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Two things become evident early on in Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports. One is that Sam Hinkie, the Sixers former general manager who served as the brains behind the entire operation, wasnt all that interested in talking about his time with the franchise, which abruptly came to an end in April of 2016 by way of a 13-page letter that includes a whole lot of references to things that are not basketball. The other is that the Sixers really didnt want this book to happen.

Me inferring, I dont think they were ready for this story to be put into form, Yaron Weitzman, the books author, told me over the phone prior to its release. Again, Im guessing there. I think part of it Im guessing, but this is an educated guess but I think the history with The Process and Sam Hinkie is not necessarily something that theyre proud of, just trying to go away from that, which is funny, because then theyll trademark Trust The Process, they did that already, so I guess thats kind of having it both ways, but who am I to say?

Still, despite the aversions by perhaps its main character and the organization at the center of it all, Weitzmans book came out last week. Tanking to the Top is the deepest dive into The Process that we have, giving a glimpse inside the years leading up to the teams controversial tear down, The Process itself, and where the Sixers stand now.

As for whether or not the current iteration of the franchise is at the top, Weitzman who, in the interest of transparency, used to be a colleague of mine at SLAM and its former football site, TD Daily admits that the most accurate title would have sounded a bit more cumbersome.

You can feel free to use my joke that Tanking to Two Straight Second Round Playoff Series doesnt sound as good for anybody, he says. I love when people on Twitter respond, The Top? What top did they get to? Like, ok, relax, its a book title, alright? Come up with a different alliteration.

If The Top means a franchise with legitimate championship aspirations, then the Sixers window is open. Weitzman made it clear that defining this exact version of the team as a contender might be a bit difficult, and concedes that winning a ring takes a fair amount of luck. But with all that said, Philadelphia has a pair of young superstars who can serve as the faces of the franchise for the next decade. After finding themselves in basketball purgatory for years, and then going through a process that hurt like hell for a while, Philly is in a position where theyre consistently playing important basketball games for the first time in a long time.

They traded a few bad years for a few more really good ones, and if youre a Sixers fan, the games matter, and theyre a championship contender, and the Sixers matter, Weitzman says. And whether you win or not, thats a luck thing, its about being at this level. From there, its a separate conversation.

Dime caught up with Weitzman prior to the books release to discuss some of its main characters, whether or not The Process is over, how the Sixers gave the NBAs various culture wars an opportunity to play out, and much more.

Im glad you mentioned what you did about The Process as an experiment. As you went into this and as you did some learning, Im sure you had an idea of the emotional response people had to this, but what do you think it is about The Process that still touches a nerve regardless of what side people were on?

I think it just came to represent a lot of different things, which I guess makes it a good story. If youre writing a story, the thing that makes the story good is that the story is really about bigger picture Why? And The Process hits that very well. It kind of came to represent and were seeing these arguments still, the nerds vs. the athletes, analytics, whats the proper way to build a team, blogs vs. old school media, kind of all these different sports/NBA culture wars just became embodied through The Process, I feel like. And then what happens is people get entrenched in their positions and the words, back-and-forth, become a even more inflamed a little bit. So if youre someone who is anti-Sam Hinkie when he first came in, youre gonna say even more so now, Oh, it never worked, you see? We were right. And then if youre somebody who thought it was right, you say, No, look, the Sixers are a contender every year.

And then Sam was just such a unique personality. I guess its the mystique, right? Because people dont know him and he didnt speak a lot and he came and he let other people sort of decide what he represented some probably were, some probably were not so correct. He became this figure in the middle of all of this, and then you mix in a million different things, you throw in Joel Embiids big personality, and Ben Simmons just becomes this monster that everyone has an opinion on.

There are six people who I think outside of [principal owner] Josh Harris, because I wanna keep this on basketball but six major players in here, for me, who kinda caught my attention, and I wanna know what you learned about them that you may not have known going in. The first one I have to start with is Sam Hinkie.

