“At the height of its popularity in the late 1980s, circulation reached 1.2 million copies per week. Headlines like ‘Bigfoot Kept Lumberjack as Love Slave’ ruled its covers. A team of dedicated journalists filled its pages with satirical fiction. If fact happened to stumble its way inside, it would be adjusted to fit the paper’s mission statement.” Here, from the people who worked there, is the story of everyone’s real favorite supermarket tabloid. – Mental Floss
Category: words
How Newsweek Became A Zombie Magazine
These controversies hollowed out Newsweek’s staff and its brand. Its clickbait-heavy approach, aimed at gaming search engines, has declined since it was spun off from parent company IBT Media in 2018. But it remains a publication that privileges the interests of Google over those of its hypothetical readers. While other publications are abandoning the “scale” model pioneered by BuzzFeed and others in favor of building a loyal audience and raking in subscriptions, Newsweek is something of a throwback. – The New Republic
Reissued Asterix Comics Have An Ugly-Racial-Stereotype Problem
A series of collected strips, in a new English translation, about the funny little Gaul and his fellows resisting the Romans is now being released in the U.S. That’s bringing new attention to an old problem: the way the original artist in the 1960s depicted African slaves. The U.S. publisher wanted to change the drawings, but the rights holder, Hachette France, refused to allow anything but minor cosmetic alterations. – Publishers Weekly
What We Learn From Book Manuscripts
The manuscripts of literary works-in-progress fascinate on many levels, from the flush-faced thrill of spying on something intensely private and the visceral delight of knowing that a legendary author’s hand rested on the paper before you, to the light that such early drafts shed on authorial methodology and intent. Sometimes, the very essence of what a writer is trying to express seems to hover tantalisingly in the gap between a word deleted and another added in its place. – BBC
The Inside Story Of An Inside Job: The Slow-Motion $8 Million Robbery Of The Carnegie Library
“Like nuclear power plants and sensitive computer networks, the safest rare book collections are protected by what is known as ‘defense in depth’ — a series of small, overlapping measures designed to thwart a thief who might be able to overcome a single deterrent. The Oliver Room, home to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s rare books and archives, was something close to the platonic ideal of this concept. Greg Priore, manager of the room starting in 1992, designed it that way.” So the only thief who could get past the Oliver Room’s defenses was Priore himself. – Smithsonian Magazine
These Women Published Under Men’s Names – Is It Misguided Feminism To Republish Them Under Their Own?
The Women’s Prize for Fiction recently debuted an upcoming project which will mark the 25th anniversary of the prize: an initiative called “Reclaim Her Name” (#ReclaimHerName) which republishes famous works by twenty-five female authors who published under male nom-de-plumes in the 19th and early 20th centuries, including George Eliot, George Sand, Vernon Lee, and Arnold Petri. The thing is, the initiative is republishing these books using the authors’ given, female names, rather than their male pseudonyms. Many have applauded this initiative. No. Stop applauding. Stop applauding now. – LitHub
Libraries (Re)Ponder Their Role Beyond Books
“A lot of libraries are thinking about their civic role a little more, and how they might help people coming out of the pandemic. They’ve always done that stuff, but will need to do it 10 times more at this point.” – Boston Globe
Hilary Mantel Will Not Be Writing Any More Historical Fiction, Thank You
“I haven’t got another big historical novel in view, … so I hope people will stop writing to me with suggestions. It’s lovely that people have the appetite for it but considering the pace at which I proceed, I would like some life before it’s too late.” – The Guardian
Claim: Leaders Who Read Fiction Have Governed Better During The COVID Crisis
Governments that seem to have done best “are led by people who read fiction” she said, naming Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland, Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, Katrín Jakobsdóttir in Iceland and Sanna Marin in Finland among them.“They are all people who read fiction. What fiction gives you is the gift of imagination and the gift of empathy. You see a life outside your own bubble. If you’re sitting there reading your endless biographies of Churchill or Attlee or whatever, you’re not looking at the world outside your window. You’re not understanding the lives of ordinary people who populate the country you’re supposed to be governing. – The Guardian
Now Is The Textbook’s Time To Shine
Remote learning isn’t all about what articles and resources teachers can cobble together from the internet – especially when a lot of students can only get online occasionally, or in the parking lot or on the steps at the public library. “A good textbook is clear, appealing, and organized in a predictable way. It’s not just paragraphs of text, but it also includes extratextual features such as reference materials, answer keys, sidebars, and key terms to aid students in their comprehension.” Now to update the racist ones … – Slate