Paper Trail

Bassey Ikpi on memory and truth; The Ringer’s Mallory Rubin promoted to editor in chief


Bassey Ikpi

At Longreads, Naomi Elias talks to Bassey Ikpi about memory, truth, and her new book, I’m Telling the Truth but I’m Lying. “What I tried to do was be very honest about the things I couldn’t remember,” she said of the book. “What was difficult was, the first book that we actually sold was supposed to be this — now that I think about it, I laugh — this self-help book, like a ‘this is how I got here’ kind of thing; and it was just impossible to do. Where am I? I didn’t get anywhere. In order for me to get to the point where I wanted to write this self-help book, I had to acknowledge the fact that my memories are very — as far as the facts go — very scattered, but as far as the emotional history that I’m trying to piece together, pretty accurate.”

The Ringer’s executive editor Mallory Rubin has been promoted to editor in chief.

At Columbia Journalism Review, Jeremy Gordon wonders how music journalism can cope with the current publishing landscape. “Twenty years ago, a magazine could slot a profile of a smaller band alongside an interview with a popular artist, and hope that it might be read as part of the whole,” Gordon writes. “Now, every article is packaged individually on the internet and measured to the last click, making it very clear when something isn’t being read, incentivizing coverage of artists with proven followings.”

Merriam Webster is considering adding ASMR—the acronym for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response—as an official dictionary entry.

BuzzFeed has created MoodFeed, a new content-sharing tool. With MoodFeed, “readers can identify their mood” using options like “stressed,” “nostalgic,” or “hungry,” to “get a list of articles that match those feelings.”