Written Pyramids

I am sure that there are insightful things to say about the coverage of Anthony Weiner's sex scandal.

For example, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart both raised questions in the last couple of days about the role of comedian vs. journalist when they bemoaned the fact that photos of Weiner's weiner makes for comedic gold but that they are friends with Weiner. They make no secret of the fact that they are both liberal comedians, but I found both comedians willingness to talk about their hestinancy to make fun of this prominent democratic congressman (even as they did make fun of him) interesting, particularly for Stewart who sometimes does journalists' jobs when he looks at what (usually Republican) politicians have said in the past compared to what they are saying now.


But that's not what I want to talk about.

What I want to say is this:

The New York Times' liveblog of Weiner's press conference ran with a particularly apropos ad on the top of the page


Do you think it's too late for Weiner to improve his online reputation? I think so.

I really need to go to sleep, but I just wanted to write something quickly about today's announcement that Jill Abramson will replace Bill Keller as the executive editor of the New York Times. 

My heart jumped a little when I read the news this morning. It's a really big deal. Journalism can still feel like an old boys club. I am shocked by the small number of women in the Senate press room every time I walk in there. Journalism will not become gender-balanced over night or even over the next few years, but Abramson's appointment is certainly a step in the right direction, and as a female journalist I can't help but feel elated (even as I wonder about the fallacy that women should automatically root for other women).

Now, the most prominent newspaper in the country will be lead by a woman. Her second in command will be Dean Baquet, the second black man to be managing editor. These are important steps for the slow-moving beast that is the journalism industry.

Abramson, who has served as a D.C. bureau chief for the Times, made clear that she valued contributions to the Times by both men and women, but she also took time to highlight the women.

From the Times:

In her remarks to the staff on Thursday, she took time to acknowledge “my sisters,” naming more than a dozen women at The Times who have helped her along the way, including the company’s chief executive, Janet L. Robinson. 

From the Washington Post: 

Among the bookcases and posters in Jill Abramson’s office at the New York Times is a blown-up black-and-white photo of the newsroom, circa 1895, in which a group of men huddle around a desk occupied by a woman named Mary Taft.


“She looks like the boss,” said Abramson. Not quite — Taft was the paper’s second female reporter. On Thursday, the 57-year-old Abramson was named the first woman to head the Times’ newsroom in its 160-year history. 

A few days ago I was re-reading my post on women in leadership positions in which I wondered if there would ever be a time when successful women did not feel that they had to be judged as female leaders as opposed to leaders, with gender a non-issue.

It's been almost exactly three years since I wrote that post, and I don't think society as a whole is there yet, but a quote in the Washington Post article leaves me hopeful (emphasis mine):

“I wouldn’t say that she was chosen because she’s a woman,” said Baquet, who is the second African American journalist to become managing editor of the Times, “but I still think it’s a big deal. It just so happened that the person best positioned to be executive editor of the New York Times is a woman. . . . I believe other women who aspire to jobs in journalism will see this as a statement about how far this profession has changed.”  

Bonus! This is an excerpt from the obituary of Mary Taft Welch published in the New York Times in December 1944:


The obituary informs readers that Taft, who was hired in 1897 or 1898, "covered news of women's activities" wrote "some art criticism" and "reported many of the early developments in the agitation for women's suffrage." She "won the respect and liking of her male colleagues on this and other newspapers" and retired in 1924.



New Yorker September 24, 2001



New Yorker September 17, 2001

Photo by Getty Images photographer Peter Macdiarmid, published on The Guardian's website

The kid on the left is clearly as fed up with the wedding as I am.

The bridesmaid, who is Prince William's 3-year-old god daughter, Grace van Custem, looks grumpy or confused in a lot of photos. I would grumpy and confused too if I were a 3-year-old kid in the midst of pomp, circumstance, and an international media circus.

I emerge from my half-a-year silence to talk about women. And writing. Surely, there was no shock in that.

The Pulitzer, by my own  count, is one of the more gender-balanced literary prized out there. By my count, 29 out of 86 Pulitzer awarded for fiction or novel (as the award category was once called) were awarded to women. That's 33 percent.Its not great, but its better than the other book awards.

