s 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, for instance, he peers ahead to imagine life in 2010, correctly forecasting wearable technology, Viagra, video calls, same-sex marriage, the legalization of cannabis, and the proliferation of mass shootings.
‘Weird News,’ ‘Dumb Criminals’ And The Media’s Monetization Of Human Misery
There’s a cynical local-to-national news pipeline designed to mock the powerless under the guise of “odd” news stories. The public’s perception of crime is often significantly out of alignment with the reality. This is caused, in part, by frequently sensationalist, decontextualized media coverage.
Mister Rogers Had A Simple Set Of Rules For Talking To Children
The TV legend possessed an extraordinary understanding of how kids make sense of language. He insisted that every word be scrutinized closely, because he knew that children—the preschool-age boys and girls who made up the core of his audience—tend to hear things literally.
The Godfather Of Fake News
Once his stories go viral, the Facebook comments burst forth. And that’s when Christopher Blair the fake news writer becomes Christopher Blair the crusading left-wing troll. It’s then that he starts on the offensive. The faker becomes the exposer, weeding out and reporting the most extreme users among his fans.
The Twitter Electorate Isn’t The Real Electorate
For anyone interested in politics, Twitter is the closest thing to a global community center, or a small-ads section—the virtual room where it happens. All of this gives the social network outsize power to shape the political conversation. However, social media is distorting our sense of mainstream opinion.
Deepfake Video: The Weaponization Of Fake News
The technology to manipulate video has become so sophisticated that words can literally be put into people’s mouths. Mark Kelley explores how it’s done and why the implications have led the U.S. Defence Department to work to protect itself against the “weaponization” of fake news.
The Rise And Fall Of Facts
Because fact-checking these days is primarily the domain of legacy print publications, it retains that sheen of legitimacy and seriousness. To fact check is to assure readers, writers, and editors that great care is being taken.
The Influencer Economy Hurtles Toward Its First Recession
Brand deals have dried up; sponsored posts have been delayed. The great reckoning is unlikely to topple the influencer industry—by now, it’s already too big—but the business of influence is going to change.
Down And Out In the Gig Economy
Gig economies are ersatz structures, designed to skirt labor laws and offload risk and expense onto workers themselves. They serve the whims of capital.
Synthetic Media: The Real Trouble With Deepfakes
Keeping on top of manipulated videos and images is no easy feat. Scientists trace the roots of their proliferation, dig up new techniques to counter digital forgeries and warn of the growing dangers ahead.
How Facebook Works For Trump
During the 2016 election cycle, Trump’s team ran 5.9 million ads on Facebook, spending $44 million from June to November alone. He won the presidency by using the social network’s advertising machinery in exactly the way the company wanted. He’s poised to do it again.