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Matthew Keys, Reuters Reporter, Accused of Colluding With Anonymous to Hack the LA Times

Matthew Keys, the deputy social media editor at Reuters in Sacramento, was indicted today for allegedly working with members of the hacktivist group Anonymous to help the anti-government organization hack into the LA Times and alter a news story. According to the Department of Justice, the 26-year ... More >>

The Sky Keeps Falling!: A Short History of the Death of Cinema

Newspapers to Google: We Don't Want Your Help

If you think American publishers are clueless when it comes to the Internet, just look abroad. This week, Brazil's National Association of Newspapers blocked Google News from aggregating its members' articles. That means that almost none of the newspaper articles published in Brazil will make it to ... More >>

AT&T, Time Warner Cable Whine About Google Perks

Back through the foggy mists of time, in 1996, America's telecommunications giants agreed to deploy high-speed broadband Internet service in exchange for all the breaks they got from the Telecommunications Act that passed that year. They proceeded to basically ignore their promises. The United State ... More >>

The Return of the Winklevii

People tend to look down upon the Winklevoss twins for all sorts of reasons: Mainly, because they're greedy, overprivileged, entitled weenies who kept pursuing Mark Zuckerberg in court even after accepting a gigantic settlement for their somewhat tenuous claim that they were in large part responsibl ... More >>

There Are No Conservatives Worth Following on Social Media

"Follow liberally," exhorts Liz Heron. "You never know who will lead you to discover something unique or important." This is one of "The Rules of Social Media" that Fast Company thinks we all should adhere to. Heron, who runs social media for the Wall Street Journal, doesn't mean "liberally" in a p ... More >>

Yes, We Can Blame Facebook and its CFO for Stock Debacle

It's easy, and to a large degree proper, to blame the people who bought into Facebook's dog of an IPO for their own losses. It was no secret that the company's prospects were highly uncertain. But that doesn't mean that others can't be blamed as well, or that investors are the only ones hurt by the ... More >>

Investing in Buzz Is a Loser's Game

There will likely never again be anything quite like the dotcom boom-and-bust of the late '90s. But that doesn't mean that everybody learned their lesson about investing in companies with questionable business models -- or at least in those with outsized expectations for growth. It only means that t ... More >>

It Ain't Easy Being Google

As the dominant search engine, Google inevitably finds itself in the position of deciding for the world which information is important and which information is less so. Just as inevitably, this leads to controversy, and tough choices being forced on the Internet's dominant search engine. The latest ... More >>

Chronicle Maintains News Pipeline With Journatic, Company That Used Fake Bylines

Two weeks ago, This American Life exposed news-provider Journatic's practice of using fake bylines to protect writers from lawsuits and to disguise that some articles were being reported and written by low-wage overseas workers. Journatic sold those articles to major American newspapers, including t ... More >>

The Internet Red Scare

Congressman Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty organization sounds like it's worried that Commies, or maybe Russian-style state capitalists, are plotting to take over the Internet. In a manifesto issued last week, the group warns that "the road to tyranny is being paved by a collectivist-Industrial com ... More >>

Turns Out, The Porn Industry Is as Sleazy as The Music Business

When you read a description like "Las Vegas attorney ... who represents a major adult film company," it's a safe bet that the fellow being described probably isn't fighting poverty or working on a human-rights campaign. And in this case, that bet would be the right one. Marc Randazza has been busil ... More >>

Bear Seduction and the Copyright Conundrum

This will probably stand as the best story of the week: Ars Technica reports that Matthew Inman, creator of the web comic "The Oatmeal" has raised $100,000 from his fans to counter a lawyer's demand that he fork over $20,000 to a fifth-rate Website that Inman had complained was stealing his work. N ... More >>

'Men Invented the Internet,' New York Times flatly declares

It was the thud heard 'round the world: The opening sentence of a story about sexism in Silicon Valley anchoring the front page of the New York Times' Sunday business section. "Men Invented the Internet," declared David Streitfeld, and it was impossible not to do a double-take, even if you didn't kn ... More >>

