Keith Gessen Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of the New York Times and the author of the new book Merchants of Truth, talks with Isaac Chotiner about moral change in the media, and about how journalism (especially local journalism) will survive after the “Trump bump.” Book deals this week: Random House paid six figures for the rights to paleobiologist Thomas Halliday’s Yesterday’s Worlds, which uses the latest science to examine “deep time and revive extinct worlds—from the most recent ice age at the end of the Pleistocene period to the emergence of early multicellular creatures over 550 million

Esmé Weijun Wang. Photo: Kristin Cofer Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver has died at age eighty-three. The New York Times has collected selections of her work that details Oliver’s “reverence for the natural world and her frank, but comforting, descriptions of mourning.” The Forward is ending print editions of its newspaper and plans to lay off nearly half the paper’s editorial staff, the New York Post reports. The publication will continue to publish online in both English and Yiddish. Esmé Weijun Wang talks to Publishers Weekly about writing about illness, her new essay collection, and the different expectations that

Carmen Maria Machado. Photo: Tom Storm Atria Books is launching a new imprint. Signal Press, which will be led by Julia Cheiffetz, will focus on “books that contribute to the conversation around feminism, politics, and issues of social justice.” Upcoming titles include Emma Brown’s How to Raise a Boy, Michelle Duster’s Ida B the Queen, and Tom Randall’s biography of Elon Musk. “In the spirit of Gawker, whose stated mission was to tell the stories journalists talk about at the bar after work,” Splinter’s Laura Wagner details everything there is to know “about all the people who have been

Adam Moss. Photo: Mark Mann After fifteen years, Adam Moss is stepping down from his role as editor in chief of New York magazine, the New York Times reports. “I’ve been going full throttle for 40 years; I want to see what my life is like with less ambition,” Moss told the paper. “I’m older than the staff. I’m older than the readers. I just want to do something new.” Moss will remain at the magazine through March. CBS News and Simon Schuster are collaborating on a podcast and book project hosted by Mo Rocca. Mobituaries, the title of

Leslie Jamison In an exclusive essay at Entertainment Weekly, Leslie Jamison details the origins of her new book on obsession and longing, Make It Scream, Make It Burn. “At first, I thought this collection was about the connection between desire and distance, about being obsessed with what we can’t fully grasp: the mystery of prior lives, the metaphor of a lonely whale, the allure of an online avatar,” she writes. “But eventually, I realized that it was just as interested in what’s right in front of us. How do we keep showing up for our daily lives? How do

Cory Doctorow The Guardian is spotlighting the “hottest-tipped” debut novelists of 2019. New Yorker writer Ken Auletta is writing a biography of Harvey Weinstein, and has sold the rights to Penguin Press. Tech journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow recently wrote on his blog Boing Boing about Bird, a scooter-sharing startup. Doctorow explained how anyone can convert, with some simple mechanical adjustments, the scooters offered by Bird into “personal scooters.” Bird has demanded that Doctorow remove the post immediately, saying that he is telling people how to steal their properrty. But the writer isn’t backing down. He’s posted again,

Linn Ullmann. Photo: Agnete Brun Vulture’s Kat Rosenfield reflects on The Millions, an indie book blog that was recently sold to Publishers Weekly. Although the website has no plans to change its mission or content, “there’s a consensus among readers, writers, publishers, and critics that something has ended,” Rosenfield writes. “If not the Millions itself, then perhaps the culture and era that sustained it: an online Wild West full of hungry readers and exuberant writers still young and innocent enough not to mind working for (almost) free.” The Nieman Foundation has announced its 2019 Visiting Fellows. BuzzFeed’s Charlie Warzel

Deborah Eisenberg At Longreads, Tobias Carroll talks to Sarah Moss about borders, Brexit, and her new book, Ghost Wall. “There was a lot of very angry public discourse about walls and boundaries,” she said of the time when she began writing her novel. “Who are the barbarians, and who are the civilized people? Who’s in, and who’s out? Who’s English, and who’s not English? Who’s British, and who’s not British? National myths of origin were very much in my mind while I was there.” Jamel Brinkley’s A Lucky Man, Deborah Eisenberg’s Your Duck is My Duck, and Lauren Groff’s

Kristen Roupenian. Photo: Elisa Roupenian Toha Lin-Manuel Miranda and three of his collaborators from Hamilton have bought the Drama Book Shop, the New York Times’s Michael Paulson reports. The bookshop has been searching for a new, more affordable space since late last year, something that the new owners intend to help with. The shop will close at the end of the month and reopen at a different Midtown location in the fall. “It’s the chronic problem — the rents were just too high, and I’m 84 years old — I just didn’t have the drive to find a new space

Sally Rooney. Photo: Jonny L. Davies. Sally Rooney has won the Costa Novel Award for Normal People. Rooney is the youngest author ever to win the prize. Other winners include J. O. Morgan’s poetry book Assurances, Bart van Es’s memoir The Cut Out Girl, and Stuart Turton’s debut novelThe Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Two hundred Vice employees from the company’s TV and video departments have joined editorial employees in unionizing with the Writers Guild of America East. Observer editor in chief Ben Robinson has left the company after ten months. There are no plans to find a replacement,

Jill Abramson In her new book, Merchants of Truth, former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson writes that the paper drafted a letter to the Chinese government “all but apologizing” for a story that exposed corruption in the country. The article, by David Barboza and Sharon LaFraniere, went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. Abramson says she confronted the paper’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, who agreed to change the letter. But Abramson claims that the letter, even in its amended form, was “still objectionable” for its apologetic tone. The confrontation “strained” Abramson’s relationship with Sulzberger, the former editor writes.

