If you’re not in the journalism world or from New York City you’ve probably never heard of him. But at the intersection of those two worlds, Peter Kaplan, was revered by many as something like a minor deity. He was the longtime editor of The New York Observer. And his style and the people he mentored have had a influence in contemporary media way out of proportion to the Observer’s pretty small circulation.
Here’s his obit in the Times. And here’s a lengthier piece on who he was and what he did from last year in The New Republic.
As you know, we relaunched TPMCafe earlier in the Fall. And there’s more relaunching to come.
Here are some of your recent favorites …
Let’s Call the Shutdown What It Is: Secession by Another Means by Bill Moyers
In Defense of Sarah Silverman by Shannon Kelley
Why Do Poor People ‘Waste’ Money on Luxury Goods? Tressie McMillan Cottom
A Programmer’s Perspective on HealthCare.og and the ACA Marketplaces by Paul Smith
Why Does Rush Limbaugh Hate Single Women So Much? by Jonathan Taplin
How to Fix the ‘College Women Need to Stop Drinking’ Narrative by Soraya Chemaly
Well, not really. Or not exactly. But if you’re into dinosaurs, this is pretty neat. There now appears to be confirmation that paleontologists have discovered soft tissue from a Tyrannosaurus Rex that died roughly 68 million years ago.
Back on November 21st I was in DC and I got into a conversation about the marijuana legalization movement and some of its more unexpected dimensions. It wasn’t a major part of the discussion but one thing I learned was that the bulk of the money funding the movement – from medical marijuana to decriminalization to full legalization – came from one guy, Peter B. Lewis, the CEO of Progressive Insurance.
He reportedly contributed between $40 and $60 million to the effort over the last 30 years. I just found out that he died two days later. And that’s raising questions about where the future money for ballot initiatives, organizing, public education and the like is going to come from.
Two posts at The Hive on future ideas for a new direction for public comments and also reader blogging at TPM (sub.req.).
Back when we launched TPMPrime a year ago, I explained that we were going to have something called ‘subscription credits.’ The idea was twofold – allow people who want to support TPM over and above the cost of a Prime membership ($50 a year) the opportunity to do so while also allowing us to not lock out people for whom the membership fee is a genuine hardship.
An interesting panel discussion by the reporters who broke and then pursued the Rob Ford Crack and Everything Else scandal (including Robyn Doolittle and Michael Cooke, alas without John Cook). Fascinating details about the reporting, the Mayor and some hints about the expected epic new document dump next Friday. Video after the jump …
In announcing this morning it has achieved its end-of-November goals for fixes to HealthCare.gov, the administration also released this progress report.
On World AIDS Day, Paul Farmer reflects on what we’ve learned about the disease — and about ourselves.
Some people are no fun. Like TPM Reader DF, who’s throwing some cold water on the idea that Jurassic Park may be opening any time in the next few years. More seriously, he points out that there are still some shortcomings in the research by the team who says they’ve isolated preserved soft tissue from a T-Rex that died 68 million years ago …
I am a vertebrate paleontologist and I am generally familiar with this work. I think your article stating that the presence of soft tissues in the T. rex specimen has been confirmed is a bit too accepting. I would say that in science, as in many other areas of academia, stating that something has been confirmed implies that a research group other than that which first proposed an idea or interpretation has replicated the finding or otherwise corroborated the finding. In this case, the story is about the same research group that has been arguing for the preservation of soft tissue all along, so it does not really count as confirmation as such.