“France’s Prime Minister, Jean Castex, … said that the state has earmarked €2 billion ($2.36 billion) for the cultural sector in the wake of the coronavirus” as part of the government’s €100 billion economic recovery plan. “The newly installed Castex told France Inter radio that the state believes ‘culture is an economic activity’ and that ‘the cultural sector has greatly suffered from the crisis … more than others.'” – Deadline
Tag: 08.26.20
Why Are Magazine Artciles Fact-Checked But Books Aren’t?
Most nonfiction books are not fact checked; if they are, it is at the author’s expense. Publishers have said for years that it would be cost-prohibitive for them to provide fact checking for every nonfiction book; they tend to speak publicly about a book’s facts only if a book includes errors that lead to a public scandal and threaten their bottom line. Recent controversies over books containing factual errors by Jill Abramson, Naomi Wolf, and, further back, James Frey, come to mind. – Esquire
How Chekhov Created The Short Story As We Know It Today
“John Cheever [once] told [an] audience he was ‘one of perhaps ten American writers who are known as the American Chekhov’. The description isn’t unhelpful because it’s used carelessly, but because Chekhov’s influence is so widespread: most short story writers are Chekhovians, whether they realise it or not.” Chris Power looks at the nearly ubiquitous features of modern short fiction in English which Chekhov more or less invented. – New Statesman
Educationist Sir Kenneth Robinson, 70
He told the audience at TED in 2006: “I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new concept of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way we strip-mined the earth for a particular commodity. We have to rethink the fundamental principles in which we are educating our children.” Understandably, this was much more enticing to the education profession than it was to government ministers, but it was based not on a single speech but Robinson’s whole career in academic education, which culminated in a professorship at Warwick University (1989-2001), before he became a senior adviser to the J Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles. – The Guardian
Writing About A Movement, Not A Moment
What we think we know about the fight for women to get the legal right to vote is only a sliver of the history – and of our present. “There’s a lot of that still hanging in the balance. And so, I guess my answer is that I hate to think of it solely as a fight, but I think that the question of women’s equality is far from complete.” – NPR
The Former Judge Who Writes Angry Letters To Journalists
A little over a year into my tenure at The Chronicle, I’d been initiated. For journalists, receiving an angry handwritten letter about usage from Quentin Kopp is a rite of passage, badge of honor and battle scar… His second letter to me, from December 2018, protested my use of “spaz” as a verb and any use whatsoever of “grok,” which he called “self-devised.” He concluded with a backhanded compliment: “But, don’t worry: Some quasi-literates may embrace you because you’re creative.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Why Won’t Publishers Fact-Check Their Nonfiction Books?
“Without widespread consumer awareness that most books are not fact checked, or about which imprints publish which books, there’s no real reason for publishers to care about fact checking. If it comes to light that a book contains major errors, it’s the author, not the publisher, whose reputation takes the hit. … Meanwhile, the stakes of not fact checking books only continue to get higher, as it’s become easier and easier to destroy a book’s credibility with a few clicks.” – Esquire
What Came Out Of The First-Ever ‘Opera Hack’? This
“Just over a year ago, San Diego Opera gathered 40 opera industry artists and cutting-edge technology designers from around the country for a first-of-its-kind Opera Hack weekend, with the goal of finding 21st century ways to modernize the 400-year-old art form. On Wednesday, the public finally got a look at the three ideas that earned the green light to move forward.” – The San Diego Union-Tribune
Hundreds Of Canadian Radio And TV Stations Warn They’ll Have To Close
As many as 40 local television outlets and 200 Canadian radio stations could be forced to close in the next three years as the financial pressures faced by media companies intensify under the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests a new study from an industry advocacy group. – CBC
Three Arrested In Elite International Movie Piracy Ring
“The group allegedly circumvented copyright protections on nearly every movie released by major production studios, as well as television shows, and distributed them by way of a worldwide network of servers.” – The New York Times