Tuesday, July 14, 2026

AI is hammering the news business


Generative artificial intelligence is having a big impact on the news business. And it’s mostly been negative so far.
For starters, internet search traffic has shifted rapidly from traditional search engines that provide links to relevant content to providing straight-up answers. That has led to news publishers losing traffic and advertising revenue. The situation has gotten dire for the news business.
For many years, publications taught journalists to load their articles with popular search terms or keywords in hopes of ranking highly on Google search pages. This technique, called search engine optimization (SEO), is now on life support.
News publishers are preparing for a scenario called “Google Zero,” when internet searches on Google result in zero click-throughs to the source information.
AI (including Google Gemini) has changed the way people discover information online. Industry pundits are advocating approaches called GEO and AEO (generative/answer engine optimization) by structuring their articles to be the source for the large language models used by AI.
News organizations also have pivoted to getting traffic from other sources such as Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and within AI chatbots.
For news publishers to survive, experts say that they need to lean into Google’s E-E-A-T principles (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness).
But those actions might be just a Band-Aid for a bigger problem.
Meanwhile, large media organizations are suing AI companies like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic for using their content to train AI models without compensating the media companies. Some media firms have reached content licensing deals in lieu of litigation.
“To many publishers, Google’s AI Overviews feel uncomfortably close to a kind of IP (intellectual property) heist: The company ingests their journalism, surfaces synthesized answers at the top of Search and increasingly cuts off the traffic that once compensated publishers for their work,” Andy Meek, Forbes senior contributor said in a recent article.

Related articles:

Once Unimaginable, Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search (Adweek; July 8, 2026)

Who’s suing AI and who’s signing (Press Gazette; July 3, 2026)

Report: Google Zero Click Searches To Open Web Fall To 27.6% (Search Engine Roundtable; June 10, 2026)

Google Search AI Overhaul Leaves Publishers Bracing For ‘Google Zero’ (Forbes; May 25, 2026)

Photo: Image generated by Google Gemini.

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Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Vanishing web content and internet services


There are frequent reminders that things on the internet aren’t permanent. Web content and online services are sometimes here today and gone tomorrow.
For instance, earlier this month TV Time, a tracking app for TV shows and movies, announced that it is shutting down on July 15. When that happens, all personal user data will be deleted.
TV Time has operated for more than a decade and built a dedicated community around episode tracking, watchlists and user ratings. But TV Time said the service is “no longer sustainable.” (See article by MacRumors.)
But all is not lost in this case. Rival services including JustWatch, Serializd and Trakt are offering migration tools for TV Time users to transfer their viewing history, watchlists and episode-tracking data to their platforms.
In May, ABC News purged the archives of respected data journalism website FiveThirtyEight and set up mass redirects to the generic politics section of ABCNews.com. The move took down thousands of articles dating back to the website’s founding in 2008.
ABC bought FiveThirtyEight, known for its data-driven analyses of elections, sports and other subjects, in April 2018.
The abrupt takedown drew heavy criticism from former editors, data journalists, and historians who viewed it as a massive blow to the preservation of public data and political history. (See article by the New York Times.)
A bigger data deletion occurred on Sept. 30, 2025, when blogging platform Typepad went dark after 22 years of service. Typepad announced its planned closure in late August 2025.
Users were given just over a month's notice to manually export decades worth of content before the servers were permanently deactivated and all unexported blogs were wiped out.
Also in May, search engine Ask.com quietly shut down after almost 30 years in operation. It launched in 1996 – a year before Google, which ultimately became the dominant search engine.
Ask.com “follows a spate of Y2K sites to the digital graveyard as AI bots take over the query space,” Sherwood News wrote.

Photos: Screenshots of TV Time and Ask.com.


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Monday, July 6, 2026

The Failed Promise of Digital Content: a recap, part 7


We were promised exhaustive libraries of digital content available anytime and anywhere, but those promises have come up short.
Since May 2009, I have written about the shortcomings of the internet and digital media when it comes to content – music, video, news articles, archived information, etc.
Here is an index of parts 101 to 115 of the series “The Failed Promise of Digital Content.”

