At the Village Voice, Donna Minkowitz reflects on her reporting on the 1993 murder of Brandon Teena, and the editorial decisions that she now regrets twenty-five years later. “For years, I have wanted to apologize for what I now understand, with some shame, was the article’s implicit anti-trans framing,” she writes. “Even in New York City, someone like me, a journalist who considered myself very involved in queer radical politics, could be massively ignorant about what it meant to be transgender.”
After BuzzFeed announced plans to close their Paris office, BuzzFeed France staff have voted for a strike this week. “France is not the US,” employees wrote in a statement. “You can’t close a media outlet in a snap of a finger.”
Hearst president David Carey is stepping down from his role. Carey will stay with the company as chairman as Hearst looks for a replacement.
The Orwell Prize has been awarded to Scottish rapper and columnist Darren McGarvey for his book, Poverty Safari.
Entertainment Weekly looks at crime novelist Megan Abbott’s recent Hollywood success. Two of her latest books, You Will Know Me and Give Me Your Hand, have been optioned by AMC and USA is working on a TV adaptation of another novel, Dare Me.
In recognition of its fiftieth anniversary, Emily Temple crunches the numbers behind the Man Booker Prize. Temple notes that during the half-century that the prize has existed, there have been sixteen years where the shortlist did not include a single writer of color and two years with no women included. “Number of years the shortlist featured 0 men: 0.”
Caitlin Moran talks to The Guardian about problematic mentors, embarrassing her children with writing, and her new book, How to Be Famous. “Who wants to read their mum writing about masturbation?” she said of whether her children are fans of her work. “We did an Easter egg hunt and one of the clues was hidden in my book and they refused to open it. The shits. They said: ‘I don’t want to read the bit about the hairiness.’”
