David Carr On 2013 In Media

Press freedom, Edward Snowden, and the Pope as Person of the Year. We’ll look back at a year in media with New York Times columnist David Carr.

It’s the information age, and a big year for media – news media.  Silicon Valley moving into the biz.  Amazon’s Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post.  Twitter and Facebook and Buzzfeed becoming a generation’s grazing ground for news.  New York Times media and culture critic David Carr has as big and knowing an eye on the realm as anyone out there.  He’s watching Time magazine name the pope “Person of the Year.”  NSA leaker Edward Snowden break spying revelations.  "60 Minutes" apologize.  China squeeze reporters.  This hour On Point:  The year in media, with hot thinker, observer, David Carr.
 -- Tom Ashbrook

David Carr, media and culture critic for the New York Times, where he writes the Media Equation column. (@carr2n)

New York Times: Where Freedom of the Press Is Muffled --"As Mr. Biden — and Thomas Jefferson before him — pointed out, a free press is essential to a functioning democracy. Whether it’s Beijing or Britain, it might be a good time for governments to stop trying to prevent the news media from doing its job and address what that work has revealed."

The Atlantic: I Thought I Knew How Big Upworthy Was on Facebook: Then I Saw This -- "The most impressive thing about Upworthy is that it publishes just 225 articles a month, according to this data. That's one for every 508 articles on Yahoo! The site is so much more dominant than other news sites on Facebook that when you graph its Facebook-shares-per-article, it looks like a skyscraper dropped into a desert. Upworthy averages about 75,000 Facebook likes per article, 12x more than BuzzFeed."

The New Yorker: The President And the Press — "It has been apparent for several years that the Obama Administration has departed from the First Amendment norms established during the seven Presidencies since Branzburg. Holder has overseen six prosecutions of government officials for aiding the press, more than were brought by all previous Administrations combined. Even after the A.P. controversy erupted, Obama said that he would make 'no apologies' for zealous press-leak investigations, since unauthorized disclosures of secrets jeopardized the lives of the soldiers and the spies he sent in danger’s way."