I learned that he is very much, a lot of the cliches that people have of him, theyre very much true. Were all three-dimensional, and theres a story, I think Chris Ballard wrote that great profile and he had some stuff in there about Sam loving basketball. I think he was the first one to describe him this way, Sam loves basketball and he squats 500 pounds, but also, if you speak to Sam Hinkie, if you talk to people about Sam Hinkie, some of the assumptions you make about him without even knowing, theyre true. The way he thinks, the way he talks.

Its sad, but I did not know his older brother committed suicide when he was a kid. Later on I learned and heard that he doesnt like talking about that, hes probably not thrilled its in the book, but its just one of those things that, like, it sucks, this profession and the stuff that we talk about, I dont have a responsibility to do it. I have a responsibility to put it in there because its an important detail in someones life, but its not like an altruistic thing to be putting in there. Is it a responsibility to the truth? Yeah, sure, but its one of those times that you put something in there that he doesnt let his kids tweet about, and its unfortunate it had to go in there, because I dont have a good response.

But yes, I learned that, and I learned that in that moment, that basketball as you see in the book, after his brother killed himself, Sam talked about this once on a podcast or he alluded to it, that a friends father brings him outside and brings him to shoot some hoops and he finds some semblance of sanctuary there. And I do think, for all the stuff with Sam, we talk about Sam in terms of being Mr. Analytics and Silicon Valley and all that, I do think he believes in the magic of sports a little bit, I do think theres something there to that. Hes somebody who truly loves and believes in sports.

Next up would be Brett Brown.

Brett Brown was a fun dude in high school and college. Brett liked his beer, theres some good stories, if I may say so myself, about him pranking teammates, I like the one at Boston College where they had something with a cab driver. That, but Bretts really good with the media and being front-facing, and hes had to deal with a lot of being the teams spokesman, and hes really good at that. Behind the scenes, Bretts got a little bark to him, whether its cursing or temper, things like that.

Joel Embiid.

The eating thing is true. I dont care what anyone says, he eats a lot. I guess we kinda knew that before, but the Chick-fil-A thing that he tried pushing back on, I dont buy that. I was most proud of myself about getting the stuff on his backstory about learning more about his story and how he actually ended up here and how he had an uncle who emailed a scout. I dont mean this as a criticism of Joel Embiid, I think his story has been told often in kind of a fairy tale way he was discovered, he came, everyone was happy, and theres some people who feel, like his uncle, a coach, agent, theres some people who feel like they helped him get there and were left behind. I think that happens with lots of people, its hard when you make it to the one percent of one percent, not everyone is gonna make it there with you, it can be difficult. I just like when stories get more human and realistic, and theres more layers to it. That doesnt mean Joel did anything wrong, its just more interesting when you hear the full story.

Kinda going off of Joel, next up has to be Ben Simmons.

How about this, Ben and Joel, I learned about the relationship between the two of them. I tweeted something today, I saw Michael Rubin at Sloan (Sports Analytic Conference) said it was bullsh*t that there was ever worries about their relationship. Thats just patently false, people have worried about it, and they were not best of friends, thats for sure. But I also think some of it was overblown. My understanding is there was never a screaming match, they never had anything major. I think it was more just like two kids growing up and theres passive-aggressive stuff.

The thing about their relationship, its funny when people talk about it, because it seems like often people on both sides are wrong from the way I read it. People say, This is a non-story, its nothing, how dare you mention it, who can think that these two dont get along? when they see a picture of them high-fiving, thats just being ignorant. But if people think that these two are doomed forever and cannot play with each other I shouldnt say play with each other, because I think the on-court question is a legitimate won but these two cannot be in a locker room with each other, they cant stand each other, that part is false.

I dont know how you could have learned something about this guy because we learned about him in a very weird way, and that is Bryan Colangelo.

