Haruki Murakami A new Gallup poll shows that the rate of reading in America has held steady for the past fifteen years, with half of young adults reading between one and ten books per year. The data “suggests that book reading is a classic tradition that has remained a constant in a faster-paced world, especially in comparison to the slump of other printed media.” The New York Times announced yesterday that Ian Fisher will take over as Jerusalem bureau chief. Fisher was most recently the Rome bureau chief, and will be replacing Peter Baker, who has been tapped to
Ayelet Waldman. Photo: Reenie Raschke In her acceptance speech last night for the Cecile B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep criticized president-elect Donald Trump’s treatment of immigrants, people with disabilities, and the press. Streep asked her cohorts to join her in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists: “We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.” Facebook has hired former NBC and CNN newscaster Campbell Brown as the company’s head of news partnerships. Brown was most recently the cofounder of The 74, an education-news website funded
http://www.jaimehogge.com Today, Donald Trump will meet with a group of Conde Nast editorial leaders, including Anna Wintour and Graydon Carter. Carter has been publicly poking fun at the real-estate mogul since at least 1988, when he called him a “short-fingered vulgarian” in SPY magazine, and Trump has retaliated on Twitter, calling Carter, among other things, a “dummy.” Neither Trump’s spokespeople or Conde Nast have commented on the purpose of the meeting. Novelist and memoirist Rachel Cusk talks about what she’s reading and how being a memoirist is like being a mother: “A parent can create a complex and instructive
John Hodgman The Millions has posted their comprehensive preview of the “most anticipated” books coming out in the first half of 2017, with titles by Roxane Gay, Rachel Cusk, Aravind Adgia, Elif Batuman, Ali Smith, Percival Everett, and many more. Medium, the web publishing service, has announced that they are cutting one-third of their staff and revamping their business model. Medium began in 2012 with the goal of changing how stories on the web worked: They aimed to promote thoughtful writing over quick clickbait. But as Medium founder Ev Williams writes in a post announcing the cuts, “In building
Nicholas Thompson On January 15th, the organization Writers Resist will be holding events around the US, as authors band together to promote democracy. A reading on the steps of The New York Public Library will feature Andrew Solomon, Masha Gessen, Robert Pinsky, and Rita Dove, and local events are being organized throughout the nation. The National Book Critics Circle has dedicated its “NBCC Reads” series to the topic of resistance literature, posting discussions by authors such as Jonathan Lethem and T. J. Siles, with new entries being added daily. After twelve years at Fox News, Megyn Kelly is leaving
John Berger Critic and novelist John Berger—whose influential works include About Looking, The Shape of a Pocket, and G—has died at the age of ninety. For those new to Berger’s work—or anyone looking to experience his particular genius—the BBC series Ways of Seeing is worth watching. In The Guardian, Alex Preston previews fiction to be published in the coming year, with new novels by Paul Auster, Katie Kitamura, and Arundhati Roy (with her first book of fiction in twenty years), among many others. Preston notes that in 2017, storytellers will have their work cut out for them: “One’s heart
Ben Smith In a year-end memo to staff, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith warned that “fake news will become more sophisticated, and . . . will spread widely.” Smith also noted that the problem can be found on both sides of the political spectrum, as in the case of a highly embellished story of a Jewish family having to “flee” town after being falsely identified as the reason for a school Christmas play being canceled. At the New York Times, James Risen writes that journalists have Barack Obama to thank for the possible mistreatment of the press under Trump. Citing
Bernard-Henri Lévy The New York Times looks ahead to the most anticipated books of 2017. Ottessa Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another World, Joan Didion’s South and West, and Elif Batuman’s The Idiot all make the cut. Journalist David Fahrenthold reflects on his long investigation of Donald Trump’s charity throughout the presidential campaign. After his work failed to dissuade voters from electing Trump, a German reporter asked if he felt his work mattered. Fahrenthold writes that it did matter, but the length of the campaign made it hard for his articles to have an impact. “In an election as long and
Claire Louise-Bennett. Photo: Conor Horgan Gwen Ihnat examines the truth behind the stories of the late Carrie Fisher’s novels, many of which have become bestsellers in the days since her death. At the Los Angeles Times, Carolyn Kellogg writes that 2017 needs to make up for 2016’s lack of a blockbuster book, “the book you see people reading on subways and on planes, that you hear about on the radio and on TV talk shows, that seems to be everywhere at once.” LitHub highlights the most |http://lithub.com/the-years-best-overlooked-books-according-to-booksellers/#|overlooked books| of 2016. Selections include Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in
Carrie Fisher. Photo: Riccardo Ghilardi Writers reflect on the legacy of actress Carrie Fisher, who died yesterday at age sixty after suffering a heart attack last weekend. At the Huffington Post, Claire Fallon writes that Fisher “could easily have gone the way of many one-time it girls . . . only remembered as a young Princess Leia. Instead, she carved out a unique path for herself, including a successful and acclaimed career as a novelist and memoirist.” At the New York Times, A. O. Scott highlights the “12 dimensions of meta” present in Fisher’s one-time role on 30 Rock as
