There’s a new study published by the University of North Carolina’s School of Media and Journalism detailing a pretty serious threat by the forces of Stupid. The report finds that since many newspapers are now owned by hedge funds and other outside corporate groups (with no particular sense of civic responsibility);

Here’s a great idea for newspapers everywhere: Turn fact-checking into a fun animated GIF. It’s kind of a face-palm, why-isn’t-this-happening-everywhere moment, actually. And that’s why it’s a great idea – because of it’s surprising simplicity. Animated GIFs tend to get more engagement in social media You want as many people

The good people at xkcd had some viral success earlier this week with a cartoon graph of human history and the acceleration of climate change relative to the last 22,000 years. I don’t know how long the graph has actually been around, but it definitely popped up in a couple places

This is the second video game I’ve stumbled across in the past few months that used interactivity to create a visceral emotional response to a contemporary event. There’s this moment of recognition as you’re playing where everything that’s wrong with the situation becomes more real. It’s persuasive, and it’s something

Whenever there’s a seemingly universally accepted narrative surrounding a particular news story, On the Media (OTM for us Brooke Gladstone fan-boys) seems to be the place to get that prevailing wisdom checked. They’re reliably the source of that much needed “other side” of the story, filling in gaps in the

  Visualizations have finally become a respected language of business. So who better than Harvard Business Review to give you a crash course on how to speak fluent chart. What is it? A beginner’s guide to viewing and creating good data viz. Think of it as a much needed, easy to

It seems like once every few months John Oliver just blows my mind. This made the rounds in the jouralism social media in a major way when it came out — probably because it cuts right down to the bone for a lot of folks who work at (or used

Charles Duhigg, in chapter 8 of his latest book Smarter, Faster, Better, perfectly illustrates the challenge of, as well as outlines a solution to, information overload. 6 years ago Patrick (aka General Knowledge) and I unknowingly dove head first into this world of cognitive psychology. It was filled with high-falutin

I stumbled across a juicy morsel about a video game called Easy Level Life that was featured on Kill Screen and Okayplayer recently. It’s an interesting piece of information translation, taking a commonly asked question (mostly by white people who’ve never had a negative experience with the police): “What did they

No that’s not the title of a long lost Bond flick (#TeamBrosnan). It’s the main takeaway of a recent episode of one of my podcast obsessions: Only Human, from long time War on Stupid Idol WNYC. The episode provides a few of the starkest cautionary tales about what’s at stake

Data Viz O.G. There’s a really interesting article over on Atlas Obscura about one bonnie Scot named William Playfair, who began making illustrated charts and graphs in the late-18th century — one of the early (or earliest) practitioners of modern data visualization). Unfortunately he lived at a time when the

With a tagline like “Laugh Harder, grow smarter.” it’s no surprise that this band of  creatives has caught our eye. Using hilarious critiques and analyses of pop-cultural artifacts like TV shows, movies, video games and books, these youtube videos manage to keep you entertained long enough for them to slip in

Brave new world There is very little doubt in my mind that the next front in the War on Stupid will play out across a field of algorithms. It already is to an increasing degree, as people discover endless mountains of content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al. There’s so much