“To their legions of fans, the groups give voice to the bilingual vernacular of a multicultural city, marinated by its past French and British rulers, the forces of globalization and successive waves of immigration. … But they have also spawned a backlash in Quebec, … where critics have castigated them as self-colonizers who are ‘creolizing’ the French language and threatening its future.” – The New York Times
Category: words
Say Goodbye To The Cleveland Plain Dealer As Owners Dismantle It
“The paper’s remaining staffers are now faced with a devastating decision: they can either leave and let the state’s largest paper, (and the country’s first News Guild), die, ceding victory at last to the Newhouses of Advance Publications who’ve been ruthlessly and methodically busting the PD’s union for years; or they can stay on, suffering the indignities of filing low-stakes stories on distant locales that haven’t been part of the paper’s regular coverage area for years.” – Cleveland Scene
Pulitzer Prizes Postponed, Will Be Livestreamed In May
The announcement of this year’s awards had been scheduled for April 20, but, as administrator Dana Canedy said in a statement, “The Pulitzer board includes many high-level journalists who are on the frontlines of informing the public on the quickly evolving Coronavirus pandemic.” – Poynter Institute
Bringing An Indigenous American Language Back From The Very Brink Of Extinction
Journalist Lorraine Boissoneault looks into the effort — using classroom lessons, software, and the memory of one of five native speakers left — to revive and teach the Menominee language of Wisconsin. – The Believer
Know What Else Coronavirus Has Infected? Our Everyday Language
Karen Russell: “Today, we are witnessing the shotgun weddings of words into some strange unions, neologisms sped into existence by this virus (‘quarantunes,’ ‘quarantini’), epidemiological vocabulary hitched together by Twitter hashtags. It seems like there is a parallel language contagion occurring. ‘Self-isolation,’ ‘social distancing,’ ‘abundance of caution’ — pairs of words I’d never seen together in a sentence back in January have become ubiquitous.” – The New Yorker
When Magazines Had Visions Of Changing (And Improving) The World
In 1895 Ladies’ Home Journal began to offer unfrilly, family-friendly architectural plans in its pages. They were mainly colonial, Craftsman, or modern ranch-style houses, and many still stand today. The Cosmopolitan, as it was then known, advertised the Cosmopolitan University, a custom-designed college degree—for free!—by correspondence course. McClure’s magazine, the juggernaut of investigative journalism—home to Ida Tarbell’s landmark investigation of Standard Oil, among many other muckraking articles of the Gilded Age—began to plot an array of ventures, including a model town called McClure’s Ideal Settlement. – Lapham’s Quarterly
Margaret Atwood Says We Are All In The ‘Better Than Nothing’ Era Now
The writer prompted the National Arts Center of Canada to launch virtual book tours for authors with new books out during the pandemic shutdown. Authors are “‘really pinched,’ Atwood said in an interview the day before she launched the authors’ series. ‘People are scrambling around, improvising and trying to get the word out there.'” – The New York Times
If Books Are Proving Too Long For A Pandemic Attention Span, Try Poetry
Why not? It’s National Poetry Month, after all, and poems can refocus the mind, bringing it gently back to focus. You might even try memorizing a poem or two. – The Atlantic
Novelists Tell Us What To Read To Inspire Us
Sebastian Barry goes for the real classics: “It seems uncanny that there is a radiant book for these times, although it was written 2,000 years ago.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Woman Who Wrote A Fantastic Pandemic Novel A Few Years Ago Returns To Take On A Different Issue
Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven was much recommended in the coronavirus’ early days – but even she thought people shouldn’t be reading it right now. Her new novel is about the 2008 crash and a Bernie Madoff-like character. Why? “It’s a period in recent history that I remember so vividly. It was such an unsettling, chaotic time.” – The Guardian (UK)