Radhika Jones will be the next editor of Vanity Fair. Jones is replacing Graydon Carter, who announced his retirement this fall after twenty-five years as editor in chief. According to the New York Post, Jones will be taking a significant pay cut: While Carter reportedly made about $2 million dollars a year, Jones is being offered about $500,000. As one Post source put it: “The era of the highly paid Conde Nast editor is truly over.”
The Washington Post’s Opinion section with now use artificial intelligence to guide readers to stories with opposing viewpoints from what they’re reading.
Gossip columnist Liz Smith died yesterday at the age of ninety-four. Smith authored her column for thirty-three years, in the Daily News, New York Newsday, and the New York Post. She wrote in her inimitable style right up until the end: In a Friday dispatch for the website New York Social Diary, Smith shared a byline with Denis Ferrara on a story that begins as an appreciation of the late actress Contance Ford, talks about how Adam Sandler isn’t actually so bad, and ends on a hopeful note, riffing on Socrates quote: “Yeah, I know, you thought today’s column was going to be a total rant about the horror of the 45th president’s first year. Sometimes we like to deliver a perverse surprise. We’ll have at least three more years to rant. We need to reserve our rage and fear. And build the new.”
Edwidge Danticat has been awarded the 2018 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Jesmyn Ward sits down with The Guardian to discuss her novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing.
At the Melville House blog, Simon Reichley examines the recently released “Industry Salary Survey,” compiled by Publishers Weekly. Predictably, the news is not good: “Everything that was a bummer last year (a dramatic pay gap between male and female employees, a stunning lack of racial diversity, stagnant wage growth, etc) is a bummer this year.”
Tonight in New York, there are far too many worthwhile literary events for one Monday evening: at the New York Public Library, Myriam Gurba discusses her memoir Mean with Emily Books cofounders Emily Gould and Ruth Curry; at McNally Jackson books, Corey Robin talks about the updated edition of his influential study of conservatism, The Reactionary Mind, with Keith Gessen; The Strand is hosting a roundtable about the book Tell Me Something Good: Artist Interviews from the Brooklyn Rail; and Greenlight Books in Brooklyn is presenting a joint book launch for Stephen Elliott and Nuar Alsadir.
