Writers and Editors

This replaces an early version of this post that appeared in June 2018. Updated 5-15-24.

 

See also Artificial Intelligence and Copyright
Artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, Dall-E, and OSINT (open source intelligence)

 

The Basics about AI

• What is AI? Everything you need to know about Artificial Intelligence (Nick Heath, ZDNet, 2-2-18) An executive guide to artificial intelligence, from machine learning and general AI to neural networks.

• What is an Internet bot? (Wikipedia) An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity on the Internet, such as messaging, on a large scale.
• What is a bot: types and functions (Digital Guide IONOS UK, 11-16-21) What is a bot, what functions can it perform, and what does its structure consist of? Learn about Rule-based bots and self-learning bots, the different types of good bots, the different types of malware bots, and how they work. What types of attacks can botnets perform?
• ChatGPT (AI) This chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022 is being used to write novels, among other things. It has a problem with factual accuracy. See also section on this website on ChatGPT (AI)

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Writers/journalists/creators and artificial intelligence and issues like copyright protection, plagiarism, flaws and inaccuracies, and how frank creators must be about using AI
• FAQs on the Authors Guild’s Positions and Advocacy Around Generative AI
• A crash course for journalists on AI and machine learning (Video, 51 min., International Journalism Festival, 4-7-22)
• Denied by AI: How Medicare Advantage plans use algorithms to cut off care for seniors in need (Casey Ross and Bob Herman, Stat Investigation, 3-13-23, a Pulitzer finalist for a series, For exposing how UnitedHealth Group, the nation's largest health insurer, used an unregulated algorithm to override clinicians' judgments and deny care, highlighting the dangers of AI use in medicine. Read the full series.
• CNET Is Quietly Publishing Entire Articles Generated By AI (Frank Landymore, The Byte, 1-15-23) "This article was generated using automation technology," reads a dropdown description.The articles are published under the unassuming appellation of "CNET Money Staff," and encompass topics like "Should You Break an Early CD for a Better Rate?" or "What is Zelle and How Does It Work?" That byline obviously does not paint the full picture, and so your average reader visiting the site likely would have no idea that what they're reading is AI-generated.

     (H/T to Jon Christian for links to this and next four pieces)
• Google Is Using A.I. to Answer Your Health Questions. Should You Trust It? (Talya Minsberg, NY Times, 5-31-24) Experts say the new feature may offer dubious advice in response to personal health queries.
• CNET's Article-Writing AI Is Already Publishing Very Dumb Errors (Jon Christian, The Byte, Futurism,1-29-23) CNET is now letting an AI write articles for its site. The problem? It's kind of a moron.
• Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers ( Maggie Harrison Dupré, Futurism, 11-27-23) We asked them about it — and they deleted everything.
• CNET's AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism (Jon Christian, The Byte, Futurism 1-23-23) CNET's AI-written articles aren't just riddled with errors. They also appear to be substantially plagiarized.
• BuzzFeed Is Quietly Publishing Whole AI-Generated Articles, Not Just Quizzes (Noor Al-Sibai and Jon Christian, Futurism, 3-30-23) These read like a proof of concept for replacing human writers--lots of repetition of pet phrases.

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• The AI is eating itself (Casey Newton, Platformer, 6-27-23) Boy, is this post packed with info and insights. The third paragraph alone kept me online for an extra half-hour, following links to more good reading.
• The AI takeover of Google Search starts now (David Pierce, The Verge, 5-10-23) Google is moving slowly and carefully to make AI happen. Maybe too slowly and too carefully for some people. But if you opt in, a whole new search experience awaits.
• Google Rolls Back A.I. Search Feature After Flubs and Flaws (Nico Grant, NY Times, 6-1-24) Google appears to have turned off its new A.I. Overviews for a number of searches as it works to minimize errors.
• AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born (James Vincent, The Verge, 6-26-23) Generative AI models are changing the economy of the web, making it cheaper to generate lower-quality content. We’re just beginning to see the effects of these changes.
• New Tool Could Poison DALL-E and Other AI to Help Artists (Josh Hendrickson, PC Mag, 10-27-23) Researchers from the University of Chicago introduce a new tool, dubbed Nightshade, that can 'poison' AI and ruin its data set, leading it to generate inaccurate results.
---This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI (Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Technology Review, 10-23-23) The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models.
• Godfathers of AI Have a New Warning: Get a Handle on the Tech Before It's Too Late (Joe Hindy, PC Mag, 10-24-23) Two dozen experts warn that 'AI systems could rapidly come to outperform humans in an increasing number of tasks [and] pose a range of societal-scale risks.'