Part 101: The end of movie discs is troubling for cinema fans
Part 102: The internet is awash in broken links
Part 103: Content on the internet has an expiration date
Part 104: Google search algorithm changes hurting small publishers
Part 105: Online content not safe from deletion
Part 106: Screw ‘netiquette’! Putting weblinks in blog posts is a waste of effort
Part 107: Why I unplugged my home landline phone
Part 108: Text message spam is annoying as hell
Part 109: Old newspapers need to be digitized
Part 110: AI summaries are the latest existential threat for news publishers
Part 111: Generative AI in the news business: Not to be trusted
Part 112: Free web platforms are preserving digital artifacts … for now
Part 113: Google search changes are hurting small news publishers
Part 114: AI-created fake photos of FIFA World Cup fans show a growing problem
Part 115: Fake movies competing with real movies for attention online

Photo: “Sorry, no internet today” by Marcelo Graciolli via Creative Commons.

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Saturday, July 4, 2026

The 'enshittification' of Google’s Blogger


When I started blogging as a pastime in late 2008, Google’s Blogger was a great choice of platforms. It was free and easy to use and had the financial backing of an internet powerhouse. I wasn’t worried about it disappearing like other platforms.
Also, in the first five years of blogging, I received annual checks of more than $100 each just for allowing advertisements on my Tech-media-tainment blog. Then there was a change in Google’s algorithms and traffic dried up.
Last week I removed the ads from Tech-media-tainment and canceled my revenue-sharing Google AdSense account. The reason was that Google kept increasing the ad counts on the page and the ads became increasingly intrusive.
Tech-media-tainment started with a static banner ad at the top of the page and another between the first and second articles. But that eventually changed to pop-up ads and advertisements on the top and left and right. The main ad forced users to manually close it like a window shade to read the article.
The last straw was when Google added contextual ads in the description of my blog: “Entertainment, pop culture, personal technology and media.” Google said it was an experiment, but I had no way to turn it off. It was ugly and confusing.
The changes at Google’s Blogger fit the definition of “enshittification,” where a service starts out user-friendly but becomes worse as the company increasingly tries to monetize it.
I hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for Blogger. I’d hate to have to export all my work to another service like WordPress or Substack, because I don’t know what to expect there. Plus, that would be a ton of work and create a lot of dead links.
Even Google Gemini admits that Blogger is rarely updated anymore, calling it “an absolute relic of the early 2000s web.”
“There is always a tiny, looming fear that Google might ‘sunset’ it one day like they do with many legacy projects,” Gemini said. Does Google’s AI chatbot know something Google hasn’t said yet?

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Friday, July 3, 2026

Hippos, orcas and other animals attacking movie protagonists


Sharks aren’t the only killer animals on the prowl on movie screens this year. There are also killer hippos, orcas, spiders and snakes at the cinema.
“Hungry,” released in late June, features a rampaging, killer hippopotamus in the Louisiana bayou. Reviews from critics have been mixed, but these types of movies are made for fans of the genre not high-brow snobs.
Coming this fall is the killer orca movie “Black Tides,” starring John Travolta. It is directed by Renny Harlin, who also directed the recent shark-attack movie “Deep Water.”
Due out on Oct. 2 is “Beware Boiúna,” which is about a legendary killer snake in the Amazon rainforest. In Brazilian folklore, the Boiúna (which translates to "Black Snake") is a massive, menacing river serpent.
Also due in October is the movie “Whalefall,” starring Josh Brolin. It involves a scuba diver swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale.
October will also see the release of “Crawlers.” Here’s the synopsis: Quarantined residents of an infested apartment complex find themselves in a fight for their lives against deadly, venomous spiders rapidly spreading throughout the building.

Related article:

Shark-attack movies are getting more ridiculous (June 30, 2026)

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Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Shark-attack movies are getting more ridiculous