Facebook's Swoon a Symptom of Wall Street's Sickness

Facebook's newly issued shares lost 11 percent of their value on Monday, their first full day of public trading after Friday's snafu-filled IPO. That's a loss of $11.5 billion. Tuesday, the fall continued, taking the stock down another 3 percent. Too many shares were issued at too high a price by an ... More >>

Drifting Away from Twitter, Toward Reality

I've been known to strongly defend Twitter, which some people have found surprising because of my default digital skepticism. But of course, I was skeptical of it at first (if nothing else, because of the name, which is stupid), until I started using it. It really can be used for quite practical pur ... More >>

Desperate Newspapers Pin Hopes on Annoyed Readers

News publishers have always treated readers like commodities -- because that's what readers are. The real customers for publishers aren't readers, but advertisers. Readers are the product. It's not quite that simple, of course, and more enlightened publishers treat readers with respect and cover the ... More >>

Center for Copyright Information: An Anti-piracy Measure That Makes Sense

About seven years ago, I read something online about a then-recent episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Overcome with the desire to watch the episode for myself, but without a subscription to HBO, I fired up LimeWire, the now-defunct file-sharing software, and quickly found the episode I wanted. An hou ... More >>

Why Are There So Few Black Chefs in High-End Restaurants?

​Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune asked a question of its city's chefs and restaurateurs that could also be asked in the Bay Area: Why are there so few black chefs working in higher-end restaurants? As reporter Christopher Borelli phrased the problem, "Interviews with scores of black chefs and ... More >>

SOPA, Limbaugh, Komen: This Is What Happens When the Mob is Right

​There is far too much cheerleading for the "wisdom of crowds." The undiscerning among us, often motivated by an understandable (if often mindless) disgust with institutions, tend to employ buzzwords like "crowdsourcing" and to preach the idea that "the people" are always right even if "the people ... More >>

Copyright Owners Continue to Tilt at Windmills

​Given the intensity of the debates over digital piracy, you'd almost think that if one side or the other were to "win," the question would be decided: If critics of copyright holders were victorious, piracy would run rampant and the media industry would be brought to its knees; if the copyright o ... More >>

News Sites Can't Rely on Advertising

​I'm not about to pretend that I know how to solve the economic dilemma that the news business finds itself in. I've been studying the matter, and writing about it off and on, for 16 years, and, like everyone, I really don't know. Maybe it will be nonprofits. Maybe paywalls. Maybe micropayments wi ... More >>

Sorry, Twitter, if You're in the Media Business, You're a Media Company

​Given how Silicon Valley moguls flee from the term "media company," you'd almost think it was as bad as "child-porn merchant." But whether they like it or not, companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter are media companies. They don't have precisely the same business models as News Corp., Disne ... More >>

What Happens When You Don't Test Recipes? Lost Readers, Even Lawsuits

Andrew Huff/FlickrThe Chicago Tribune's test kitchen: It doesn't need to be big to be effective.​Last month, a Chilean court ruled that a major newspaper there had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to readers who'd made a recipe for churros that it had published. Why? Well, the recipe had c ... More >>

MySpace Says It's Bringing TV to the Web -- But It Isn't

​Specific Media, now the owners of MySpace, took Justin Timberlake on stage with them Monday night at the Consumer Electronic Show, and with a lot of fanfare, they announced ... essentially nothing. The purported big news is that MySpace is revolutionizing television by bringing it to the Web an ... More >>

GoDaddy's Wall-to-Wall Awfulness

​Every time GoDaddy makes the news, as it has over the past week by supporting the widely reviled Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), the question naturally arises: Waitaminute, this is a domain registrar, right? Right. GoDaddy is in perhaps the dullest business this side of term life insurance, and ... More >>

Wikipedia: Should it Go Dark to Protest the Stop Online Privacy Act?

