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You Can Save Journalism!
Ad-blocking software: what a great idea! Ad-blocking software: what a terrible idea—if you are a media company. The handwringing about ad blocking happened largely behind closed doors until Apple announced the enhancement as part of its new mobile-platform operating system. Don’t worry. This post is not to announce a Kickstarter or other hustle for cash. Read more
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Ferguson and Failing Suburbs
It is distressing to see Ferguson, Mo., making headlines again for demonstrations that turn violent. To outsiders, especially those who have not followed every detail of the injustices revealed by the shooting of unarmed Michael Brown by policeman Darren Wilson (who sought to question Brown in the theft of some cigarillos), the enduring protests seem Read more
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Fortified Island: New Orleans Changes, Yet Remains True to Itself
Drivers in New Orleans who make a wrong turn may confront the high concrete walls that line drainage canals and top levees. They, and enormous flood gates and pumping stations, are the product of some $14 billion in flood-protection, funded largely by federal taxpayers, that has been built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Read more
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Architectural Record Sale: Wane or Gain of Architects’ Influence?
It’s hard to see the sale of Architectural Record magazine (and its sister publication ENR) to BNP Media as anything but a shift downmarket, since it joins a portfolio that includes Stone World and Floor Trends. It is Record’s second sale in less than a year, having been already spun off from its longtime corporate Read more
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Historic Preservation: Fighting the Wrong Battles?
The Frick Collection’s formality is as astringent as a dry martini. We marvel at the works of great art hung within rooms of impersonal splendor. Yet the Frick is rather contrived, an elegant knockoff of a French country seat, by Thomas Hastings, of Carrère and Hastings, carefully re-proportioned to fit on a New York City Read more
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Sprawling Atlanta Tries to Be a City
Along Atlanta’s potholed Howell Mill road, sagging sheds of metal salvagers, brake liners, and security-gate fabricators are rapidly giving way to Texas donuts: faux-loft apartment buildings wrapping parking structures. Amid the light-industrial detritus can be found a contemporary-art incubator and the White Provisions development, a huge residential/commercial loft complex that anchors a wildly popular restaurant and Read more
James S. Russell 