Interview magazine is shutting down after nearly fifty years. Founded by Andy Warhol in 1969, the publication has become entangled in legal challenges from former staffers who claim lost wages worth hundred of thousands of dollars, as well as a charge that the former creative director, Karl Templer, overstepped “the professional line.”
The New York Times is developing a television series based on “Overlooked,” the paper’s ongoing feature about important women and people of color who did not receive a Times obituary. The scripted series will have ten episodes per season, each telling one person’s story. All of the episodes will be written and directed by women.
Spiegel Online has more details about the scandals at the Swedish Academy. The article, which details the charges against Horace Engdahl and Jean-Claude Arnault that led to the Nobel Prize in literature being suspended this year, also speculates about the future of the award: “Some say that the Nobel Committee should simply take responsibility for the prize away from the Swedish Academy and give it to a different academy. That, they say, is the only possible way to save the prize—if indeed it can still be saved.”
At the Columbia Journalism Review, Farai Chideya writes about the lack of diversity in newsrooms and offers suggestions for how the long-standing issue might be addressed: “Major news prizes like the Pulitzer and DuPont could require public disclosure of diversity metrics as a qualification for acceptance of the prize. This would broadly affect both the for-profit and the non-profit media outlets that compete for these awards.”
At n+1, Mark Krotov remembers publisher Peter Mayer, who died on May 11th at the age of eighty-two. Mayer was the publisher of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and founder of the Overlook Press. Krotov writes, “He was known for his charm, his temper, his savvy, his smoking, and for the relentless dynamism he brought to an industry that often preferred to react or sit still.”
Tonight at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, Mary Gaitskill will read from and discuss her collection of essays, Somebody With a Little Hammer.