The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism’s report on the discredited Rolling Stone story, “A Rape on Campus,” concludes that the piece’s mistakes were systemic and could have been avoided, noting “the failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking.” Rolling Stone has retracted the article and replaced it with the Columbia report, calling it “an anatomy of journalistic failure,” while Gawker says the problem was “pathological conflict-avoidance.” At The Guardian, Jessica Valenti writes that the magazine’s response to the crisis will cause more harm, as the staff tries to shift the blame to Jackie, the story’s subject: “In the midst of an all-out backlash against so-called PC culture and anti-rape activism, they shirked their real responsibility both to Jackie and to all the victims of sexual assault, and it will have a resounding impact on those working to end sexual violence.” On Twitter, journalists look for lessons from the debacle, while Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post laments that no one lost their job in the wake of the scandal. (At The Observer, a story on something that actually has led to someone getting fired from Rolling Stone: negatively reviewing Hootie and the Blowfish during the height of their popularity in the mid-’90s.) For more on the case and its aftermath, see New York magazine’s round up.
Princeton University has acquired Jacques Derrida’s personal library of more than 13,000 annotated books.
In Dissent’s spring issue, Francesca Mari looks at the assistant economy, “the main artery into creative or elite work—highly pressurized, poorly recompensed, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes menial secretarial assistance.” On April 23, n+1 will host a symposium about labor in publishing, following their recent series about magazine workers, including Keith Gessen’s remembrance of n+1’s early days: “Was the magazine exploiting everyone? It sure felt like it. Those years were a constant exercise in begging, cajoling, subtly threatening, and otherwise getting people to do things they didn’t necessarily want to do.”
Tonight at McNally Jackson Books in New York, Renata Adler will talk about her new book of collected non-fiction, After the Tall Timber.