Charles Johnson Jason Miller, communications director for the Trump transition team, has turned down an offer to serve as White House communications director. His duties will be taken over by former RNC spokesperson Sean Spicer, who was recently named White House press secretary. Former campaign manager and recently-appointed White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told ABC News that, contrary to his current attitude toward the media, the Trump administration will offer “a great deal of press availability on a daily basis.” Business Insider takes a look at Jared Kushner’s attempts to amass a media empire, a plan which sources say
Ta-Nehisi Coates Women’s Wear Daily reports that Jared Kushner may be preparing to join his father-in-law in DC. The New York Observer owner and son-in-law of president-elect Donald Trump, is said to be looking for buyers for the paper. At the New York Times, Bookends writers share the best book they read in 2016. Siddhartha Deb calls Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian “unflinching in its portrayal of settler colonialism and so familiar in its violence, racism and twisted masculinity,” while Zoë Heller notes that Emma Cline’s The Girls, a “story about the charismatic power of an evil cult leader turned
Lila Azam Zanganeh. Photo: Martin Godwin Libby Chamberlain, founder of the Hillary Clinton-supporting Facebook group Pantsuit Nation, has signed a deal with Flatiron Books. The book will collect posts and images from the Facebook page and “amplify the collective voices of the women who shared their stories of overcoming or facing sexism, racism or xenophobia.” The jury for the 2017 Man Booker Prize has been selected. Colin Thubron, Tom Phillips, Sarah Hall, Lila Azam Zanganeh, and Lola Young will announce the 2017 longlist in July. Bloomberg has named the members of its White House team. Alex Wayne will stay
Laura Albert Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji has been released from prison pending the appeal of his two-year sentence. Naji was originally convicted of “violating public modesty” after excerpts of his unpublished novel gave a reader “heart palpitations” and “a drop in blood pressure.” A hearing to decide whether Naji will face trial for a third time is scheduled for January 1. The New Yorker has been chosen as Ad Age’s Magazine of the Year. David Remnick and Lisa Hughes were chosen as Editor and Publisher of the Year. Columbia Journalism Review talks to Tina Nguyen, whose Vanity Fair review
Maria Semple Starting today, the Knight Foundation is matching donations made to non-profit news organizations through the end of Obama’s term in office. Qualifying organizations include The Marshall Project, ProPublica, PBS NewsHour, and more. Flatiron Books has announced a name for Oprah Winfrey’s imprint, as well as its first titles. An Oprah Book will first publish a cookbook written by Winfrey, Food, Health and Happiness, on January 3. Julia Roberts has been tapped to star in a TV adaptation of Maria Semple’s novel, Today Will Be Different. Semple, who has written for shows like Suddenly Susan and Arrested Development, will write the
Shirley Jackson Facebook announced plans yesterday to fight the spread of fake news. The social media site is testing new tools that allow users to report misleading articles, as well as partnering with news organizations like the Associated Press, Snopes, and PolitiFact to fact-check reported news items. After the announcement, conservative media figures took to Twitter to express their dismay at the new tools, which they say are biased against them. Daily Mail US politics editor David Martosko has continued writing about Trump even after interviewing at Trump Tower for a position in the president-elect’s administration. Martosko, who is
Nassim Nicholas Taleb At the Washington Post, Philip Bump explains why both supporters and detractors of the president-elect should be pushing him to give a press conference, writing that “the best way to get the most information is to empower the question-asker, not the person who’s giving the answers.” At the Huffington Post, Michael Calderone notes that Trump has waited longer than both Barack Obama and George W. Bush to hold a press conference after the election, instead distracting “the press by bringing stars through the Trump Tower lobby, holding meetings which on their face have nothing to do
Shirley Hazzard Novelist Shirley Hazzard has died. In a new report, the Committee to Protect Journalists says the number of journalists jailed in 2016 is now at 259, an all-time high since the group began keeping track in 1990. Nearly one-third of the imprisoned journalists are in Turkey, where a failed coup last summer led to a crackdown on the press. Infowars’s Alex Jones has been removing content from his website that links him to Pizzagate. A criminal complaint against Edgar Maddison Welch, the man who fired a rifle inside Comet Ping Pong, shows that he had shared a video
Glenn Thrush After facing sharp criticism for their role in spreading fake news during the 2016 presidential election, Facebook is looking to hire a head of news partnerships. The listing seeks applicants with over twenty years of experience in news, which “means those applying must have started their news career before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had celebrated his 13th birthday.” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s charitable foundation is giving Poynter a gift of $1 million to fund a journalism ethics faculty chair. In explaining the gift, Newmark said, “I want to stand up for trustworthy journalism, and I want to
Jenny Diski Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among the dozens of writers who’ve signed an open letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping. The PEN International letter implores the Chinese government “to release the writers, journalists, and activists who are languishing in jail or kept under house arrest for the crime of speaking freely and expressing their opinions.” PEN America has announced the longlist for their 2017 Translation Prize. Finalists include Philip Boehm for Herta Muller’s The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, Carlos Rojas for Yan Lianke’s The Explosion Chronicles, and Deborah Smith for Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. The