Vox analyzed seventeen months of Fox & Friends transcripts in an effort to understand the relationship between the show and the president. Rather than simply echoing the party line as traditional state-run media might, Alvin Chang writes that the show seeks to offer Trump advice. “What we found is that Fox & Friends has a symbiotic relationship with Trump that is far weirder and more interesting than state media,” Chang writes. “Instead of talking for Trump, they are talking to him.”
The New York Times has hired Reggie Ugwu as a pop culture reporter. Ugwu was most recently at BuzzFeed News, “where he focused on pop music, and the cultural, economic and technological forces that shape it.”
Rion Amilcar Scott’s Insurrections has won the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.
The Times talks to new press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders—”the good cop to Mr. Spicer’s barking sergeant.”
Jennie Yabroff talks to Jonathan Dee about capitalism, representing tragedy, and his new book, The Locals. The book begins on September 12, 2001, with a scene that Dee says he had to fight to keep in the book. Dee chose to illustrate the event through an unnamed stranger reacting to the actions of a man that turns out to be the book’s protagonist. “You don’t want the opening scene of your novel to consist of a bunch of characters sitting on their couches watching TV and crying,” he explained. “I felt like I had to begin with at least an invocation of 9/11, if not the day itself, because that day instigated a long political reaction that we didn’t recognize as a reaction for quite some time.”