It wouldn’t be summer cinema without shark-attack movies. But some of the new movies are playing more for laughs than scares.
“Water Park Shark” is a B-movie horror comedy from Anthony C. Ferrante – the director behind the famously ridiculous “Sharknado” franchise. The plot involves great white sharks breaching a water park in Cape Cod, Mass. It’s due out on July 3 on Amazon Prime Video.
“Sorority Shark Attack” reportedly is set for a streaming video release later this year. It features Robert Carradine (“Revenge of the Nerds”) in one of his final film roles before his death in February.
“Thrash,” which premiered April 10 on Netflix, also generated as many laughs as scares. The plot has a pack of hungry bull sharks invading a flooded coastal town in South Carolina during a hurricane. To make matters worse, the initial storm surge breaks open a massive commercial tanker truck carrying animal blood.
Here’s the plot of “Chum,” released on June 5: “A newlywed couple joins friends on a Mediterranean yacht excursion, only to find themselves caught between a predatory shark and a psychopathic killer in their midst – transforming a sun-drenched escape into a fight for survival.”
“Chum,” starring Alice Eve, received terrible reviews.
Another recent shark-attack movie was “Deep Water,” starring Aaron Eckhart. It involves an international flight that crashes in the Pacific Ocean, and the passengers and crew must work to survive a group of circling sharks. Released on May 1, the film received mildly positive reviews from critics.
Coming soon are “The Devil’s Mouth” and “The Bay,” both of which feature sharks attacking tourists in Thailand.
“The Devil’s Mouth” stars Kathryn Newton and Lana Condor and is set for release on Amazon Prime Video on July 29.
“The Bay” stars Francesca Eastwood and is due for release on July 17 in select theaters and on digital video on demand.
Next year will seen the release on Netflix of “Under Paris 2,” the sequel to “Under Paris” (2024), which featured a giant shark in the Seine. Yeah, totally believable.

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Monday, June 29, 2026

AI-generated fake movie stills infuriate


Just as frustrating as the proliferation online of AI-generated fake movie posters are social media posts with photos purporting to be from new movies. They usually come with teases to the effect of “You’ve got to see this movie. It’s incredible.”
But they offer no details. No title. No release information. Nothing. It’s all one big infuriating tease.
Some photos are obviously fake. One still showed a female sniper with two right hands. (See above.) Generative AI now tends to make dumb mistakes like that. But the technology is improving, and it will get harder to tell the truth from the lies.
What follows are some recent phony movie stills posted on X. Be sure to mute those X users who do this so they don’t show up in your feed again.





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Sunday, June 28, 2026

Fake movies competing with real movies for attention online


I used to rely on suggestions from social media for new movies to watch, but lately X, formerly known as Twitter, has been awash in posts promoting fake movies using AI-created posters and photos.
At first glance, some look compelling. But you soon realize that you’ve been duped. Others with A-list actors are obvious fakes.
The situation is as bad as the numerous online photos of sexy women at FIFA games that turned out to be AI frauds.
Some of these phony movies are fan fiction or wishful thinking as far as casting. But the people who post them don’t usually say that and present them as if they are real. They likely post them to generate user engagement through clickbait.
The worst offender is an account called Movies House (@luther_181). I have muted them and suggest you do too. In fact, I mute all accounts that post this garbage.

Photo: Fake movie poster for “Vis A Vis” with images of actors Jason Statham, Dwyane Johnson and Angelina Jolie.











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Friday, June 19, 2026

AI-created fake photos of FIFA World Cup fans show a growing problem


Lately I’ve seen a flood of photos on social media platform X that purport to show beautiful female fans of national teams participating in the FIFA World Cup. But many of them are fakes created by generative artificial intelligence applications. And it’s getting hard to tell the real ones from the fakes.
Thankfully some X users do the research and flag the fantasy photos with Community Notes. They point out flaws in the photos such as digital artifacts that are telltale signs of AI. But these fakes will only get better, making it harder to discern the truth from falsehoods.
I appreciate it when some posters add labels to mark their photos or videos as AI-created. But not all netizens are good actors.
And this is just sports and entertainment, fake photos will be a bigger problem in news and politics. One recent post contained an AI-altered photo that showed an event at the White House that didn’t occur. Expect more of this as AI develops.

Photo at top: AI-generated photo of a sexy FIFA fan posted multiple times on X.

Related articles:

World Cup ‘supporter’ goes viral as AI image leaves fans duped (News.com.au; June 14, 2026)

Is she real? USA World Cup fan in tiny bikini goes massively viral (Mundo Deportivo; June 13, 2026)











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Sunday, June 14, 2026

Kylie Minogue should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame


The Netflix documentary series “Kylie” provides compelling evidence that Australian pop music superstar Kylie Minogue needs to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The fact that she has never been nominated is a disgrace. The longevity of her career, her reinventions, her chart-topping hits and sold-out concerts to this day are all factors in her favor. The three-part Netflix series also shows the personal and professional challenges she has faced and overcome.
Australia has been a noticeable blind spot for the Rock Hall. The only Aussie acts in the hall are AC/DC and the Bee Gees.
Aussie snubs include Minogue, INXS (nominated for the first time this year), Midnight Oil, Crowded House and Nick Cave.
Next year would be a perfect time to induct Minogue as she reportedly will be on another world tour.
Kylie is an icon who deserves to be in the Rock Hall before a raft of other female solo artists.
The 2026 Netflix docuseries “Kylie” and concert film from her Tension tour “Kylie: Tension Tour Live” hopefully will give Minogue an exposure lift to hall voters.
Put her name on the nomination ballot and she will lead the fan poll. I’m sure of it.

