🤞Living In Multiple Americas - The Neal Ungerleider Newsletter
+ Visualizing COVID risk + Turning around the New York Times + more!
I live in multiple Americas.
I work in advertising and PR, which skews Democratic but is disproportionately white, male, and well-off the further up you go. I live in a Chicago neighborhood where local politics are a constant clash between an activist-y new guard and the old machine system. When I turn on Facebook, I’m back in the outer borough NYC Italian/Jewish neighborhood where I grew that’s gone all in for Trump.
All of these Americas—and a few tens of thousands more—coexist at the same time. Sometimes easily, sometimes not so easily. And hey, there’s also a presidential election this week!
Your perspective isn’t your neighbor’s perspective. Your perspective isn’t your coworker’s or your relative’s perspective. They might genuinely believe those conspiracy theories you laugh at. Your facts might be their conspiracy theories. They might believe things in their heart they never told you. They might be hiding their opinions for the sake of fitting in. When noone’s looking, people fill out ballots differently than you might expect. They might not even be filling out that ballot at all.
We’re all going to have to live with each other on November 4th, on November 5th and every day after that. Noone knows what’s going to happen on Election Day or in the days afterwards. Be kind to each other, think about the long term and block some social media sites if you have to—the news will always be there. 🤞
New Futures:
Spanish newspaper El Pais just put together the most visual, most intelligently made risk guide to catching COVID I’ve ever seen.
Antonio Garcia-Martinez’s substack on “American magical realism” is worth a read: “The Zoom class of tech-enabled elites, those who could unplug from reality via representation better than anyone, largely did so. Much to corporate management’s surprise, a universal and continuing WFH didn’t ding productivity much at all. On the contrary, ‘work from home’ actually means ‘live at work’.”
Why retail stores are boarding up in so many cities in advance of Election Day. TLDR: It’s less the guarantee of political violence from either the right or the left and more the fact that actuaries are uttering a collective “oh fuck” at risk factors from a highly partisan election in the middle of a country-altering pandemic after multiple riots earlier this year. Fun!
Advertising/Marketing/PR:
Surprising absolutely noone in the advertising world, Deutsch New York and Los Angeles are splitting up into separate agencies.
Some good news for the industry: 99Designs’ new study finds half of freelance graphic designers worldwide are on track to earn more in 2020 than they did in 2019 (Usual grain of salt here: 99Designs has a vested interest in this topic, yadda yadda…). The not good news in the report is that 26% of respondents reported losing a salaried role in 2020.
Media:
Josh Sternberg on Facebook’s emotional slot machine: “The algorithm rewarded any content that got the most engagement, not just the mundane life stuff. That mundane, boring stuff got throttled. And what gets the most engagement? Fantastical posts about conspiracy theories, often peddled by accounts with large followings.“
Lots of podcasting news: Netflix is testing an audio-only mode for Android users designed to bring Netflix into cars and along jogs, Audible will now offer 100,000 different podcasts to listeners, and Spotify employees are angry that Spotify-exclusive podcaster Joe Rogan hosted Alex Jones on a recent episode.
T-Mobile is offering a $10/month television plan designed to compete with cable television and attract cord-cutters. (Disclosure: I have worked with TMOB on previous projects.)
Apple TV has signed Jon Stewart for a weekly hour-long show about “topics that are currently part of the national conversation.” Will it be more John Oliver or more David Letterman? We’ll see.
Longrunnning Twin Cities alt weekly City Pages is shutting down. RIP.
Simon Owens looks at why Crooked Media succeeds where Air America failed.
Insider Inc. just purchased a majority stake in Morning Brew.
Mine Safety Disclosures goes into the nitty gritty of how the New York Times turned their business around.
Tech:
When Zoom is the defacto platform for holding meetings, what happens when Zoom censors events?
Apple’s up to some weird stuff in the search engine world.
Maciej Ceglowski argues that private equity is ruinous for tech innovation.
Facebook’s making a big move into cloud gaming and offering high quality streaming games.
Under Armour is selling MyFitnessPal, which is in a hard spot for mobile apps: Popular but customers don’t want to pay for it.
Cadillac Fairview, a major Canadian real estate company, used cameras hidden in mall maps to semi-secretly collect 5 million images of shoppers.
You know who makes metric shittons of money and saves companies and government agencies from doom on a regular basis? Excel consultants.
Fun:
Quartz Obsession visits the work of HP Lovecraft.
Turning Ferris Wheels into COVID-friendly coworking spaces.
ESPN and FiveThirtyEight dive deep into political donations from pro sports teams owners.
Paper Magazine cofounder Kim Hastreiter’s amazing office space.
DNA analysis lets us reconstruct prehistoric dogs and where our modern dog breeds come from.
Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately:
The Futur’s How To Manage Your Time & Get More Done.
One man’s quest to save the folk music of the Holocaust.
Amazing pizza from Chicago’s Milly’s Pizza in the Pan.
The trailer for Johnny Depp and Julien Temple’s new Shane MacGowan documentary:
That’s it for this issue. Email me here and please don’t hesitate to contact if I can be of assistance. Thank you for taking the time to read this damned thing. And donate to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.
Love and coffee,
Neal
About This Newsletter: My name is Neal Ungerleider, and I’m a strategic communications consultant working with brands and agencies on marketing/advertising/PR projects. I worked as a journalist in a previous life and now write this weekly newsletter about the comms industry and adjacent things. Thanks for taking the time to read it. For more, here's my bio, my portfolio, and current projects.
Connect on Twitter or LinkedIn or learn more about my services at nealungerleider.com.