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Monthly Archives: August 2019

@jasonpramas broadens the frame regarding the MIT Media Lab's ethical predicament. https://twitter.com/digboston/status/1166436732394496001 …

broadens the frame regarding the MIT Media Lab’s ethical predicament. https://twitter.com/digboston/status/1166436732394496001 …


Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
@jasonpramas broadens the frame regarding the MIT Media Lab’s ethical predicament. https://twitter.com/digboston/status/1166436732394496001 …

@jasonpramas with this great piece on how @mit and the @medialab have been taking money from the shitbag pals of both of the Negroponte brothers for ages. Not just #Epstein either. #mapoli #innovation? https://digboston.com/more-reasons-to-resign-from-the-mit-media-lab/ … via @digboston

with this great piece on how and the have been taking money from the shitbag pals of both of the Negroponte brothers for ages. Not just either. ? https://digboston.com/more-reasons-to-resign-from-the-mit-media-lab/ … via


Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
@jasonpramas with this great piece on how @mit and the @medialab have been taking money from the shitbag pals of both of the Negroponte brothers for ages. Not just #Epstein either. #mapoli #innovation? https://digboston.com/more-reasons-to-resign-from-the-mit-media-lab/ … via @digboston

DigBoston's @jasonpramas with MORE REASONS TO RESIGN FROM THE MIT MEDIA LAB: The connection to Jeffrey Epstein is just one of many questionable relationships https://digboston.com/more-reasons-to-resign-from-the-mit-media-lab/ … @medialab @MIT #JeffreyEpstein #politics #highereducation #corporations #criticism #MeToo #justice

DigBoston’s with MORE REASONS TO RESIGN FROM THE MIT MEDIA LAB: The connection to Jeffrey Epstein is just one of many questionable relationships https://digboston.com/more-reasons-to-resign-from-the-mit-media-lab/ …


Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
DigBoston’s @jasonpramas with MORE REASONS TO RESIGN FROM THE MIT MEDIA LAB: The connection to Jeffrey Epstein is just one of many questionable relationships https://digboston.com/more-reasons-to-resign-from-the-mit-media-lab/ … @medialab @MIT #JeffreyEpstein #politics #highereducation #corporations #criticism #MeToo #justice

MORE REASONS TO RESIGN FROM THE MIT MEDIA LAB

MIT Media Lab image by ckelly, CC BY 2.0. Modified by Jason Pramas.
MIT Media Lab image by ckelly, CC BY 2.0. Modified by Jason Pramas.

 

The connection to Jeffrey Epstein is just one of many questionable relationships

 

Recently, two scholars announced their plans to cut ties with the MIT Media Lab over its longstanding relationship with Jeffrey Epstein—the New York financier who had been arrested on federal charges for the alleged sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York and committed (a suspiciously convenient) suicide in custody on Aug 10. Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT (which is “a collaboration between the MIT Media Lab and Comparative Media Studies at MIT,” according to its website) and an associate professor of the practice at the MIT Media Lab, and J. Nathan Matias, a Cornell University professor and visiting scholar at the lab, are certainly to be commended for having the courage of their convictions. Particularly Zuckerman, who is literally leaving his job over the Epstein affair.

 

The lab’s direct connection to such a highly placed, dangerous, previously convicted sex offender is certainly more than enough reason for staffers, affiliates, and grad students to consider resigning their posts. However, it must be said to those who stay on that there have always been plenty of other reasons to resign from the MIT Media Lab from the moment it opened its doors. Because “capitalism’s advanced R&D lab”—as a colleague of mine close to the current fray calls it—has never been picky about which donors it will accept funding from. And that presents a major dilemma for other people of good conscience who happen to be working there.

 

So, I decided it would be worth a quick spin through some of the misdeeds of a few of the most well-known Media Lab corporate donors. In hopes that other people connected to the highly problematic institution might also decide to announce an abrupt career change in the name of social justice. Better still, they could organize themselves into a movement to either reform where the lab gets its money—and on whose behalf it works—or simply break it up. And maybe spread its projects around to other, less compromised, institutions.

