Author: Nick Bergus

What’s Left for Gannett to Cut?

Zachary Oren Smith, formerly of the Iowa City Press-Citizen, reporting for Iowa Public Radio:

The nation’s largest chain of newspapers is shrinking much of its physical footprint in Iowa. IPR News confirmed Gannett Media will not renew its office leases for the Ames Tribune and the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Leases expire in April.

The official word is this is part of a “flexible workplace model,” and no jobs are being cut (this time). Of course, there’s only a couple of reporters left, and most of the other functions (layout, editing, production) have been centralized out of town.

Legacy media hasn’t been robust for years, but the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids area is left with The Gazette, KCRG, Iowa Public Radio and Little Village as critical sources of original reporting.

As Twitter Declines, 25 Tweets Highlighting What It Was

The New York Times:

On Wednesday, Twitter announced that users who pay extra will be able to send their thoughts into the world in tweets of up to 4,000 characters, instead of 280 or less. A few hours later, the site glitched. Users couldn’t tweet; they couldn’t DM; #TwitterDown began trending. All of it — the muddled sense of identity, the breakdown of basic function — confirmed the sense that Twitter, a site that has hosted the global conversation for almost two decades, had become a rickety shell of itself, that its best days were behind it and that it would never be as significant again.

Ate these are the 25 most important tweets? Some I’ve never seen before, but they are a good representation of all that Twitter was.

I’ve stopped using Twitter, which I used heavily and evangelized for since June 2007, and it’s still kind of amazing how quickly it stopped being the place that hosted the “global conversation”.

It’s not a great sign that more 10% of these tweets are Donald Trump, tho.

It’s Shut the Fuck Up Friday

Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times:

To people unfamiliar with the American criminal justice system, Baldwin’s decision sounds reasonable: Something terrible happened, and he wanted to help. But defense lawyers I talked to said Baldwin’s case should serve as a reminder that if you are involved in a serious incident, it’s best not to talk to the police unless you have an attorney present.

Manjoo is right, but it’s easier said than done to just shut the fuck up. Police rely on social engineering.

Manjoo cites an entertaining 48-minute video in which a law professor argues that nothing good can come from talking with cops no matter how innocent you are followed by a long-time-cop-turned-law-student telling you how he operated during interrogations which only confirms the need to shut the fuck up.

Getting Bad and Sloppy

Tom Barton and Izabel Zaluska reporting for The Gazette:

A rush is on in the Iowa Legislature to fix an oversight resulting from a previously passed property tax reform package that could mean potentially millions of dollars in lost revenue in the coming months for some Iowa cities.

The state legislature, controlled by the alleged party of small government, has filed and passed a lot of legislation that hurts cities and their ability to make local decisions. And a lot of that legislation is sloppy, which almost always leads to unintended consequences and then rushed “fixes”. Surgical strikes these are not; instead they are broad messaging bills that also have real-world impacts.

With cities and counties in the throes of setting their budgets to take effect July 1, the error by the state has thrown the process into disarray and may cause cities, counties and school boards to either lose millions of dollar they planned on — or raise tax rates more than they wanted.

It’s not like cities throw these things together at the last minute, or wait until the legislature is back in session. At this point, cities have been working on budgets for months. Budgets, as the story notes, are due in March but there are public hearing and publication deadlines that mean they need to be finalized in January and early February, so if cities are going to suddenly see millions of dollars less than they expected, that’s kind of a big deal.

Art of the Iowa Capitol as a house of horrors by Rhaomi via Dall-e

All Colors Combine to Make Brown

Novel storytelling is fascinating and fun: Momento told its story backwards and Primer told its story out of sequence.

Netflix offers Kaleidoscope as a limited series of episodes each named after a color watchable in any order. Otherwise it’s a run-of-the-mill heist series. And, in the end, the and-order-is-fine dynamic just leaves the viewer feeling like you’ve watched a out-of-order series, robbed of any crescendo or finale.

2022 In Review

I find the “good riddance to this year” trope, even in terrible years, unhelpful and uninteresting, and in light of some recent years, not particularly meaningful. Here’s some highlights of my past 12 months.

  • Finally took a letterpress workshop at Public Space One
  • Replaced 2,500 car miles with an electric pedal-assist bike
  • Hiked more than 100 miles, including in the Rocky Mountains and the Loess Hills
  • Added a redwing blackbird to my arm thanks to Nikki Powills
  • Had really meaningful and sometimes tough conversations with my kid who is now on the verge of adulthood
  • Ended my 1,010-day COVID-free streak
  • Engaged with friends and family for walks, meals and more

Onward.

Day 1,010

Getting COVID-19 isn’t inevitable, despite how much it feels like it may.

I knew the numbers were increasing, knew we had ticked from “low” to “medium,” but I was lazy. Maybe cocky.

There are two times in the past week I thought about wearing a mask and didn’t, and one of those probably caught me.

And so, after successfully avoiding COVID for 1,010 days, it got me.