Journalism 

If you're in journalism, you want what the AARP has - off-the-charts readership and a rock-solid subscriber base. By default, 23.5 million American households receive AARP: The Magazine, the most widely circulated periodical in the country, serving what may be one of the most powerful demographics: people over fifty. AARP, with its aging celebrity cover stars, belongs on “the coffee table,” Bob Love, the editor in chief, says. (The Bulletin, its more informational sister publication—covering Medicare, Social Security, wonky stuff—is for “the kitchen table.”) With its bind to the AARP nonprofit, the magazine is not dependent on capricious advertisers—nor Facebook or Twitter—to satisfy its bottom line. Splashy it’s not, but Love calls AARP “necessarily the largest magazine on the planet." Read More

How many plans to save local journalism are too many? - It’s an ill-kept secret that, with few exceptions, politicians of both parties really, really like their local newspapers and other local media. News is a conduit for getting their views to constituents and a feedback loop for finding out what issues are on the community’s mind. As the pandemic advertising recession and longstanding negative trends have made the financial precariousness of these enterprises obvious, Congress has pretty much decided it should come to the aid of local news. The question of how remains, together with making the help timely.  Read More

COVID-19

Amid pandemic, U.S. must reduce incarceration to protect public safety, report finds - To stem the tide of COVID-19 infections both within correctional institutions and in surrounding communities, jurisdictions around the U.S. should act immediately to reduce the number of people housed behind bars. That’s the recommendation of a panel of criminal justice and public health experts assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The panel detailed its guidance in “Decarcerating Correctional Facilities During COVID-19: Advancing Health, Equity and Safety,” a report released on Oct. 19. Jails and prisons in the U.S. are often overcrowded, dense, poorly ventilated and disconnected from public health systems, making COVID-19 prevention among incarcerated people and staff exceedingly difficult, the panel reported. Read more

Who Is Missing From College During the Pandemic? A Lot of Students, Actually - They might be on your roster, but they’re ghosting you. So what’s an online professor to do when students just aren’t participating? That’s the question that San Francisco State University professor David Pena Guzman is facing during the pandemic, when, as at so many colleges, his teaching has shifted online. “I sent out targeted individual emails [saying] Hi Nancy. Hi Peter. Hi Eduardo. I am noticing that you haven’t posted and you haven’t uploaded any assignments. I just want to reach out personally to you to make sure that nothing is wrong. And if there’s anything I can do.” Some students got back to him and said they are struggling with adjusting to online and would like an extension so they can get back on track—which he says he gladly granted. “But then there were also the students who just never responded. And so there is this massive question mark hovering over several people in my roster, and I’m just not sure what to do.” Read more

GovTech

Strategies for Making Public Safety Data Actionable - A key theme that has emerged concerns the need for the public safety community to figure out ways to harness the tremendous amount of data that could be available to emergency responders. As recently as a decade and a half ago, data largely was an afterthought in the public safety community. At the time, most public safety agencies still were using land mobile radio (LMR) data systems with transmission speeds of 9,600 baud or less, even though mobile data computers that leveraged commercial wireless air cards started to replace LMR-based narrowband data systems a few years prior. This meant that text messages were the alpha and omega of mobile data for most agencies. Read more

COVID Closed the Door on Old Tech in a Number of Cities - Either by necessity, design, or other reasons, the COVID-19 crisis challenged cities to work smarter, and in many cases, become more resilient. The changes brought by the pandemic have been as small as getting rid of the old timeclock in the public works department in Spokane, Wash. — it encouraged too much close gathering — or using artificial intelligence to help root out misinformation and grow contact tracing in Houston. “We did not choose to be in the middle of this crisis, but the way we react to it is a choice we’re going to make, which means we cannot bring things back to the way they were,” said Sameer Sharma, global manager for smart cities and transportation at Intel, during a discussion at the virtual Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo on Tuesday. Read more

Elections and Voting

What record early voting numbers tell us about the election —  The country is seeing record turnout for early voting, as well as some late legal challenges around when -- and if -- all those votes get counted. Almost 70 million people have already cast their ballots, with Election Day still a week away. William Brangham reports and talks to the University of Florida’s Michael McDonald, who runs the United States Election Project, about what the numbers show. Read more

Minecraft and Rock the Vote team up to show young users what it's like to vote - A new collaboration between Rock the Vote, a nonprofit focused on empowering young voters, and the popular video game Minecraft introduces young Americans to the voting process in a virtual bid to engage first-time and future voters. Announced eight days ahead of the presidential election, Build the Vote has created an online world featuring “voting houses” and a virtual election for interested users. Players cast their votes for important issues — gun laws, criminal justice reform, healthcare access, climate change, racial equality, the education system, immigration, job stability, student loans, and combating corruption — rather than real-life candidates. But the goal is the same: encourage community participation in important, political processes. Read more

 NOTEWORTHY FREE EVENTS

Thursday, October 29th, 7:00 PM (ET), David Hudson, Jr. of Belmont University and First Amendment Fellow for the Freedom Forum, Kate Klonick of St. John’s University School of Law, and Nathaniel Persily, co-director of the Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet, and John Samples of the Cato Institute and member of Facebook's Oversight Board will explore what social media platforms are doing to tackle disinformation, foreign interference, and fake news during this election season. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.This program is presented in partnership with the Freedom Forum. RSVP Here

Thursday, October 29th, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT - Your Vote 2020: An Evening with Donna Brazile by Baltimore County Public Library - Legendary political strategist Donna Brazile will analyze our election process, from both historical and current perspectives. Read more and register here

From the BrightTalk Archives: Battling Disinformation, Voter Suppression & Cyber Attacks from Sep 23 2020 | 60 mins This episode of the Election Hacking Original series will explore the impact of social media platforms on democratic elections, with a special focus on the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Watch here

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