At 3 p.m. on March 31, the staff at Indianapolis ABC affiliate WRTV was prepping for the 5, 6, and 7 p.m. broadcasts. By the end of the night, most of them were unemployed. Circle City Broadcasting — which already owned two other Indianapolis stations — completed its $83 million…
Category: Media
Geography
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Adams County, PA Sheriff: “We Did Not Arrest Afroman. Check the Map.”
Rapper Afroman — whose real name is Joseph Foreman— won a lawsuit against the Adams County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio after deputies raided his home in 2022, and he turned the footage into music videos titled “Will You Help Me Repair My Door” and “Lemon Pound Cake.” The officers sued…
Culture
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CBS News Radio Dies at 100: What We Just Lost
CBS News Radio is done. Not struggling. Not “pivoting to digital.” Done. After a century—through the Depression, World War II, Kennedy’s assassination, 9/11, every hurricane, every blackout, every moment when the power grid failed and the internet went dark—CBS News Radio kept broadcasting. Until now. David Ellison’s Skydance Media just…
Culture
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France Just Knighted Its Last Newspaper Hawker — And With Him Goes an Entire Era
Ali Akbar has been selling newspapers on the streets of Paris for 50 years. Seven days a week. Ten hours a day. Rain or shine. On a secondhand bicycle, weaving between cafés in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, shouting “Ça y est!” — his signature catchphrase meaning “That’s it!” Last month, French President Emmanuel…
Culture
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The Super Bowl Halftime Show Has a Height Requirement
The news, such as it is, is that there’s a height requirement for people who want to be part of the Super Bowl halftime show. Not the headliner. Not the star whose name goes on the announcement graphic. The field cast. The dancers, performers, and bodies whose job it is…
Journalism
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Tony Dokoupil’s First Night, the Pause, and the Edit That Followed
On Tony Dokoupil’s first night anchoring the CBS Evening News, the show briefly stopped pretending it wasn’t live. The moment came during a transition. Dokoupil moved from one segment to the next and discovered — in real time — that the handoff wasn’t where he expected it to be. The…
Culture
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7 Guinness World Records You Can Aim to Set in 2026
Guinness World Records has published a list called “The seven records you should set in 2026.” Not could. Should. Which already tells you something about where we are. The institution built on documenting extremes is now pointing at blank spaces and saying, please, someone occupy these. What follows isn’t a…
Culture
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Bizarre ER Injuries and the Quiet Collapse of Shame
Bizarre ER Injuries and the End of “Please Don’t” The headline did all the work. No irony. No flourish. Just a sentence from the New York Post that landed like a dropped tray in a quiet room. You didn’t want to click it. You clicked it anyway. Because a headline…
Culture
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Bureaucratic Absurdity Has Entered Its Leaf Era
A Leaf, a Fine, and Bureaucratic Absurdity The scene is painfully ordinary: an 86-year-old man sitting outside in Skegness, England, minding his business, when a rogue leaf — dry, brown, doing what leaves do — blows straight into his mouth. He spits it out. The state intervenes. This is bureaucratic…
AI
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120,000 Home Cameras Hacked — And Privacy Might Be Dead
Every once in a while, a story comes along that makes you stop and think, Wow… we’ve crossed a line we can’t uncross. This is one of those stories. South Korean police arrested four people for hacking more than 120,000 home and business cameras. That number itself is disturbing. What…