paper trail

Bad news on the journalism job market; Aleksandar Hemon's new book

Aleksandar Hemon. Photo: Velibor Božović

The Columbia Journalism Review reports on the dismal prospects for people working in media. Between January and May of this year, roughly 3,000 journalists were laid off or offered a buyout. According to Gerry Smith, writing in Bloomberg, 2019 is on track to be the worst year for the industry since 2009. Andrew Challenger, part of the firm that compiled the data, told Smith: “In most industries, employers can’t find enough people to fill the jobs they have open. . . . In news, it has been the opposite story. And it seems to have been accelerating.”

Poynter has started a new series, “How We Did It,” that surveys local newsrooms about their strategies and techniques.

At Lit Hub, Emily Temple compiles the fifty best one-star Amazon reviews of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

For Jacobin, Anne Colamosca writes about twentieth-century Italian author Natalia Ginzburg, noting the recent rediscovery of her work as its been translated into English. Colamosca focuses on Ginzburg’s political side, drawing out her antifascist background and her portrayal of family life during Mussolini’s reign and the aftermath of World War II.

On Monday July 8th, Aleksadar Hemon will read from his latest book, a double volume titled My Parents/This Does Not Belong to You, about his parents immigration from Sarajevo and his memories of childhood.