Gary Knell’s departure for the National Geographic Society “continues the rapid turnover at the top of the audio and digital news outlet over the past few years. Knell took over the top job in December 2011 after the former chief executive, Vivian Schiller, had resigned nine months earlier amid fallout from two major controversies under her leadership. Schiller lasted just 26 months in the job.”
Category: today’s top story
Ruth Asawa, 87, Who Emerged An Artist From Internment Camps
“Her family spent the first five months of detention in stables at the Santa Anita Park racetrack. It was there that three animators from the Walt Disney Studios taught her to draw.”
Jasper Johns’s Longtime Assistant Charged With Stealing And Selling Johns’s Art
James Meyer, 51, “was arrested for stealing at least 22 works from his employer and selling them through an unnamed New York gallery for $6.5 million, falsely telling the dealer and buyers that Mr. Johns had given them to him as presents.”
Detroit Artist Puts Price Tags On City Monuments – Going Out Of Business Sale
Driven by Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing, Vile and a small crew of people tagged some of Detroit’s most iconic landmarks Wednesday with pink, yellow and green DayGlo price tags that included the message: “Motor City Going Out of Business Sale.”
Online Micropayments Could Transform Journalism, Media And Music Businesses
The microtransactions made possible by services such as Bitcoin and Ripple “could let users read the rest of a New York Times article for a few cents instead of signing up for a full monthly subscription, … or ‘pay for Wi-Fi internet metered by the minute (or second!) if you just need to check one email’ or ‘support your favorite artists or coders with a tip’.”
The Downside Of A World Literature
“People writing and reading in different languages (even if one language, English, predominates) about different histories and cultures and ideas: who could be against that? Still, in a sick, sad world, it’s hard not to be suspicious of anything as wholesome as World Literature.”
Singer Eydie Gorme, 84
“[The] bouncy, bantering, big-voiced pop singer and entertainer … as a solo act and with her husband, Steve Lawrence, performed on the air, in clubs, onstage and on records for more than 50 years.”
Werner Herzog Directs A Corporate-Sponsored PSA
From One Second to the Next, a 35-minute documentary made as part of AT&T’s “It Can Wait” stop-texting-while-driving campaign, is “quite likely the greatest driver’s ed film of all time.”
New York Loses Residents At A Fast Rate (But Gains So Many More Who Move There)
“From 2000-2010, the New York MSA lost over 1.3 million people. On net during that Census decade, 80,000 more people moved from NYC to Philadelphia than the other way around. Over that same time period, Detroit bled about 215,000 people. New York City is six times the failure that Detroit is in terms of attraction.”
Why TV Is Now So Much Smarter Than Movies
“There are many reasons why post-millennial TV has switched places with movies as the medium of choice for people seeking smart diversion, but one of them is this: in the same way the middle has dropped out of class categories and political discourse in North America, it’s also disappeared from popular movies.”