Collapse in trust for US military by citizens pic.twitter.com/CdYU3mxfEL

— Ben Kohlmann 🇺🇸 (@benkohlmann) December 2, 2023

Kimberly Wethal:

“Visually, (Humanities) is not great,” freshman Cole Pederson said as he sat in a dimly lit hallway between classes. “It’s old and mostly concrete … starting my day, this is not the building I want to be in. It’s not a great vibe.”

BY MICHAEL LIPKA AND ELISA SHEARER

A declining share of U.S. adults are following the newsclosely, according to recent Pew Research Center surveys. And audiences are shrinking for several older types of news media – such as local TV stations, most newspapers and public radio – even as they grow for newer platforms like podcasts, as well as for a few specific media brands

• For the most part, daily newspaper circulation nationwide – counting digital subscriptions and print circulation – continues to decline, falling to just under 21 million in 2022,according to projections using data from the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM). Weekday circulation is down 8% from the previous year and 32% from five years prior, when it was over 30 million. Out of 136 papers included in this analysis, 120 experienced declines in weekday circulation in 2022.
• While most newspapers in the United States are struggling, some of the biggest brands are experiencing digital growth. AAM data does not include all digital circulation to three of the nation’s most prominent newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. But while all three are experiencing declines in their print subscriptions, other available data suggests substantial increases in digital subscriptions for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. (Similar data is not available for The Washington Post.) For example, The New York Times saw a 32% increase in digital-only subscriptions in 2022, surpassing 10 million subscribers and continuing years of growth, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). There are many reasons this data is not directly comparable with the AAM data, including the fact that some digital subscriptions to The New York Times do not include news and are limited to other products like cooking and games. Still, these brands are bucking the overall trend.
• Overall, digital traffic to newspapers’ websites is declining. The average monthly number of unique visitors to the websites of the country’s top 50 newspapers (based on circulation, and including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post) declined 20% to under 9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, down from over 11 million in the same period in 2021, according to Comscore data. The length of the average visit to these sites is also falling – to just under a minute and a half in the last quarter of 2022.
• Traffic to top digital news websites is not picking up the slack. Overall, traffic to the most visited news websites – those with at least 10 million unique visitors per month in the fourth quarter of a given year – has declined over the past two years. The average number of monthly unique visitors to these sites was 3% lower in October-December 2022 than in the same period in 2021, following a 13% drop the year before that, according to Comscore. The length of the average visit to these sites is getting shorter, too. (These sites can include newspapers’ websites, such as that of The New York Times, as well as other digital news sites like those of CNN, Fox News or Axios.)
• Across several years of data, there has been a drop in audiences for local TV news, affecting morning, evening and late-night time slots alike. For example, the average number of TVs tuning into ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates for the evening news was just over 3 million in 2022, down from just over 4 million in 2016.
• The story is mixed when it comes to audio, too. The share of Americans who listen to terrestrial radio has declined in recent years, as has listenership on NPR and PRX. But there has been a clear rise in audiences for podcasts and other types of online audio. Although podcasts often are not news-related, about two-thirds of U.S. podcast listeners say they hear news discussed on the podcasts they listen to.

Paul Soglin:

While the concerns raised here are focused on 2025 and beyond, there will be a more immediate hit. When tax bills go out in December, no one will be spared, not homeowners who directly pay property taxes, or renters, who will experience significant rent increases to cover their landlords’ taxes.

Over the decades Madison, unlike many other cities, was fortunate to be able to spend more money on “good works” — community services — than law enforcement. In hard times we were able to maintain staff and services while other cities were forced to lay off workers and make deep budget cuts that hurt everyone. This was possible because we balanced the ability of renters and homeowners to pay for public services with the needs of the community. A city cannot do “good works” if it is financially challenged and if property taxes make housing unaffordable for homeowners and renters alike. Sadly we are already there.

