On his return to the US from a vacation with his family, columnist Shaun King was detained at JFK Airport and questioned about his involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement. The Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts Jr writes that “one is hard-pressed to explain what happened Monday as anything other than a clumsy attempt at political intimidation, the government’s unsubtle way of letting a critic know that Big Brother is watching.”
Matthew Lacombe discusses his research on NRA editorials in American Rifleman magazine and how they’ve impacted gun owners’ views on gun laws.
Splinter’s Hamilton Nolan proposes a radical idea for funding journalism: Take back the money that Facebook, Google, and other tech companies have made by siphoning away print-ad dollars and give it back to publications. “It has always blown my mind that big, successful tech companies do not directly fund journalism,” he writes. “It’s cheap, it’s good for the country, and it helps to perpetuate the demonstrably successful business model that has gotten the companies this far already.”
