News That Stays News

Eulogy and Euphemism March 11, 2011

1. Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, has a word or two for yours truly, among others. One wonders if he would appreciate the irony.

“Aggregation” can mean smart people sharing their reading lists, plugging one another into the bounty of the information universe. It kind of describes what I do as an editor. But too often it amounts to taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material. In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model.

2. From the Baltimore Sun: Snoop from the Wire arrested in drug raid.

3. Nora Ephron on her adolescence.

4. David Foster Wallace’s piece in Gourmet, “Consider the Lobster”

5. In 1980, Pauline Kael asked why movies had become so bad in a long piece in the New Yorker. Interesting incidental critique of Kramer vs. Kramer. N.B. The article will be easiest to read if you copy and paste it into a word document and make it double-spaced.

6. George Orwell revisits the Politics and Aesthetics debate and explains why he writes.

7. The day Ronald Reagan got shot, told from the perspective of a secret service agent.

8. Another article about college admissions and Tiger Mom, this one from a former college counselor.

Credits: The Browser, Longform.org, Julia