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• How AP Investigated the Global Impacts of AI (Garance Burke, Pulitzer Center, 6-21-23) "When my editor Ron Nixon and I realized that too few journalists had gotten trained on how these complex statistical models work, we devised internal workshops to build capacity in AI accountability reporting....No surprise, FOIA and its equivalents are an imperfect tool and rarely yield raw code. Little transparency about the use of AI tools by government agencies can mean public knowledge is severely restricted, even if records are disclosed.Viewing predictive and surveillance tools in isolation doesn’t capture their full global influence.The purchase and implementation of such technologies isn’t necessarily centralized. Individual state and local agencies may use a surveillance or predictive tool on a free trial basis and never sign a contract. And even if federal agencies license a tool intending to implement it nationwide, that isn’t always rolled out the same way in each jurisdiction."
• AI is being used to generate whole spam sites (James Vincent, The Verge, 5-2-23) A report identified 49 sites that use AI tools like ChatGPT to generate cheap and unreliable content. Experts warn the low costs of producing such text incentivizes the creation of these sites.
• The semiautomated social network is coming (James Vincent, The Verge, 3-10-23) LinkedIn announced last week it’s using AI to help write posts for users to chat about. Snap has created its own chatbot, and Meta is working on AI ‘personas.’ It seems future social networks will be increasingly augmented by AI.

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• AI Art for Authors: Which Program to Use (Jason Hamilton, Kindlepreneur, 12-9-22) There are dozens of AI art tools out there, many with unique specialties. But most would agree that three stand up above the rest:
    Midjourney
    Dall-E 2
    Stable Diffusion.

Hamilton discusses how to access them, what they cost, how they can be useful, and why he recommends them (or not, and what for, illustrated), with a final section on AI art's copyright problems: Are they copying exist art on the collage principle (a little here, a little there), or are they facing legal and copyright problems?
• Artificial Labor (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At, 5-12-23) With the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, "we are entering a historical battle between actual labor – those who create value in organizations and the world itself – and the petty executive titans that believe that there are no true value creators in society, only “ideas people” and those interchangeable units who carry out their whims...The television and film industries are controlled by exceedingly rich executives that view entertainment as something that can (and should) be commoditized and traded, rather than fostered and created by human beings. While dialogue eventually has to be performed by a human being, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers clearly views writing (and writers) as more of a fuel that can be used to create products rather than something unique or special....entertainment’s elites very clearly want to be able to use artificial intelligence to write content."

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• The Fanfic Sex Trope That Caught a Plundering AI Red-Handed (Rose Eveleth, Wired, 5-15-23) Sudowrite, a tool that uses OpenAI’s GPT-3, was found to have understood a sexual act known only to a specific online community of Omegaverse writers. The data set that was used to train most (all?) text-generative AI includes sex acts found only in the raunchiest of fanfiction. "What if your work exists in a kind of in-between space—not work that you make a living doing, but still something you spent hours crafting, in a community that you care deeply about? And what if, within that community, there was a specific sex trope that would inadvertently unmask how models like ChatGPT scrape the web—and how that scraping impacts the writers who created it. (H/T Nate Hoffelder, Morning Coffee)
• AI art tools Stable Diffusion and Midjourney targeted with copyright lawsuit (James Vincent, The Verge, 1-16-23) The suit claims generative AI art tools violate copyright law by scraping artists’ work from the web without their consent. Butterick and Saveri are currently suing Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI in a similar case involving the AI programming model CoPilot, which is trained on lines of code collected from the web.
• The lawsuit that could rewrite the rules of AI copyright (James Vincent, The Verge, 11-8-22) Microsoft, its subsidiary GitHub, and its business partner OpenAI have been targeted in a proposed class action lawsuit alleging that the companies’ creation of AI-powered coding assistant GitHub Copilot relies on ---“software piracy on an unprecedented scale.”

---"Someone comes along and says, 'Let's socialize the costs and privatize the profits.'"

