paper trail

Amazon makes a film about journalist Ida Tarbell; Pamela Paul to head "Times" book coverage

Pamela Paul

Amazon will produce a film titled Ida Tarbell about the journalist of the same name whose nineteen-article series, “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” was serialized in McClure’s Magazine at the turn of the twentieth century. Tarbell shed light on the dirty doings of John D. Rockefeller and was one of the first so-called muckrakers, a label she rejected: “I was convinced that in the long run the public they were trying to stir would weary of vituperation, that if you were to secure permanent results the mind must be convinced.”

“To a remarkable degree our daily book critics help set the literary agenda for the country,” writes Dean Baquet, executive editor of the Times, in a memo to staff announcing that Pamela Paul, the editor of the Sunday Book Review, will take charge of the entirety of the paper’s books coverage. Paul will probably erase the line between Sunday and daily reviews—“a line established when the paper was divided according to print constructs.”

The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore will air its final episode tonight. Comedy Central President Kent Alterman said “the show ‘hasn’t resonated.’” The Times writes, “Though the late-show genre remains heavy on easygoing laughter, any one episode of ‘The Nightly Show’ could occasionally go for prolonged stretches without a single joke, something that intrigued some critics but failed to attract a broader audience.”

Would you like to receive a stipend of $12,000 to be a BuzzFeed Fellow? BuzzFeed seeks to diversify the media landscape “by investing in the next generation of necessary voices.” Apply by October 1.

Tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, Yaa Gyasi will read from her novelHomegoing.