Diana Evans Yesterday in an op-ed, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes called for the social-media behemoth to be broken up. Now, the company has responded, resisting the idea by saying that the real solution is “the painstaking introduction of new rules for the internet.” Nick Clegg, a Facebook vice president, told the Verge: “Facebook accepts that with success comes accountability. But you don’t enforce accountability by calling for the breakup of a successful American company.” The New York Times reports that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader of Myanmar, had been opposed to the release of two Pulitzer-winning
Chris Hughes In a New York Times op-ed, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes writes that it is time to break up the social media giant, calling for government regulation of the site, and for Mark Zuckerberg to be held accountable: “I’m disappointed in myself and the early Facebook team for not thinking more about how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders. And I’m worried that Mark has surrounded himself with a team that reinforces his beliefs instead of challenging them.” The Times has also created a video version of Hughes’s essay on
Rachel Louise Snyder At the Columbia Journalism review, Todd Gitlin wonders if the news media has learned the right lessons from their mistakes covering the 2016 presidential race: “Learning trivial lessons will not do for 2020. The dishonor and depredations of the Trump presidency expose every single one of the institutions that enabled his rise from tabloid celebrity to apprentice celebrity to full-blown commander of recklessness and untruth.” Poynter has an ambitious new four-part series about Southern newspapers in the era between the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. Some of these publications are now apologizing for their
Michael Ondaatje Two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, have been freed from prison in Myanmar after being held for more than five-hundred days. The journalists were accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act. Originally sentenced to seven years behind bars, the pair were granted amnesty by president Win Myint. Recode’s Peter Kafka reports that Amazon is considering paying online publishers that use affiliate links, like BuzzFeed and the New York Times’s Wirecutter. G/O Media, formerly Gizmodo Media, has hired Paul Maidment as editor in chief. “Why is a country that successfully fought a Revolutionary War to
Layli Long Soldier Tonight at the National Arts Club in New York, Graywolf Press will celebrate its forty-fifth anniversary with a poetry reading by, among others, Catherine Barnett (Human Hours), Ilya Kaminsky (Deaf Republic), Layli Long Soldier (WHEREAS), Vijay Seshadri (3 Sections), and Monica Youn (Blackacre). Jacob Silverman, the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, has written about trying to get by as a journalist in the gig economy. “Journalism’s dependence on part-time freelancers has been bad for the industry—not to mention writers like me.” Bob Morris has composed an oral history
Mark Fisher. Photo by Georg Gatsas. At the New Republic, Jacob Silverman writes about the economy of freelance journalism and the indignities a writer trying to scrape together a living often suffers. Silverman also notes the ways in which those who feel writing is a calling have blind spots about their own precarious situation: “Journalists can be so pious about the suffering they cover, while also wearing a protective shield of cynicism, that they excuse the material conditions of their own lives.” Woody Allen is reportedly pitching a memoir to publishers. According to the New York Times, so far
George and Paula Saunders After publishing an anti-Semitic cartoon in its international edition on Thursday, the New York Times has cancelled its contract with the company, CartoonArts International, who provided the image. The unnamed editor who decided to run the cartoon has been disciplined and Times publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, wrote to staff that the paper’s bias training would now include a focus on anti-Semitism. Craig Popelars, a book publishing veteran who has worked for twenty-five years at Algonquin books, will become a publisher of Tin House. The Portland-based imprint is planning to expand its output from eighteen books a
Joel Anderson The Guardian has posted its first operating profit since 1998. In 2015, the paper reported a loss of nearly 75 million dollars. In the meantime, 450 jobs have been eliminated, with 120 of those jobs coming from editorial. Part of the turnaround has come from The Guardian’s digital strategy, which makes all articles available for free but asks readers to donate. The new host of Slate’s hit podcast Slow Burn has been announced. Leon Neyfakh left Slate shortly after Season 2 to start his own podcast, Fiasco, and now Joel Anderson is taking the helm for season
Ian McEwan At the New Republic, Alex Shephard writes about publishers’ “Trump problem.” Since books like Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and Bob Woodward’s Fear became blockbusters, publishers have been churning out quick takes on the president, often padded volumes that quickly feel outdated. As Shephard observes, “The result . . . is an industry addicted to the quick Trump fix—and an industry that is rapidly moving away from one of its seminal strengths. The point of nonfiction books is to offer something that you can’t get on television—or the internet.” At Slate, Laura Miller argues that Ian McEwan
