J. Max Robins

Three months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Fox News has yet to prove it can dominate with primetime hate the way it once did.

Tucker Carlson has been targeting what is —in his mind — a tech-billionaire cabal that wants to silence free speech from the political right. But the tech behemoths were doing what they always do: making decisions based on what was best for the bottom line.

The Donald’s evil media genius may not be enough to win the White House again, but it is still enough to have nearly 70 million people vote for him and to no doubt keep Trumpism alive for the foreseeable future.

With all the unfair and unbalanced shilling Fox News does for Donald Trump, it may come as a surprise that Rupert Murdoch may actually be rooting for Joe Biden. As for Jeff Zucker, a Biden win could mean tanking ratings for CNN.

In the days since Techonomy Detroit, I'm more hopeful about my hometown than I have been since I left for New York to go to Columbia University 30 years ago. Yet before I headed to the conference, when I joked with media and tech pals that I was on my way to “the Paris of Southeastern Michigan,” I’d get a laugh or a look of grave concern. In their eyes, a place I love was a disaster zone, a dear family member on the critical list.

In the wake of Jeff Bezos’s purchase of The Washington Post, he would do the journalism business a big favor by cutting a similar deal for The Los Angeles Times. And while he's at it, the Amazon multi-billionaire should snap up the seven other newspapers owned by the Times' parent, the Tribune Company. They include The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant, and The Orlando Sentinel. Since the Tribune Company emerged from bankruptcy last December 31, it has signaled its plans to either spin off or sell the newspaper part of its media empire. Bezos could quickly flesh out his news and information universe.

The best news for the ailing news business in a long time is Jeff Bezos's $250 million purchase of The Washington Post. Those who entertain the knee-jerk reaction that this acquisition of a legacy media operation is simply Bezos laying down dead presidents for “a billionaire's bauble” are sorely mistaken. The news and information economy desperately needs disrupters and innovators of Steve Jobs-like ambitions, and who else but Bezos fits that description? The Amazon founder wouldn't have opened his checkbook if he himself didn't think he was that guy.

NewsCred launched in 2008 with a contrarian business model in digital media that its founder Shafqat Islam admits was “naive”—a plan to spotlight premium journalism. Since then, the plan has matured. Having created powerful curation technology for its partners, NewCred has licensing agreements with hundreds of blue-chip sources, ranging from The New York Times to Getty Images, The Economist, and the Mayo Clinic. With a killer's row of partners, NewsCred is quickly becoming a force in creating custom content in brand marketing for some of the biggest players in the world.

Old-school journalism lost another battle with the numbers-driven ethos of the digital age last week. Statistician extraordinaire Nate Silver's leap from The New York Times to ESPN puts in stark relief the disadvantage blue chip Fourth Estate institutions have competing against an entertainment ethos in the digital age. A David Carr or Andrew Ross Sorkin may be big names, have blog fiefdoms and Twitter followers in the hundreds of thousands, but the mentality of the Times is that the only real star is the Grey Lady itself and that the organization is what keeps those journos in boldface.

I wonder if NSA leakmeister Edward Snowden watches the ABC prime-time drama “Scandal?” In particular, I'd be interested to know if he saw the episode entitled “Hunting Season” that originally aired last October, before Snowden went rogue. Why? Because that episode of the show—about the machinations of Olivia Pope, a gorgeous D.C. fixer extraordinaire—featured an NSA analyst who exposes a far-reaching domestic spying operation that permeates even the highest reaches of government.

A scant month into the launch of BuzzFeed's business section and its editor Peter Lauria is stoked. The news establishment from whence he hails has already taken notice. Out of the gate, The New York Times, the Financial Times, and CNBC, among others, have followed scoops by Lauria and his young team. For example, after news surfaced that Bloomberg reporters were using the financial services giant's terminals to report on clients, BuzzFeed uncovered that higher-ups at the company knew about the unsavory practice for more than a year.

Creators and lovers of in-depth reportage and short fiction fear not. Yes, long-form investigative journalism and related serious writing may be disappearing from the professional press. But there is digital salvation. E-book singles (EBS)—non-fiction and fiction pieces between 5,000 and 30,000 words—are on the cusp of becoming a significant business and may well propel a renaissance in deep-dive journalism, the short story, and novella.