 

BP and ExxonMobil. Every energy company engaged in extracting oil, natural gas, and coal, processing it, and/or distributing it to be burned in internal combustion engines or power plants is hastening the extinction of the human race by inducing ever-worsening global warming. With knowledge aforethought. As evinced by the organized campaign of disinformation they have all led against climate science, according to the noted book and documentary Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University and Erik M. Conway of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. There is no way to take this money and still have clean hands. Whether it’s a thousand dollars or a million. MIT Media Lab leadership knows this and does it anyway.

 

Ford Motor Company. A company as old and as large as Ford has inevitably done a lot of reprehensible things. Two of the worst: a) producing carbon-burning, greenhouse gas-emitting vehicles for over a century (almost 400 million since 1903) and b) working with energy companies like the ones that became ExxonMobil to form the Global Climate Coalition—a key international lobby group that spearheaded the fight by major corporations against climate science to prevent environmental regulation that would negatively affect their bottom line, according to Oreskes and Conway. It is the fifth-largest vehicle manufacturing company in the world.

 

Hyundai Motor Company. The third-largest vehicle manufacturing company in the world. And therefore another corporate scofflaw even without looking at its miserable record of union busting. Continuing to flood the planet with millions more carbon-spewing, global warming exacerbating machines every year. Oh, and the Korean conglomerate also got caught “overstating” its vehicles’ mileage a few years back, according to US News and World Report.

 

Honeywell SPS. While the Safety and Productivity Solutions “strategic business unit” of Honeywell International Inc. is the one giving money to the MIT Media Lab, its parent corporation is a major defense contractor. And a particularly dangerous strain of that breed of sociopathic capitalist entity. According to the Don’t Bank on the Bomb website produced by the interfaith Dutch antiwar group PAX, “Honeywell is involved in US nuclear weapon facilities as well as producing key components for the US Minuteman III ICBM and the Trident II (D5) system, currently in use by the US and UK.” Because what could possibly go wrong with continuing to produce more nukes? 

 

Citigroup. One of the main American banks responsible for the 2008 global financial collapse thanks to heavy investment in derivatives based on subprime housing mortgages. Also, the recipient of one of the largest bailout packages from the federal government in US history. That was either as “little” as $45 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money (which it paid back), or as much as $500 billion—when all government assistance it received is included (much of which it didn’t have to pay back)… according to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by James Freeman, co-author of the critical Citigroup history Borrowed Time. Most of the tens of thousands of working families whose lives were ruined when their homes were seized for mortgage nonpayment by the banks which set them up to fail did not get a bailout.

 

GE. A company I have written a baker’s dozen pieces on, between the start of the GE Boston Deal in 2016 and this year (when said deal fell apart). Once a major employer in Massachusetts, GE not only destroyed the economies of several cities around the state by precipitously shutting down major plants—in part to cut costs by eliminating thousands of good unionized jobs—but also polluted the entire Housatonic River valley from northwest Mass to Long Island Sound, as I covered in parts one and seven of my GE Boston Deal: The Missing Manual series. Yet is still trying to avoid having to finish cleaning that toxic mess up. Furthermore, GE was heavily involved in causing the 2008 global financial collapse through its former “shadow bank” division GE Capital and was the recipient of a huge government bailout via $90 billion in cheap credit it definitely did not deserve, as I outlined in parts two and three of my series.

 

McKinsey & Company. A virtually unaccountable private consulting firm with its fingers in many multinational corporate pies—and a special emphasis on working with authoritarian governments. The New York Times has spent years exposing some of its more sordid activities, including running the $12.3 billion offshore hedge fund MIO Partners, identifying the social media accounts of three prominent online critics of the Saudi government (one of whom was subsequently arrested), and helping Boeing find some needed titanium by getting a Ukrainian oligarch to bribe eight Indian officials. Plus, it reported—close to home and perhaps worst of all—that the “[Commonwealth] of Massachusetts released new documents from 2013 that detailed McKinsey’s recommendations on how Purdue Pharma could ‘turbocharge’ sales of its widely abused opioid OxyContin. The state said McKinsey advised Purdue to sharply increase sales visits to targeted doctors and to consider mail orders as a way to bypass pharmacies that had been tightening oversight of opioid prescriptions.” The thousands of opiate deaths in the Bay State alone since that time are on the criminal consultancy’s head—along with Purdue, and other corrupt pharmaceutical companies.

