The New York Times is offering another round of buyouts in the newsroom in the hopes of avoiding forced layoffs. The paper plans to merge the current system of copy editors and “backfielders” into a single group. The Times is also eliminating the public editor role, currently held by Liz Spayd. In a memo, publisher Arthur Sulzberger noted that the public editor position was poorly suited to the digital age. “Today, our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be,” he wrote. Instead, the paper is establishing a Reader Center. Run by International desk editor Hanna Ingber, the department will work with editorial staff throughout the newsroom to field tips, criticisms, and other feedback.
Former CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley will now serve as a full-time correspondent on 60 Minutes. Pelley has worked on the program since 2004, and continued to work as a correspondent after he took over Evening News in 2011.
Politico is launching a London edition of Playbook this summer. The newsletter will be run by current Daily Mirror political editor Jack Blanchard.
Bill O’Reilly is working on his next book. Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence will be published in September by Henry Holt.
At Literary Hub, Chris Kraus explains why you should read Eileen Myles’s recently-reissued first novel, Cool for You. Loosely based on Myles’s childhood, Kraus writes that the novel could be considered a kunstlerroman, or “a chronicle of an artist’s becoming.” “Seventeen years after its first publication, the book feels just as radical, startling, and daringly alive as when it first came out,” writes Kraus. “Perhaps now it will be better read.”