Related articles:

Kylie Minogue and the Art of Staying a Mega-Famous Pop Star Forever (Rolling Stone; June 5, 2026)

Kylie Minogue Confirms 40th Anniversary Tour Plans: ‘I’m Probably Not Meant to Say This, But Yes’ (Billboard; May 17, 2026)

Photos: “Kylie” docuseries poster and photos from the premiere. (Netflix)


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Sunday, June 7, 2026

AI summaries are taking oxygen from news publishers


Artificial intelligence summaries from the likes of Google Gemini are very enticing. Who needs to scour an article for a fact or information when Google can just pull it out and present it to you?
But fewer visits to news publishers’ websites mean less advertising revenue for those companies. That threatens their business and the journalism they create.
"The open web is on its way out. With AI, Google is reducing everyone to raw data providers,” Richard Kramer, a financial analyst with Arete Research, said in a New York Times article.
Google announced its latest search changes on May 19 at its Google I/O conference. It called the changes its “biggest upgrade in over 25 years.”
“Google’s AI search tools may genuinely improve usability, but they also fundamentally reshape the web ecosystem Google originally helped build,” Techradar contributing writer Eric Hal Schwartz said in a news post. “Publishers, creators, and websites increasingly worry that conversational AI answers reduce incentives for users to click through to original sources.”
TechCrunch writer Sarah Perez summed it up by writing, “The era of the ‘ten blue links’ is officially over.”
She added, “The links, to clarify, have not entirely disappeared; they are just no longer the priority for many types of searches.”
The big news publishers have been able to extract licensing fees from Google and other AI firms for scraping their content, but the little guys are largely on the outs.

Related articles:

Journalism job cuts in 2026 tracked (Press Gazette)

New York Times chief: How and why publishers should fight AI ‘tsunami’ (Press Gazette; June 2, 2026)

New York Times Publisher Warns That AI Companies Are Making Choices That ‘Violate Settled Law’ and Could Cause a ‘Great Deal of Unnecessary Harm’ (Variety; June 1, 2026)

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson warns AI companies scraping without paying: ‘We’re coming for you’ (Press Gazette; March 4, 2026)

News Corp, Meta in AI Content Licensing Deal Worth Up to $50 Million a Year (Wall Street Journal; March 3, 2026)

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Sunday, May 31, 2026

Google search changes are hurting small news publishers


For many years, news publishers relied on “search engine optimization” techniques to get their articles to rank highly on Google search to drive traffic to their websites. But recent changes at Google have slashed traffic to news publishers. And it’s only going to get worse with AI.
With Google Gemini artificial intelligence, the company’s search engine has become an answer engine. It doesn’t lead with links to websites or news articles where individuals can find relevant information. It cuts to the chase and provides answers to questions that web surfers are asking. Except AI has been known to confidently give incorrect information.
With AI-generated summaries, web users don’t need to click through to suggested webpages to find information. Google just presents it to them on the Google search page. While it provides links as footnotes, most users aren’t going to check out the source material.
News publishers big and small are seeing their web traffic (and related advertising revenue) from search dry up. The biggest publishers are better positioned to find ways to weather the changes, but the little guys are getting squashed.
Google is no longer primarily about referring traffic to publishers – it has become the destination for information, leeching off the work of others. Google’s AI-generated summaries have replaced the “10 blue links” it used to provide.
Google launched its AI Overviews in May 2024 and has since upgraded its search page to an “AI Mode” with chatbot-style answers provided by Google Gemini. And the negative impact to news publishers and other websites has been dramatic.
One website that I’ve used for following news on streaming video services, The TV Answerman, recently announced that it is ending its daily/regular coverage of the TV industry because of the loss of revenue from the Google changes.
“There’s no way to continue due to Google Search’s decision in 2023 to promote large sites (and marketing partners) over small ones such as this,” TV Answerman publisher Phillip Swann said in an April 17 post. “Google has 90 percent of the Search market; if it decides to bury your stories, you’re pretty much history.”
Swann provided more commentary in an April 28 post.
“Like many other small publishers, I have seen my site traffic plummet over the last few years due to Google Search’s algorithm change that elevated larger sites and marketing partners such as Reddit,” he said.
And his problems occurred before Google announced on May 19 its latest big search changes that would focus on AI answers.
Some publishers are preparing for “Google zero,” the point at which they receive zero click-throughs from the search platform.