Tunku Varadarajan:

Embedded in a civil lawsuit against Hillsdale College is an assault on the fabric of this small, private Christian school founded in 1844. The lawsuit, brought by two undergraduate women who allege that they were raped two years ago by male Hillsdale students of their acquaintance, alleges not only that the college was negligent in handling their complaints, but also that it failed to afford them the protection to which they were entitled under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

In 2011 the Obama administration turned Title IX into a sword in the armory of federal civil-rights law. On pain of losing federal money, including student financial aid, the Education Department compelled schools to adopt rules that deprived those accused of sexual misconduct of basic due-process protections. The Trump administration undid those rules, and the Biden administration is working to reinstate them. The problem with invoking Title IX against Hillsdale, however, is that the college takes no money from the government. “Not a cent,” says its president, Larry P. Arnn, which means that Hillsdale isn’t bound by Title IX.

www

The Realities of Socialism is a multimedia project—a collaboration between organizations in Canada, Australia, the United States and United Kingdom—to educate people about the experiences of socialism that was imposed on tens of millions of people across the world throughout the 20th century. Here you will find data-driven videos, infographics, short videos and informative studies about socialism’s history in Poland and Estonia, Sweden and Denmark’s short experiment with socialism, and Singapore’s unique approach.

#DEVELOPING Dane Co. Exec Joe Parisi sent an email to county department heads this week directing them to quit "X" – formerly Twitter

"I would like all departments to phase out utilization of X effective immediately and cease using it all together no later than January 1, 2024"

— Tim Elliott (@TheTimReport) December 2, 2023

At Yale, 92% of grades in women’s studies classes are either A or A-. Only 55% in mathematics are.

You couldn’t ask for a better metaphor for what ails American academia and culture.

(h/t @sfmcguire79) pic.twitter.com/spWXDszHdB

— i/o (@eyeslasho) December 1, 2023

commentary

Eroding the truth and withholding literacy instruction for students obstructs their civil rights. Hiring high-priced attorneys to fish for staff willing to distort the truth in court about what a child would require to learn how to read is a new low. @RachnaHeizer… pic.twitter.com/D5vTM1WWjO

— Debra Tisler (@Debra_Tisler) December 2, 2023

Emily Fowler:

In contrast, teacher-student ratio has remained stagnant

The University of Wisconsin Madison employs roughly one administrator for every four undergraduates, and has grown its administration and support staff by 23 percent since 2013, according to an analysis conducted by The College Fix.

In contrast, the ratio of undergrads to teaching and instructional staff has largely stayed the same since 2013-14, hovering at about 106 per 1,000 students.

In 2013, UW-Madison employed 7,186 administrators and support staff employees, which includes student and academic affairs divisions, IT, public relations, administrative support, maintenance, and legal and other non-academic departments, which was 251.5 administrators per 1,000 students.

By the 2021-22 school year, for which the most recent data are available, the university had bumped the number of administrative staff to 8,817, according to the analysis, which used data provided by UW-Madison to the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The number of administrators per 1,000 students increased to 275, representing a 9.3 percent increase compared to 2013.

Patrick Mcilheran and Jim Bender:

If successful, a lawsuit claiming Wisconsin’s private-school parental choice program and public independent charter schools are illegal will also shut down the Public School Open Enrollment program used by approximately 73,280 children, according to legal experts.

If a court buys the claim that one program’s funding mechanism is impermissible because of the way state aid follows children to another school, the others’ would be too, said Rick Esenberg, head of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which is seeking to join the case.

The Public School Open Enrollment program allowed 73,280 students to attend a traditional public school in a district they did not live in during the 2022-23 school year, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

The number of children who took their state aid to a private school under Wisconsin’s parental choice programs was 52,062, and another 11,138 attended an independent public charter school. Attending traditional public district schools that year: 819,214. That means open enrollment amounted to 9% of district schools’ enrollment.

Rep Jim Jordan:

The email reveals that Nick Clegg—former UK Deputy Prime Minister—tried to reason with the Biden White House that, under America’s First Amendment, “removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US.”

KRON4

A young teenage girl who police said was involved in over a dozen organized retails thefts of over $30,000 in merchandise in San Francisco was arrested, the San Francisco Police Department announced Thursday.

