2015 Winter Breaking News
Giving Credence: Why is So Much Reported Science Wrong, and What Can Fix That?
In January, David Broockman, then a political science Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, found something unusual about a study he and fellow student Joshua Kalla were trying to replicate. The data in the original study, collected by UCLA grad student Michael LaCour and published in Science last December, had shown that gay canvassers, sent door-to-door […]
Berkeleyside: The Nimble Hyperlocal News Site is Winning Awards and Attracting Eyeballs
Protesters gathered near the gates of Sproul Plaza on the Cal campus, carrying signs and chanting a phrase reverberating around the country: “Black lives matter.” The crowd swelled as it headed away from campus to downtown, where, by 6:30, demonstrators lay down and blocked the street. Ten minutes later, someone smashed windows at Trader Joe’s. […]
Confessions of an Online Journalist: How I Killed My Profession
In the fall of 1994, when I was a young reporter struggling to pay the rent, I wrote a cover story for the San Francisco Bay Guardian: “Plugging In: An Idiot’s Guide to the Internet.” I explained why a 14.4 baud modem was a great deal, and reported that the Internet was a fantastic resource […]
Confessions of a Sex Columnist: Is Covering This Just a Freaky, Masochistic Act in Itself?
When I first started writing my sex column, I was what one might consider “sex positive.” As a kid growing up in rural Maryland, I had been influenced by the sexually liberated Bay Area—the place that elected the first openly gay mayor, inspired famous sex writers Susie Bright and Carol Queen, and, of course, was […]
Academics of Arrangement: Berkeley Prof Deciphers How and Why We Organize Things
Robert Glushko’s job is to think about the organization of, well, everything: Ikea, zoos, spice racks, even crime families. He tries to get at the concepts behind how and why we arrange things, and what makes certain arrangements better than others. Take a bus, for example, says the UC Berkeley School of Information professor—it’s really […]
Why a New-Media Whiz Equates Journalism With a Tribe Wandering 40 Years in the Desert
Your journalism crowdfunding platform, Spot.Us, the first of its kind, was acquired by American Public Media in 2011 and has since been “retired.” What do you think went wrong, and what does it mean for the viability of crowdfunding for journalism in general? David Cohn: Much like startups, the majority of mergers and acquisitions don’t […]
Are Journalism Schools Just Whistling Past the Graveyard—or Resuscitating the News Biz?
The keynote speaker at the 2014 commencement of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism—an elite institution that prepares students for a profession in which the prospects are, let’s face it, a little touch-and-go at the moment— was a former small-time drug dealer and heavy-duty coke addict who had been in and out of rehab […]
Say What? Scientists Devise an Algorithm That Detects Sarcasm Better Than Humans Can
Think people know when you’re being sarcastic? Yeah, right. Studies show that most of us believe we are much better at communicating than we actually are, especially when interacting online. For instance, a 2005 study found that recipients correctly identified the sarcasm behind email statements only 56 percent of the time. Furthermore, the participants remained […]
He Who Tells the Best Story Wins: Radio and Podcast Host of “Snap Judgment” Talks Shop
In 2007, Glynn Washington was director of a program at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business called YEAH (Young Entrepreneurs at Haas), working to give underprivileged Bay Area youth more opportunities in life, when he seized upon an opportunity of his own. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Radio Exchange (PRX) were running a […]
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