Christopher Wink – CGW's Blog

Gubernatorial conversations

I’ve recently interviewed a pair of influential elected officials: Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer and Maryland Lt. Governor Aruna Miller. I filed Technical.ly stories. Find the live reocrdings of my interviews and links to my reporting below.

Science communication at a crossroads

I joined a spirited conversation at the University of Maryland BioPark for a system-wide symposium on science communication.

I filed a story for Technical.ly here. Our panel looked like this:

Megan Nicholson, a senior editor at Issues in Science and Technology
Heath Kelsey, director of the Integration and Application Network at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
Christopher Wink, cofounder and publisher, Technical.ly
Moderator, Michael Sandler, the UM system’s vice chancellor for communications and marketing

ESHIP “Builder of the Day”

The tribe I feel closest to are the ecosystem builders: those who work their tails off to bring entrepreneurship to the center of local strategy.

One of the chief conveners is ESHIP Alliance, which is growing an online community of just such ecosystem builders. Smartly, and generously, there they’re highlighting longtime and active ecosystem builders. I’m proud they kindly highlighted my Technical.ly work today.

This is a clever strategy 🙂 Thanks to ESHIP leader-organizers and champions

My foundational political belief: countervailing power

This was originally a social video

What’s your defining political belief?

I’ve been thinking about that because on this app, and others, there’s a loud and often vicious argument among people most Americans would place somewhere left of center. Liberal, progressive, leftist, socialist, Democrat — those words do not mean the same thing, and I usually try not to wade into that labeling fight, either as a journalist or as someone who studied political science.

But I do think there’s a fair and useful question underneath it all: what is your foundational belief? Mine is this: I am deeply skeptical of concentrated power.

The economic and family challenges of school-free summer

My latest Business Insider story is focused on the economic and family challenges of school-free summer.

I’m scrambling to get my kid into summer camp. We’ve joined multiple lotteries and lost money, but I need to fill 10 weeks of summer.

Read the story here

To navigate AI, journalists must know the technology, and their job

To navigate AI, journalists need to break it down: What the technology is, and what the job is.

I was thrilled to keynote this weekend’s New Mexico Local News Fund’s local news summit in Albuquerque. My talk: Risks, Ethics and Opportunities for AI in Local Newsrooms.

To an audience of 100 local journalists and publishers in New Mexico, and supporters from around the conutry, I walked through a simplified framework for understanding what we call artificical intelligence — and I shared Technical.ly’s ethics for AI in storytelling.

Find my full slides here.

Enormous credit to Rashad Mahmood and Denise Zubizarreta.

Yes, I vibe-coded a new landing page

I’ve been blogging for at least 20 years now, which means this site has lots of embarrassing signals of previous versions of myself. That also means whatever particular post I put up doesn’t necessarily present the particular person I think I am.

So I thought it would be helpful to have a simpler landing page online for my work and identity as a journalist and community contributor — one that isn’t owned by some distant publicly-traded corporation. Meanwhile, I was looking for a tiny coding project that I could complete on my own with the current generation of AI tools.

Here it is: I vibe-coded a (very) simple landing page at ChristopherWink.com, migrated my decades-old WordPress blog to a new hosting provider and brought it to a new subdomain.

Mega-events have failed cities before. Are we learning?

Cities love hosting mega-events — the Olympics, World Cup, NFL Draft. But decades of research suggest they rarely deliver the long-term economic boost leaders promise.

Are we learning? This was the focus of the plenary discussion I moderate this week in Washington DC at the annual leadership summit hosted by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC). I also wrote about it here.

Great men are rarely good; good men are rarely great.

This perspective has long influenced my thinking, and it comes to mind again in the context of the longstanding rivalry between the late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

I was always uncomfortable with people valorizing Jobs, because the track record seemed clear: he treated people very badly. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has done objective good with his wealth since. And yes, rehabilitating a reputation by investing in meaningful global health projects… that is a good.

But, though we don’t know the final word on the Epstein files, Gates’s relationship there does not look good, especially in light of a noncommittal interview done by his ex-wife Melinda.

Blue Man Group founder Chris Wink (that’s not me) appears in the Epstein Files

Well, my name is in the Epstein files. Not me though.

There’s another Chris Wink. He’s the founder of Blue Man Group, the eclectic artistic troupe that got its start in New York and maintains a longstanding residency in Las Vegas.

That Chris Wink (Blue Man Group founder and artist) is 25 years older than the Chris Wink (journalist) who is writing this. Once a friend pointed out that name appeared in this heinous file and document release, I wanted to ensure somewhere on the internet this clarification was made: there are (at least) two very different Chris Winks. When I was getting my journalism started in 2008, I first learned of the name competition.