---“This is the first class-action case in the US chal­leng­ing the train­ing and out­put of AI sys­tems. It will not be the last.”
• The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next (James Vincent, The Verge, 11-15-22) The last year has seen a boom in AI models that create art, music, and code by learning from others’ work. But as these tools become more prominent, unanswered legal questions could shape the future of the field.
`
• Wendy’s to test AI chatbot that takes your drive-thru order (St. Louis-Post Dispatch) (Erum Salam, The Guardian, 5-10-23) 'The Guardian' reports that Wendy's is ready to roll out an artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot capable of taking customers' orders. Pilot program ‘seeks to take the complexity [the humans] out of the ordering process’
• In a Reminder of AI's Limits, ChatGPT Fails Gastro Exam (Michael DePeau-Wilson, MedPage Today, 5-22-23) Both versions of the AI model failed to achieve the 70% accuracy threshold to pass.
• Some companies are already replacing workers with ChatGPT, despite warnings it shouldn’t be relied on for ‘anything important’ (Trey Williams, Fortune, 2-25-23)
• ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead (NY Times, 5-1-23) For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries it will cause serious harm.
• Teaching A.I. Systems to Behave Themselves (Cade Metz, NY Times, 8-13-17)

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On the plus or minus side:
• Smarter health: How AI is transforming health care (Dorey Scheimer, Meghna Chakrabarti, and Tim Skoog, On Point, first piece in a Smarter Health series, WBUR radio, 5-27-22, with transcript) Guests Dr. Ziad Obermeyer (associate professor of health policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Emergency medicine physician) and Richard Sharp (director of the biomedical ethics research program at the Mayo Clinic, @MayoClinic) explore the potential of AI in health care — from predicting patient risk, to diagnostics, to just helping physicians make better decisions.
• Artificial Intelligence Is Primed to Disrupt Health Care Industry (Ben Hernandez, ETF Trends, 7-12-15) Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the prime technologies leading the wave of disruption that is going on within the health care sector. Recent studies have shown that AI technology can outperform doctors when it comes to cancer screenings and disease diagnoses. In particular, this could mean specialists such as radiologists and pathologists could be replaced by AI technology. Whether society is ready for it or not, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, or any other type of disruptive technology will be the next wave of innovation.
• How will large language models (LLMs) change the world? (Dynomight Internet Newsletter, The Browser, 12-8-22) Think about historical analogies for 'large language models': the ice trade and freezers; chess humans and chess AIs; farmers and tractors; horses and railroads; swords and guns; swordfighting and fencing; artisanal goods and mass production; site-built homes and pre-manufactured homes; painting and photography; feet and Segways; gull-wing and scissor doors; sex and pornography; human calculators and electronic calculators.
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• Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind by Susan Schneider. Can robots really be conscious? Is the mind just a program? "Schneider offers sophisticated insights on what is perhaps the number one long-term challenge confronting humanity."―Martin Rees
• Top 9 ethical issues in artificial intelligence (Julia Bossmann, World Economic Forum, 10-21-16) In brief: unemployment, income inequality, humanity, artificial stupidity (mistakes), racist robots (AI bias), security (safety from adversaries), evil genies (unintended consequences), singularity, robot rights. She makes interesting points!
• AI in the workplace: Everything you need to know (Nick Heath, ZDNet, 6-29-18) How artificial intelligence will change the world of work, for better and for worse. Bots and virtual assistants, IoT and analytics, and so on.
• What is the IoT? Everything you need to know about the Internet of Things right now (Steve Ranger, ZDNet, 1-19-18) The Internet of Things explained: What the IoT is, and where it's going next. "Pretty much any physical object can be transformed into an IoT device if it can be connected to the internet and controlled that way. A lightbulb that can be switched on using a smartphone app is an IoT device, as is a motion sensor or a smart thermostat in your office or a connected streetlight. An IoT device could be as fluffy as a child's toy or as serious as a driverless truck, or as complicated as a jet engine that's now filled with thousands of sensors collecting and transmitting data. At an even bigger scale, smart cities projects are filling entire regions with sensors to help us understand and control the environment."
• Beyond the Hype of Machine Learning (Free download, GovLoop ebook, 15-minute read) Read about machine learning's impact in the public sector, the 'how' and 'why' of artificial intelligence (AI), and how the Energy Department covers the spectrum of AI usage.