The National Book Award has been awarded 68 times, 15 times to women (22 percent)  Twelve out of the 43 books awarded the Man Booker Prize were women (27 percent).  Twelve out of 107 Nobel Laureates in literature are women. That's 11 percent.

So, of all the prizes to win as a female fiction writer, the Pulitzer is the one where gender should be the smallest, issue. But, news questions are, to some extent, predictable, so a short Wall Street Journal interview with Jennifer Egan, who won the prize for her book Visit From the Goon Squad ended with this:

Over the past year, there’s been a debate about female and male writers and how they come off in the press. Franzen made clear that “Freedom” was going to be important, while others say that Allegra Goodman was too quiet about “The Cookbook Collector.” Do you think female writers have to start proclaiming, “OK, my book is going to be the book of the century”?

Anyone can say anything, that’s easy. My focus is less on the need for women to trumpet their own achievements than to shoot high and achieve a lot. What I want to see is young, ambitious writers. And there are tons of them. Look at “The Tiger’s Wife.” There was that scandal with the Harvard student who was found to have plagiarized. But she had plagiarized very derivative, banal stuff. This is your big first move? These are your models? I’m not saying you should say you’ve never done anything good, but I don’t go around saying I’ve written the book of the century. My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.

The authors Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarized were Megan F. McCafferty, Meg Cabot, Sophie Kinsella, and maybe Salman Rushdie. With the exception of Rushdie, where the plagiarism was also the least clear, Viswanathan plagiarized well known, successful chick-lit / YA authors.





Chick-lit authors and fans took offense at Egan's description of the genre (or, really, the parts plagiarized) as "very derivative, banal stuff" and bloggers suggested that Egan was guilty of  "girl-on-girl crime" and called for an apology. ( As for the three women themselves, Cabot, posted on her Facebook wall "I'm certain Jennifer Egan didn't mean to be rude." McCafferty was a lot more angry and also received an apology. I don't see anything from Kinsella, did I miss it? ).

Here's the thing: the genre is derivative and banal. Sometimes an author's work is even derived of her own previous books. I spent sometime in a bookstore looking at the backs of Kinsella's Shopaholic books (which is a different series than the book that was plagiarized from), and each one of them had the same book summary: Becky shops a lot, Becky is in trouble because of shopping (financially and romantically) Becky's troubles are resolved and deferred. Becky lives a glamorous life full of hot men (or man, she's loyal to her husband once they marry), cute shoes, gossip, and occasional career.

I've read books by each of these three authors. When I was in 12th grade, my English teacher asked me if there were any books that I was secretive about reading, ones that I didn't want to tell anyone else I was reading. I don't think she was asking me about books I was embarrassed about, but right now that's what I think of. I am embarrassed to admit that I have read these books because I believe in the power and importance of Literature, and I don't think those books are Literature (the pretentious capitalized L is intentional).

My English teacher's question came in the form of a question written in the margins of my final high school English paper. The paper prompt was "what is literature." My answer was "a work of writing that makes the reader feel something." Now, years later, I would change that to "makes the reader feel something that lasts beyond the time it takes to read the work itself or makes the reader re-appreciate the power of language." The second part allows for some of the post-modernist writers to be included as part of Literature and the addendum to the first part is reflective of my belief that not everything that is written is Literature. I write every day. Nothing I write for work is literature. It's written to inform and nothing else. Writing that entertains--even if it makes the reader laugh or cry--but leaves little emotion once the act of reading is completed falls into the same category.

I recognize that my answer is somewhat subjective; maybe there are people who read the works of McCafferty,  Cabot, and  Kinsella and find themselves marveling at the books weeks after the reading is complete. But for me--and clearly for Egan as well--these books fall short of being Literature.

They certainly fill a niche; the authors are wildly successful, and deserve to be. But the books are not memorable. They don't linger. There were no sentences that made me marvel at the possibilities embedded in the English language. At best, they are brain candy, light, entertaining fluff that fills the time well enough while being read but leaves nothing lasting.

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He was demanding that the channel promote radical solutions to environmental problems including, but not limited to, forced sterilization.


But you don't have to take my word for it, you can read the two-page manifesto at the Washington Post's website.


Almost exactly 15 years ago, the Post published another manifesto: the Unabomber's.


Sharing the costs with the New York Times, the Post printed the 50-page manifesto in a special section, but only after months of deliberating over the decision: it was received by the papers in June and not published until December.