Hilton Als Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has announced that it will publish Final Draft, the selected writings of David Carr, the late New York Times reporter who authored the bestselling memoir The Night of the Gun. The book will be edited by Carr’s widow, Jill Rooney Carr. Ta-Nehisi Coates will write the introduction. The book will be released in 2020. Motherhood author Sheila Heti dwells on “books that have shaped her.” “Every book alters something about what you thought you knew about the world.” Novelist Fatima Bhutto talks about Maggie Nelson’s underrated Bluets, the last book that made her cry,
Sally Wen Mao. Photo: Jess X. Chen Anne Anlin Cheng talks to Sally Wen Mao about rage, Anna May Wong, and her new poetry collection, Oculus. “When I read about Wong, and her first-person accounts of her struggles, what I felt was more than empathy—it was identification. The feelings she wrote about did not require me to imagine, because I’ve felt them too,” Mao said about her persona poems in the voice of Wong. “I recognized that what I felt was more than me—it transcended me. It was about me and it wasn’t about me—both of those statements can
Kate Zambreno At the Paris Review, Kate Zambreno and Sarah Manguso discuss motherhood, capitalism, and Zambreno’s new book, Appendix Project. “The body is so often left out of the question of writing. I needed to be a writer after I gave birth—I needed to think and have a vehicle or container in which to think,” Zambreno said. “Everyone was telling me that becoming a mother would take away that existential drive to make work—but it was the opposite. I have never felt more full of life and death, and it made me become reborn as a writer, through the
Ian McEwan. Photo: Urszula Soltys. Three months before technology news site The Markup’s expected launch, editor in chief Julia Angwin has been let go from the Craig Newmark–funded project that she helped found with Sue Gardner and Jeff Larson. Angwin says that she was pushed out by Gardner after she refused to “change the site’s mission to ‘one based on advocacy against the tech companies’ instead of ‘producing meaningful data-centered journalism about the impact of technology on society,’” the Times reports. Several staff members have resigned in protest. tells The Guardian. Ian McEwan talks to Literary Hub about Bach,
Prince. Photo: Scott Penner Prince’s memoir The Beautiful Ones, which was announced just before his death in 2016, will be published by Random House in October. “Spanning from his childhood to his final days as one of the most successful musical acts of all time,” The Guardian reports that the book will include “Prince’s unfinished manuscript alongside photos from his personal collection, scrapbooks and lyrics, including his original handwritten treatment for his 1984 hit Purple Rain.” Quartz’s Annaliese Griffin examines the sexist media coverage of Pintrest as the company prepares to go public. “The fact that pinners, as the
Rebecca Solnit BuzzFeed examines the Mueller report and revisits the story that Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. At the Washington Post, Paul Farhi points out that the Mueller report shows fake news came not from the media but from Trump and his team. Also at the Washington Post, Carlos Lozada, who just won a Pulitzer for criticism, argues that the Mueller report is “the best book on the Trump White House so far.” Meanwhile, three printed versions of “The Mueller Report” have risen to the top of Amazon and Barnes Noble best-seller lists. “The mantra I give
Carmen Maria Machado. Photo: Tom Storm Carmen Maria Machado talks to Electric Literature about Carmilla, a vampire novel by J. Sheridan LeFanu that predates Dracula by two decades and is now being reissued by Lanternfish Press with an introduction by Machado. “The connection between narratives of vampires and narratives of women—especially queer women—are almost laughably obvious,” she says. “The hunger for blood, the presence of monthly blood, the influence and effects of the moon, the moon as a feminine celestial body, the moon as a source of madness, the mad woman, the mad lesbian—it goes on and on. It
Michael McFaul Simon Schuster is starting a new imprint this summer. The “trend driven” Tiller Press will publish “practical nonfiction, serving readers clamoring for information to solve their real-world problems, achieve their goals, and lead richer, more meaningful lives.” After a New York Times journalist blocked former ambassador and From Cold War to Hot Peace author Michael McFaul on Twitter, Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton wonders whether it’s ethical for journalists to block reasonable critics on social media. “Is blocking someone who is a respected member of the commentariat — and a frequent source for your news organization — okay
Susan Choi At Vulture, Morgan Jerkins talks to Claudia Rankine black trauma, Serena Williams, and her new play, The White Card. “I love women who refuse invisibility in black femininity and who are insisting that we are worth whatever worth is out there,” Rankine said. “The policing of Serena shows up again and again in my work because the amount of respect I have for that woman floods me. We see her in a sport dominated by white people and you hear the racism against her again and again and again. And yet, she keeps winning.” At Literary Hub,
Nick Flynn Last week, Chris Lehmann left The Baffler to become editor of the New Republic. Now, The Baffler has named its new editor in chief: Jonathon Sturgeon, who has been a senior editor at the magazine since 2017. “During The Baffler’s explosive growth since the 2016 election,” says publisher Noah McCormack, “Jonathon has led the way in commissioning the broad range of diverse writers that have gained The Baffler an ever-growing audience.” This Thursday, Michel Houellebecq, France’s “best-known and most provocative novelist,” will receive the Legion of Honour, France’s “highest civilian distinction,” from President Emmanuel Macron. Electric Lit