Category: words

This Nonprofit Website Could Be The Future Model For Thriving Online Journalism

The Conversation, founded in Melbourne in 2011 with university and state government funding, now has ten editions in various countries and 150 employees as well as dozens of freelance contributors; its traffic has more than doubled in the last year alone to 38.1 million monthly site visits. Its specialty is interpreting scholarly research for a general audience, and its articles can be reprinted elsewhere for free. And its outside funding protects it from worry about plummeting ad revenue. Anya Schiffrin looks into how the site’s owners and editors pull it off. – Columbia Journalism Review

National Book Critics Circle Board Members Resign After Discussion Of Black Lives Matter Statement Goes Bad

When the NBCC statement was posted, a foreword was appended which said, in part, “In the course of our committee’s discussion with the rest of the board, a board member responded to the statement with an email that many of us saw as racist. Before a planned vote on the statement today, details from the board’s internal discussion were released on social media, and some board members have announced their resignation.” – The Guardian

Poetry Foundation Leadership Resigns Following Demands And Criticism

Just a few days after a letter, written by 30 prominent poets and now co-signed by roughly 2,100 people, called for the resignation of the $250 million foundation’s president and board chair and a detailed plan for the organization to hire from and support the work of marginalized groups and to “eradicate institutional racism,” president Henry Bienen and board chair Willard Bunn have stepped down. – Chicago Magazine

Books Are A Contrived Medium. Soon They Will Be Gone

Literacy altered the human brain, making it “refit some of its existing neuronal groups” and “form newly recycled circuits.” The brain had to change because the innate brain can’t read. It responds to what it is exposed to if exposure happens often, for a long period. Literacy develops through practice—through labor that compels the development of revised brain functions. The more you read, the more your brain adapts. It is a “plastic” organ. – Claremont Review of Books

How Frontline Booksellers Have Been Facing The Pandemic

“Frontline booksellers are the first people customers see when they set foot in bookstores across America. They also do physically demanding work, from carrying heavy boxes to shelving thousands of books every year. Often they work for hourly wages and are among the most vulnerable workers in the publishing industry. … Over the past eight weeks, PW spoke with five frontline booksellers to hear about their experiences. They were granted anonymity in order to be able to speak freely. These are their words, edited and condensed for clarity.” – Publishers Weekly

Poets Threaten Boycott Of Poetry Foundation Over Response To Antiracism Protests

“More than 1,800 people have signed on to an open letter criticizing the Poetry Foundation’s response to the protests sweeping the United States, pledging not to work with the organization until it meets demands that range from replacing its president and board chairman to redirecting funds to antiracism efforts. The Chicago-based foundation is one of the nation’s wealthiest literary organizations, with an endowment that exceeds $250 million.” – The New York Times

When Public Libraries Reopen, Things Will Be Different (And Very Hard On Librarians)

Not only will library staff have to deal with a raft of new safety procedures and protective equipment, they will be faced with enforcing mask-wearing and distancing rules on potentially recalcitrant patrons. “And all of it will be done under the threat of job cuts, a potential second wave of Covid-19 infections, immense budget pressure, and worsening political dysfunction.” – Publishers Weekly

Why Digression Is Good, In Eating And In Writing

How should food writing work? “On the one hand, it should communicate the demands of craft, expressing the physical skill of cookery with words on a page; on the other, food writing should convey emotional content, the ability of food to carry inside it memories personal and historical. It was crucial for me that neither of these strands should dominate above the other.” – LitHub

Lockdown Doesn’t Work For Every Writer, But Boy, Did It Ever Work For Pushkin

Quarantined during a cholera epidemic 190 years ago, the poet excelled. “Pushkin, who would never be allowed to travel outside Russia and was now stranded in the countryside amid ‘rain, snow and mud up to your knees,’ leapt across historical epochs, countries and genres—from the medieval French tower in ‘The Miserly Knight’ to Vienna in ‘Mozart and Salieri.’ ‘The Stone Guest’ swept from the gates of Madrid to the balcony of one of Don Juan’s lovers.” And he finished Eugene Onegin to boot. – The Economist