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• Can Artificial Intelligence Keep Your Home Secure? (Paul Sullivan, NY Times, 1-29-18) Security companies are hoping to harness the potential of A.I., promising better service at lower prices. But experts say there are risks.
• What will our society look like when Artificial Intelligence is everywhere? (Stephan Talty, Smithsonan, April 2018) Will robots become self-aware? Will they have rights? Will they be in charge? Here are five scenarios from our future dominated by AI.
• Amazon Is Latest Tech Giant to Face Staff Backlash Over Government Work (Jamie Condliffe, NY times, 6-22-18) Tech "firms have built artificial intelligence and cloud computing systems that governments find attractive. But as these companies take on lucrative contracts to furnish state and federal agencies with these technologies, they’re facing increasing pushback  Read More 

Updated frequently. Will keep adding entries, not to support sides but to get the big picture. Go to the original articles to get their full story.

• Striking deals to end campus protests, some colleges invite discussion of their investments (Kathleen Foody, Karen Matthews, Mike Catalini, and MIchael Hill, AP News, 5-3-24) Anti-war demonstrations ceased this week at a small number of U.S. universities after school leaders struck deals with pro-Palestinian protesters, fending off possible disruptions of final exams and graduation ceremonies. The agreements at schools including Brown, Northwestern and Rutgers stand out amid the chaotic scenes and 2,400-plus arrests on 46 campuses nationwide since April 17.
    Deals included commitments by universities to review their investments in Israel or hear calls to stop doing business with the longtime U.S. ally. Many protester demands have zeroed in on links to the Israeli military as the war grinds on in Gaza.

  What to know about student protests
---What's happening: Student protests over the Israel-Hamas war have popped up at many college campuses following the arrest of demonstrators in April at Columbia University.
---Why: The students are protesting the war's death toll and are calling for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are advancing Israel's military efforts in Gaza.
---On campus: As students around the country protest, student journalists are covering their peers in a moment of uncertainty.

• 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses Wikipedia's entry is more thorough than many news stories, trying to cover many aspects of, and angles on, the protests.

• California police move in to dismantle pro-Palestinian protest camp at UCLA (Reuters, 5-2-24)
    "Hundreds of helmeted police muscled their way into a central plaza of the University of California at Los Angeles early on Thursday to dismantle a pro-Palestinian protest camp attacked the previous night by pro-Israel supporters.
    "The pre-dawn police crackdown at UCLA marked the latest flashpoint for mounting tensions on U.S. college campuses, where protests over Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza have led to student clashes with each other and law enforcement.
    "Live TV footage showed about six protesters under arrest, kneeling on the ground, their hands bound behind their backs with zip-ties.
    "Dozens of loud explosions were heard during the clash from flash-bang charges, or stun grenades, fired by police."

    

• DRAD Statement: As a free speech organization, we condemn campus crackdowns (Defending Rights & Dissent, 5-1-24)
   "Defending Rights & Dissent condemns the crackdown taking place across campuses in the United States. Across the country, we have seen protests calling for a ceasefire and end to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. Increasingly, many of these protests have taken place on America’s campuses. Since the Columbia University occupation began on April 17, protests, including encampments, have spread across college campuses as students link their opposition to Israel’s war with demands for university divestment. In spite of false claims to the contrary, the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful and nonviolent.
   "The nonviolent nature of the protests has been no protection against police violence. Police have arrested and assaulted both students and professors engaged in peaceful protests. They’ve even arrested journalists covering the protests. Police have shown up to peaceful protests in riot gear or on horseback. They have used tear gas, projectiles, tasers, and batons against the protesters. The situation continues to develop rapidly, but at the time of publication, arrests had taken place on nearly thirty separate college campuses.
   "These violent attacks on protesters have been accompanied by the spread of false information designed to demonize the protesters and facilitate the crackdown against them. Northwestern University allowed the police to break up students protests and arrest 102 students. The university justified its decision by stating one of the pro-Palestine protesters yelled “kill the Jews.” In fact, according to journalists on the ground, a pro-Israel counter protester engaged in what they described as a “provocative joke.” Multiple media outlets repeated a story that a protester stabbed a Yale student in the eye because the student was Jewish. This story turned out to be false. A reporter shared a picture on social media purportedly of a Columbia student protester holding a despicably anti-Semitic sign. Later, it was revealed that not only was the man not a student protester, the picture was not even taken on Columbia’s campus. The individual, who has no connection to advocacy for Palestinian rights, frequently holds anti-Semitic displays across New York City. False stories have been repeated by politicians advocating for a crackdown on student protests.
    Read the full story HERE

