Yesterday, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced that Frederick J. Ryan Jr.—a onetime Reagan-administration staffer and currently Politico’s first chief executive—will be replacing Katharine Weymouth as publisher of the paper. This is the first time that the Post will not be headed by a member of the Graham family since 1933, when Weymouth’s great-grandfather Eugene Meyer bought the paper.
At The Atlantic, a story about Paul Moran, who systematically dug through and took items from John Updike’s trash for three years, beginning in 2006. Moran has blogged about his finds at The Other John Updike Archive, and says of his pursuit: “It was disgusting. . . . The immediacy made it seem so wrong, but longterm, if you flash back on virtually any major author or historical artist, you would think, ‘I wish I had Mark Twain’s stuff or Andy Warhol’s stuff.’”
Simon Reynolds, author of music studies such as Rip It Up and Start Again and a Bookforum contributor, has written an ode to “inkies,” British weekly music newspapers like NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds. “Imagine, if you can, or remember, if you’re old enough, a long-ago time when music fans had to wait. Wait for news about music. Wait for reviews that were really previews of music you’d wait even longer to hear.”
Emily Bazelon and Dave Weigel are both leaving Slate. Bazelon will join the New York Times Magazine, as part of their in-progress redesign, and Weigel is moving to Bloomberg Politics.
A&E Networks is rumored to be in negotiations with Vice Media to pay $25 million for a 10 percent share.