I learned that the Andrea Bargnani thing was something that hung over him, the missed Andrea Bargnani pick. He thought he was railroaded in Toronto a little bit, and I think I have a quote in there somewhere about somebody telling me he thought the Bargnani pick was actually a good one and he should be proven right in that, that hung over him. Fultz was his big gambit to put his imprint on the Sixers, his own career, things like that.

I think the context of Bryan Colangelo is interesting, some of his background with his father, I found some quotes I felt were pretty interesting about him when he was hired in Phoenix telling local newspapers that the charges of nepotism were something that worried him and bothered him and he wanted to prove them wrong, and I do think all those different whims were what led to him saying, Im gonna go for it with Markelle Fultz, thats gonna be my guy, Im gonna show that Im validating myself, Im not just Jerrys kid, Sam wasnt responsible for this, I can build this championship team. I think that pushed his aggression a little bit.

For me, the most interesting guy in any Process thing, Markelle Fultz.

Theres a lot more to his story than just a simple shoulder injury, right? No matter what he wants to say, doesnt mean A+B=C. For example, I learned that his mother, two people told me his mother forced him to fire his best friend, who was his trainer, because she was upset about how he was handling him, or that local kids were leaving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at his house in Cherry Hill, I believe, where he lived. And she wanted to send out flyers saying stop doing this, and she didnt like how the flyers were sent out, and she made Markelle, how it was relayed to me, choose between him or me, which is not really a choice. And I think things like that, there was just a lot going on for a 19-year-old kid to deal with.

Is there anyone in your reporting on this book who turned into a bigger piece to this entire puzzle than you expected going in?

The main guys are the main guys, right? Brett and Joel are kind of my main people, and Sam. And then you have Markelle and Jahlil I guess Okafors whole story played more of a role in this than I thought, in terms of him being on TMZ that night essentially was the final straw with Hinkie and being pushed out. In context, how Okafor, it was a combustable situation, this guy who came in and sort of he saw his mother die in front of him and blamed himself a little bit, which I guess I knew that story, but not really, or I had forgotten it or never connected the dots. That doesnt mean A happened because of B, because of C, but its sort of like the randomness. Jahlil Okafor sort of represents that this person with this backstory was thrown in this situation and that kind of led to the undoing of all of that.

So Ill say that, and to be honest, Josh Harris a little bit, too. As funny as it sounds, the owner of the team, but I found his arc interesting, how hes here when he buys the team and at his introductory press conference, talking about how this is a good business opportunity. Hes at Sloan Conference now talking about how hes an NBA GM, or hes sitting in the middle of the press conference where they announced Tobias Harris and Al Horford and all those guys, and Josh Harris is there next to Elton Brand explaining why he thinks theyre gonna help from a basketball standpoint. I found that interesting and surprising, and learning about private equity a little bit and what Josh Harris business background was, it kind of gave more insight into, yes, Hinkies the architect but its very obvious he was hired by somebody who wanted him to do exactly that.

I should have thrown Scott ONeill in there, too. His whole story is interesting in terms of someone who played more of a role than I thought, someone I didnt really know before.

You mention how Philly served as this basketball culture war in all this, is there anything unique about the city and the fans of Philadelphia that you thought made it possible to go all-in on all of this for as long as the franchise did?

Thats kind of the funny thing, Ill say this, thats where they blew it in a way, and not Sam Hinkie. But just that if youre gonna do a tear down, the hardest thing in sports I always compare it to the Knicks because Im a New Yorker, theyve been losing for 20 years without a plan to lose in sports, use one consistent plan. They had a consistent plan, and they had actually got a big chunk to buy in, and thats almost the hardest part when you do a tank, or you do a rebuild, its getting people to buy in.