• UCLA students describe violent attack on Gaza protest encampment: ‘It was terrifying’ (Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles, The Guardian, 5-1-24)

Slow response from authorities left students shocked as people wearing white masks attacked pro-Palestine protesters
   When Meghna Nair, a second-year student at the University of California, Los Angeles, saw a masked group of people headed toward the pro-Palestine encampment on campus late Tuesday evening, she expected trouble.
   “I knew where they were going. I had an idea what they planned to do,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
   “But the violence that unfolded on the public university’s campus overnight and the slow response from authorities shocked Nair and other UCLA students.
   “Late Tuesday night, a masked group surrounded the encampment in solidarity with Gaza, throwing fireworks and violently attacking students. Students and reporters for multiple outlets said university-hired security forces locked themselves in nearby buildings and police looked on for hours before intervening.
   "UCLA cancelled all classes on Wednesday and with the exception of the central meeting area, the normally lively campus was mostly deserted. A helicopter hovered overhead throughout the morning while groups of security guards and law enforcement stood around the sectioned off encampment. Students slowed as they passed the barricades, taking in the scene." ...
   "Nair said she was sickened by the attacks on students who she viewed as courageous for standing up for what they believe in and advocating for Palestinians.
   “They didn’t start this. This was a peaceful protest,” she said. “What I saw last night, those people, as far as I know, were just random people coming in on to our campus, full grown adults and they started attacking kids.”

• Noah Goldberg Twitter thread (Noah Goldberg @Noah__Goldberg) on Twitter. "A nugget tucked in mine and @LAcrimes reporting on police response at UCLA last night.
According to three sources, Mayor Bass had to call UCLA Chancellor Gene Block last night to get the chancellor to allow LAPD to deploy on the campus."

• Police move in and begin dismantling pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ encampment at UCLA (Los Angeles, AP/WTOP, 5-24) "Police removed barricades and began dismantling a pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ fortified encampment early Thursday at the University of California, Los Angeles, after hundreds of protesters defied police orders to leave, about 24 hours after counterprotesters attacked a tent encampment on the campus.
     "Police methodically ripped apart the encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and trash dumpsters and made an opening toward dozens of tents of demonstrators. Police also began to pull down canopies and tents. Demonstrators held umbrellas like shields as they faced off with dozens of officers.
     "The police action occurred a night after the UCLA administration and campus police waited hours to stop the counterprotesters’ attack. The delay drew condemnation from Muslim students and California Gov. Gavin Newsom." 

• Governor @GavinNewsom statement on the violence that unfolded at @UCLA. "I condemn the violence at UCLA last night. The law is clear: The right to free speech does not extend to inciting violence, vandalism, or lawlessness on campus. Those who engage in illegal behavior must be held accountable for their actions--including through criminal prosecution, suspension, or expulsion." ~ Governor Gavin Newsom

• Biden says ‘order must prevail’ during campus protests over the war in Gaza (Chris Megerian, AP News, 5-2-24) The Democratic president broke days of silence on the protests with his remarks, which followed mounting criticism from Republicans who have tried to turn scenes of unrest into a campaign cudgel. By focusing on a law-and-order message while defending the right to free speech, Biden is grasping for a middle ground on an intensely divisive issue in the middle of his reelection campaign.

 
• Student journalists discuss covering the campus protests (PBS NewsHour, 5-1-24)
--- Daily News Lessons (many of them, some on protests, most on issues of the day. From PBS NewsHour)

 
• Student journalists discuss covering the campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza (Transcript, PBS NewsHour, 4-30-24: reporting: Amna Nawaz, Karina Cuevas, Ethan Dodd, Leila Jackson) News coverage has been "very over the top on the days where there is violence and there is brutality by police possibly, but not so much when there is just peaceful protests that have been happening in the days since." Feedback invited.

• Student journalists are covering their own campuses in convulsion. Here’s what they have to say (David Bauder and Christine Fernando, AP News, 5-2-24) The Columbia-based Pulitzer Prize Board, meeting this weekend to decide on its annual prizes, issued a statement on Thursday recognizing “the tireless efforts of student journalists across our nation’s college campuses, who are covering protests and unrest in the face of great personal and academic risk.”
    The protest movement has become a training ground for students grappling with complicated editorial decisions for some of the first times in their careers. They confront the awkwardness of reporting on their peers and the challenge not to get swept up in emotion.
    On American campuses awash in anger this spring, student journalists are in the center of it all, sometimes uncomfortably so.

