“Byliner, which launched in 2011, was one of the darlings of the literary startup scene … Its original mission was to publish original e-singles, both fiction and nonfiction, and also to create a sort of archival home for journalists on the web.” Do the company’s problems “mean that longform journalism on the web is doomed? Or are Byliner’s problems specific to Byliner?”
Tag: 07.04.14
The Radio Show They Call ‘This Latin American Life’
On the Media‘s Bob Garfield talks with Daniel Alarcón (whom you might as well think of, for now, as the Latino Ira Glass) about his Spanish-language series, Radio Ambulante. (audio)
The (Very Obvious) Reason Hollywood Is Making Fewer Comedies
“The emerging world enthusiasm for Hollywood films does not extend to comedies, or at least not relative to its love of action movies and animated films. In China, for example, U.S. comedies account for only 10% of box office spending, compared to 25% in the U.S.”
Ready For A “Golden Age” Of Children’s TV?
“In recent years, adult television viewers have reveled in an overflow of quality programs that critics have called a new golden age. So why shouldn’t preschoolers be equally spoiled?”
How The History Of Blues Was Shaped By White Collectors
“If today people so often take Mississippi delta blues for heart of the form, it’s in no small measure because the collector-researchers of the ’50s and ’60s, and the blues rockers who followed their lead, taught us to think that way. In fact, those edgy, relatively marginalized, rural guitar players had, for the most part, been little-known artists with limited sales among the black Southern audience, which generally saw blues as dance music. But they presented challenging sounds and images irresistible to the white collector specialists.”
Should We Still Care About Wagner’s Anti-Semitism?
“The recent Wagner anniversary has brought a predictable amount of equivocation and hand-wringing about the German master’s role in the history of hate. We know by now not to read history backward. A nineteenth-century composer who died in 1883 cannot logically be accused of personal complicity in a twentieth-century genocide. Yet that does not mean that the broader question of his responsibility for the spread of modern anti-Semitism can be simply ignored.”
You Motivated? New Research On How We Push Ourselves To Achieve Is Enlightening
“You might suppose that a scientist motivated by a desire to discover facts and by a desire to achieve renown will do better work than a scientist motivated by just one of those desires. Surely two motives are better than one. But as we and our colleagues argue in a paper newly published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, instrumental motives are not always an asset and can actually be counterproductive to success.”
Ivor Novello And Noël Coward’s Flirtation With Fascism
Philip Hoare asks, “Can we excuse these flighty young men their fling with the far right?”
Russian Parliament Takes One More Step Toward A Closed Internet
“Russia’s parliament passed a law on Friday to force Internet sites that store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so inside the country, a move the Kremlin says is for data protection but which critics see an attack on social networks. The law will mean that from 2016, all Internet companies will have to move Russian data onto servers based in Russia or face being blocked from the web.”
Talking About Books We (Love To) Hate
“I casually hate, in equal amounts, Ender’s Game, The Lovely Bones, Prep, and everything written by Stieg Larsson.”