The remembrances of Robert Silvers continue. At the New Yorker, Louis Menand remembers his regular lunch partner of seven years. “The Review will continue, we all hope, to be a great magazine,” he writes, “but everyone knows that it cannot be the same magazine without Bob, and that the world of art and ideas will be somehow smaller without him.” Ian Buruma, a longtime writer for the magazine, talks about his first piece for the Review, Silvers’s considerate editing style, and what might happen next at the publication. At the New York Review of Books, Luc Sante, Nathaniel Rich, Francine Prose, and other Review contributors reflect on their time working with Silvers. Sante remembers Silvers as an editor who never left the office, and had a habit of accidentally lighting his trash can on fire with cigarette butts. “When this happened he would get up,” Sante writes, “his eyes never leaving the page he was reading, and step out into the hall while his assistants rushed to put out the flames.”
Medium has launched a new subscription plan for $5 per month. The decision comes after the company laid off one third of the site’s staff last January after advertising revenues proved unable to generate enough revenue. The Verge notes that it’s still unclear when new features will be made available to premium users. “At the moment,” Jacob Kastrenakes points out, “the service isn’t offering subscribers much beyond the knowledge that their money is going directly to writers.”
Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman have purchased the film rights to George Saunders’s novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Cast and crew have yet to be announced. In a statement, Saunders said that he is excited to work with the pair. “My hope is that we can find a way to make the experience of getting this movie made as wild and enjoyable and unpredictable as the experience of writing it,” he said.
After pulling out of an office lease at a building with ties to Jared Kushner, The Guardian has announced layoffs of their US staff, possibly in an attempt to offset their losses from the deal. The paper has been planning to reduce staff in the New York office since last September.
At Cosmopolitan, Amanda Carpenter comments on Ivanka Trump’s new White House office and national security clearance. Carpenter calls the appointment nepotism, and argues that Trump’s new title-less role takes work away from other well-qualified women. “Trump’s spinners will argue the arrangement is not a violation of federal nepotism laws because Ivanka is not being given a salary or title—a stunning symbol of privilege in itself,” she writes. “Ivanka’s too wealthy to need the salary and too well-known to need a title, a slap in the face to women who have toiled for years, for little pay, hoping to work up the ladder and obtain a White House job one day.”
The Whiting Foundation has announced the ten new winners of the Whiting Awards: Francisco Cantu, Simone White, Phillip B. Williams, Clarence Coo, James Ijames, Clare Barron, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Tony Tulathimutte, Jen Beagin, and Lisa Halliday.