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Will Workers Return To The Office? This Expert Says No

My prediction? Absolutely not. If companies make employees who can do their jobs at home go into the office, it will be harder for them to hire, and other companies will benefit. - Washington Post

COVID Killed Quite A Few Dance Companies, And The Survivors Are Scared

As dance companies are returning to the stage, the ghosts of those that no longer exist haunt the field. … Dance advocates see the vanished organizations as troubling signs that the art form, routinely under financial stress, may be shrinking, its structures drastically changing. - MSN (The Washington Post)

Why People Really Cancel Their News Subscriptions

The Nieman Journalism Lab asked its readers who had cancelled to tell them why, and hundreds did. Ideological or political bias was cited, but it was by no means the primary reason. - Nieman Lab

Study: Sell An Idea By Focusing On “Why” Or “How”?

Should she focus on why her idea is useful or should she instead promote a more concrete focus on how the idea works when pitching to an audience of investors? - Harvard Business Review

Campus Threats To Academic Freedom? Maybe Not So Much

None of this is to say that higher education shouldn’t be vigilant about threats to academic freedom and free speech. But let’s not give in to exaggeration and fearmongering. - InsideHigherEd

This Is The Second Most Popular Talk Radio Show In America (You May Never Have Heard Of It)

"Like much of talk radio, The Ramsey Show sits in a murky zone between journalism and entertainment. It is not quite a news program, religious service, reality show, infomercial, or financial advice; it is somehow all five." - Columbia Journalism Review

Another Set Of Looted Treasures Is Being Repatriated To Africa (And These Are Actually Going To Benin)

You know about the Benin Bronzes, looted by the British from what's now Nigeria and some of which are being returned there. These objects, the Abomey Treasures, were taken by the French army in 1892 from the Kingdom of Dahomey, present-day Benin, where they'll be shipped next month. - AP

Mort Sahl, Who Created Political Comedy As We Know It, Dead At 94

He became famous for walking to the microphone with a newspaper and riffing on whatever stories he found there. (Time magazine called him "Will Rogers with fangs.") As actor-filmmaker Albert Brooks put it, "Every comedian who is not doing wife jokes has to thank him for that." - AP

Why It’s So Important To Figure Out Who Gets To Own Our Data

Our problem today lies in finding a model of data ownership that recognizes the collective interest we have in how personal data is used, that avoids the profound costs of free-wheeling private exploitation by individual firms, and that does not slip into authoritarian state control. - Boston Review

She Saved Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center And Merged It With The Philadelphia Orchestra. Now She’s Retiring

When Anne Ewers arrived in 2007, the Kimmel still had $30 million in construction debt. She raised money to pay it off, increased revenue (more Broadway shows, fewer touring orchestras), and oversaw the merger that ended conflicts between the Kimmel and its largest tenant. - MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Astonishing Growth In University Endowments Last Year — What To Do With It?

Washington University in St. Louis saw a 65 percent return. Duke, 56 percent. MIT, 55.5 percent (after completing a $6 billion capital campaign). Brown, 51.5 percent. Dartmouth, 46.5 percent. Yale, 40.2 percent. - Inside Higher Ed

Broadway Shows, With The Advantage Of Time Off And Protests, Have Quietly Made Changes

Many changes came about because actors requested some rethinking of words, lyrics, or choreography. Sally Hemings, for instance, no longer flirt-dances with Jefferson in Hamilton's "What Did I Miss?" - The New York Times

Alec Baldwin, Firing Prop Gun On Set, Kills Cinematographer And Wounds Director

While filming a scene on location near Santa Fe for the feature Rust, which he co-wrote, is producing and stars in, Baldwin discharged a prop pistol loaded with blanks and hit director of photography Halyna Hutchins, now dead, and director Joel Souza, hospitalized. - Santa Fe New Mexican

Bernard Haitink, Revered Conductor, Dead At 92

Known especially for his Mahler and Bruckner, Haitink had long tenures at the helm of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, Royal Opera in London, and Glyndebourne Festival and spent periods as (unofficially but in effect) interim chief conductor at the Boston And Chicago Symphonies. - BBC

Disgraced During #MeToo, Garrison Keillor Tries For A Comeback

Five years after he retired from A Prairie Home Companion, four years after accusations led public radio and publishers to drop him, Keillor is self-publishing and doing speaking gigs before forgiving audiences. He has no regrets, but his account of things is, well, sanitized. - MSN (The Washington Post)

Black Americans Should Absolutely Appropriate European Opera (Though Not Necessarily Like This): John McWhorter

Writes the Columbia University linguist and New York Times columnist of Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones and William Grant Still's Highway 1, U.S.A., "the tradition being appropriated here is based on a philosophy of composition and audience reception hardly inevitable." - The New York Times

Report: One-Third Of UK Music Jobs Were Lost During Pandemic

The research said there were 69,000 fewer jobs in music in 2020 than in 2019 - a drop of 35% - due to the "devastating impact" of coronavirus. - BBC

The Mind-Boggling History That Shapes South Korea’s Popular Cultural Exports

Think about it: Parasite and Squid Game are pretty weird: intense drama, occasional shocking violence and dark satire jumbled with juvenile humor and an almost childish innocence. What does this strange mishmash come from? The difficult, disorienting past hundred years South Korea has lived through. - The American Scholar

The Existential Dangers Of “Longtermism”

Longtermism might be one of the most influential ideologies that few people have ever heard about. I believe this needs to change because I have come to see this worldview as quite possibly the most dangerous secular belief system in the world today. - Aeon

WBEZ And The Chicago Sun-Times: Can Public Radio Really Rescue Print Journalism?

"Similar mergers and acquisitions have become a common way to bolster the struggling print industry, but if radio were to take on a major newspaper, that would be a first." - The Verge
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