Welcome back to another edition of The Detour. If you have enjoyed reading this newsletter as much as we have loved writing it for you and want to keep our independent journalism going, please consider pledging a subscription below.
Thank you for reading Frame’s award-winning work as we continue our mission of covering underreported multimedia stories from around the world.
Without further ado, here’s what’s on deck this week:
🏈 In the sports world, the real MVP is … grass? We’ll explain.
🇺🇸 Kamala Harris puts her hat in the ring. But who’s funding her campaign?
😾Grumpy Cat lives on
But first, here’s a closer look at what’s been going on around the world lately:
Kelly Kimball for Frame. // Wikimedia Commons
$81 million — The amount of money raised by the brand-new presidential candidate Kamala Harris in just 24 hours following the withdrawal of U.S. President Joe Biden from the race on Sunday. It’s the largest amount of cash raised in a 24-hour span in presidential history. That is, according to Harris’ campaign.
Who are Harris’ biggest donors so far? For starters, Harris has inherited the $96 million left behind by Biden’s abandoned campaign. (Trump’s team filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday alleging Harris shouldn’t get these funds). According to campaign finance records, the majority of Harris’ donors are everyday folks and first-time donors contributing sums of up to $200. And the lion’s share of donation efforts are coming from grassroots organizers — like Win With Black Women, which hosted a digital fundraiser for Harris over Zoom with over 44,000 participants on Sunday night. They raised $1.5 million in three hours and crashed Zoom.
6 — The number of American cities that are finalists to potentially host future Sundance Film Festivals beginning in 2026. For the past 40 years, the Sundance Film Festival has premiered many of the world’s greatest films in Park City, Utah. But the festival’s contract with the city will finally expire by 2025, and the festival may be getting new digs.
Here’s the shortlist of cities bidding for the top spot: Atlanta, Cincinnati, Boulder, Louisville, Kentucky, and Santa Fe.
What do you think? 👇
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256 — The number of Black sailors exonerated by the U.S. Navy last week who were unjustly punished following a 1944 explosion at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in California that killed 320 people, injured 400, destroyed two ships and a train, and damaged the nearby town of Port Chicago. Here’s a breakdown by the National WWII Museum of what happened that day, why, and what the exoneration means decades later.
Sailors loading munitions at Port Chicago in the 1940s. // Source: National Parks Service
150 — The age of the historic Hudson-Athens Lighthouse, which was built in 1874 and is still standing in the Hudson River. This year, The National Trust for Historic Preservation has designated it one of America's 11 most endangered historic places. That’s why the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society is working double time to raise enough money to reinforce the structure so it doesn’t collapse.
148 — The width in feet of the mouth of a Moon cave that was recently discovered by NASA after parsing through archival data. Scientists believe the cave could be used to shelter astronauts in the event of a storm, extreme temperature swings, or harsh radiation. Researchers say there may be countless more caves on the Moon’s surface that have yet to be found.
This week, our product designer Jeremy is guest-writing his debut Cover Story for The Detour. In it, Jeremy illuminates the unexpected nemesis of professional athletes: Grass. Let’s get into it.
Grass touches it all. This year, the type and quality of grass became a massive thorn in the side of the greatest international sports tournaments. Take this year’s Copa America, which wrapped two weekends again: Even above security concerns and organization, field conditions were among the top complaints among athletes throughout the tournament.
But, why? The international football association FIFA prohibits the use of turf in major tournaments from the Copa America to the World Cup. But this year’s Copa took place in 14 stadiums across the United States, where 11 of the 14 were National (American) Football League stadiums with over half made of synthetic grass, or turf. To meet FIFA standards and save money, the NFL stadiums agreed to simply roll row after row of grass sheets on top of their turf fields. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, this left a rough playing surface that Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez described as a “disaster.” Other reports by players revealed the match between Argentina and Canada was played on a field that felt “like a trampoline,” or a “hollow” stage.
Sounds uncomfortable for even a game of pick-up soccer, let alone a world-class sports match where the quality of a field should be the last thing on athletes’ minds.
