Skip Navigation
James Fallows

James Fallows - James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May.
More

James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic. His latest book, China Airborne, was published in early May. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.
« Previous Fallows | Next Fallows » Email Email Print Print

I Love Wikipedia, But...

By James Fallows

Dec 1 2011, 7:41 AM ET

They really have to do better than the current "please give!" campaign (I have!), in which a series of real-life photos go in the upper left corner of the search page, above whatever name or concept you are looking for. Eg just now:

Wikicrepia.png

And:

DianaWikipedia.png

Or:
BachmannWikie.png

More on this phenomenon from TechCrunch. Seriously, if this were the Early Bird Dinner Club site, you could understand the inattention to page layout. But Wikipedia? In any case, please consider donating, as I have. Thanks to TMF in SF for the prompt.
__
UPDATE: Via TechCrunch, news that Wikipedia views this photo-roulette as serendipitous feature rather than bug. It turns out that more people make donations when the pictures are placed this way. Brian Glucroft points out that for languages written right-to-left, like Hebrew, Wikipedia switches the photo placement to achieve the same effect.

And it turns out that The Oatmeal has done a much less polite version of my montage above.


Presented by

More at The Atlantic

The Youthful Magic of 'Moonrise Kingdom' The Youthful Magic of 'Moonrise Kingdom'
'Black Lagoon': The First, Great Pretty-Girl-Attacked-By-Aquatic-Beast Film? The First Great Pretty-Girl-Attacked-By-Aquatic-Beast Film
How 'Natural' Is Stevia? How 'Natural' Is Stevia?
Earth From Space: The Snows Over Southern Patagonia The Snows Over Southern Patagonia
A Message to Law Grads: Instead of Corporations, Help Ordinary People A Mission Statement for America's Lawyers

Just In

Correspondents

View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

Afghanistan: May 2012

Jun 1, 2012

Subscribe Now

SAVE 59%! 10 issues JUST $2.45 PER COPY

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

James Fallows
from the Magazine

Obama, Explained

As Barack Obama contends for a second term in office, two conflicting narratives of his presidency…

Barack Obama

Facing huge risks and holding inconclusive intel, the president makes a gutsy call to take out bin…

Hacked!

As email, documents, and almost every aspect of our professional and personal lives moves onto the…