sundance

Run for your life – it’s the shredded newspaper man!

I really love this new costume/sculpture “We are all here to do what we are all here to do,” by Fabio Lattanzi Antinori and Alicja Pytlewska. Resembling something that emerged from the imaginations of Maurice Sendak and Guillermo del Toro, it was constructed using “shredded newspapers found around East London” and is perhaps an unsubtle visual metaphor for the declining state of the traditional print news industry and the ongoing Murdoch/News International phone hacking scandal.

Back to (old) school

It’s back to school time. That means many college students are already on campus and many student newspapers are already in full publishing swing, including the University of Richmond’s “Collegian,” which just last week published a little gem of an opinion piece entitled “A Letter to Women,” in which the author promotes the old she-dresses-like-a-slut-so-she-deserves-it philosophy and condemns women for enjoying sex.

Newspapers: not dead yet

Robert Gober’s “Newspaper” (1992)

Ever since the birth of online news, we’ve heard endless forecasts of the supposed doomsday of the newspaper industry, so now that web media is a daily part of most former newspaper-reader’s lives, is it true? Are newspapers really on the outs? It’s likely that even more local papers will go under – many already have. Big guns like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post are all down a couple of percents – a slower decline than what was predicted three years ago. The future is still uncertain, but it’s not the quick death a lot of us feared it might be.

The new abortion providers

Dr. Emily Godfrey is our new hero: she had the courage to be featured on the cover of the NYTimes Sunday Magazine last weekend as a doctor willing to provide abortions, not in an abortion clinic but at her practice where she sees all sorts of patients. In case you missed it last weekend, the article titled “The New Abortion Providers” took a fascinating look at the movement to bring this safe, common and legal medical procedure back into hospitals where it’s less vulnerable to attack by anti-choice zealots:

Culture wars: The New York Post vs. the Standard Hotel

The end of August is always a slow season for news–and nowhere is that more evident than in the New York Post’s extensive coverage of the Chelsea Standard Hotel “controversy.” This past Monday, the Post ran a story on a recently discovered feature of New York’s newly opened High Line park. In addition to offering [...]