Why Anna Deavere Smith Created ‘Notes From The Field’, Her Documentary Play About The School-To-Prison Pipeline

“I was in hair and makeup next to a [Nurse Jackie] castmate, British actress Eve Best, and I told her I couldn’t get out of my mind a news story I had just heard: that a kid in Baltimore, my hometown, had peed in a water cooler at school and they were going to send him to jail. Eve responded, in her fabulous accent, ‘Oh, well, whatever happened to mischief?’ That was when it struck me: rich kids get mischief, poor kids get pathologized and incarcerated.” – Literary Hub

I Tweeted As Susan Sontag

Starting in January 2018, Rebecca Brill started sending out short excerpts from Sontag’s published diaries on Twitter every day. And what happens when one does this? “You will start talking about Susan Sontag incessantly. You will bring her up at meetings … and in chats with your favorite bartender. … As hard as you try to refrain, you will constantly quote Susan Sontag’s journals and notebooks on dates. … You will not get many second dates. Another thing is that you will have trolls.” – Literary Hub

How Did One Of The Best Documentarians Around Get Caught Up In The Theranos Fiasco?

Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure, American Dharma) actually directed a few commercials for Theranos several years ago, before the company’s fraud was discovered. Morris now refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for having promoted fraudulent goods and services (as is the case with the AIG ads he directed in the years before the 2008 financial crisis). – Hyperallergic

Unhampered Access: Libraries Are Bringing Their Children’s Programs To Laundromats

“Laundry literacy programs have recently sprung up all over the country, … and thousands of children have benefited from the chance to hone their early-literacy skills in an everyday setting, often with their parents participating, often on a regular basis, and always for free. Can’t these children simply go to a branch library instead? Not necessarily.” – American Libraries

Broadway Adaptation Of ‘Magic Mike’ Suspended Following Exodus Of Show’s Writers

“The musical has canceled its [preview] engagement at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre, which was supposed to start this November. … Magic Mike: The Musical‘s writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, composer Tom Kitt, and lyricist Brian Yorkey recently left the production over ‘creative differences’ just before a developmental workshop that was supposed to take place earlier this month.” – Vulture

Voice-Of-America-Service For Cuba Fails To Meet Basic Journalism Standards: U.S. Study

“The analysis of content aired and published by Radio and Television Martí, a sister agency to the better-known Voice of America, was launched by the broadcasters’ parent organization.” It found that Martís content routinely fails to meet standards of fairness, sometimes descends into outlandish propaganda — and that none of this is due to the direction of any Trump administration official. – The Washington Post