I put it in my book, I do find that the Rights to Ricky Sanchez guys had a really big role in all this, I really do, in terms of being able to galvanize a fan base into one coherent voice, or organize a fan base into one coherent voice, and galvanize them behind this plan. I think that helped, I really do, and they became spokesmen, they were the leaders and people listened to them. It was almost like they were pitchmen for it without being on the teams payroll. If youre a team, thats the best thing you can have, influencers like that. And the flip side is, they were already there and they were so mobilized, the group represented by those guys, when you push out Sam Hinkie, youre gonna have a loud, organized voice coming against you as well and making everything seem louder.

I dont know about Philly the city. Honestly, I dont know, I was an interloper there. I was in Philadelphia a lot, but it was mostly the Marriott, the arena, or Camden at the practice facility, its not like I was walking the streets. I cant pretend to know a city like that, but I do think that the way this played out with the fan base, it did make things louder and more intense on both sides for sure.

Would you say that The Process is over or is it something that, as long as Embiid, as long as Simmons, as long as those links to the absolutely garbage Sixers teams are there, theyre always going to be in The Process?

I dont know. I mean, yes, no. I guess if I were to do it, its a three-part play. Part one was the tanking, part two was from Simmons rookie year to now, and now where do you go from here, this is the first dip in it. Yes and no, how about that? Hows that for a clear answer?

This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity, and was made possible by Dime receiving an advanced copy of the book.

More:
'Tanking To The Top' Brings Readers Inside The Process - UPROXX

Mar 26th 2020

Editors note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For more coverage, see our coronavirus hub

IN THE PAST few weeks politics has retreated to its core function: protecting the tribe from death and destruction. The government has adopted the slogan Save lives along with Protect the NHS and Stay home. The army is on standby. In the coming weeks thousands of people will die before their time; those who survive may confront a 1930s-style depression.

The atmosphere in the Westminster village reflects these grim facts. Boris Johnson gets through 20-hour days by munching vegan food, perhaps in the belief that plants are good for the immune system. Aides are sleeping on sofas and old camp beds. Having restricted the number of MPs allowed into the chamber so that they could sit two metres apart, the House of Commons has risen early and will remain closed for at least a month. The mother of parliaments is now a sepulchre.

Covid-19 is changing the way Britain governs itself in broader ways, too. Two kinds of politics that have dominated the country for the past decade have vanished. The first is the politics of revolution. Britain has been turned upside down by the successful campaign, driven by activists such as Dominic Cummings, the prime ministers chief aide, to wrench Britain away from Europe. Since his election victory in December, Mr Johnson has set about implementing his grand ambitions to rewire the country for a post-Brexit future, shifting power from London to the provinces, pouring money into infrastructure and completing Brexit negotiations in double-quick time.

The second is politics as performance or spectacle. Politics has always been performance art to some degree: look at the weekly bear-pit that is prime ministers questions or the humiliating rituals of general elections. But performance has triumphed over substance in recent years. Leading politicians have become celebrities. Mr Johnson built his political career by appearing on television and turning his first name and blond hair into a global brand. Politics has also been supercharged by the culture wars. Can people with penises reasonably be described as women? Should student groups be allowed to prevent luminaries from voicing controversial opinions at universities? These were the great issues that got peoples blood boiling only a few weeks ago.

The abrupt change of political direction has produced a bad case of whiplash, with Britain adjusting to these new circumstances more slowly than most continental countries, and old habits surviving, discordantly, into the new era. Politics suddenly requires a different sort of personhence the disappearance of Mr Cummings and the appearance by Mr Johnsons side of medical and scientific experts. And it requires a different style of presentation from the one that Mr Johnson was comfortable with, focusing on statesmanship rather than celebrity and reassurance rather than disruption.

Downing Streets communications operation has been particularly slow to adjust: messages have sometimes been confused (Mr Johnson told people to stand two metres apart while obviously standing closer than that to his neighbour) and have been couched in high-falutin language about herd immunity and social distancing. Mr Johnson has also indulged in his natural exuberance by, for example, suggesting that the search for more ventilators should be christened Operation Last Gasp. But things are improving. Isaac Levido, the campaigner who won the election for Mr Johnson, has been brought in to impose more discipline in Downing Street messaging. The prime minister rose to the seriousness of the occasion in announcing a lockdown to the nation on March 23rd. His address was watched by 27m people.

