NewsBeat

October 2018 NewsBeat 21 C John T. Tuthill III atherine Rosa, longtime business manager of the Canarsie Courier died August 25th after a long battle with cancer. Rosa, 63, was the much beloved "chief, cook and bottle-washer" at the newspaper — remembered as a mentor, friend, coach, task-master and curmudgeon. She was an ardent supporter of NYPA — she will be missed. Catherine is survived by Michael, her husband of 40 years, her daughter Toni, grandchildren Michael and Maycen and a host of relatives and friends. Catherine Rosa ohn T. Tuthill III, of Bellport, the third generation of publishers to guide the Long Island Advance, died last month at Long Island Community Hospital surrounded by his family following a long illness. He was 86. John Tuthill began his career with the Advance, then known as the Patchogue Advance, in December 1957 following in the footsteps of his father, Captain John T. Tuthill Jr., and grandfather, James A. Canfield. Following the death of Captain Tuthill in June 1972, John III became the paper's publisher. Under his leadership, the size of the paper changed from a broadsheet to a tabloid format. He also changed the name to the Long Island Advance. The Advance purchased The Long Island News in 1972 and John and his wife Lorelei purchased the Suffolk County News and Islip Bulletin in 1985. In 2011 John oversaw the creation of the Tide of Moriches as well as the purchase of the Tri Hamlet News, an online news site. A Bellport High School graduate, John served two years in the Navy before graduating from Colgate, where he majored in economics and was a member of Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He was president of the New York Press Association in 1973. John is survived by his wife, Lorelei Pries-Ritholz Tuthill; his sister, Mrs. Joan Munhofen of Williamsburg, Va.son, J. Terry Tuthill IV and daughter-in-law, Joanne, of Bellport daughter, Julie G. Fehring and son-in-law, Robert, of Bayport; son, Jeffery S. Ritholz of West Babylon; daughter, Susan K. Ritholz of Brooklyn grandchildren, Heidi and Brad Fehring, and John T. Tuthill V and Ashley E. Tuthill. He was predeceased by his sisters, Louise Tuthill and Priscilla Carleton. The family requests that memorial donations be made to the New York Press Association Foundation, 621 Columbia Street Extension, Suite 100, Cohoes, NY 12047. The Press Association Foundation funds paid summer internships for college journalism students. J the press for their failings. Everyone needs a way for these parties to work together with some mutual understanding, tolerance and care, with a joint goal of making bad actors less powerful. Similarly, everyone involved with these debates also needs —?immediately?—?to understand better how powerful these bad actors actually are. We may be giving this set of problems far more attention than it deserves, simply because the notion of Russian manipulation of elections or Macedonians marketing to ethnic nationalists is so fascinating. In truth, these may not be the biggest problems around media and democracy. It's the fourth bucket of problems that keep me up at night. While bots are bad for Twitter and Facebook, polarization turns out to be a great business model — it leads to engaged and passionate users, who are good for profits and bad for democracy. The platform companies simply may not have an appetite to take on "known bugs" problems, both because these bugs are hard to fix, and because they may be bugs for democracy rather than for these businesses. Here the best fixes may be environmental. Rather than tempting or threatening (through regulation, perhaps) Facebook to fix the polarization of our political system, we need to help build a climate that encourages new rival platforms to take on these challenges. For starters, we'd look at policies that required existing platforms to allow users to export their data and move it to new platforms, and to bridge between them so users can try other ways to interact online. Having a clearer shape of a problem is not the same thing as having solutions. It's important if only so we don't collapse in the face of a task that often seems insurmountable: making sense of how the current media environment prepares citizens to be effective civic actors. Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT and an associate professor at MIT's Media Lab. His research focuses on issues of internet freedom, civic engagement through digital tools and international connections through media. This edited article originally appeared on the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy website.

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