Related articles:

Top 50 US news websites: Half of sites see traffic fall 20% or more in a year. (Press Gazette; May 8, 2026)

Exclusive: Small publishers hit hardest by search traffic declines (Axios; March 17, 2026)

AI surfacing is messy: Data shows publisher visibility and traffic often misalign (Digiday; March 11, 2026)

The Internet's Most-Read Tech Publications Have Lost 58% of Their Google Traffic Since 2024 (Growtika; Feb. 26, 2026)

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Sunday, April 19, 2026

Joy Division/New Order finally recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame


The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its 2026 class of inductees on April 13 and I’m generally pleased with the outcome. I’m thrilled the hall’s voters selected my top pick: Joy Division/New Order.
They’re my all-time favorite band and got me into the EDM scene, starting with “Blue Monday” (1983).
Four of my seven picks from the fan ballot made it into the hall this year. The others are Phil Collins, Billy Idol and Iron Maiden.
The 2026 class of performer inductees also includes Oasis, Sade, Luther Vandross and Wu-Tang Clan.
Plus, the hall added 10 more individuals through side categories like early influence and musical excellence. Notables in that group include Queen Latifah, MC Lyte and Gram Parsons.
All told, the 2026 class includes approximately 46 individuals thanks to large groups like Wu-Tang Clan and Iron Maiden. The final number depends on how many members past and present the hall plans to officially induct at its ceremony on Nov. 14 in Los Angeles.
The 2026 class is notable for having 18 induction slots (the most since 1987). I guess this is a catch-up year, designed to put a dent in the hall’s sizable backlog of worthy performers who have yet to make the cut. That includes Australian rock band INXS, who I pushed for this year.
While the 1987 class holds the record for the most “induction acts” with 22 distinct slots, the 2012 class is the winner by total headcount, with a staggering 63 individuals inducted. That year, the hall inducted a roster of “backing groups” alongside their previously inducted frontmen to correct historical omissions.

Related articles:

John Sykes on 2026 Rock Hall Inductions, Why Voters Embraced So Many Acts From the 1980s & Their Curious Snub of Mariah Carey (Billboard; April 16, 2026)

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s 2026 Inductees: Oasis, Phil Collins, Iron Maiden, Sade, Billy Idol, Wu-Tang Clan and More (Variety; April 13, 2026)


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Saturday, April 4, 2026

CES tech trade show thriving but still below pre-Covid glory days


The annual CES technology trade show, still referred to by many as the Consumer Electronics Show, this week said attendance at its 2026 conference Jan. 6-9 in Las Vegas rose 4.2% to 148,392 people. But the number of exhibitors declined 8.9% to about 4,100.
CES still hasn’t recovered from the Covid pandemic, which forced the cancellation of the 2021 show. The last pre-Covid show in 2020 attracted 171,268 attendees and 4,419 exhibitors.
The peak year for attendees was CES 2017, which drew 184,279 participants.
One area that has surpassed pre-Covid levels and hit a record high was media attendance at CES. The CES 2026 show attracted 7,037 media representatives, up 6.9% from the prior year.
The Consumer Technology Association, which produces CES, said “media” includes news media, content creators and industry analysts. So, it’s hard to say how many were journalists vs. social media influencers and others.
Still, CES is doing well when compared with other conferences.
Brunico Communications announced earlier this week that it is cancelling its U.S. events portfolio in 2027, including the Realscreen Summit, the Kidscreen Summit and NATPE Global.

Photo: CES 2026 in Las Vegas (Patrick Seitz)

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Saturday, March 28, 2026

Will New Edition join Phish and Dave Matthews Band in this distinction?