    “This is your legacy,” the Spectator wrote — “a president more focused on the brand of your university than the safety of your students and their demands for justice.”
    “This is a moment in our campus’ history,” said Arianna Smith, editor-in-chief of The Lantern at Ohio State University. “Being able to contribute to its coverage is a privilege we don’t take lightly.   We’re under a lot of pressure to get it right, to be accurate, so that’s what we’re striving to do.”
    At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, student journalists are also making difficult decisions about anonymous sourcing. Managing Editor Liv Reilly said photographers are being mindful not to take photos that show faces of people who fear being arrested."

 

• The protests over the Israel-Hamas war put a spotlight on college endowments (Thalia Beaty, AP News, 4-26-24)

    “Divest from death” read the bubble letters written in chalk on the sidewalk on Tuesday outside of The New School in New York City.

    "Campaigns to pressure universities to divest for political or ethical reasons go back decades, at least to the 1970s when students pressured schools to withdraw from investments that benefited South Africa under apartheid rule. More recently, in the early aughts, schools made rules barring investments in things like alcohol, tobacco and gambling, according to a report from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and Commonfund.

    "Campus protests are bringing attention to who controls university endowments and how decisions about those investments get made. Endowments usually are managed by a board of trustees at the university and the purpose of any endowment is agreed upon by the donors, usually to benefit the institution. They don’t “belong” to current students, faculty or alumni but rather to the organization itself."  A thoughtful piece.

• US campus protests: hundreds of riot police move in to disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA – live (Gloria Oladipo; Fran Lawther, Amy Sedghi, Hamish Mackay, Jonathan Yerushalmy and Lois Beckett, The Guardian, 5-2-24)
   "Officers in tactical gear moving on to campus in latest flashpoint for mounting tensions over protests at US colleges.
   "As police helicopters hovered overhead, the sound of flash-bangs, which produce a bright light and a loud noise to disorient and stun people, pierced the air. Protesters chanted “where were you last night?” as the officers approached.
   "California Highway Patrol officers wearing face shields and protective vests stood with their batons protruding out to separate them from demonstrators, who wore helmets and gas masks and chanted, “you want peace. We want justice.”
   "Police methodically ripped apart the encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and trash dumpsters and made an opening toward dozens of tents of demonstrators. Police also began to pull down canopies and tents. Demonstrators held umbrellas like shields as they faced off with dozens of officers."

• ‘Unacceptable’: Why it took hours for police to quell attack at UCLA pro-Palestinian camp (Noah Goldberg, Richard Winton and Summer Lin, Los Angeles Times, 5-1-24)
   "When dozens of counterprotesters swarmed UCLA late Tuesday night, attacking the Palestinian solidarity encampment at the center of campus, university authorities were quickly overwhelmed.
   "Law enforcement sources told The Times there were only a few UCLA police officers on hand. They tried to stop the violence but were no match for the crowd and had to retreat, having been attacked themselves, the sources said.
   "A group of unarmed private security guards was there as well. But the guards were hired mainly to protect campus buildings, not to break up fights or make arrests. So they observed the scene as it descended into chaos.
   "It would take about three hours for scores of California Highway Patrol officers and police from Los Angeles and other agencies to fully bring the situation under control.
   "The response to the violence is now under increasing scrutiny, with many on campus and outside criticizing UCLA for not handling the violent counterprotest better."

• British Colleges Are Handling Protests Differently. Will It Pay Off? (Stephen Castle, NY Times, 5-11-24) University leaders have so far adopted a more permissive attitude to pro-Palestinian encampments than their U.S. counterparts. Here’s why.

