At Nieman Lab, Laura Hazard Owen outlines four points about “what makes a message ‘feel’ true” from a new collection of research on fake news: repetition, pronounceability, familiarity, and “regular photos.” You can download and read the collection, The Psychology of Fake News, for free from Routledge.
For the New York Times, Kyle Buchanan and Reggie Ugwu scrutinize the Criterion Collection’s “blind spots.” Namely, “though the collection features the directorial debuts of multiple generations of white auteurs—including Gus Van Sant, Noah Baumbach, David Gordon Green and Lena Dunham—it has no African-American directors born after 1957.” Of the 461 directors represented in the collection, only four are African American. Peter Becker, president of the company since 1997, said Criterion has plans to “diversify” its canon with the help of an advisory group.
Jake Gyllenhaal is set to star in a TV adaptation of Ian Parker’s recent New Yorker article about former book editor and thriller novelist Dan Mallory. “Our protagonist is white, male and pathological. There is a void in him and he fills it by duping people,” said Janicza Bravo, who will write and direct the series.
At Boston Review, Magda Koneiczna looks at Victor Pickard’s new book, Democracy Without Journalism?, and the question of public funding in the media. The advertising-supported model, prevalent in US news organizations, has been hit hard by the pandemic. As Koneiczna writes: “We’ve left journalism at the mercy of the marketplace, which dictates how much news we get.”
Tonight at 5 PM EST via Zoom, Books Are Magic hosts a panel on “a hot topic of debate in Romancelandia”: the cover designs of romance books. Register for free here.
