About Editing and Writing

From a New York Times story by Marc Tracy headlined “How Marty Baron and Jeff Bezos Remade The Washington Post”:

On July 30, 2013, Martin Baron left The Washington Post building and crossed 15th Street for an extremely rare happy hour drink.

The publisher, Katharine Weymouth, had asked to meet him at a hotel bar. She needed to tell her executive editor that The Washington Post Company would be selling the newspaper her family had run for 80 years to the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

From an interview on vanityfair.com by Joe Pompeo headlined “You’ve made the Post swashbuckling once again: Marty Baron receives a star-studded farewell and dishes in a wide-ranging exit interview”:

At 3 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, hundreds of Washington Post employees logged on to a video call for a pandemic-safe virtual farewell to Marty Baron, whose last day as executive editor is Sunday, February 28. Baron, who is retiring at age 66 after eight years at the Post and more than four decades in the news business, is a titan of the media world. Thursday’s pretaped video tribute to Baron was an A-list affair befitting journalism royalty, with remarks from the likes of Jeff Bezos, Steven Spielberg, Diane von Furstenberg, Lesley Stahl, Dean Baquet, Wolf Blitzer, and Lester Holt, as well as the Hollywood team that immortalized Baron in Spotlight: Liev Schreiber, Tom McCarthy, and Josh Singer.

From a lithub.com story by Alysia Abbott headlined “Thank You, Lawrence Ferlinghetti”:

When Lawrence Ferlinghetti died this week at age 101, many of my friends, even writer friends, expressed surprise on social media.

Ferlinghetti outlived all the younger Beat writers he once published including Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Greg Corso. When The New York Times, in a 2005 interview, asked him why, he answered, “Kerouac drank himself to death, and Burroughs, when he was young, thought the healthiest person was one who had enough money to stay on heroin all his life. I really never got into drugs. I smoked a little dope, and I did a little LSD, but that was it. I was afraid of it, frankly. I don’t like to be out of control.”…

From a Washington Post story by the AP headlined “New York Times editor Bill Hamilton joining publisher Celadon Books”:

The Washington editor for The New York Times is joining Celadon Books as executive editor. Bill Hamilton will begin his new job April 5 and focus on acquiring books about politics and history.

“This is a unique moment for our country, when understanding how we have gotten to this point has never been more important.,” Hamilton said in a statement Friday. “My goal is to find writers who can help us do that as well as produce books that are a joy to read.”

From a conversation on the PBS News Hour:

It is a tumultuous time in the news business, with a perilous financial landscape and significant percentages of Americans saying they fundamentally don’t trust news sources that don’t line up with their opinions. Gregory Moore, editor-in-chief at Deke Digital, and Radhika Jones, editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, join Judy Woodruff to discuss.

Judy Woodruff:

It is a tumultuous time in the news business. Significant percentages of Americans fundamentally don’t trust news sources that don’t line up with their opinions. And the financial landscape is perilous.

From a Town & Country story by Horacio Silva headlined “Why the Political Memoir is the Year’s Hottest Book Genre”:

Fifteen years ago, the once powerful book publisher Judith Regan, ruler of her own imprint at Rupert Murdoch’s Harper­Collins, embarked on a project of dubious distinction. Somehow she convinced O.J. Simpson to get on board with a mea culpa manqué about the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. It would be called If I Did It, and it had the makings of a blockbuster.

For some writers, working with an editor is like going to the doctor. The doctor can see that you’re cheating on your diet, you’re drinking too much, and you don’t get any more exercise than a three-toed sloth. And you know that the doctor sees all of that. You don’t have any secrets from your editor, either.

If you have a good editor, you won’t be savaged. You will benefit. You may even find some satisfaction in collaborating with someone who sees what you mean to do, sometimes more clearly than you yourself do, and helps you to get there.

From a New York Times story by Alexandra Alter headlined “Hilary Clinton and Louise Penny to Write Political Thriller”:

In Louise Penny’s upcoming thriller, a novice secretary of state faces the daunting task of rebuilding American leadership after years of diminishing influence abroad. She is immediately put to the test when a wave of terrorist attacks threatens to destabilize the world order.

A topical political thriller represents new territory for Penny, who is best known for intricate murder mysteries set in a quiet Canadian town. But she had a political veteran on hand to help her shape the plot: her co-author and friend, the former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

From a Washington Post obit by Adam Bernstein headlined “Fanne Fox, ‘Argentine Firecracker’ at center of D.C. sex scandal, dies at 84”:

At about 2 a.m. Oct. 7, 1974, U.S. Park Police pulled over a silver-blue Lincoln Continental that had been swerving and speeding without headlights on near the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.

A female passenger in an evening gown ran from the car, climbed the stone parapet along the Tidal Basin and — acting on what she later described as a frantic impulse — leaped headfirst into the frigid, inky water. Her splashdown would ripple into one of the capital’s most infamous sex scandals.

From a New York Times story by Joe Lemire headlined “This Book Is Not About Baseball, But Baseball Teams Swear by It”:

Everett Teaford remembers the curious gaze from the executive across the room. Teaford, a former major league pitcher, had joined the Houston Astros as a professional scout in early 2016, and at an organizational meeting, his new colleague Sig Mejdal kept shooting him a look.