• Where are the US college campus protests and what is happening? (Jonathan Yerushalmy, Helen Livingstone, and Erum Salam, Explainer, The Guardian, 5-2-24) Protest encampments have been set up on about 30 campuses across the US over the Israel-Gaza war, with unrest flaring at some after police moved in to clear out protesters

 

To post a link to another story, be sure to provide an accurate, working URL. The URL for this last item, for example, is

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/02/where-are-the-us-college-campus-protests-and-what-is-happening 

Small presses: A troubled sector

• Small Press Distribution (1969 – 2024) "After 55 years, Small Press Distribution (SPD)—one of the last remaining independent book distributors in the US—was shutting down immediately, with no advance notice or transitional support." Against all odds, a tiny distribution service in the back of Berkeley’s Serendipity Books grew to help authors attain some of the literary world’s crowning achievements. Alas, "several years of declining sales and the loss of grant support from almost every institution that annually supported SPD have combined to squeeze our budget beyond the breaking point....Our inventory of 300,000 books is in safe hands, having been transferred to our SPD Next partners Ingram Content Group and Publishers Storage and Shipping (PSSC) over the past several months. You will need to contact Ingram or PSSC to discuss distribution options and the return or disposition of your books."
---“The Small Press World is About to Fall Apart.” On the Collapse of Small Press Distribution (Adam Morgan, LitHub, 4-3-24) "Distributors are perhaps the most opaque and byzantine part of the publishing industry. When you buy a book on Amazon or Bookshop.org, it’s usually the distributor—not the publisher—who ships you a copy from its warehouse. When bookstores, libraries, and schools order books for their brick-and-mortar locations, they use online catalogs populated by distributors. Even further, most distributors (including SPD, before it vanished) employ sales teams that work to get copies in Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores, and other retail outlets like gift shops. Without a distributor, presses like Black Lawrence and Noemi are completely cut off from their main sources of income—and for some, SPD might have been the only affordable option left."
• How to Evaluate Small Publishers—Plus Digital-Only Presses and Hybrids (Jane Friedman, 6-25-18) "Small publishers often have little or nothing in common with each other; each has unique contracts, distribution power, and quality, not to mention title count and revenue. That said, small presses can be alike in that they take pride in their status (and often rightly so) and call themselves “independent publishers,” to emphasize their creativity or more personal approach, and to differentiate themselves from corporately owned behemoths."
• The Key Book Publishing Paths: 2022-2023 (Jane Friedman's excellent chart). Should you self-publish or traditionally publish? This infographic will help you determine the best choice for you and your project. Six categories analyzed: The Big Five, Other Traditional, Small Presses, Self-Publishing and Hybrid, Indie and DIY, and Social (serialization, fan fiction, social media and blogs, Patreon/patronage). A realistic description of small presses (albeit hard to read in small type).

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• Small Presses (Writer Beware) See Submitting to a Small Press: Issues to Consider and Evaluating a Small Press (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association)
• Small Press Complaints (Writer Beware) Lots of them! Shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls.
• Preditors and Editors list of book publishers and distributors lists many small presses and tells you which ones to avoid, and why.

• Publishing With a Small Press: Straddling the Indie-Traditional Gap (Eliot Peper on Jane Friedman's blog, 7-19-23) Small presses often have more flexible contract terms than the Big Five. Small presses run the production and distribution processes for you. Small presses often have more flexible contract terms than the Big Five.

    "Traditional publishers typically offer somewhere between 5-15 percent gross royalty to authors and 25% net royalty on ebooks. I received a 50/50 net royalty split and retained many subsidiary rights to my work. If you have specific priorities you want to negotiate, you’ll probably be able to find a healthy middle ground."
• Better Than Fall Back: The Small Press Option (Shirley Showalter on Jane Friedman's blog, 7-30-13, updated 7-19-23) Several mini-articles, worth a look.
• Small Press Distribution: An Interview with Brent Cunningham (RealPants.com)
• Complete Guide to Small Press Publishing: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Small Presses for Writers (Kate Sullivan, TCK Publishing,
• 3 Unique Research Methods for Identifying Small Publishers (Rosalie Morales Kearns on Jane Friedman's blog, 7-19-23) Browse review venues that specialize in small-press books. Identify awards for small-press books. Check bestsellers and new releases through book distributors that specialize in small-press books. With many useful links.

