I say what I mean, and I do what I say. ~Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) in "Heat". (Work links on my LinkedIn)
Higher education reporter, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
New statement from Scott Pelley:
There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58thseason, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.
The waste is heartbreaking.
Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.
I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.
Scott Pelley
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger says AI companies are making choices that could lead to “a great deal of unnecessary harm” to the news business and the public’s access to reliable sources:
“I fully believe AI has the power to do a great deal of good in the world. I’m not calling AI — or the tech giants that control this technology — inherently bad or evil. I’m warning that AI companies are making choices that violate settled law, threaten the viability of creative work, and appear likely to cause a great deal of unnecessary harm.”
https://t.co/y4iHtqDwiQ
Bob is not only a friend, he remains one of the most ethical, professional people in golf media. Millions of people read his stuff, and yet the dolts at SI who bought a fake AI video platform for $200 million (thus necessitating these job cuts) get to carry on unaffected.
Being one of the subjects of a story is admittedly uneasy. But this is so incredibly nice of Michael Bamberger, one of the all time best in golf. Thanks to those who have reached out here and elsewhere. It is much appreciated. More to come.
https://t.co/49wGaC0otx
Cate Blanchett losing Best Actress for TÁR (2022) to Michelle Yeoh is the kind of Oscar decision that ages worse every year. The performance is on the level of Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood (2007), and the Academy already knows it.
This, right here, is why Bryson is so unlikable to me:
In one breath, he describes possible PGA Tour fines as “quite unfortunate… considering what I could do for them.”
Then immediately after that, he says, “The egos need to get dropped… Everyone needs to come in level-headed.”
ARE YOU KIDDING ME, MAN?!
Shoutout to @Mark_Schlabach for writing this ESPN article.
Yesterday was the most watched Kentucky Derby of all time…19.6 million for telecast and 24.4 million for actual race
It was higher rated than basically every sporting event besides the NFL and College Football title game
It’s crazy how much the Derby continues to grow
We have a year’s worth of economic data since Liberation Day, when President Trump announced much higher tariffs on most imported goods and countries, and the data are definitive; the tariffs have done significant damage to the economy. Since that day, job growth has come to a standstill, with only the non-traded healthcare industry adding meaningfully to payrolls. Also, since that day, inflation has accelerated, with the consumer expenditure deflator increasing at a 3% year-over-year pace, up from 2.5% before the tariffs and well above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. And the trend lines don’t look good, especially as the economic fallout from the Iran War hits with full force. The higher energy and other commodity prices caused by the war threaten to do even more economic damage than the tariffs, further undermining growth and pushing inflation higher. The U.S. economy is resilient, but just how resilient is set to be tested.
"I think that college football should be run by people who like college football. And every decision, every idea I've seen about playoff expansion seems like it's come from people who don't like college football, don't know why we like it... A 24-team playoff would be a disgrace." - Kevin Clark
The money is the money — but I still can’t believe the league signed off on a plan to have playoff games overlap each other on a night when there were only two games. And then the second one, which is great, isn’t nearly as accessible to fans because of where it’s airing.
A 2025 study out of M.I.T. cautioned that “the integration of LLMs into learning environments may inadvertently contribute to cognitive atrophy.” This danger hasn’t slowed the advancement of A.I. in schools. https://t.co/nPxSO7Hdcb
Two economists just published a mathematical proof that AI will destroy the economy.
Not might. Not could. Will — if nothing changes.
The paper is called "The AI Layoff Trap." Published March 2, 2026. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Boston University. Peer reviewed. Mathematically modeled.
The conclusion is one sentence.
"At the limit, firms automate their way to boundless productivity and zero demand."
An economy that produces everything. And sells it to nobody.
Here is how you get there.
A company fires 500 workers and replaces them with AI. A competitor fires 700 to keep up. Another fires 1,000. Every company is behaving rationally. Every company is following the incentives correctly. And every company is building a trap for itself.
Because the workers who were fired were also customers.
When they lose their jobs faster than the economy can absorb them, they stop spending. Consumer demand falls. Companies respond by cutting costs — which means automating more workers — which means less spending — which means more falling demand — which means more automation.
The loop has no natural exit.
The researchers tested every proposed solution. Universal basic income. Capital income taxes. Worker equity participation. Upskilling programs. Corporate coordination agreements.
Every single one failed in the model.
The only intervention that worked: a Pigouvian automation tax — a per-task levy charged every time a company replaces a human with AI, forcing them to price in the demand they are destroying before they pull the trigger.
No government has implemented this. No major economy is seriously discussing it.
Meanwhile the numbers are already tracking the curve. 100,000 tech workers laid off in 2025. 92,000 more in the first months of 2026. Jack Dorsey fired half of Block's workforce and said publicly: "Within the next year, the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion."
Nobody is doing anything wrong. Companies are following their incentives perfectly. That is exactly the problem.
Rational behavior. At scale. Simultaneously. With no mechanism to stop it.
Two economists built the math. The math leads to one place.
Source: Falk & Tsoukalas · Wharton School + Boston University ·
https://t.co/4m8E9jQNYm