 

GlaxoSmithKline, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG (Roche), Novartis, and Takeda. And speaking of pharmas, here are four that donate to the Media Lab. All of which make huge profits by converting largely publicly funded basic science research into privately owned drug formulas protected by patents and other exclusive rights granted to them by governments. Then repurposing older medications for different uses—for which they receive new patents. According to a Washington Post op-ed by Robin Feldman, the author of Drugs, Money, & Secret Handshakes, “…78 percent of the drugs associated with new patents were not new drugs coming on the market but existing ones. The cycle of innovation, reward, then competition is being distorted into a system of innovation, reward, then more reward.” Ultimately, big pharmas extend their monopolies over the most profitable drugs by using their dominant positions to keep cheaper generic versions produced by smaller pharmas from gaining a foothold for years after they’re finally allowed to enter the market. The amount of unnecessary misery created by such companies in countries like the US that lack a comprehensive national healthcare system able to keep drug prices low is, therefore, immense. On top of the more specific misery caused when Takeda’s diabetes drug Actos was found to cause bladder cancer, according to the New York Times. Or when Roche made serious bank by convincing government to stockpile the influenza drug Tamiflu and was later found to have been withholding vital clinical trial data showing it wasn’t very effective, according to the Guardian. Or when GlaxoSmithKline “agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges and pay $3 billion in fines for promoting its best-selling antidepressants for unapproved uses and failing to report safety data about a top diabetes drug,” according to the New York Times. Or the ongoing scandal resulting from the FDA accusing Novartis of manipulating the “data used to support approval of the drug Zolgensma,” according to Stat. Which is supposed to be a treatment for the rare baby-killing genetic disorder spinal muscular atrophy and is the most expensive drug in the world at $2.1 million for a one-dose treatment, according to NPR.

 

Deloitte. Just a bunch of harmless accountants, right? Wrong. According to Canada’s National Observer, Deloitte is the largest of the “Big Four” audit firms that have “emerged as central players in the creation and abuse of offshore tax havens.” They also “become champions of the privatization of government services.” Giving a hearty assist to the consolidation of wealth by ever smaller numbers of corporations and individuals. Thus diminishing the governments that were once able to tax the rich and powerful and use the money to provide the very public services that have gradually been privatized—and concentrating more of the remaining public funds in those same private hands.

 

That’s just a sample of the dozens of MIT Media Lab “member companies.” Not all of them are as bad as the ones above. But few are above reproach. Check them out yourself at media.mit.edu/posts/member-companies/. And consider what kind of university would allow one of its major initiatives to run for decades with such little regard for social responsibility.

 

Full disclosure: Jason Pramas has interacted with Ethan Zuckerman professionally from time to time.

 

Apparent Horizon—recipient of 2018 and 2019 Association of Alternative Newsmedia Political Column Awards—is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s executive director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2019 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

EDITORIAL: DIGBOSTON SEEKS FALL INTERNS https://buff.ly/2Zi1qbX  #Boston #Massachusetts #journalism #democracy #student #intern #reporter #opportunityknocks @jasonpramas

EDITORIAL: DIGBOSTON SEEKS FALL INTERNS https://buff.ly/2Zi1qbX 


Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
EDITORIAL: DIGBOSTON SEEKS FALL INTERNS https://buff.ly/2Zi1qbX  #Boston #Massachusetts #journalism #democracy #student #intern #reporter #opportunityknocks @jasonpramas

EDITORIAL: DIGBOSTON SEEKS FALL INTERNS

 

(Interested candidates, please read this whole editorial)

 

At DigBoston, we like to have a lot of interns working for us at all times. Particularly college journalism students who will soon be seeking jobs as full-time newspaper or magazine reporters. Prior to June, over the first couple of years after my partners Chris Faraone, John Loftus, and I acquired this paper, we had taken as many as eight at once. But when we didn’t find ourselves overwhelmed managing that many talented young people, we figured, “Why not take more?” So this summer we had 17 interns—16 reporters and one marketing specialist. Plus two more reporting interns working remotely who didn’t participate directly in our internship program.

 

That worked out very well. And we’d like to do the same thing this fall—which is why I’m writing this editorial. But I think it’s worth running through our rationale for wanting to host such a large group of aspiring journalists again before continuing to my pitch for new talent.