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• How Small Presses Are Welcoming More Women Into Publishing (Aaron Calvin, Pacific Standard, 12-14-16) Dorothy, YesYes Books, and Graywolf Press have made it their mission to publish more women — and reform an industry that more often celebrates the achievements of men.
• Against Conglomeration: Nonprofit Publishing and American Literature After 1980 (Dan Sinykin and Edwin Roland, Post45, 4-21-21) In 2008, Zadie Smith imagined "Two Paths for the Novel." The next year, Mark McGurl published The Program Era, about how creative writing programs changed American literature.... The editors of n+1 responded by proposing that the two paths for the novel were MFA or NYC: creative writing programs or New York publishing....By missing corporate conglomeration, they miss the whole. The two paths paved by the period — which subsume and reorient realism or avant-garde, MFA or NYC — were commercial or nonprofit. 1980 marked the start of this era. Under tremendous financial pressure, commercial and nonprofit publishers split in their approaches to literariness. Writers of color, who make up a disproportionately small fraction of literary production, do not align easily along the intersecting axes of conglomeration and literariness. This literary order — organized around conglomeration, literariness, and diversity — lasted twenty-seven years, from 1980 to 2007. It ended with the financial crisis and the emergence of Amazon as a major player in publishing....In 2003, Graywolf broke from the indie distributor that connects small presses across the US to partner with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. "It is a step away from the band of 'small presses' and into that virtually empty gap between us and the substantial independent/literary presses"...
• 5 Ways Small Press Publishers Offer Opportunities for New Authors (Emily Wenstrom, The Write Life, 8-30-16)
• 3 Unique Research Methods for Identifying Small Publishers (Rosalie Morales Kearns on Jane Friedman's blog, 3-19-2020)
• The Big, Big List of Indie Publishers and Small Presses (Nonconformist Authors, The Nonconformist, Medium, 9-14-19) 150+ proofs that indie is beautiful.
• 24 of Our Favorite Small Presses (Powell's Books, 3-14-18)
• 20 Small Press Books You Might Have Missed (Ruth Minah Buchwald, Electric Lit, 8-29-19)

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The following dispatches and quotes about the late beloved Marc Pachter are posted here on my Writers and Editors blog partly to make it easy for Marc's friends and colleagues to post comments. Marc died after a yearlong celebration of his 80th birthday, filled with travels to his favorite people, haunts, and cultural hotspots in Asia, Europe, South America, and the United States.

 

You can watch the Memorial service for Marc Pachter, April 13, 2024 (video online), held at the National Portrait Gallery.

 

• Marc Pachter, Who Revived National Portrait Gallery, Dies at 80 (Sam Roberts, NY Times, 2-23-24)
     Marc Pachter, who transformed the National Portrait Gallery in Washington from a collection primarily of solemn paintings of old white men into a more up-to-date museum that now includes illustrations and interviews with diverse living luminaries, died on Feb. 17 in Bangkok. He was 80.
     The cause was cardiac arrest, his son, Adam, said. Mr. Pachter, who [after many years of living in Washington DC] lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, died in a hospital while vacationing in Thailand.
     As director of the Portrait Gallery from 2000 to 2007, Mr. Pachter presided over a $300 million renovation that reimagined the museum while maintaining its artistic integrity.

     A memorial service was held at the National Portrait Gallery on Saturday, April 13, at 9 am in the Kugod Courtyard (at 8th and G Streets NW, DC).

     It was a beautiful day in a beautiful setting, and it was particularly nice to hear Marc's son and daughter, Adam and Gillian, talk about life with their delightfully nontraditional father.

 

• Marc's memorable talk on the Living Self Portrait Series (Marc Pachter, Director Emeritus, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (EG3) February, 2008)

     If you listen to nothing else, listen to this lecture. Marc started to worry about the fact that people didn't get their portraits painted anymore, so he came up with the remarkable Living Self-Portrait Series. As a cultural historian, Marc conducted live interviews with  Read More 

What should it be? Black and white?  Black and White? black and white?

A few well-expressed opinions, handy for classroom and copy desk arguments.

Frequently updated and as of 11-20-24  there is no clear consensus on which of the two words (black, white) to capitalize or why.

But here you can find arguments about what's proper: 

• The Case for Capitalizing the B in Black (Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Atlantic,6-18-2020) 'The style guide of the American Psychological Association declares, as it has for a generation: “Racial and ethnic groups are designated by proper nouns and are capitalized. Therefore, use ‘Black’ and ‘White’ instead of ‘black’ and ‘white.’” That seems sensible enough. But for some people, White is the sticking point. As The American Heritage Dictionary (on whose usage panel, now disbanded, I have served) ventured, in its fourth edition: “In all likelihood, uncertainty as to the mode of styling of white has dissuaded many publications from adopting the capitalized form Black.”

• The decision to capitalize Black(John Daniszewski, The Definitive Source, AP, 7-19-20) AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a Read More