paper trail

Samira Nasr named top editor of Harper’s Bazaar; Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Chenjerai Kumanyika on prison abolition

Chenjerai Kumanyika

For Nieman Lab, journalist Wendi C. Thomas details the ways in which the Memphis Police Department has been spying on Black journalists and activists and how that surveillance has changed her reporting. Thomas found out she was being surveilled when she was reporting on a suit brought by the ACLU of Tennessee against the MPD for spying on residents “for political purposes.” “I’d long suspected that I was on law enforcement’s radar, simply because my work tends to center on the most marginalized communities, not institutions with the most power,” she writes. “My sin, as best I can figure, was having good sources who were local organizers and activists.”

On the Intercepted podcast, scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore discusses prison abolition and defunding the police with professor and activist Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Jennifer Szalai explores the debate around the word fascism.

Two leaders of the Poetry Foundation have resigned after the organization received an open letter with more than 1,800 signatories criticizing the foundation’s response to recent anti-racist protests.

Samira Nasr has been chosen as the next editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar. Nasr is the first woman of color to serve as the top editor of the magazine in its history.

At the Paris Review, Sarah Bellamy reflects on performance, white supremacist violence, and the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. “As a stage director I am trained to watch how people move and to interpret meaning—to read their bodies. As an American I am also trained to read bodies and see race. And, like looking through a pair of binoculars, these two lenses perfectly aligned in the moment after Ahmaud fell, magnifying the embodiment of white supremacy in his murderer.”

In a press release, Simon & Schuster confirmed that John Bolton’s upcoming book, The Room Where It Happened, has been edited to “incorporate changes to the text that addressed NSC concerns.”