New Edition currently leads the fan vote for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by a comfortable margin, having surpassed early No. 1 Phil Collins. Does that make the group a lock for induction into the music hall this year? Not necessarily.
Since the Rock Hall introduced the fan vote, the winner of the top spot has failed to be inducted in the same year only two times.
Dave Matthews Band topped the fan vote in 2020 but was not inducted that year. They topped the fan vote again in 2024 and got in that year.
Phish was No. 1 in the fan vote in 2025 but was snubbed by the hall.
However, 11 of the 13 artists who have won the fan vote were inducted in their respective years. The other inductees include Rush (2013), KISS (2014), Stevie Ray Vaughan (2015), Chicago (2016), Journey (2017), Bon Jovi (2018), Def Leppard (2019), Tina Turner (2021), Duran Duran (2022) and George Michael (2023).
Frankly I’m surprised by the fan support for New Edition. I guess they’re a nostalgia favorite for the younger crowd.

Photo: Fan vote leaderboard for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as of a.m. March 28, 2026.

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Saturday, March 21, 2026

New physical halls of fame for Tejano music, New Jersey greats, Cleveland sports


Tech-media-tainment currently counts about 600 halls of fame that you can visit in North America. Some stand the test of time while others disappear.
What follows are some of the latest physical halls of fame in the U.S.

Totally Tejano Hall of Fame & Museum


The Totally Tejano Hall of Fame & Museum in San Antonio, Texas, opened on Dec. 6, 2025. The museum honors the legends of Tejano music and culture in Texas.
Tejano (Spanish for “Texan”) music is a genre that fuses Mexican vocal traditions with various global styles, including European polkas and American pop, rock and country.
The Totally Tejano Hall of Fame & Museum includes exhibits celebrating Tejano icons and Grammy Award winners such as Little Joe Hernández and Flaco Jiménez, along with rare memorabilia.
It is the second Tejano music hall of fame. The other is the Tejano Roots Hall of Fame in Alice, Texas.
On Jan. 3, the Tejano Roots Hall of Fame inducted its 2025 class in a ceremony at the County Fairgrounds in Alice, Texas, according to Tejano Nation.
There’s also the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame & Museum in San Benito, Texas.
Texas conjunto (Spanish for “ensemble” or “group”) is a musical genre born in South Texas and Northern Mexico in the late 19th century. Often called the “heartbeat of South Texas,” it is a lively, danceable fusion of Mexican vocal traditions and European folk instruments brought by German, Czech and Polish immigrants.

New Jersey Hall of Fame


The New Jersey Hall of Fame found a physical home at the American Dream entertainment complex and shopping mall in East Rutherford, N.J., in June 2024.
At its most recent induction ceremony on Nov. 21, the hall inducted the Jonas Brothers and the Isley Brothers music groups, among others.

Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame


The Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame found a physical home and museum at the Urban Community School’s Roundstone Athletic Center in Cleveland, Ohio, in December 2025. The hall honors the talented athletes who have come from Northeast Ohio.
(See articles by Cleveland.com and Cleveland Magazine.)

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Friday, March 13, 2026

Cornhole, competitive dancing, lightsaber fighting and other fringe sports


With spring training underway for Major League Baseball – 150 years after the start of the National League – it’s fun to look at some fringe sports that hope someday to become mainstream and have staying power. Good luck with that.

International Dance League


The International Dance League on March 4 announced the launch of its first official competitive season, marking a major milestone in the league’s mission to establish dance as a professional, global sport.
“IDL’s first season will feature six of the most influential and accomplished professional dance teams in the world, competing across six scheduled regular-season events in New York (USA), Vancouver (Canada), Sydney (Australia), Seoul (South Korea), and two in Los Angeles (USA),” IDL said in a news release. “Each event will have standardized judging and a championship title modeled after traditional professional sports leagues, with a season champion crowned at the end.”
The first event is set for May 2 in New York City. The championship will be held in Los Angeles on Sept. 20.
“Fans can expect high-level athletic performances, cultural expression, and live entertainment, catering to both in-person audiences and global digital viewership,” IDL said.

Saber Legion World Championships


The competitive world of LED lightsaber combat is the subject of a new documentary called “Saber.” It focuses on a group of dedicated saber combat athletes – and likely “Star Wars” fanatics – as they prepare for the Saber Legion World Championships in Las Vegas, according to GeekTyrant.

Ultimate Fighting Bots


Ultimate Fighting Bots is the world’s first humanoid robot combat league where humans pilot robots in real-time battles. The most recent event was held Jan. 6 in Las Vegas at the Battlebots Arena. I’ll be more interested when the robots are autonomous.

