WHAT I’M READING
April 2021
• Elevation – Stephen King
• If it Bleeds – Stephen King
• Finders Keepers – Stephen King
• End of Watch – Stephen King
• Riding the Bullet – Stephen King
March 2021
• Later – Stephen King
• The Institute – Stephen King
February 2021
• The Naked Mind – Annie Grace
• Total Catastrophe Living – Jon Kabat-Zinn
January 2021
• A Time for Mercy – John Grisham
December 2020
• The Midnight Library – Matt Haig
November 2020
• A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
• Calm the F*ck Down – Sarah Knight
October 2020
• Rage – Bob Woodward
September 2020
• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe – Charles Yu
• Becoming – Michelle Obama
August 2020
• The Darwin Affair – Tim Mason
• Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
July 2020
• The Book of Joy – Dalai Lama & Desmond Tutu
• Educated: A Memoir – Tara Westover
June 2020
• Everything is F*cked – Mark Manson
• White Fragility – Robin Diangelo
May 2020
• The Library Book – Susan Orlean
• Beyond Anger – Thomas J. Herbin, Ph.D
April 2020
• Alexander Hamilton – Ron Chernow
February 2020
• Just Mercy • Bryan Stevenson
• Talking to Strangers • Malcolm Gladwell
January 2020
• The Great Believers • Rebecca Makkai
December 2019
• Armada – Ernest Cline
• Gulp – Mary Roach
November 2019
• Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson
August 2019
• The Outsider – Stephen King
• Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide – Shanto Iyengar
July 2019
• Atomic Habits – James Clear
• The Tattooist of Auschwitz – Heather Morris
• Believe Me – JP Delaney
June 2019
• Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
• Buddhism for Beginners – Jack Kornfield
Donald Trump and the post-truth era
A few hours before the polls closed on Election Day, the manager of my apartment complex sent out a note saying that all doors save the front one would be closed, that all residents needed to have their security fobs on them at all times because the Miami police chief had announced that violence was expected and eminent.
The Washington Post op-ed process
So, after six drafts, five weeks of writing, rewriting, revising and redoing, my op-ed about the – now kiboshed – move of the Republican National Convention to Jacksonville has been published in the Washington Post. Whew!
William Barr and the GOP’s demonization of a free American press
I was struck by something this week while listening to an interview of Attorney General William Barr on “Morning Edition.” Specifically, his repeated complaints about “the media” this and “the media” that, as though news reporters and pundits were part of some vast, faceless entity bent on the destruction and dismemberment of the Trump administration.
The FIU campus: spooky, quiet and extremely closed
Wednesday afternoon I made a brief – and authorized – visit to the closed FIU Biscayne Bay Campus. Though all of us – faculty and staff – had been sent to work from home more than a month ago, we could ask for special double-secret permission to return to campus if we needed to.
Los Angeles area community papers to shutter
Three stepsisters – the Glendale News-Press, Burbank Leader and La Cañada Valley Sun – died this week of complications from COVID-19. The News-Press was 115, the Leader (nee Review) was 112 while the Valley Sun was 74.
Teaching in the age of (novel) coronavirus
With all of the madness going on about the novel coronavirus, one thing I've been struggling with is how to appropriately grade work. Relatedly, should the university allow a pass/fail option? Does it not matter because graduate schools will (likely) take any grade dips this semester into account?
Deadline reporting, college edition
This has been quite the week. On Monday, I led a group four students to Southwest Florida to report on two satellite caucuses put on by the Iowa Democratic Party in St. Petersburg and Port Charlotte. It was a long couple days... I think I put in my 40 before noon Tuesday.
Kobe Bryant, social media and newsroom culture
At this point, there's not that much more to be said on the topic, but I figured I'd share a few of the things that struck me about the coverage and the aftermath.
Teaching local news coverage
I work in a news desert. The journalism department at Florida International University is housed in at the Biscayne Bay Campus, which is in North Miami. Northeast Miami-Dade County, in general, gets little attention from either of the two large dailies – The Miami Herald and South Florida Sun Sentinel – partly because it is relatively far away from their respective centers of political gravity and partly, I suspect, because there aren’t a lot of subscribers out this way. It's time to do something about it.
PUBLISHED WORK (2018 – Present)
Broward/Palm Beach New Times
• Coral Springs Comics Shop Calls It Quits Even as D&D Thrives
Miami New Times
• Former FIU Journalism Professor Leaves Lasting Legacy of Empathy
• Dozens of People in Miami-Dade Have No Legal Name or Identity
• Miami Crew Braves Wind, Chill, and Rain to Win La TraverSeine Dragon Boat Race in Paris
• Snowbirds Vote for Klobuchar at Satellite Iowa Caucuses in Southwest Florida
Miami Herald
• Man spends more than 30 unpaid years tending to the dead at Miami Cemetery
Los Angeles Times
• Commentary: A long, bumpy ride along with the Parkland teens in search of gun reform
San Diego Union-Tribune
• Commentary: A shooting and a tax fraud scheme has me thinking about forgiveness
The Washington Post
• With Jacksonville canceled, can Trump win Florida?
Get updates about upcoming shows and published work
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