Minnesota's 1996 'Inter-web' Newspaper of the Future!

In a completely bizarre move, the Minnesota State Demographics Center released a fake newspaper in 1996 that they titled "The Not Yet Gazette."

It was supposed to use demographic information to show what the state will be like in November 2025.

The site is totally worth exploring for gems like this: "Life on the Inside: Are ElderDorms Homes or Prisons for Old People?"

There's another article mentioning the slim election of a coalition led by a " Governor Sheriff Abdul Muhammed." (I don't know how they got that title out of demographic data.)

Also, in the future they call baby-boomers 'grasshoppers,' supposedly due to a parable about grasshoppers not saving for old age. I smell Gen-X all over this.

It's silly, but I'd rather consume demographic data through this forum than the typical presentation.

Although, it does seem naive to assume newspapers would be around in 2025.

Chuck Lewis, investigative journalist, politely listens to wingnuts at Silha Lecture Wednesday

Charles “Chuck” Lewis, spoke at the University of Minnesota as part of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law anniversary.

He's pretty amazing, talking about public service journalism, editorial spinelessness, and private interests' intimidation.

During his speech, he disclosed some of the internal controversies that he's run into in his years as an investigative journalist for ABC, CBS, and the Center for Public Integrity.

My favorites:

• ABC canceled an extensive report on a situation near Love Canal where Occidental dumped three times as many chemicals into the local drinking water supply as at Love Canal. His footage and information from a hundred or so interviews never made it out of the network.

• The head of CBS put pressure on 60 minutes' Mike Wallace not to report on the cigarette industry because the he was also head of a cigarette company. Wallace supposedly told him to go to hell.

• The Center for Public Integrity was sued by Russian oligarchs. Lewis comments, "I hate when that happens." Their insurer lost more than $4 million fighting the case, which caused them to drop the center from its insurance. That spurred Lewis to raise a $5 million endowment and get guarantees that prestigious firms would do pro-bono work if the center was sued. According to Lewis, it's providing a model for the small non-profits that are sprouting up, to defend them from powerful moneyed interests. He said his legal philosophy now would be that a good offense is the best defense.

• He talked a lot about the dangers of private power (which is often discussed), mentioning that very few Pulitzers have been given for business reporting, largely because they face well-funded lawyers that threaten corporations' bottom lines. He rightly emphasized the impact of the Clinton-supported Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed these cautious (with news) reckless (with money) corporations to buy up the old media and help gut its public service arms.

Unfortunately, the earlier MPR interview, where Lewis stated that investigative journalism is about holding authorities accountable and getting the "bastards," brought in its share of wingnuts (not that those aren't awesome and true statements).

They asked at length, in a packed room, about the 9/11 commission, Pakistan, their travels to other parts of the world, and their problems with cable journalism (and one guy tried to get everyone to raise their hands to take a survey, really). Lewis was polite, but they wasted time for those of us who came to hear about investigative journalism, a different animal, after all, than MSNBC.

MPR Interview:

Scathing Report on Immigration Detention

Dr. Dora Schriro compiled a scathing report (by academic standards) of the U.S. immigration detention system that will deport around 400,000 people by the end of this year, filtering them through eight different programs and at least four different government agencies. More than 30,000 are currently being detained at any given time.

In the Upper Midwest, the problem is less concentrated than in areas nearer to Mexico, but it's still bad, with a handful of detention centers that show little accountability to the judicial process or human rights like this heartbreaking aggregation at the Ny Times. MinnPost did a good overview of our state's system recently.

You can read the report yourself, thanks to the New York Times.

Here's some key findings that I thought were striking:

• Felons and others of crimes make up less than half of detainees, and get mixed in with asylum seekers and others.
• New technology and the deputization of local authorities could swell the numbers of non-criminals filtered through the system.
  
• The facilities are built and run like jails, but with little of the expected accountability.
• Detainees often have no access to law libraries or access to the court, little or no recreation, no family contact or visitation, and no allowance for religious observations.
• Health intake is casual, with suicidal and mentally ill detainees locked in segregation.
• Lawyers and family often have trouble finding where detainees are being held.