Part of the reason for the papers' reticence was that it was directly giving into the Unabomber's demands for publication; Ted Kaczynski said he would stop the bombings if his manifesto was published. Part of it was surely cost. Part of the decision to publish was that an FBI hope that it would help someone recognize the writing and identify the Unabomber


But I have to wonder if the papers would have waited so long to publish, if they received the manifesto today. For one thing, it could have been printed online for free-- though I imagine that Kaczynski would not have been happy with that option, what with being so anti-technology. Also, and more cynically, it would have driven a lot of web traffic to the site, in fact, even in the 90's, the manifesto was widely disseminated on the Internet, and the case had the web abuzz.


The families of the murdered students at Virginia Tech objected to airing the videos; they felt the decision was insensitive and the videos gave an almost unfettered platform for Cho's views.

I'm still not sure what an editor-at-large does, and I am sure that it varies from magazine to magazine, but these lines  from W's editor-at-large in a New York Observer item are shocking for any editor of a magazine--especially one that calls itself "a little bit edgier" than other big fashion magazines:

"I'm going to buy an iPad! I'm going to buy an iPad! I don't have a computer, so this is a big moment for me," continued Ms. [Lynn]  Hirschberg.

And how does she write her stories now without a computer?

"I don't type them," said Ms. Hirschberg. "I give a handwritten copy to someone who types them, who I pay."

Previous to her new gig, Hirschberg covered Hollywood for the New York Times. Even if glossy magazines are still doing fine in print alone (which I doubt, considering W is looking into iPad apps, and its parent company Conde Nast is not exactly living in the same lap of luxury it used to), any editor should be embarrassed to admit she does not use a computer in this day and age.

I've come here with gripes about the Washington Post's coverage of the internet before, and before I do it again, I just want to say that I absolutely LOVE the articles written by the Post's main "strange stuff on the Internet" beat writer, Monica Hesse. Her writing is engaging, funny, and --most importantly here--relevant.

But Hesse didn't write today's A1 article, and the reporter who did was clearly doing a content-strapped editor a favor.

Here's the headline and lede:

4chan users seize Internet's power for mass disruptions

One morning in June, Google's list of the top global searches began to fill up with random words: "fried chicken," "comic book stores," "gyms." Before anyone could stop it, a racial slur jumped to the No. 1 spot.

And here's graf number five (emphasis mine):

Created seven years ago by a 15-year-old, 4chan is a vast web of anonymous, uncensored message boards. No one's in charge, but the site's users have managed to pull off some of the highest-profile collective actions in the history of the Internet.

As far as I can tell, this is a story about a phenomenon that is seven years old, with a news hook that is two months old.

To make matters worse, Hesse wrote a profile about 4chan and its founder in February 2009 for the same newspaper. Now, there wasn't really a hard news hook then either, but she had a couple of things going for her: she was covering a convention of people who start memes (so at least there was that hook); her writing is light and informative (there's more information in that story than in today's) ;and the story ran in the Style section, which is by definition a place for quirky features.

Today's story, which as far as I can tell adds nothing to the story the Post ran over a year ago, adds nothing new. It's really just a discussion of 4chan gaming Google search trends, which it did months ago.

I get that a lot of Post readers don't know what 4chan is -- I was hanging out with a bunch of 20 somethings the other night and a couple of people in this Internet-savvy bunch didn't know--but running this story on A1, just makes the Post look like a giant luddite.

So why did the story run A1? I have no idea.

But this is the best part. Had the editors and the San Francisco-based technology reporter been a little more in tune with the pulse of the internet, they would have found a news hook.

At about 9 p.m. yesterday, The Smoking Gun, posted a transcript of the 4chan's founder's testimony in the trial of the guy who hacked into Sarah Palin's e-mail during the presidential election. The trial concluded at the end of April, but the testimony had never been seen before.

The Post doesn't mention the transcript at all.

The other day, I watched The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, which is Dr. Seuss' first and only feature film. It a strange dream sequence complete with childhood nightmares, Seussian sets, villains, fantasy, and very strange musical numbers. A good portion of the way through, the lead kid steals this from a prison guard:

Comic via xkcd.  I know that this is a serious topic, but I couldn't think of a better way to illustrate this post.

