The Believer has been sold to the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Joshua Wolf Shenk, the director of the Institute, will take over as editor. The current editors, Heidi Julavits and Vendela Vida, will remain as consultants. Vida told the Associated Press that although The Believer has become more financially stable over the years, the sale will help sustain the magazine for the long term. “To persist and grow,” Vida said, “The Believer needs resources and an ambitious agenda, and Josh and the Black Mountain Institute have both.”
Mary Gaitskill talks to the Huffington Post about Twitter, politics, and her recent essay collection, Somebody With a Little Hammer. Gaitskill stays she’s stayed away from social media because of its impersonal nature. “I thought it would just be positively dangerous for me to get on Twitter at night, when I’ve had a little too much to drink, and start expressing myself,” she said. “It’s one thing to do that with somebody who you’re looking at, and who may think you’re a drunken idiot or an unstable person, but at least you’re looking at that person. With Twitter it’s like, you don’t even see who they are.”
The TV series based on Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend will be broadcast by HBO. The show’s dialogue will be in Italian, with English subtitles. Although HBO has committed only to the eight-episode first season, the New York Times writes that “the ultimate aim is to adapt all four novels, for a total of 32 episodes.”
At Vanity Fair, Evgenia Peretz profiles Nan Talese, head of her eponymous imprint at Doubleday and wife of journalist Gay Talese. Peretz explores the “intense mystery” of the couple’s nearly sixty-year marriage, which has weathered numerous infidelities and a book based on said infidelities. Talese has a tendency to go after the things she wants and do whatever is needed to get them—she surprised her then-boyfriend in Rome and told him they were getting married. Even in her professional life, Talese made her way up the ranks of publishing houses while raising two children and dealing with male authors who didn’t like the idea of a female editor. The Taleses’ two daughters are also baffled by their longevity of their parents’ relationship. Though her husband is currently working on a book about their relationship, Talese doesn’t seem worried. “He doesn’t know anything about marriage,” she said, “so I’m not concerned.”
Elizabeth Spiers, founding editor of Gawker and former editor in chief of The Observer, explains why her old boss Jared Kushner is not the right leader for the Office of American Innovation. Spiers writes that Kushner had trouble translating his real estate experience to the media world, and was wary of spending money on the publication, even when it was doing well. After the paper’s first profitable quarter, Kushner suggested layoffs. “He wanted the Observer to be cheaper to run, usually at the expense of growth and evolution.” Spiers also notes that Kushner might be innovative, but not in an effective way. When she started her job at The Observer, she was given Kushner’s old Macbook laptop. Kushner “liked the design of Apple products” but not the operating system, so the computer was running Windows. “Frankensteining two products you appreciate into one product you appreciate even more isn’t irrational; it’s even creative, in a way,” she writes. “On the other hand, why did the newspaper’s owner need a $2,500 monitor?”