The New York Daily News has yet to hire a new editor after the December 31 retirement of Arthur Browne, who was also serving as publisher. Though parent company Tronc knew of Browne’s impending resignation, they have not named a permanent or temporary replacement for either position. “I’ve never heard of a paper functioning without at least an acting editor in chief for any period of time,” said Jim Rich, the paper’s editor before Browne. “At a moment where local coverage is teetering on the brink of extinction, it’s depressing to think that this is the state of affairs at what was once a stalwart of local journalism.”
Former President Barack Obama has decided to continue his tradition of sharing his lists of the best books and music from the past year. Favorite books included Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing.
The Foundation for Contemporary Arts has awarded $40,000 grants to poets Lisa Robertson, Anne Boyer, and Fred Moten.
The Rumpus talks to Joshua Clover about protests, riots, and the differences between the two. “The protest has a logic I identify as discursive. It wants to communicate with people. . . . And then there’s the other half, which I refer to as the practical half, which is trying to take care of certain practical goals, things like destroying the power of the police,” he explained. “Rioters don’t make demands. Rioters take care of business. But the protest side makes demands, and as we saw in the Civil Rights Movement, they were able to win some limited gains.”
BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman reflects on his part in popularizing the term “fake news,” a phrase that now makes him “cringe.” Silverman had been researching and reporting on hoaxes and plagiarism in the mainstream media for years, but says that the 2016 election changed the way these stories were viewed. “I should have realized that any person, idea, or phrase—however neutral in its intention—could be twisted into a partisan cudgel,” he writes. “After the 2016 election, shocked US Democrats, looking for explanations, adopted the concept as an easy answer to the puzzle of Donald Trump’s election. And in response, Trump and his supporters saw the term as a threat and an insult — and a weapon.”