If Mr Johnson is to come out of this well, he will need to make further changes. There is growing support for creating a national governmenta veritable covid-coalitionmodelled on Winston Churchills national government during the second world war, making Sir Keir Starmer deputy prime minister if he wins the Labour leadership as expected and drawing on talented MPs from across the political spectrum. The risk is that the prime minister would sacrifice the tools of party discipline and might find himself presiding over a cabinet of big egos and discordant voices. A national government may be a step too far, but there is a strong case for replacing Mr Johnsons Brexit government with a One Nation Tory government.

The current cabinet is one of the weakest in post-war history precisely because its members were chosen for their enthusiasm for pushing through the Brexit project. Some of themsuch as Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, and Priti Patel, the home secretaryare far too divisive to command national respect. The fact that Mr Raab, an abrasive Brexit ultra, is currently Mr Johnsons designated survivor should he fall victim to covid-19 is particularly worrying. Otherssuch as Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, and Liz Truss, the trade secretaryare over-promoted. Mr Johnson needs to draw on all the talents within his party: it is foolish that Jeremy Hunt, Britains longest-serving health secretary, doesnt have a cabinet position. The prime minister also needs to choose a more acceptable figure to replace him if he becomes illperhaps the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, whose performance has been exemplary, but who may already have enough on his plate, or perhaps a newly promoted Mr Hunt, who, after all, came second in the Conservative Party leadership race.

Mr Johnsons career has always been defined by his powerful sense of history (hence his obsession with Churchill) and his ruthlessness in achieving his goals (hence his willingness to break with friends and even family in order to achieve Brexit). He needs to realise that covid-19, not Brexit, will determine how he goes down in history. And he needs to apply the same ruthlessness to clearing out the Brexit cabinet that he applied to clearing out the government that he inherited from Theresa May. He should not try to fight todays battles with yesterdays weapons.

Dig deeper:For our latest coverage of the covid-19 pandemic, register for The Economist Today, our daily newsletter, or visit our coronavirus hub

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "The new politics"

Continued here:
Politics in the time of covid-19 - The Economist

Photo courtesy of Patrick Semansky/AP Photo

UPDATED: March 27, 2020 @ 1:45 p.m.

Students and graduates across America are in the same boat struggling with mounting student loan debt. Now, they have one more crisis to unite them: the coronavirus pandemic.

In response to the ever-growing health and economic crisis, President Trump on Friday signed a $2 trillion bill, which includes pausing federal student loan payments and waiving the interest for six months, reported Forbes.

This comes after President Trump announced a 60-day suspension of student loan payments and interest late last week, reported Politico.

Thomas Minter, an East LA College student who will be transferring to Cal State LA, was pleased with the presidents decision, though he emphasized personal responsibility, including in regards to finances.

My wife, who is a Cal State LA student, and I both have student debt at the moment but completely understood the contract that we were entering into, Minter wrote in an email sent a day before the stimulus package deal was reached. Eventually, it will have to [be paid] back and there will be only limited chances to postpone payment. This is why money management is VERY important.

Minter asked to keep in mind that he and his family have experienced homelessness, due toliving off credit instead of saving. He continued, We learned a hard life lesson and had to work our way back from that, which is a lesson beyond priceless.

In addition, on Tuesday, Politico reported the administration paused collecting from borrowers who defaulted on their federal student loans.

A total of $1.56 trillion student loan debt has affected 44.7 million Americans, according to Forbes.

