I had a whole week at home for the first time since [checks calendar] August. Some of that spare time let me finish bringing a story to publication at a new client, and some of the rest went into attending a conference hosted by the same client.
This piece on stagnating support among U.S. tech companies for transparency reports had a prolonged and sometimes-painful gestation period. First I had another site interested to run it, then the other site decided it did not want the story. Then I had some anxious moments wondering if anybody anywhere would want to pay me for this (hello, impostor syndrome) before an editor at The Atlantic green-lighted my pitch. This time, the approval stuck, leading to the first story I’ve sold to one of my favorite publications.
In the interest of transparency–as in, to explain the screengrab I took this morning–management chose to swap out the initial headline after the story was posted. That’s not an uncommon occurrence in the news business these days.
It’s been a busy week, and I still have to pack for a flight tomorrow morning. (I’m off to San Francisco to speak on a panel about “Blogger Language 4.0” at PR Summit.) I’ll have to be a little more concise than usual in these descriptions…
And speaking of the future of journalism, here I argued that the ability of a local-news site called ARLNow.com to hire its first full-time reporter is probably a better sign of the health of my profession than Nate Silver’s headline-making move from the New York Times to ESPN.
I wrote up the speech Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) gave at the Center for American Progress about government surveillance and the secret body of law that barely constrains it.
The number in the title of this week’s episode refers to the U.S.’s ranking in a recent survey of broadband access; tune in to see host Denise Howell, Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn and me talk about the state of our broadband market and a grab-bag of other issues.
The last time I spoke at a monthly meeting of the D.C. area’s Apple user group was in February 2011. A few things have changed since then (my ability to get lost on the roads of George Mason University’s Fairfax campus is not among them), so I enjoyed catching up with my friends at WAP.
A reader wanted to know a cheap way to get a laptop online during a long cross-country trip, so I suggested some prepaid data services–most reselling Sprint’s old WiMax network. I also shared a tip about using mobile sites when you’re starved for bandwidth, one of the things I’ve resorted to in the face of uncooperative WiFi at conferences and elsewhere.
9/29/2019: Tech Companies Are Quietly Phasing Out a Major Privacy Safeguard, The Atlantic
Rob Pegoraro 