San Francisco police investigating organized retail crimes on the 800 block of Market Street had identified the 14-year-old girl as one of the suspects in a large number of retail thefts, SFPD said. The thefts were being committed by a “large group of juvenile and adult suspects” and stole merchandise totaling over $30,000, according to police.

Ray Nayler:

Like most Americans, I like to think of myself as an individual—but a week ago I walked out into a parking lot to find five cars identical in make, model, year, and color to my own. I was glad I remembered my license plate number, and that my key fob would (hopefully) only unlock the correct vehicle.

A few days later I found myself in a grocery checkout line, skimming through yet another article in which the writer touted the wonders of “artificial intelligence” and fretted hazily over whether we are nearing the point when AI will be able to produce novels, films, and other creative work, effectively replacing us. When I looked up and over to other people in the line, half of them wore the same shoe brand as me.

Werner Vogels:

Similar to the software development processes of decades past, we have reached a pivotal point with tech education, and we will see what was once bespoke on-the-job-training for a few evolve into industry-led skills-based education for many.

We have seen glimpses of this shift underway for years. Companies like Coursera, who originally focused on consumers, have partnered with enterprises to scale their upskilling and reskilling efforts. Degree apprenticeships have continued to grow in popularity because education can be specialized by the employer, and apprentices can earn as they learn. But now, companies themselves are starting to seriously invest in skills-based education at scale. In fact, Amazon just announced that it has already trained 21 million tech learnersacross the world in tech skills. And it’s in part thanks to programs like the Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship and AWS Cloud Institute. All of these programs enable learners at different points in their career journey to gain the exact skills they need to enter in-demand roles, without the commitment of a traditional multi-year program.

To be clear, this concept is not without precedent: when you think about skilled workers like electricians, welders, and carpenters, the bulk of their skills are not gained in the classroom. They move from trainee to apprentice to journeyperson, and possibly master tradesperson. Learning is continuous on the job, and there are well defined paths to upskill. This style of lifelong education—to learn and be curious—bodes well for individuals and businesses alike.

AP

Seven unions representing teachers and other public workers in Wisconsin filed a lawsuit Thursday attempting to end the state’s near-total ban on collective bargaining for most public employees.

The 2011 law, known as Act 10, has withstood numerous legal challenges over the past dozen years and was the signature legislative achievement of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who used it to mount a presidential run.

The latest lawsuit is the first since the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped to liberal control in August. But it was filed in a county circuit court — unlike other major cases that have gone directly to the Supreme Court since its ideological shift — and will likely take more than a year to make its way up for a final ruling.

The Act 10 law effectively ended collective bargaining for most public unions by allowing them to bargain solely over base wage increases no greater than inflation. It also disallowed the automatic withdrawal of union dues, required annual recertification votes for unions, and forced public workers to pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits.

Andrew Bahl:

The decision to file the case in Dane County court means it could be months or longer before it winds up before the state Supreme Court, if the high court even decides to take the case.

In March, Protasiewicz told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she believed Act 10 was unconstitutional but also said she might recuse herself after signing a petition to recall Walker over the issue.

Without Protasiewicz, the court could deadlock at 3-3 on the issue, raising questions about what the outcome of the case might be.

——-

WILL:

WILL President and General Counsel Rick Esenberg, stated, “For the better part of the last 12 years, no piece of legislation has loomed larger in public policy debates in Wisconsin than Act 10, the collective bargaining reform law passed in 2011. The ‘Budget Repair Bill,’ introduced by Governor Scott Walker in the first weeks of his first term, represented a fundamental break with the past and a new era for state and local governments in the Badger State and the country. Since then, WILL has been on the forefront of examining the impact of Act 10 on education, the teaching workforce, and puncturing the myths that persist about the law. Now with a new lawsuit, we stand ready to defend the law in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. Because make no mistake, an end to Act 10 would have a devastating effect on the budgets of school districts, municipalities, and Wisconsin’s overall fiscal stability.”

