Patti Smith remembers friend and collaborator Sam Shepard, who died last week from complications of ALS. “He liked packing up and leaving just like that, going west,” she writes. “He liked getting a role that would take him somewhere he really didn’t want to be, but where he would wind up taking in its strangeness; lonely fodder for future work.”
At New York magazine, Christian Lorentzen reflects on the current demand for dystopian fiction. From Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne, to Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan, Lorentzen explains how “the present moment, with its dismal politics and cries from both sides of impending catastrophe,” has made dystopian novels more appealing to readers. “When things are bad, we want to hear how much worse they can get,” he writes. “There’s something paradoxically comforting about watching characters live through terrifying alternate realities and collapsing near futures.”
Macmillan Publishers is moving from the Flatiron Building in Chelsea to new offices in downtown Manhattan. Publisher’s Weekly notes that as the building’s only tenant, “Macmillan has become associated with the skyscraper to the point where Bob Miller chose to call his new imprint Flatiron Books when he joined Macmillan in 2013.” The move will be completed in 2019.
After numerous scoops by pro-Trump on White House staff shake-ups were confirmed, Axios writes that this access is making right-wing news organizations seem more trustworthy. “The fake stories make it hard to spot the true news, but for others, the true news gives credibility to the misinformation.”
Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler has filed a lawsuit against the network over a now-retracted story about the murder of Democratic National Committee aide Seth Rich. Wheeler claims that Fox News “intended to deflect public attention from growing concern about the administration’s ties to the Russian government,” and that a reporter “created quotations out of thin air and attributed them to him to propel her story.”
Columbia Journalism Review talks to former NBC reporter Anthony Ponce about quitting his job, becoming a Lyft driver, and creating the Backseat Rider podcast, which is based on conversations he has with his passengers. Ponce says that the new job has changed his life in many ways, especially financially. “I moved my family back in with my parents. My wife and I are renting out our house, and I also took a job part-time on-air stuff with a company called Dose for a morning show on the CW. The podcast hasn’t grown audience-wise where it could be my full-time gig … yet,” he said. “On the fulfillment side, on a scale from 1 to 10, I’m at a 10.”