Back in March, the CEO of Tribune Company banned the word "allegedly" from on-air broadcasts at the Tribune-owned web station. It was among 119 words banned from the air because they were not conversational enough. The list is head-scratching-inducing, but "allegedly" stands out as problematic because it is shorthand for "this is not a fact". This person is not yet charged with a crime." It's an important word both for legal reasons and for ensuring that journalists don't skimp on the truth.

It's likely that it often becomes a dangerous shortcut as a reporter runs with a sexy story and the details are enough that readers stop seeing the "allegedly" and just assume the person in question actually committed the crime. But it's something.

I don't know what the New York Times' policy is on the word, but it certainly could have been used more liberally in their coverage of a fire on Staten Island. Last Thursday, a fire in Staten Island killed a family--two sons, two daughters, and  a mother. Investigators quickly determined that the victims were murdered: some of them had their throats slit, and the fire was set intentionally.

They also said that they thought that one of the sons, a 14 year old, was the murderer. That (likely false) theory emerged only hours after the fire.

But now it seems likely the investigators were wrong. Autopsies show the boy died may have died from his slit throat before the fire was started. Investigators are now focused on the mother, while not ruling out the boy's involvement.

The first story that the New York Times wrote liberally relied on variations of the phrase "investigators said" but the reporters also had already drawn the lines between good and evil.

As a single mother in a terrible job market, Leisa Jones had been doing everything she could to hold things together, working part time as a department store security guard during the holidays and, more recently, attending beauty school. Her neighbors said she had made the second-floor apartment on Staten Island where she lived with her four children — two boys and two girls — a place where good manners and good behavior mattered.

On Thursday, after firefighters had picked through the ruins of what they initially believed had been an early-morning fire that killed Ms. Jones and all four children, they uncovered evidence that was even more troubling: Ms. Jones's oldest child...had apparently started the blaze after slitting his sisters' throats.

Those first two grafs are hard to walk back from (which is why I substituted the boy's name for an ellipses). They paint the story of a mother was just a hard working single mother, the hero of everyday life, and of a son who killed his family. "Apparently" does not begin to convey the shakiness of what may end up being a completely false narrative.

The initial story was followed up with a story based on interviews with people who knew the family: the boy had a psychological assessment that recommended he switch schools (though why is unclear), a history of assault, had been bullied, and had been seen lighting paper on fire. If it seems like a leap to say that these were warning signs of homicide on this magnitude, it's because it is.

But that didn't stop the Times from jumping into full-on speculation on the same day:

In front of his home and at a Staten Island pool, he had apparently been lighting fires, flashes of heat and light that spoke, it turned out, of something more than just a fascination with flames. Inside, he burned.

The heat of that rage consumed the 14-year-old boy and left in its place, it would seem, an all-too-mature murderer.

If there's any place "allegedly" should have appeared so far, it should have been in every sentence of this story. The "it would seem" can refer to "all-too-mature" so there's nothing to say that this boy's guilt is not a given. Never mind that the writer has stated "inside, he burned" as fact.  And the boy isn't even alive to contest it.

I'm not really a broadcast news kind of person; I read the newspaper--some on print and some online-- and I listen to NPR. But every once and a while I end up watching the 11 o'clock local news. One of those once-in-a-whiles was the night before the nuclear summit. 

I was watching a television show, and the teasers for  the news kept repeating "How will road closings for the nuclear summit affect your morning commute? Find out at 11."

"Excellent," I thought, as I listened to a stream of motorcades go past the window, "I would love to know if it will affect my morning commute."

So, I stayed by the television to find out. I didn't even get a map of road closures. I got man on the street interviews with person after person who got to tell the television audience how they thought the road closures would affect their own personal commutes.

 First of all, viewers were not informed of where these random people lived or worked so there was no way to draw connections from their experiences to my own. Second of all, these interviews were not live; they were filmed before the road closures began, so the men and women being interviewed were guessing. Hello random person I don't know why YES I want to know whether you think it's annoying that the roads are closed. Oh, wait. I don't. I certainly don't want your inexpert opinions on whether the road closures are necessary in place of actual information about what the road closures are and how they will affect my morning.

In the end, I logged onto WPost.com and found a map there.