​Should Wikipedia shut itself down to protest the bizarrely clueless anti-piracy measures Congress is considering? As with many things about Wikipedia (such as whether an encyclopedia that anybody can edit is a good idea), it's not an easy question to answer. Would it even be effective? It's har ... More >>

India Wants Facebook to Prescreen User Content

​Sometimes it's hard to refrain from going libertarian. Okay, not really, but whenever governments try to pass or enforce absolutely clueless, sledgehammer-blunt laws governing the Internet, it's a challenge not to simply give up hope that enough politicians will ever understand the basic concepts ... More >>

Restaurateurs and Yelpers: Now Friends but Not BFFs

Not exactly BFFs.​It's been a few years since Delfina Pizzeria printed up T-shirts with its one-star Yelp reviews, and the tension between restaurateurs and Yelpers seems to have simmered down, reports the Chicago Tribune this week. But that doesn't mean restaurateurs have learned to love the sit ... More >>

Groupon's Big Bowl of Problems

​Groupon, it appears, means to get rich or die tryin'. On Friday, it updated a regulatory filing indicating that it is scaling back its IPO plans. Less than five months ago, when it first filed, the company said it planned to raise about $750 million. Now that's been reduced to $540 million. The e ... More >>

Google Thumbs Nose at Antitrust Regulators

​You can't say Google doesn't have balls. Despite increasingly heavy antitrust scrutiny by the federal government, the Internet behemoth is charging ahead with a deal that brings all kinds of potential for cornering a market. It will pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility, a leading maker of hand ... More >>

Filthy Fast Food Playgrounds, Michelle Obama Eats a Burger (Gasp!)

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. 1. Dirty fast food slides. The Chicago Tribune/LA Times profile an Arizona woman who is evaluating the playgrounds at fast food restaurants by taking video of the filth and sending s ... More >>

Mee Mee's Cow Ears and Coin Cookies, the Horror of Bycatch

​ Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. Mee Mee Bakery's macaroons.​1. Mee Mee's sweets. Rice Plate Journal, my block-by-block survey of Chinatown restaurants, is finally hitting the dense restaurant zone of Powell an ... More >>

Addiction, Tradition, and Oyster Shells: Today in Great Food Writing

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. Lot of great writing out there this week: The feature in this week's New York Times dining section profiles young cooks and entrepreneurs taking over the family business -- dim sum ... More >>

Your Rags to Their Riches: Donated Clothes May Fund International Fugitive

Foursquare: The Silliest Thing Ever Invented

​Before I started using Twitter a couple of years ago, I, like many people then and now, assumed it must be the silliest thing ever invented. The stupid name didn't (and doesn't) help. Mainly, I thought people used it for telling the world what they had for lunch, but I then looked into the matter ... More >>

Facebook Paying People to Watch Ads Won't Work

Caitlinator/Flickr​I'm frankly amazed that in all the coverage of Facebook's plan to pay users to watch ads, nobody -- as far as I can tell -- has mentioned the several companies that tried to do something similar during the (original) dot-com boom, and failed spectacularly. The most famous of th ... More >>

Reading the Beard-Nominated Stories, Tasting Tobacco (and Not Liking It)

Bert23/FlickrSmoke up all you want. But why do you feel the need put tobacco in my Manhattan?​​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media. 1. Beard Journalism Award finalists, part 1. Over the course of the next few days, I'm ... More >>

United Airlines Forgets Young Passenger, Force-Feeds Him McDonald's

First United gets everyone to refer to Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue' as 'The United Airlines Song' ... and now this​United Airlines is facing a brewing Internet-driven PR disaster following a boy's horrible, horrible flight out of San Francisco.  Julien Reid, 9, has told his parents that he w ... More >>

Does Large-Scale Urban Fish Farming Make Sense Here?

Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago TribuneA student at the Chicago High School of Agricultural Science checks on an experimental tank of tilapia.​Our favorite morsel from the blogs. Mission fishin': While the idea of urban farming continues to crackle through the zeitgeist, for most of us it's still more ... More >>

Get Touched

Overthrow Capitalism! Maybe.

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Round One!

Get KO'd at the Cow Palace

War, What Is It Good For?

Absolutely nothing -- unless you're Clear Channel Communications

Dog Bites

Overpriced Sports Star Joins Local Team; Light Reading; A Match Made in Heaven; A Suggestion for Rearranging the Deck Chairs at Salon.com

Unspun

Suspicious Minds

Letters

Final Deadline

David Burgin is legendary as a rough-and-tumble newspaper editor. But the legend is full of astonishing contradictions, and its last chapter may include the outcome of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by one of his proteges at the Oakland Tribune.