The Trump administration response is the scraps bare minimum, said Ryan Perez, a Bernie Sanders supporter.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has put forth his own proposal on tackling student debt in light of the pandemic. While his Democratic rival for the partys presidential nomination, Sanders, has done well among very liberal voters and young people, Biden is trying to win over that crowd after a series of recent progressive proposals, including eliminating $10,000 of student debt for every borrower in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Perez, a business administration major, is not convinced of Bidens proposal either. Echoing Sanders, he said free education and wiping out student debt is a basic right. He added: Younger voters should not fall for this and should not accept it.

The different philosophies like that between Minter and Perez are a part of the countrys culture wars, but now Americans are united in an even greater war against a common enemy, one that keeps spreading and taking lives with no care for political ideology. In the meantime, folks across the U.S. are coping with the challenging times.

For Perez, its listening to music and playing video games with his online friends. For the Minter household, it includes board games and Bible study.

See the original post here:
BREAKING: One crisis on top of another: Student loan debt amid the coronavirus pandemic - CSULA University Times

All last week Peter Jukes, co-founder of Byline Times, fought with coronavirus. He posted updates on his condition on social media and even published a powerful piece on the investigative site denouncing the UK governments herd immunity response to the pandemic.

No doubt his recovery was aided by thoughts of his ambitious plans for Byline Times, the start-up newspaper launched last year to challenge the UKs established national press. It recently expanded into documentary filmmaking and will shortly launch in broadcast radio.

The investigative paper, run on a shoestring budget from an office in Southwark, south London, is already on the point of break-even by hitting its target of 5,000 subscribers ahead of its first anniversary this month, putting it in a stronger position than many centuries-old regional titles.

With the press under intense pressure from a collapse in physical sales and free handouts as readers stay at home, Byline Timess lack of dependency on the newsstand is insulating it from the crisis. At around 5,000 we are just about washing our face, explains co-founder Jukes, who says its business model was a year ahead of schedule. Our next aim is to move to 10,000 subscribers. We believe we could get there in a year. We will then invest that into marketing and to getting better and better journalists.

While the site is currently dominated by a series of critical pieces on the UKs failings in its approach to stopping the spread of coronavirus, Byline Times has a broad editorial mission. It ranges from exposing dark money corruption to analysis of the identity culture wars currently being exploited by the new political right. It reports critically on Russian state interference and the worst excesses of authoritarianism in China.

After Easter, it will expand into radio. Stephen Colegrave, the projects co-founder and a former executive at Saatchi & Saatchi, says that an established broadcasting partner is in place to host Byline Times on its platform. Within a couple of months we will be up and running on radio. [Rupert] Murdoch is launching on radio and we want to do a drive time show positioned up against Radio 4 and Murdochs Times Radio.

The worlds most famous press baron is a nemesis for Byline Times. Jukess journey in journalism began when, as a television dramatist, he took up a position in the gallery of the Old Bailey to live blog the phone-hacking trials of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. His endeavours were paid for by crowd-funding. When I covered the phone hacking trial I thought: we have one of the worst presses in the world, he recalls.

In 2016, Jukes and Colegrave inherited Byline, a web-based experiment in crowd-funding investigative journalism. Three years later they pivoted to a subscription model, which costs 29 for the digital format and 36 for the monthly paper to be delivered by post. When we started we thought it would be an advertising model and we didnt even think of printing a newspaper, says Jukes. We printed a newspaper for the launch so that people had something to take away and we realised that everyone wanted a newspaper.

The Byline Times website remains free to access. Traffic is not insignificant, says Colegrave. We are reaching up to half a million a month now and are planning to be over 1m a month by the end of this year. The audience is five times bigger than it was a year ago.

Byline Times hosts a network of contributors that includes investigative reporters such as David Hencke and Iain Overton, and cultural commentators including Bonnie Greer, CJ Werleman, Open Democracy founder Anthony Barnett and film reviewer Chris Sullivan. The site and paper are edited by Hardeep Matharu, a journalist with a background in covering social affairs.

Matharu has written extensively for Byline Times on the culture wars that are shaping modern politics. She explored why her Punjabi parents and other Asian immigrants were being charmed by Boris Johnson and the rhetoric of Brexit.

