
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet has announced his new masthead. He retired the managing editor position (which he formerly held), and created in its place the position of deputy executive editor, to which he promoted four people—Susan Chira, Janet Elder, Matt Purdy, and Ian Fisher.
A Twitter call for words journalists write but people never say produced this list: lambaste, foray, ballyhoo, tout, oust, fornicate, salvo, pontiff, bolster, and opine. A funny assortment, but if we were to reduce written English to words people actually use—or what about the syntax people use?—there wouldn’t be a lot to choose from.
Slate and the Whiting Foundation will be recognizing second novels with a new award—or rather, more of a list. The five novels—to be chosen by novelists Yiyun Li and Colson Whitehead, bookseller Sarah McNally, New Yorker web editor Sasha Weiss, and Slate editor Dan Kois—will be announced on November 19.
Combination exclamation marks and question marks are called interrobangs, or so we learned on National Punctuation Day, which was yesterday.
Amtrak has granted twenty-four people residencies, including Saul Williams, Darin Strauss, and Jennifer Boylan.