Commodifying “Content”

Four recent incidents have made me aware again of one of those itches it seems impossible to scratch, the valuation of “content” as a product rather than as the culmination of a process. Scholarship, today, becomes simply the thing for sale. The first of these was the resignation of Jonah Lehrer from The New Yorker. The second…

The Lesson from David Barton

Christian publishing house  Thomas Nelson has pulled David Barton’s book The Jefferson Lies from distribution. According to NPR: “When the concerns came in, from multiple people, and that had weight too, we were trying to sort things out,” said Thomas Nelson Senior Vice President and Publisher Brian Hampton. “Were these matters of opinion? Were they differences…