She identifies a failure of the political left to engage in the culture war and says that has aided the rise of populism. Its an area she claims is not properly covered by traditional media, leaving a void which Byline Times is attempting to fill.

We believe the left must work out how to offer a new narrative around people's cultural concerns and properly acknowledge the rise of English nationalism an area which must be explored further in the media as a whole. As the child of parents who were born under the Empire and who voted to leave the European Union in 2016 my own instinct is that economic and social factors are not the only ones now at play.

Jukes, who worked with Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr in her investigation of the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, says he has watched the British right import a playbook developed in America by Steve Bannon, the former adviser to Donald Trump who was executive chairman of reactionary media platform Breitbart News. The Conservatives, for 50 years sold economic probity, now they are selling damn economics, what matters is identity, Jukes claims. I think they are following Bannons template.

He argues that Murdoch is a master of culture wars and that Piers Morgan, a former Murdoch editor, is fighting similar battles from his breakfast television sofa. He is constantly playing these culture war games against Meghan [Markle], using the fairness principles of the sixties and the idea that men and white people are victims of prejudice.

As well as moving into radio, Byline Times is embracing documentary making. The new Byline Films commissioned filmmaker Sheridan Flynn to make a series called The Great British British Break-Up, an exploration of the pressures on the United Kingdom. His opening film, released in February, highlighted how English nationalism was seen in Northern Ireland as a threat to the UK.

Jukes says that next film will be made in Scotland to see how they turned this Scottish nationalism which was quite exclusive and anti-English into a civic nationalism which welcomes English people if they are resident in Scotland.

Before the spread of coronavirus, Byline Times was due to examine the issue of English nationalism in a live debate in London featuring Labour MP David Lammy who has called for a new civic nationalism talking with Byline contributors.

The Byline Times growth story has thus far benefited from alignment with the Byline Festival, an August bank holiday weekend celebration of journalism and culture in the Sussex countryside that hosts its own media circus, alongside classes in investigative reporting and comedy stages. Performers have included John Cleese and Hardeep Singh Kohli (both Byline Times contributors) and last years festival attracted 5,500 people.

Like the rest of the entertainment sector, the event is threatened by the current crisis. But Byline Times will be hoping that continued subscriber growth and a rising profile will ensure a viable future as an alternative voice in UK media.

Ian Burrell's column, The News Business, is published on The Drum each Thursday. Follow Ian on Twitter @iburrell

Original post:
How investigative title Byline Times is extending its alternative voice into film and radio - The Drum

Ive been on to my solicitor to draft a certificate setting out why I should be saved when the Great Triage comes.

I cant think of a single reason off the top of my head but hell come up with something. Hes good. Hes expensive. I want the document on me when Im wheeled into ICU.

Meanwhile, we wait. Those who matter most to us are putting their lives at risk on the frontline. Politicians are frantic. The media is in overdrive. But the rest are part of a waiting nation.

Some of us wait at home. Some in queues. In Redfern this week, the line waiting for Centrelink to open went all the way up the street, a disciplined queue, each citizen a little apart, sitting on milk crates and cradling takeaway coffee.

God bless the milk crate, there for us in good times and bad to gawp at Mardi Gras or disarm a killer rampaging round the Sydney CBD and now the crates are indispensable as we queue, perhaps endlessly, for help.

Strange how old-fashioned the responses are to this new-fangled intruder in our lives. Were washing our hands. Grandmothers are cutting hair again. Rolled oats are in short supply. One of my in-laws is selling chooks at $35 each.

Whats happening is clear: the virus is taking us back to our childhoods. But a word of caution. The happy memory of hens in the garden and fresh eggs for breakfast doesnt survive much scrutiny. I know. I fed the buggers. It means a lot of work with never enough eggs. How I loved the sight of my father at the chopping block killing the chooks too old to lay.