This brings us to another reason I’m thinking about grass. There are 30 stadiums in the entire NFL. Of these, 7 out of 10 fields which host the highest-average injuries per game are made of turf instead of grass. Meanwhile, 7 of the 10 fields with the lowest-average injuries per game are made of grass.
Source: NBC News
If you’re following my math, you’ll likely realize that turf is simply bad news: Every year since 2015, non-contact injuries have been higher on turf fields than on grass ones. Simply put, players are safer on grass — and they have been advocating for more grass fields since the league began tracking this data. This year’s Copa has re-sparked this age-old debate among NFL players as they head into the beginning of their season.
So, why haven’t professional sports stadiums made the switch? One major reason is that grass fields are at least five times more expensive to install and maintain than turf. But in a world where the U.S. is the wealthiest country to host the World Cup since 1994 (which is when the U.S. last hosted the games), and the NFL is the world’s wealthiest sports league, is money really a concern here?
Here’s my humble request to sports organizers everywhere — on the slight chance they may be reading The Detour this week: Don’t skimp on the grass, make sure people feel safe, get the fundamentals of the game right, and both fans and athletes will be happier for it.
Signing off for now,
Jeremy
On Friday, July 26 — The Olympics kicks off in Paris. For two weeks, 10,000 athletes will compete in 329 events across 39 sports. NBC is broadcasting the event live and has a full schedule of events here. The Paris Opening Ceremony will take place on this day at 1:30 pm ET, with “classic Parisian splendor and style.” For the readers who have lived in Paris, what do you think this means specifically? I’m genuinely curious. 👇
On Sunday, July 28 — The anniversary of Bob Dylan’s rise to folk fame takes place. On this day 59 years ago at the Newport Folk Festival, in Rhode Island, the American singer and songwriter made the controversial choice to play the electric guitar instead of the traditional acoustic guitar. The performance led to uproars by crowd goers but is considered by critics as one of the most pivotal moments in the history of rock and roll. It is also the topic of a brand new biopic of Dylan, with a trailer that released today. Here’s a recording of the actual moment Dylan performed electric instead of acoustic back in 1965:
On Monday, July 29 — The annual World Press Photo exhibition continues its world tour, with its next stop in Portimão, Portugal. Each year, the World Press Foundation showcases the results of its coveted World Press Photo Contest demonstrating the most important and defining photojournalism of the last year. You can view this year’s winners and the story behind each shot here. Here is one of the most impactful photos of the set by photojournalist Mohammad Salem in Khan Younis, Gaza, last October:
Between now and August 19 (ie literally any day now) — Presidential candidate Kamala Harris will announce her running mate as the Democratic National Convention quickly approaches. Early speculation abounds, with Harris reportedly having spoken “with at least three Democratic governors who have been mentioned as potential running mates,” according to The Wall Street Journal. The Democratic National Committee expects Harris to pick a veep by August 7 if she indeed wins the nomination (which looks to be the case). Here’s a rundown from the Times of who Harris might pick.
This week, I’m in San Francisco for the New Media Ventures’ annual summit. The summit has been full of talks and panels on the future of journalism, fostering more political participation, and how to build trust in digital spaces. During a breakout session today, the session’s moderator Deepti Doshi, talked about ways of building trust in digital spaces.
Deepti, who leads an organization called New_Public which is focused on fostering healthy digital public spaces, brought up ways that online groups can build a healthy sense of community and trust. She mentioned the story of one Facebook group where when a person acted in a way that was slightly rude or noxious, but not necessarily something that necessitated their removal from the group, a group member would post an image of a grumpy cat. The grumpy cat here serves as a way of establishing the values and identity of the group, by calling attention to the boundary of accepted behavior when someone nearly crosses it.
A grumpy cat // Source: Grumpy Cat
When online or in person groups have tools like grumpy cats it allows for groups to establish an identity and strengthen social bonds within them, while also allowing group participants to be active participants in molding and upholding that group’s values — a key component of any healthy community.
While grumpy cats might not be the usual fare here on Concepts, I think they’re a fascinating tool for thinking about how we can build vibrant, healthy digital spaces, as well as thinking about what makes social groups thrive in general — whether they be online or in person.
— Ben
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