 

There is general agreement that there is a crisis in American journalism. And I write about it frequently in these pages. The old advertising-driven economic model for commercial news outlets is collapsing—helped along by the rise of digital media giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon—even as consolidation of remaining outlets by a shrinking number of giant media corporations is accelerating the downward slide of regular mass layoffs of journalists in advance of the shuttering of thus-hollowed-out newspapers and magazines on cost grounds. Nonprofit and cooperative economic models have not yet proved to be viable alternatives for struggling independent news operations. And public funding for journalism is not yet on the political table. 

 

The result of this unfortunate situation is nothing less than the gutting of American news media. According to an analysis by the Pew Research Center: “From 2008 to 2018, newsroom employment in the U.S. dropped by 25%. In 2008, about 114,000 newsroom employees—reporters, editors, photographers and videographers—worked in five industries that produce news: newspaper, radio, broadcast television, cable and ‘other information services’ (the best match for digital-native news publishers). By 2018, that number had declined to about 86,000, a loss of about 28,000 jobs.”

 

But the story is worst for print newsrooms—the very sector that many journalism students looking to intern with us are most interested to work in, and home to the longform reporting that all other media outlets rely on: “This decline in overall newsroom employment has been driven primarily by one sector: newspapers. The number of newspaper newsroom employees dropped by 47% between 2008 and 2018, from about 71,000 workers to 38,000.”

 

This is bad news indeed. For working journalists and aspiring journalists, yes, but also for our beleaguered democracy. Which relies on the “Fourth Estate”—journalism, broadly writ—to hold powerful individuals and institutions accountable to the will of the people on matters large and small. A democratic society no longer able to support a robust and (at least nominally) independent news sector, whatever it wants to call itself, will not remain a democracy for very long.

 

Yet journalism schools continue to pump out more trained journalists than in previous years, an effect partly explained as a “Trump bump” reaction to our polarizing president. According to a December 2018 survey of nearly 500 journalism and media educators in 45 states conducted by the Education Week Research Center in coordination with the Journalism Education Association, “student interest in journalism is growing or holding steady.”

 

On the one hand, it’s easy to feel like said schools are doing a disservice to journalism students, preparing many of them for reporter jobs that no longer exist. Plus it’s certainly true that too many corporatized colleges are more than happy to take advantage of any academic trend that results in more paying “customers.”

 

But on the other hand, our democracy needs more journalists—especially considering how many paid reporting jobs America has lost of late—not less. And failing to train the journalists we need is doing a disservice to that democracy.

 

Which is why DigBoston is so committed to running a large internship program. We strongly believe that America should remain (or truly become, given our broadly left-wing orientation) a democracy and that having more journalists in every city and town is one way to help ensure that outcome. 

 

However, we cannot yet afford to pay interns. We are by no means immune to the crisis in journalism, and inherited a newspaper that has needed to be gradually stabilized since 2017 before now being able to even start to think about expanding our operation. And eventually offer at least some paid internships. Allowing us to better meet our goal of always having the most diverse group of interns possible by every metric, including class. A goal we’re actually doing pretty well at reaching season to season thus far. Though we can always improve on that front.

 

So, interning with us means participating in a very open exchange. We ask reporting interns to work just a few hours a week—basically producing one article at a time—alongside jobs or other internships that do pay and school (although we also have some interns that are not currently in school). We let them start and finish their time with us whenever they want (a two-month stay being typical). We treat our interns as reporters. As “equals with less experience,” as I’ve long typified it. When they’re working with us, their article subjects do not know they are interns. We encourage them to pitch us stories they are interested to cover, and we also offer assignments to them as they come in. 

 

Reporting interns write for us as long as they like and leave us with good clips with an established newspaper for their resumes. Plus, and probably most importantly, they become part of our talent network—people we know and have worked with, and people we can recommend for jobs elsewhere, or maybe even hire ourselves one day. Every two weeks, we ask them to attend “pitch meetings” with Chris and me. If they can make those, great. If not, we can work around that. Most of the knowledge transfer between staff and interns takes place by working together.

 

And that’s the basic deal. We also have other kinds of interns from time to time, as mentioned in passing above. As such, if you’re a journalism student (or a marketing, graphic arts, photography, design, media studies, English, etc. student), and you’re interested to intern with us, we’d love to hear from you.