Anyway, this is all old news. I had actually forgotten about this particular annoyance until I came across this xkcd comic:

News networks giving a greater voice to viewers because the social web is so popular are like a chef on the Titanic who,  seeing the looming iceberg and fleeing customers, figures ice is the future and starts making snow cones. 

Comparing any news source to the Titanic makes me gloomy, but I certainly agree with the sentiment.

Bonus: Here is an interview with  a guy who  basically makes it his job to get quoted as a man-on-the-street as often as possible.  Most recently, he was first in line to get the iPad, and all sorts of news outlets and blogs dutifully reported it, though many have caught on to his antics. Back in 2003, the AP warned reporters about quoting him.

There are a lot of things to complain about with Glee. The music is great, but the plots can be sloppy bordering on offensive. 

I seem to be more or less on my own in my level of discomfort in the blackmail plot with Sue and the principal, but catching a Shakespeare reference in the season finale of Glee did not help much:

"One last chit, Figgy, give the glee club another year, and I won't mention us making the beast with two backs again."

I'm willing to bet that the writers did not know that "the beast with two backs" is from Othello. But I did; I am obsessed with Othello.  My thesis for my BA was titled "'All That Is Spoke Is Marred' – The Transformation of Othello As Seen Through Speech."

So, I knew that "a beast with two backs" is part of a list of racially-charged animal metaphors that Iago uses to describe Desdemona sleeping with Othello. And when I heard it here, in describing what the creators of Glee clearly see as a race as well as infidelity issue, I cringed a little. (Emphasis mine).

IAGO
'Zounds, sir, you're robb'd; for shame, put on
your gown;
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is topping your white ewe. Arise, arise;
Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you:
Arise, I say....

BRABANTIO
What tell'st thou me of robbing? this is Venice;
My house is not a grange....

IAGO
'Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not
serve God, if the devil bid you. Because we come to
do you service and you think we are ruffians, you'll
have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse;
you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have
coursers for cousins and gennets for germans.

BRABANTIO
What profane wretch art thou?

IAGO
I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter
and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

It should be noted that this dialogue also produces an exchange that should be printed on DC Shakespeare shirts:

BRABANTIO
Thou art a villain.

IAGO
You are--a senator.

This is an essay, apropos of nothing, that I originally wrote for another blog. I'm reprinting it here, because more than a year after writing it I am still proud of it and still grappling with these issues. 


"It's really important to make women in our community less invisible," the chief Rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks, said at a panel discussion in D.C. in advance of the release of a prayer book with his commentary. A murmur of approval rose from the audience.

"You can see it on the first page of my siddur," he said, referring to the version of the prayer book with his commentary. He has written the first prayer in both the feminine and the masculine grammatical forms. He has included a prayer of thanksgiving for the birth of a girl. He has -- as chief rabbi--fought for aggunot [women whose husbands refuse to give them a divorce] and for strong, religiously acceptable prenuptial agreements, and for communal lay-person leadership roles.

His prayer book still has the line "Blessed are you God for you did not make me a woman." In the American version, there is no commentary on that line. The editor took it out; it was too much apologetics, not enough explanation.

Overheard on an airplane in D.C.:

Flight Attendant to boarding passenger: I like your dress.

Boarding Passenger (who appears to be in her 20s and is wearing a knee-legnth, pink, sleeveless dress with detailing around the hem): Thank you.

Flight Attendant: It's very Sex and The City.

Boarding Passenger: It's very TJ Maxx.

Flight Attendant: It's very Carrie Bradshaw.

Passenger continues walking. I wonder if she felt complimented by the somewhat strange exchange and how much she sees herself in Bradshaw (projecting my own life onto this stranger I would guess 'not at all'.)

They were balanced precariously in too-full bags; their green leaves sticking out of the top. I walk past a construction site and they thwip thwip against a fence.

Crossing the street, I feel something brush my ankle and one of my leeks is on the ground. I double back, and as I turn back around the other one falls. I'm out of time for retrieving it. Standing on the sidewalk, I watch two cars miss the leaves before the third drives over them. The leek still looks intact.

Two days later, I think it's gone. Crossing the street, I notice  a web of white crushed into the street. As if the leek had silk hidden inside.

Does anyone else get the sense that Mark Zuckerberg fills in Mad Libs to generate his apology letters? (Here, here, and here).