Pity he wont be round when all this is over. There will be work. But when will that time come? We havent a clue. The most remarkable thing about these remarkable times is having so little idea when and where this story will take us. Its arc is a mystery.

Theres no left or right way to approach this catastrophe. Theres only doing it badly or getting it right

The virus is reminding us how much time and energy we spend predicting the future. We do it automatically. And despite the twists and turns that catch us off guard, we humans are pretty good at working out whats coming down the track. Its how we survive.

But not this time.

Thats why the virus has overwhelmed the news cycle. With the future so uncertain we cant tear ourselves away. We keep reading and watching and listening though the story wasnt different this morning and will be the same tomorrow the same yet new.

Mind you, the old are beginning to tire. Im so sick of the news, a celebrated whinger raged at me the other day. Twenty-five minutes of coronavirus and then the weather. Its not enough. What about a murder every now and again

The mysteries of the future are throwing politics in the air. Politics divides over the best way to deal with reasonably predictable outcomes. Politicians and commentators throw the words unprecedented around all the time. But its rarely justified. Now it is.

Politicians are feeling their way forward into the unknown. Old divisions are all but meaningless. Theres no left or right way to approach this catastrophe. Theres only doing it badly or getting it right.

So were seeing an extraordinary sight I cant remember in my lifetime: conservative governments making radical choices and spending huge sums of money to address a national crisis.

How trivial this makes the politics of the last decade seem, all those years conservatives spent blocking solutions to that other great challenge we face. Its too expensive to do anything about climate change, they said. Too daring. Too disruptive. So they deliberately pursued the politics of logjam.

But now the purse is open. Extraordinary demands are being made of the country. And perhaps, in the end, it will work. The great lesson of the coronavirus may well be that we have it within our grasp to address and solve the problems of this country.

That would change Australia, a nation thats grown increasingly pessimistic over recent years about the possibilities of politics and increasingly reluctant to demand political solutions to the problems we face in the future.

Perhaps the culture wars might be abandoned at the same time out of sheer pointlessness. Its sweet to see the panic merchants of the media those who revved up the nation about refugees and Indigenous land rights and transgender kids and the high price of doing anything about climate change urging calm in the face of the virus, calm and trust in the government.

We wait. One day we will tell stories about being there when handshaking stopped; when we held our breath passing people in the street; when cruise ships roamed the seas; when the Minister for Keeping Out Foreign Contagion came down with the bug; and, for a couple of days, Bondi beach was closed while Crown Casino stayed open.

We all have friends waiting on milk crates and know grandparents in exile from their families. With dry coughs and breathlessness, the pandemic has also brought loneliness and, of course, ruin everywhere.

The business of a woman I know has gone kaput and 15 employees are facing the sack. Shes a big figure in her trade. Shes always grown vegetables as a hobby but you should see her garden now. Its never been so planted, weeded and fed. Its a picture.

Over the road, friends of friends are hunkered down for a fortnights self-isolation. The prisoners sit with their little girl in the doorway and their families gather at the gate. They bring picnic chairs and, of course, takeaway coffee.

Theyre learning not to kiss and hug. It isnt easy. Worse, we all find, is learning to stand a little apart. It feels so awkward, so cold, so wrong.

A woman known for her extreme attitudes on a number of fronts has stood apart rather dramatically by retreating to the remote hinterland of Canberra where she is running her business from a tent pitched in a paddock. From here, she explained, I get line of sight to the Telstra tower.

Theres a reassuring lesson for capitalism here. From that great distance, even though they are scattered to their own homes, she is still able to terrify her staff.

Im working from home as I always have. As usual, I sit in a bubble of good fortune. But Im getting on. When the kids call the virus the Boomer Doomer, they had my kind in mind.

Which reminds me, Id better get on to my lawyer again.

See the article here:
One day we will tell stories of the virus, a time when we held our breath passing people in the street - The Guardian