Mel Stanfill

I find myself unable to muster a blog post this week. Not because I’m busier than usual, but because events this week have worn me down too much to try to contextualize them or think any big smart thoughts in their general direction. As one tweet put it:

So instead of a blog post—since (as I learned recently) one’s arrangement of other people’s work is considered creative labor enough to copyright (West Publishing Co. v. Mead Data Central, Inc., 1986), and I figure that also means it’s intellectual labor enough to be worth putting  up—a curated list of things I’ve found useful in making sense of the past week’s events. And yes, I could have (and maybe should have) used Storify, but I am making you visit my site instead.

On Boston and media:

 

Daren Brabham’s The Boston Marathon Bombings, 4Chan’s Think Tank, and a Modest Proposal for an Emergency Crowdsourced Investigation Platform at Culture Digitally, suggesting the benefits of crowdsourcing investigations.

And the rebuttal to such arguments:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, potential downsides to the constant flow of information:

 

 

 

 

 

Key Question: Has the sum of CNN’s terrible coverage decisions reached critical mass? (Or, as an alternative measure, New York Post level? The Apology the New York Post Should Have Issued, via @mikemonello and @kouredios)

First, CNN had Steubenville and only worrying about the boys’ ruined lives, then reporting an arrest inaccurately, and then:

 

 

On Boston in Post-9/11 context:

Stay the Hand of Vengeance: From Guantánamo to Boston, why Americans have a dangerous tendency to overreact to terrorism at Foreign Policy

 

 

 

 

 

Bronx idiots beat up Bangladeshi man hours after Boston bombing for looking like an ‘Arab’  (via @willbrooker)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And for the other event that left me disappointed in humanity this week, on the defeat of background check legislation in the Senate:

For the Love of God, Just Call It a Filibuster at The Atlantic

Curbing Filibuster Abuse policy paper from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

 

Next week, regular blog post, promise.