The purpose of today’s post is to introduce you to an email I find well-researched and instructive. Its author is Judd Legum, his website and email are Popular Information, Click on the Subscribe bottom on that page to receive his usually daily email article. Popular Information is published by Substack, a new (2017) facilitator of email newsletter publishing. Popular Information does not depend on advertising.
Judd Legum is young (41), but experienced in the world of online journalism. At age 26 in 2005, Mr. Legum founded ThinkProgress, an online progressive news site that grew to a 40 person newsroom and 10 million unique visitors a month. He has an undergraduate degree in Public Policy analysis from Pomona College and a J.D. from Georgetown University. He shares with me many worries about the effects of social media and propaganda on the minds of media consumers. This WIRED article, Judd Legum Wants to Fix News With a Newsletter explains Legum’s intent and underlying concerns.
I encourage you to click and read Legum’s Murder exposes Facebook’s Boogaloo problem. This article hit my inbox as I was writing about Matt Shea’s inciting armed protestors against Governor Inslee’s Covid-19 lockdown. It resonated even more as armed vigilantes (“militia”) appeared in response to bogus Facebook rumors of “Antifa” showing up at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Spokane, Sandpoint and many other communities.
I recommend browsing his recent series discussing Facebook, how Facebook works, and the recent exodus of advertisers from Facebook as a protest of Zuckerberg’s unwillingness to limit inflammatory, hateful, and deceitful posts.
That’s all I have energy for today. Please consider signing up for Judd Legum’s Popular Information email. This sort of thing might be the future of thoughtful journalism.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry