AdWeek gives a summary of the New York Times Company’s annual meeting, at which chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. claimed that the company needed to approach its new paywall with “constant innovation,” and argued that “dangerous and complicated stories are worth paying for.” CEO Janet Robinson pointed out that the company’s 2010 profits were on the rise, but some shareholders remained skeptical: One asked why dividends, which were frozen in 2009, have yet to be reinstated.
Malcolm Gladwell explains his method for keeping up with the news. The Blink author reads newspapers—in their print versions. “At this point, I realize, I am almost a full 24 hours behind the news cycle. Is this is a problem? I have no idea.”
Author Ed Martin has opened a bookstore in New York’s West Village, but he has only one book for sale: his Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days With the Phoenix Mars Mission, a report (from the ground, alas) on NASA’s 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander.
Oscar Wilde: uncensored at last.
The shortlist for the 2011 Orwell Prize has been announced.
Following the publication of Rudolph Wurlitzer’s great 2008 Western Drop Edge of Yonder (originally a film script that Jim Jarmusch liberally borrowed from when making Dead Man), most of the cult author’s novels, such as Nog, Flats, and Quake, have been brought back into print (the latter two with an introduction by Bookforum columnist Michael Greenberg). But one title remains hard to find: Slow Fade, an amazing tale about a drifter who is hired by a monstrous director of Westerns to write a screenplay about his missing daughter. Drag City Records is now releasing it as an audiobook, read by none other than musician and Old Joy star Will Oldham. Today at 3pm at Brooklyn’s Spoonbill & Sugartown bookstore, Oldham will read from the text in person (Ben Chansey will provide music). Later, at 7:30pm at Manhattan's Anthology Film Archives, Oldham will read again and talk with Wurlitzer (along with Wurlitzer’s wife, photographer Lynn Davis), followed by a screening of Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, for which Wurlitzer wrote the screenplay.
