The Recommendation Engine's Hidden Curriculum
Algorithmic recommendations don't just filter content—they teach implicit lessons about what information is worth knowing
Why Media Literacy Programs Often Fail
Media literacy asks individuals to outwork industrial-scale misinformation systems—and the math never adds up
Why Content Moderation Cannot Be Neutral
Every moderation system encodes values — the real question is whose values, and who gets to decide
Why Investigative Journalism Is Economically Irrational
The most valuable journalism creates benefits it can never capture—and the market responds accordingly.
The Streaming Wars: Understanding Platform Competition Dynamics
Why streaming platforms spend billions on content while losing money, and what comes next
Why Sports Rights Drive Media Strategy
Live sports aren't just programming—they're the infrastructure holding media business models together during streaming disruption.
The Economics of Outrage: Why Conflict Drives Coverage
The economics of media don't just permit outrage—they require it.
Why Algorithms Cannot Solve Editorial Judgment
Algorithmic content curation promises neutral efficiency but cannot escape the normative choices editorial judgment requires
Why Fact-Checking Cannot Scale to Misinformation
The economics of creating falsehoods will always outpace the economics of verifying them.
The Metrics That Make Media: How Measurement Shapes Production
The numbers media organizations choose to track don't just measure content—they determine what content gets made.
The Infrastructure Behind Breaking News
The hidden technical systems and economic arrangements that determine which stories reach you first.
Why Media Mergers Rarely Deliver Promised Synergies
Consolidation promises efficiencies but delivers market power, defensive positioning, and executive rewards
Why Public Broadcasting Faces Structural Crisis
The funding structures meant to protect public broadcasting have become the vectors of its vulnerability
The Bandwidth of Trust: Why Medium Shapes Message Credibility
Technical properties of communication channels systematically shape credibility—understanding media architecture reveals why identical messages succeed or fail across platforms.
Why Subscription Fatigue Threatens Quality Journalism
The subscription model meant to save journalism may contain structural limits that concentrate success and stratify access to quality information.
The Newsletter Economy: Why Email Became Media Infrastructure
Inside the infrastructure economics that made forty-year-old email technology the unexpected escape route from platform dependency.
Platform Dependency: When Distribution Controls Creation
How media organizations gradually surrender editorial control to distribution algorithms—and the structural strategies that preserve independence in platform-dominated ecosystems.
The Attention Auction: How Programmatic Advertising Reshapes Content
Inside the automated markets that price your attention thousands of times per second and reshape what content gets created to capture it.
Why Local News Deserts Expand Despite Digital Abundance
Understanding how digital platforms extracted local advertising revenue without replacing local information production reveals why market forces cannot restore community journalism
Why Media Monopolies Subsidize Your News Consumption
The entertainment profits funding your news are disappearing—understanding this hidden architecture reveals why journalism faces structural crisis beyond simple market competition.
The Attention Deficit: Why Quality Content Gets Ignored
Why the infrastructure connecting journalism to audiences systematically filters against the substantive content readers claim to value most.