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April 14, 2014 Andy Cush

Today, Banksy updated his website with a new work depicting two lovers who gaze into their respective cell phone screens, mid-embrace. It’s a clever if unsubtle comment on the ways we use technology to mediate social interaction, and it looks a lot like an Atlantic magazine cover from 2012. The image, for a story titled “Is Facebook Making Us […]

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April 7, 2014 Marina Galperina

We know that Russia Today aka “RT” is a ridiculous front for Kremlin propaganda. We know about Putin’s massive crackdown across the Russian media landscape. What’s left? Calvert Journal has published a comprehensive “media compass” in the style of New York Magazine’s approval matrix, ranking the left-over outlets from lowbrow to highbrow and state-controlled to independent. Turns […]

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March 19, 2014 Andy Cush

New York media nostalgists may find occasion to get misty-eyed this morning as the New York Observer launches its revamped look, featuring smaller pages, a tabloid layout, and white — not pale pink — paper. Joseph Meyer, CEO of Observer Media Group, explained the change in an internal memo published by Capital New York. Our new print format, […]

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March 14, 2014 Andy Cush

Today’s New York Times features a full-page ad from an organization affiliated with the Occupy Gezi protests commemorating the life of Berkin Elvan, a 15-year-old boy who was killed by a police teargas canister during a demonstration. The group, called Gezi Democracy Movement, funded the ad on Indiegogo. “Fifteen-year-old Berkin Elvan died after 269 days in a […]

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March 11, 2014 Marina Galperina

The New York Times notoriously avoids printing curse words. They don’t print “fucks.” They don’t print “Fucked Up,” even when reviewing their album. They don’t even like printing “screw.” Watching their writers and editors weasel out of shit not fit to print is like reading absurdist literature. There’s Tumblr that highlights various instances of the strange shit that […]

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February 23, 2014 Bucky Turco

On Friday, the New York Post “reported” the following story that likely made even the staunchest of NYPD supporters gasp in horror: Two Brooklyn cops sideswiped a parked SUV, then arrested a man sitting in the passenger seat of the vehicle, accusing him of damaging their car, a suit charges. And the officers would have […]

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February 14, 2014 Andy Cush

Is that it will give many more people access to everyone’s favorite local news channel,  NY1. According to Capital New York, the terms of Comcast’s 2011 buyout of NBCUniversal dictate that it must make any cable channels it owns available to the other providers at a fair rate. Because Time Warner owns NY1, and Comcast will own […]

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February 10, 2014 Andy Cush

Back in October, the New Jersey Star-Ledger endorsed Chris Christie for a second term as governor of that state, citing his “remarkable political talent” and “skill at playing Trenton’s inside game” while admitting it had “deep reservations” about him as a public official. It was a strange, bifurcated endorsement, and now, Tom Moran, the paper’s editor, sounds […]

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February 6, 2014 Andy Cush

In a bid for “hipster”-baiting buzz that makes your average New York Times trend piece look tame by comparison, the New York Daily News is reporting that residents of three totally grimy, starving-artist neighborhoods — Bushwick (average one-bedroom rental as of December 2013: $1,990), Greenpoint ($2,859), and Williamsburg ($3,443) — actually wear clean clothes! Some of them even have […]

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January 29, 2014 Andy Cush

The most exciting part of last night’s State of the Union broadcast came after the speech itself, on NY1. During a post-SOTU interview, reporter Michael Scotto asked Staten Island Republican Rep. Michael Grimm a question regarding his campaign finances, which are currently under federal investigation. Grimm didn’t like that, and stormed off. The action started when […]

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