A very silly lawsuit brought by Scarlett Johansson against a French novelist, Grégoire Delacourt, claims that he defamed the actress in his novel La première chose qu’on regard—in English, something like The First Thing You Look At. The character in question isn’t Johansson, but a model who resembles the actress. Nevertheless, a French judge has ruled that Delacourt owes Johansson $3,4oo for portraying her—in a work of fiction—as having had two affairs she never engaged in. Unless Johansson reads French, it’s unlikely that she’s read La première chose; it hasn’t been translated.
According to a Harvard Business school case study, Buzzfeed is disrupting media in the same way that Toyota and Honda disrupted the car industry in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
The Millions publishes a preview of books coming out during the second half of 2014. Among the big names are David Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, Marilynne Robinson, Denis Johnson, Hilary Mantel, Denis Johnson, and Richard Ford.
A scale counts the average page number of the five most highlighted passages in Kindle e-books and gives books a score meant to suggest how deep most readers get before they stop reading. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century has a woeful grade of 2.4 percent, while at 25.9 percent Fifty Shades of Gray isn’t that much better. Boring in two very different ways...
Rolling Stone has promoted its associate publisher, Michael Provus, to the position of publisher. Provis will take over from Chris McLoughlin, who resigned after only a year at the magazine.
Capital New York reports on the conflicted internal response to the hiring of Jezebel’s new editor-in-chief, Emma Carmichael. Many are disappointed that the long-time deputy editor, Dodai Stewart—one of the few women of color on the masthead, and the longest-serving staffer—didn’t the get the job.
