Sony Picks Up Respected Book-To-Film Unit That Disney Shut Down

“Sony and HarperCollins Publishers said on Monday that they would finance a yet-to-be-named venture run by the executive, Elizabeth Gabler, who is considered Hollywood’s foremost bridge to the New York publishing world. Ms. Gabler, 63, was previously president of Fox 2000, a division of 20th Century Fox, which Disney absorbed in March as part of a $71.3 billion deal with Rupert Murdoch.” – The New York Times

Audit Finds ‘Substantial Uncertainty’ About Baltimore Symphony’s Viability, Says Management

“The organization’s independent auditor for the fiscal year that ended on Aug. 31, 2018, concluded that ‘there is substantial uncertainty about the BSO’s ability to continue [for one more year] as a going concern,’ the BSO said in a news release. The BSO did not respond to multiple requests that it provide a full copy of the audit.” – The Baltimore Sun

Should The Roosevelt Statue In Front Of The American Museum Of Natural History Come Down? The Museum Asks Visitors

“Addressing the Statue,” with an accompanying video and website, examines various aspects of the monument and the president it memorializes. It explores the history of the statue’s design and installation, who the men at the bottom of the statue may represent and Roosevelt’s own racism. The museum examines its own complicity at points, too, with references in the video to its exhibitions on eugenics in the early 20th century. – The New York Times

Spotify Slammed For Its “Dance Like Nobody’s Paying” Ad Campaign

The campaign comes after longstanding complaints about the company’s royalty payments, not to mention its attempts to appeal the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to increase songwriter rates by 44% over the next five years and its recent determination that it had overpaid music publishers by an undisclosed amount in 2018 and is requesting a refund. Predictably, songwriters and music industry pros aren’t happy about the new campaign, which seems to add insult to injury after the above incidents. – Variety

The Break Out Break-dancing Millennial Counter-Tenor

The singers who performed in operatic works by Handel or Vivaldi in the eighteenth century were the musical celebrities of their day, and Jakub Józef Orliński’s approach is to gleefully inhabit that space of stardom, rather than to handle the repertoire as if he were a reverent museum curator. “I treat Baroque music as, basically, pop music, but in their time.” – The New Yorker

Turkey’s War On Free Speech Is Intensifying, Says Author Elif Shafak

Shafak wants the world to pay attention to what Erdogan has been doing since the failed 2016 coup: “Much has been said about the anti-liberal nature of authoritarian populism, but relatively little about two other features concomitant with its rise: anti-intellectualism and anti-feminism. Authoritarian populism likes to divide society into two camps: the pure people versus the corrupt elite. Writers, poets, journalists and scholars are often associated with the latter group. In the populist imagination, being elite has nothing to do with economic power or social status. It is about values.” – The Guardian (UK)