It turns out that pornography and journalism have even more in common than media critics think: the Internet is wrecking business models in both industries in similar ways.The woes of journalism get the most ink. Lines upon lines have been written about the inexorable decline of the journalistic profession—most of them scribbled by nervous, hand-wringing […]

First it was Paul Krugman, denouncing the inadequacy of the Obama administration’s response to unemployment and slow growth. Then it was Maureen Dowd, unleashing a fiery salvo at what she sees as the President’s shortcomings.And now, it is “Et tu, Nick Kristof?” as the Times‘ most indefatigable voice for human rights and the protection of […]

Early news from Europe this morning: the relief from the Spanish weekend Spanish bank bailout has already begun to fade. Spanish bond yields are rising despite the bailout and Italian bond yields are also rising. (Rising bond yields mean that investors demand higher interest rates to hold the debt of a given country.)  In the […]

Reports that the public is losing “faith in science” have caused a lot of chin stroking, head wagging and even some and finger pointing among the intelligentsia — especially since the studies point to a particularly sharp decline among conservatives.Via Meadia isn’t so sure all this is on the right; the last time we looked, […]

Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin boldly underlined many of the trends we’ve been tracking here at Via Media for a long while now: the writing is on the wall for many blue institutions, which have grown increasingly unpopular and have proven to be unsustainable as the financial crisis has ground on.Walker’s victory dealt a severe […]

Argentina’s President did something so amazing today that it made the world news: she announced that she’s converting her last dollar bank account into pesos.But don’t worry; this isn’t a story about the decline of the dollar.Argentina wasted the 20th century lurching from one ill-considered economic experiment to the next. Many worked temporarily; the country’s […]

Dragged down by inclement weather in soybean producing regions of the country, recently published numbers from Brazil’s statistical agency were absolutely dismal: GDP grew only 0.2 per cent quarter-on-quarter and a meager 0.8 year-on-year. Still, the 7.3 per cent contraction in agricultural output is not what really bothers local and foreign analysts.The deeper problem is […]

This week’s episode on the US-China squabble channel is about pollution. The American embassy in Beijing has been tweeting hourly pollution levels from a device installed on its roof for about three years, something the Chinese have never been comfortable with. This week the Chinese officially demanded that foreign embassies cease broadcasting independent assessments of […]

The $125 billion Spanish bank bailout announced this weekend is more of the same: another temporary dose of pain meds that (we hope) prevents a market meltdown for a while but does not address the underlying conditions.Fair enough, in a way; Via Meadia has no desire to see a full blown European financial panic and […]

Turkey’s increasing presence and clout in its neighborhood is expanding further abroad to east Africa. The Christian Science Monitor reports: At the conference [on Somalia, held in Istanbul], Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized other nations for lacking Turkey’s on-the-ground presence in Somalia.“Without living there you cannot devise the correct policies and you cannot help. […]