World Chase Tag


World Chase Tag is the first and only global league for competitive tag. Born from a backyard game in 2011, WCT now attracts athletes from 18 nations across two divisions: an open division and a dedicated women’s division.
Two teams of up to 6 athletes face off inside The Quad, a 12-meter by 12-meter arena filled with obstacles, adding a parkour element to the game. Each match is best of 16 chases. If the evader survives 20 seconds without being tagged, their team scores. If a match is tied, it goes to Sudden Death Chase-Off. Each team picks their best chaser and best evader for one final chase each.

World Axe Throwing League


The World Axe Throwing League has taken the recreational activity of axe throwing and turned it into a competitive sport.
The World Axe Throwing League has brought together axe-throwing clubs and standardized the sport with official league rules and safety protocols.

American Cornhole League


The American Cornhole League is attempting to turn the casual backyard bag-tossing game into a pro sport. These tossers take this game seriously.


Major League Wiffle Ball


Major League Wiffle Ball, aka MLW, is a professional wiffleball league, established in 2009. MLW currently features an eight-team league based out of Brighton, Michigan. It also sponsors a tournament circuit. It has hosted tournaments in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Texas, and Arizona.

USA Pickleball National Championships


The leisure activity of pickleball has gone big time with the USA Pickleball National Championships. The next championships will be held at the Barnes Tennis Center in San Diego, Calif., from Oct. 31 through Nov. 8.

Pillow Fight Championship


The Pillow Fight Championship is a professional sports organization that arranges competitive pillow fighting matches. It was founded in 2021 and offers a unique style of combat sport using specialized pillows, according to Wikipedia.

Enhanced Games


The upcoming Enhanced Games will feature athletes who are allowed to take performance-enhancing drugs banned in other sports. The May 24 event in Las Vegas will feature 50 athletes competing in swimming, weightlifting and track and field.
(See articles by ESPN and the Guardian.)

Related articles:

Blood sports satisfy primal male urges for violence (Tech-media-tainment; March 7, 2026)

ESPN’s ‘The Ocho’ Is Back, but Is Axe Throwing a Sport? We Asked. (Morning Consult; Aug. 6, 2019)

Strange sports: Lingerie MMA, pizza acrobatics, lumberjack contests (Tech-media-tainment; Sept. 23, 2017)

Photos from their respective sports organizations.

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Saturday, March 7, 2026

Blood sports satisfy primal male urges for violence


Some sports fans like to see athletes spill blood or suffer concussions and broken bones. That’s the only way to explain some emerging violent sports. We already have boxing and mixed martial arts, but apparently they aren’t extreme enough for some fans.
What follows is a look at some alternative brutal sports.

Run Nation Championship

Run Nation Championship is a highly controversial Australian full-contact sport where two athletes sprint at full speed and collide with each other like modern-day jousting. The object is to knock your opponent down or out cold. Critics say the new sport is reckless, dangerous and should be banned. It debuted in early 2026. SB Nation said the sport is dumber than Power Slap.
(See articles by Vice, Complex, Daily Mail and MMA Mania.)

Power Slap

Power Slap is a U.S. slap-fighting competition. Athletes stand face to face and slap each other as hard as they can. That’s pretty much it. The first event was held in 2023.

Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship

Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship is the first legal, sanctioned, and regulated bare-knuckle boxing event in the U.S. since 1889. Based in Philadelphia, BKFC says it is dedicated to preserving the historical legacy of bare-knuckle fighting. Its first event was held in 2018.

Photos from their respective organizations.

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Saturday, February 28, 2026

My 2026 picks for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame


The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation on Feb. 25 announced a list of 17 performer nominees to be considered for 2026 induction into the Rock Hall. And fan voting is now open.
Fans can choose up to seven artists for the eventual fan ballot. And like Chicago politics, people should vote early and vote often. But a warning: the voting website was down when I tried it today.
The inductees will be announced in late April.
Here are my seven picks for induction this year:
  • Phil Collins
  • INXS
  • Joy Division + New Order
  • Billy Idol
  • Mariah Carey
  • Melissa Etheridge
  • Iron Maiden
Some thoughts on my picks:
Phil Collins is currently leading the fan voting by a wide margin and for good reason. The beloved music icon has a fantastic solo catalog and deserves to be a double inductee like his Genesis bandmate Peter Gabriel. Shockingly, he's a first-time nominee this year. In fact, 10 of the 17 nominees are first-timers.
In my Jan. 27 blog post, I urged the Rock Hall to get back to basics and choose some true rockers this year. In that spirit, I am backing rockers Billy Idol, INXS, Iron Maiden and Melissa Etheridge.
I also hope this finally will be the year New Order (and its predecessor Joy Division) gets in. They're an amazingly influential electronic band with great music.
And finally, there's Mariah Carey. She's an extraordinarily successful pop singer and a legendary diva. She needs to get in the Rock Hall before fellow nominees and female singers Pink, Sade, Shakira and Lauryn Hill.

