‘Social media is the new tabloid’

‘It needs to be said again: Leave Britney alone’

Kat Tenbarge at The New York Times

Britney Spears can “finally live on her own terms,” but an “online chorus of onlookers has howled about how she’s displayed that freedom on social media,” says Kat Tenbarge. This “time, it isn’t just the paparazzi following Ms. Spears’ every move,” as on social media “anyone can play the role of gossipmonger.” This “creates a cacophony that is difficult to ignore.” A “large audience’s benevolence” goes “only so far before it curdles into something far more sinister.”

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‘The Lorax’s warning is clear. Will we speak for the trees and our wildlife?’

Jane Davenport at USA Today

President Donald Trump’s “administration is seeking to implement sweeping rollbacks to some of our country’s bedrock wildlife regulations,” and this “would degrade habitat on public lands, undermine decades of recovery efforts and accelerate the extinction crisis we face today,” says Jane Davenport. They “represent the modern-day ax at the base of our Truffula trees. And, unless we act, the ax will keep swinging.” This “unprecedented dismantling of our conservation framework would trade irreplaceable ecosystems for short-term profits.”

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‘How can overworked and disengaged college students still get straight A’s?’

The Dallas Morning News editorial board

Walk “onto a college campus and you’ll hear the same refrain: Students are exhausted,” says The Dallas Morning News editorial board. Students “feel exhausted and anxious, yet they keep delivering on the traditional indicators of success — good grades and impressive résumés flush with clubs and extracurriculars.” They “might be spending less time on their academic work, or turning to tools like ChatGPT to help complete assignments, but their results are stronger than ever.”

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‘The Springsteen movie shows the problem with today’s music biopics’

Carl Wilson at Slate

The “worst thing I can say about writer-director Scott Cooper’s new biopic about the making of ‘Nebraska’ is that I can’t imagine people bothering to love or to hate it that much,” says Carl Wilson. “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” is a “worthy try at the nearly impossible task of depicting cinematically an artist making a deeply interior turn.” But its “only real courage is in that attempt, not in its own content or form.”

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