Karamo Brown Queer Eye star Karamo Brown is writing a memoir, which will be published by Gallery Books in March. In Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing, and Hope, Brown will detail his life story, from his upbringing in the South to his television career, as well as his unique outlooks on life, culture, and connection. “When Karamo Brown first auditioned for the casting directors of Netflix’s Queer Eye, he knew he wouldn’t win the role of culture expert by discussing art and theater,” the book’s synopsis explains. “Instead he decided to redefine what ‘culture’ could — and

Jorge Luis Borges At the Columbia Journalism Review, Robert P. Baird reports on Jacobin magazine, the socialist print publication that has gained a sizable following since its launch in 2010. Baird talks to Jacobin’s founding editor and publisher, Bhaskar Sunkara, and tracks the magazine’s unlikely rise. As one Sunkara’s debate opponents put it, Sunkara “started a magazine that’s got 38,000 subscribers! He bought a magazine in Britain! He’s the wunderkind of socialism!” On the New Yorker fiction podcast, Orhan Pamuk reads Jorge Luis Borges. Emma Best reports on the 1976 FBI investigation of the Village Voice for espionage, after

Sally Rooney. Photo: Jonny L. Davies. At The Atlantic, Derek Thompson looks at worrying trends in the media business, noting four in particular: there are “too many players,” a lack of “saviors,” no “clear playbook” for how to move forward, and publications are stuck with “patrons with varying levels of beneficence.” What’s next? According to Thompson, one clue comes from looking back to the early-nineteenth century “party press era,” a time of flush partisan patrons funding the news: “Journalism could be more political again, but also more engaging.”  Sloane Crosley writes about what Hollywood gets wrong about publishing. But,

At Poynter, Daniel Funke At Folio, ten creative directors pick their favorite magazine covers of the year, including Marilyn Minter’s cover shot of Lady Gaga for the New York Times Magazine, Time magazine’s fold-out cover for their “Guns in America” story, and New York magazine’s Stormy Daniels cover, shot by  Amanda Demme. Many long-running magazines closed in 2018, including the Village Voice, Interview, and Tin House. Hmm Daily has the full rundown in “The Year in Dead Publications.” Vol. 1 Brooklyn has a list of the best fiction of the year. They’ve included some of the consensus picks (The

Jenny Xie. Photo: Teresa Mathew As their long-running advice column “Dear Sugar” comes to an end, Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond reflect on the art of giving and receiving advice. “After much reflection we have decided that it’s time to shift our focus to other creative endeavors — namely, our next books,” Strayed explains of the decision. Almond reflected on why the two started the project in the first place. “The design flaw in most advice columns, I felt, was that their authors took themselves too seriously,” he remembered. “I realized the flaw in my approach, which is that

Ursula K. Le Guin Jeff Jarvis rounds up the German media’s reactions to recent revelations that Der Spiegel reporter Claas Relotius had fabricated numerous articles. “The Spiegel affair cuts deeper into our presumptions and makes us ask whether our compulsion to make news compelling (yes, entertaining) leads us astray,” he writes. The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan reflects on the best and worst of American journalism over the past year. The New York Times lists the books that, despite not making the paper’s “100 Notables” or “10 Best” lists, are still “worthy of attention.” How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

Zadie Smith Zadie Smith is working on a short story collection. Grand Union, which includes ten new stories and ten previously published pieces, will be published by Hamish Hamilton in the UK next fall. Reporter Maya Kosoff is leaving Vanity Fair. The New York Times offers a reading list for viewers of Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel, If Beale Street Could Talk. Director Lars Jan talks to LitHub about 1968, Joan Didion, and his stage adaptation of The White Album. After two residents of Fergus Falls, Minnesota pointed out eleven of the “most absurd lies” in a

Celeste Ng. Photo: Kevin Day Celeste Ng talks to the Times Literary Supplement about writing tics, favorite books, and how the work of women authors has been underappreciated for too long. “For hundreds of years, the work of women – and particularly women of colour – has been dismissed as trivial, domestic, or just generally ‘less’ than that of men,” she says. “I think we’re starting to realize how powerful – and needed – those voices actually are.” LitHub and Book Marks collect the best reviewed books of 2018. Top picks include Ling Ma’s Severance, Zadie Smith’s Feel Free,

Richard Powers New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul addresses the controversy over Alice Walker’s recent “By the Book” interview, in which the author said she was currently reading a book by anti-Semitic writer David Icke. “When we interview anyone, whether it’s a public official or a foreign leader or an artist, The Times isn’t saying that we approve of the person’s views and actions,” Paul said. “We’ve also faced criticism when a writer only named white authors, or male authors. My response to that is the same as in this case: Does that answer tell you something