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Saturday, February 14, 2026

The Winter Olympics and fringe sports


The Winter Olympics are underway in Italy and with it the return of some fringe sports that most people only hear about every four years. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I find fringe sports interesting.
The Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games run from Feb. 6 through 22. They will feature such popular sports as alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, figure skating, speed skating and ice hockey.
This year’s Winter Olympics added its first new sport in over two decades – ski mountaineering, aka “skimo.” The last one added was skeleton in 2002. (See articles by NPR and Sherwood News.)
All told, the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy will feature 116 medal events across 16 different sports and disciplines.
Some seem like fringe sports that should be eliminated from the games but probably won’t for historical and other reasons. Chief among them is curling. Come on, that’s not a sport. It’s a pastime for people in the northern climes.
I also don’t get the appeal of bobsleigh, which comes in two-man and four-man varieties as well as two-woman and women’s monobob.
While luge is a legitimate sport in my mind, I don’t understand the reasoning behind doubles, which stacks a second person on the sled. It has been relentlessly ridiculed in memes this year, for good reason.

Photo: Luge women’s doubles at Winter Olympics 2026. (Olympics photo)




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Saturday, February 7, 2026

Newspapers I used to work for and what’s become of them


My professional career has been in two parts. The first was after I earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and worked for daily newspapers. The second was after I earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and then worked for trade and business media.
I don’t include the first part of my career on my LinkedIn profile. It was fun, educational and helped hone my stills in reporting, writing and editing, but it really doesn’t pertain to my current focus.
But lately I’ve been thinking about those print media days. I still have boxes of “clips” of articles from those years. I’ll probably just end up throwing them away at some point.
What spurred my nostalgia was recent headlines. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution just stopped printing a paper newspaper after 157 years and the Washington Post is slashing its staff amid a shrinking business.
It’s a tough time for print journalism after decades of business erosion due to the internet.
As an undergraduate student at U of I in the early 1980s, I worked at the Daily Illini student newspaper, which then published five days a week. Apparently it now only prints a weekly edition, called The DI, on Wednesday and is mostly focused on online news, which makes sense.
After college, I worked for the Small Newspaper Group, owned by the Small family out of Kankakee, Ill. I started at the Streator Times-Press in central Illinois. I worked there for two years (1984-86) before moving to the Daily Dispatch in Moline, Ill., and shortly thereafter the Rock Island Argus.
The Streator newspaper merged with its bigger sister newspaper in Ottawa, Ill., to serve the greater LaSalle County, Illinois, area, in September 2005.
In March 2018, Shaw Media bought the combined newspaper. (See articles by the AP, Streator Chamber of Commerce, and Dirks, Van Essen & Murray.)
I have fond memories of working in Streator, an industrial and farming community. One large factory there made glass bottles. There was a bar across the street for workers that I would go to. The bartenders would pour beer from bottles, which they would toss in a chute on the wall behind them. The bottles would smash as they fell into a container on the other side, presumably to be recycled to make new beer bottles.
When I moved to the Quad Cities to work for the Daily Dispatch and Rock Island Argus (1986-92), I lived in East Moline, Ill.
An industrial Midwest hub located on the Mississippi River dividing Illinois and Iowa, the Quad Cities are made up of Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island, Illinois. There are lots of great parks and restaurants there and it is home to agriculture giant John Deere.
The two sister newspapers eventually merged operations. And in June 2017, Lee Enterprises, publisher of the rival Quad-City Times in Davenport, bought out its cross-river competition from the Small family. (See articles by Our QC News, the Quad-City Times, KWQC and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.)

Photos: My profile of Jim’s Rib Haven from the April 28, 1991, edition of the Rock Island Argus. I was saddened to hear that Jim’s Rib Haven has since closed.


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