“A new study offers a better sense of how much funding has been flowing to this media niche in recent years. … The results only offer a partial look at philanthropic support for these publications, since the study just tracks foundation funding. But the numbers are still illuminating for anyone who’s ever wondered how outfits like Harper’s and Mother Jones stay in business, much less the New Criterion.”
Category: words
Are Americans Really Reading Less And Less?
Caleb Crain: “A little more than a decade ago, I wrote an article for The New Yorker about American reading habits, which a number of studies then indicated might be in decline. … I’ll go out on a limb and say that I don’t think that I got this part wrong. But I’ve often wondered whether I was right about the underlying trend, too. Were Americans in fact reading less back then? And are they reading even less today? Whenever I happen across a news article on the topic, I wonder if I’m about to find out whether I was Cassandra or Chicken Little.” So Crain looked into the data.
A New American History Prize In Honor Of David McCullough
“Looking ahead to its 300th anniversary year in 2024, Philadelphia’s Carpenters’ Company” – to this day the city’s union guild for carpenters – “has announced it will inaugurate the David McCullough Prize for Excellence in American Public History, to be awarded annually starting next year.”
I Was Almost Never Asked To Review Books By Women. Why?
“Besides embarrassment, I also feel curiosity. What could explain the strange fact that it took seven years for an editor to assign me a female writer? I’m a liberal critic writing for liberal publications. How did this go on for so long? I suspect there are at least two possible explanations here.”
A Devoted Reader Breaks Up With James Joyce
In many ways, Joyce has been my longest long-term relationship. We met when I was sixteen and have been sweethearts ever since. I would have liked to say that about a living man, the way famous writers do in their acknowledgements of their latest novel, thanking their ‘loving husband, without whose unceasing patience and support etc,etc’. For years I thought it was their fault – the blokes. Until I realised how annoying it must be to live in the shadow of another man, and a dead one at that.
Celebrated Children’s Book Writer Slams Publishers For Their Language Obsessions
Geraldine McCaughrean was named winner on Monday of this year’s CILIP Carnegie medal for her historical adventure novel Where the World Ends, 30 years after she first took the prize, the UK’s most esteemed children’s literature award. She used her winner’s speech to attack publishers’ fixation on accessible language, which she called “a euphemism for something desperate”.
It’s Official: Los Angeles Times And San Diego Union-Tribune Have A New Owner
“Biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong … is spending $500 million to acquire the news organizations, along with Spanish-language Hoy and a handful of community newspapers, from Chicago-based Tronc.” Reporter Meg James gives background on both the new owner, a South Africa-born surgeon, and the newspapers’ troubles over the past few years.
Study Shows Big Gender Disparity In American Books Coverage
The highly anticipated “VIDA Count,” released Monday, has The New Yorker, The Nation and The Atlantic among those devoting less than 40 percent of their book coverage to women in 2017. Only two of 15 publications analyzed in the main VIDA count gave women 50 percent or more — Poetry magazine and Granta. Those between 40 percent and 49 percent include The New York Times Book Review and the Paris Review, from which editor Lorin Stein resigned last December amid allegations of sexual harassment.
Are We Living In A Post-Reading World? (Here Are The Stats)
I’ll cut to the chase: between 2003 and 2016, the amount of time that the average American devoted to reading for personal interest on a daily basis dropped from 0.36 hours to 0.29 hours. It would seem that reading in America has declined even further in the past decade. But statistics can be tricky, so let’s kick the tires a little.
The Histories Of Those Who Made The Pease Porridge And Emptied The Chamber Pots
When tourists go through Britain’s castles and grand houses, they’ve started asking a lot more questions about the people who made those places run. As one curator points out, “there was a time when this wasn’t considered ‘proper’ history” – but that changed, in part because of some of the books she recommends, including those investigating plumbing – and a primary document from the 1750s in which “almost nothing” happens.