 

All candidates for fall internships can email Chris and me at internships@digboston.com with “INTERNSHIP APPLICATION” in the subject line. Please include a paragraph or two about why you’d like to intern with us and what kind of internship you’re interested in. Then add links to three clips (if you want to be a reporter, or three artworks/photos/designs if you want to work with us on the design side, or three marketing campaigns if you want to help us with that, or appropriate proof that you have skills in whatever other area you’d like to help us with), and a link to your resume. That’s it. No need to write long letters to us.

 

Our internship program is increasingly competitive, no lie. We don’t take all applicants. We are obviously looking for reporters more than other kinds of interns. But if you believe in our mission, love journalism and democracy, and have some skills to back up your aspirations, then you will have a good shot.

 

We look forward to your applications. Good luck.

 

Jason Pramas is executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston.

Amidst my book research today, I took a break to catch up with @DigBoston. Great articles and thoughtful op-ed pieces about affordable housing in Cambridge. Local independent journalism matters.pic.twitter.com/GnxwzUArWX

Amidst my book research today, I took a break to catch up with .

Great articles and thoughtful op-ed pieces about affordable housing in Cambridge.

Local independent journalism matters.


Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
Amidst my book research today, I took a break to catch up with @DigBoston.

Great articles and thoughtful op-ed pieces about affordable housing in Cambridge.

Local independent journalism matters.pic.twitter.com/GnxwzUArWX

Big ups to @Fara1 and @BINJreports for digging into all this sketchy stuff surrounding the SPAM scandal (SPAMdal) https://binjonline.com/2019/08/21/theres-much-more-to-the-mass-state-police-scandal-than-is-being-reported/ …

Big ups to and for digging into all this sketchy stuff surrounding the SPAM scandal (SPAMdal) https://binjonline.com/2019/08/21/theres-much-more-to-the-mass-state-police-scandal-than-is-being-reported/ …


Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
Big ups to @Fara1 and @BINJreports for digging into all this sketchy stuff surrounding the SPAM scandal (SPAMdal) https://binjonline.com/2019/08/21/theres-much-more-to-the-mass-state-police-scandal-than-is-being-reported/ …

DigBoston's @jasonpramas calls on #restaurants to do one simple thing to help the nearly 5 percent of Americans with chronic #heartburn when they eat out in his latest column HEARTBURN: THE COMMON DIETARY CHALLENGE THAT RESTAURANTS IGNORE https://digboston.com/heartburn-the-common-dietary-challenge-that-restaurants-ignore/ … #health #GERD

DigBoston’s calls on to do one simple thing to help the nearly 5 percent of Americans with chronic when they eat out in his latest column HEARTBURN: THE COMMON DIETARY CHALLENGE THAT RESTAURANTS IGNORE https://digboston.com/heartburn-the-common-dietary-challenge-that-restaurants-ignore/ …


Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
DigBoston’s @jasonpramas calls on #restaurants to do one simple thing to help the nearly 5 percent of Americans with chronic #heartburn when they eat out in his latest column HEARTBURN: THE COMMON DIETARY CHALLENGE THAT RESTAURANTS IGNORE https://digboston.com/heartburn-the-common-dietary-challenge-that-restaurants-ignore/ … #health #GERD

posting without comment!! https://www.masslive.com/worcester/2019/08/there-is-no-more-real-newspaper-in-the-city-of-worcester-mayor-joseph-petty-says-after-gatehouse-cuts-longtime-telegram-gazette-columnist-clive-mcfarlane-amid-series-of-layoffs.html …

posting without comment!! https://www.masslive.com/worcester/2019/08/there-is-no-more-real-newspaper-in-the-city-of-worcester-mayor-joseph-petty-says-after-gatehouse-cuts-longtime-telegram-gazette-columnist-clive-mcfarlane-amid-series-of-layoffs.html …


Source: @jasonpramas Twitter account feed
posting without comment!! https://www.masslive.com/worcester/2019/08/there-is-no-more-real-newspaper-in-the-city-of-worcester-mayor-joseph-petty-says-after-gatehouse-cuts-longtime-telegram-gazette-columnist-clive-mcfarlane-amid-series-of-layoffs.html …