Beth did have good taste

A Baltimore-based thread to explain one singular, overriding reason why American journalism is incapable of compassing and explaining the astonishing misrule and the implosion of all our governing norms. To wit:

A few decades ago, as a police reporter covering the Baltimore department, a new...

I’m not quite sure how, but I suspect this all connects en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_woman...

It def helps me to leave a little signpost for my future self to know where I would've gone had I had more energy

A true porque no los dos moment

Is our company successful? Let me tell you about all the money we're spending!

I genuinely can't wrap my mind around how pathetic this is.

I used to write the WaPo editorials on US-Africa policy, as well on as human rights and politics on the continent.

To describe hundreds of thousands of deaths on the continent as “messy” is an absolute abomination.

Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV, but in his other hand he’s got an inhaler

Real-life René Magritte painting

In some ways, we seem most human when caring for animals

Yet this is life.

Some guys have all the luck

how it started / how it’s going

A screenshot of the landing page for a story from the Independent reading: Delta flew 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father to ICE detention in Texas, new video shows A photo of federal agents detaining Liam Conejo Ramos in Minnesota outraged people across the nation last year Ariana Baio Tuesday 17 March 2026 16:15 EDT

A screenshot of the landing page for my story reading: Video proves Delta flew Liam Ramos and his dad to ICE detention center Three plainclothes federal agents can be seen boarding a Delta flight while guarding the 5-year-old boy and his father, right under unsuspecting passengers' noses. Gillian Brockell 16 Mar 2026 - 8 min read

A line from the Independent story reading: “The airport footage was obtained through an information disclosure request to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by activist Nick Benson with MN50501 - a Minnesota-based organization that advocates against Trump's policies.” I’ve highlighted the part where it links to MN50501.

A screenshot of a browser window showing that the MN50501 link includes “?ref=gillianbrockell.com”

This @the-independent.com story is such an obvious lift of mine that they didn’t even bother deleting my site’s referral URL.

And no, they do not credit me for reporting it first or (intentionally) link to my story.

In j-school, rewording someone else’s reporting was called plagiarism. 1/

Six word short story [Thousand Oaks Star, May 4, 1988]

Boo

This is a good lesson for journalists: Use plain language to state true things clearly.

Heck yeah. Congrats, Jake! (And congrats, ProPublica!)

Sentences that no one wrote On "A.I." and humanity

Re-upping because it's now available without the paywall:

Is the default assumption that a reminder is not gentle?

As ever, @annamerlan.bsky.social has written something timely and resonant.

The quote from Dmytro Iarovyi had the odd effect of galvanizing me, by reminding me that my despair is not simply a defect, but is evoked by design.

if only the tailgate were visible in the picture and it had that mise en abyme thing going

In writing about (and railing against) artificial intelligence, the art historian Sonja Drimmer has returned again and again to the phrase “permission structure.” The phrase was popularized in the early 2010s by the Obama crew, and it referred to the rhetorical strategy of giving an opponent enough reasons to change their mind while also allowing them to save face. In Drimmer’s usage, the meaning seems to slide into giving someone an excuse to do what they already wanted to do, and I like that connotation. If a newspaper publisher wants to lower headcount, they can now use AI to replace reporters while telling themselves they’re riding the wave of the future. No matter that the product will suffer. No matter that other humans will suffer too. If some DOGE shitheads want to hurt people just because, the “because” can be justified by AI; computer says no. This is the kind of ethical slippage that’s easy to spot in others, but I can feel it happening to me too.

Shoutouts to @lukeoneil47.bsky.social for editing the story (and thinking along with me) and to @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social for her insights on AI and permission structures

I wrote about teaching writing and how AI can make us doubt each other’s humanity

guy methodically pulling out his own cue stick at the bar and proceeding to suck

Both perfectly fine names on their own

I don't teach him, no. I'm in the journalism school. I did reread many of books during lockdown, though, and came to appreciate him all over again.

Sentences that no one wrote Today Keith Plocek, who teaches journalism at the University of Southern California, writes about Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, solipsism, and the permission structure "AI" gives us to doubt...

Today @keithplocek.com, who teaches journalism at the University of Southern California, writes about Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, solipsism, his students using "AI" and the permission structure it gives us to doubt and devalue one another's humanity. www.welcometohellworld.com/sentences-th...