articles of interest - May 1

***SOCIAL MEDIA

The saga of a YouTube family who pulled disturbing pranks on their own kids  The Washington Post

Leaked document reveals Facebook conducted research to target emotionally vulnerable and insecure youth  News Australia

Yik Yak, the once popular and controversial college messaging app, shuts down  USA Today

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Digital Publishing: How the New York Times and Washington Post are Changing the Podcast Field   Editor & Publisher

People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently  Medium

How YouTube’s Shifting Algorithms Hurt Independent Media  New York Times

***INTERNET

The secret lives of Google raters  Ars Technica

***TECHNOLOGY

The Impact of Virtual Reality on Learning  Campus Technology

***JOURNALISM

Digital transformation in newsrooms means focusing on readers not platforms  Medium

The Media Bubble is Real — And Worse Than You Think  Politico

In Mexico, ‘It’s Easy to Kill a Journalist’  New York Times

Will Twitter Replace The Photojournalist?  Forbes

Northwestern journalism school lets accreditation lapse (Dean: the process is "flawed" and not useful)  Chicago Tribune

***FAKE NEWS

Hate the News? Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Wants You to Edit It  Wired

The Future Of News Is Visuals (And How This Millennial-Led Startup Is Reinventing It)  Forbes

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launches Wikitribune, a large-scale attempt to combat fake news  Nieman

Facebook tapped a New York Times vet to help fight fake news and make money for publishers  Business Insider

It turns out people are very bad at estimating the magnitude of the fake news problem  Nieman Lab

What Web Page Structure Reveals on News Quality  Monday Note

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

A look at Structural Equation Modeling: a framework for data analysis composed of a family of related methodsKD Nuggets

A peek inside the ‘black box’ of #MachineLearning systems; checking the logic of Neural Networks   Stanford

Where we stand with automated Machine Learning ..and where it is likely going KD Nuggets

In much of science, Bayesian methods are becoming increasingly central to finding small needles in huge haystacks  The Conversation

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

IHeartMedia shares drop amid warning it may not survive another year  My San Antonio

Twitter to launch 24/7 news streaming service with Bloomberg  Venture Beat

***PERSONAL GROWTH

When you plan a trip to Italy but land in Holland  Becoming (my blog)

***LITERATURE

Why You Love the Smell of Old Books  Daily Jstor

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Anti-Semitic Incidents Spike Since Election, Jewish Watchdog Says  NBC News

Policing for civil forfeiture profit  The Week Magazine

How to Be an Ally to New Minority Scholars (opinion)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Is it OK to eat at a barbecue joint when the founder was a white supremacist?  The New Yorker

School of Medicine is in danger of losing its accreditation because of a lack of diversity  Stat

Can College Cure Racism?  Daily Jstor

The ‘hotbed of anti-Semitism’ isn’t a foreign country: It’s U.S. college campuses  Washington Post

***FREE SPEECH

Students campuses nationwide issue statement calling free speech  Inside Higher Ed

Addressing the Real Crisis of Free Expression on Campus (opinion from the President of the Newseum)  Newseum Institute

Too PC Or Not PC? The Debate Over Free Speech On Campus  1a.or

***LEGAL ISSUES

Judge blocks release of unpublished Prince songs  Minnesota Public Radio

White House official says 'we've looked at' changes to libel laws that would restrict press freedom  ABC News

Supreme Court won't review San Diego minister's lawsuit against gay therapy ban  Reuters 

***RELIGION

Religion Could Be More Durable Than We Thought  NPR

Consecration of gay bishop against church law, says United Methodist top court  Religion News Service

The Christian Agenda Behind Inmate Education: For prisoners, learning often comes with evangelical strings attached  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Sub-Saharan Africa experienced largest increase in religious restrictions in 2015  Pew Research Center

SoCal Megachurch Sued Over Investment Fraud  Courthouse News

Alvin Plantinga wins Templeton prize  Catholic News Agency

Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads   Religious Dispatches

Share on Twitter Share via Email If it doesn’t stem its decline, mainline Protestantism has just 23 Easters left  Washington Post

Anti-discrimination measure or blow to religious freedom? California bill sparks debate on employer codes of conduct   LA Times

Among white evangelicals, regular churchgoers are the most supportive of Trump  Pew Research Center

***MUSIC

How Ed Sheeran perfected the art of being a mainstream misfit  Vox

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Doing the Right Thing in Sexual-Misconduct Cases (opinion)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Expelled for sex assault, young men are filing more lawsuits to clear their names  Washington Post

San Diego State University will pay a former student $10,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former student who said he was wrongly accused and suspended for a sexual incident  Union Tribune

The AP conducted a year-long investigation into student-on-student sexual assault in schools  Associated Press

Sociology Chair steps down, denies alleged harassment among faculty is the cause  Daily Camera

NY community college president resigns after he is recorded blaming alleged assault victim  Associated Press

***HEALTH

End-of-life care: A better way to care for the dying  The Economist

***RESEARCH

6 Common Flaws To Look Out For in Peer Review  Publons

Va. man pleads guilty to scamming $500,000+ in federal education funds, science grants  WJLA

107 Studies Published in a Cancer Journal Have Just Been Retracted  Science Alert

***HIGHER ED

Analysts and some colleges worry Blackboard is stretching itself too thin  Inside Higher Ed

Colleges Rush to Ramp Up Online Classes (sub. req’ed)  Wall Street Journal

White Religion Profs at Seminary Apologize for Tweet where they posed as Gang Members   Inside Higher Ed

Small private colleges stand to lose both money and student diversity in continually seeking to outbid each other for students, a new study warns  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Paraphrasing tools, freely available online, can fool plagiarism detection software, study finds  Inside Higher Ed

A troubling new way to evade plagiarism detection software(And how to tell if it’s been used)  Retraction Watch

***STUDENT MEDIA

High school journalists' investigative feat fuels calls for legal reforms  Student Press Law Center

***STUDENT LIFE

First Year Students are More Politically Polarized that Ever  Inside Higher Ed

Half of millennials could be competing with robots for jobs  The Washington Post

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Blind Spots that Require New Faculty Roles (a new analysis of survey data by USC researchers)  The Changing Faculty