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Sahil Bloom:

“We oftentimes talk about what someone’s potential is, but I think to put it in better terms…the Capability Gap is what you’re capable of relative to what you’re doing…if you understand the truth about that, you can actually take information that can help you close that gap.”

Ilya Somin:

My wife, Alison Somin (an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, and former special assistant at the US Commission on Civil Rights) has an article about anti-Asian discrimination in education, and how federal agencies have mostly ignored it:

Discrimination against Asian-American students in admissions at selective universities has been an open secret for decades. An entire cottage industry even coached ambitious applicants on how to be less Asian. Data produced in litigation showed that for applicants with academic credentials in the top 10 percent of Harvard’s pool, the odds of admission were 56.1 percent for African Americans, 31.3 percent for Hispanics, and 15.3 percent for whites, but only 12.6 percent for Asian Americans. In emails uncovered in the parallel lawsuit against the University of North Carolina, admissions officers were candid about preferring applicants of other races over Asian Americans. One representative exchange: “perfect 2400 SAT All 5 on AP one B in 11th” “Brown?!” “Heck no. Asian.”

Yet the federal agencies charged with enforcing civil rights laws prohibiting this discrimination largely have done nothing in response. These agencies could have issued guidance emphasizing that such discrimination is forbidden or pursued targeted investigations against universities widely suspected of discrimination. But they have not….

Corrinne Hess:

When the incident happened, the district responded with a statement saying the account was “ill-informed, inaccurate and incomplete.” District officials have declined to comment further, citing student privacy, but said further steps were taken to ensure a similar incident does not recur.  

Title IX bans sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government. Federal law also prohibits discrimination against transgender students.

Tim Cushing:

This mass collection was exposed by the initial Snowden leak. The FISA court order published by multiple news outlets showed the government was able to engage in bulk surveillance via a single FISA request. This one targeted Verizon’s business services, but nothing about what was published suggested this was the only cell service provider responding to these blanket orders. 

At the same time Snowden was airing the government’s dirty surveillance laundry, the DEA was inadvertently exposing its delicates. A particularly spectacular unforced error by the DEA saw it handing over information on its secret “Hemisphere” program in response to records requests seeking something else entirely. The information contained in this accidentally exposed presentation not only showed AT&T had employees “embedded” in the DEA to provide more instantaneous responses to phone records requests, but also that DEA agents and experts were being instructed to engage in parallel construction to hide the origin of phones records obtained with this program that were being used as evidence in court. 

The DEA’s ability to obtain phone records in bulk was confirmed several months later by none other than the DEA, which released another set of Hemisphere documents to records requesters. Perhaps figuring there was no longer any reason to pretend this program didn’t exist, the DEA was more forthcoming the second time around.

Jon Keegan:

Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., is being sued in federal court for the unauthorized sharing of personally identifiable information and health data with Meta. 

Two different proposed class-action lawsuits were filed on Nov. 10 and Nov. 13 in the Southern District of Ohio, Western Division. The plaintiffs, both from Ohio, are anonymous. 

The suits alleged that Kroger essentially ”planted a bug” on its website, which includes an online pharmacy, and was “looking over the shoulder of each visitor for the entire duration of their Website interaction.” That “bug” refers to the Meta Pixel and the other trackers Kroger used on its website. The Nov. 10 suit claimed that as a result, Kroger leaked details of which medications and dosages a patient sought or purchased from Kroger’s pharmacy, which then allowed “third parties to reasonably infer that a specific patient was being treated for a specific type of medical condition such as cancer, pregnancy, HIV, mental health conditions, and an array of other symptoms or conditions.”

In February, The Markup revealed that Kroger collects extensive data through its loyalty program. The investigation detailed Kroger’s use of the Meta pixel on kroger.com, including how the company sent information to Meta when a pregnancy test was added to a virtual shopping cart. A similar example was included in the Nov. 10 lawsuit, showing that Meta is informed when a user searches on Kroger.com for Plan B contraceptives. The Nov. 13 lawsuit, in trying to establish the harms of “mishandling medical information,” also cited a Markup story on hospital websites disclosing sensitive information to Meta through the pixel.