The Wirecutter Union has reached a deal for a new contract with the New York Times. Last month, the union went on strike on Black Friday and the following weekend. Staff writer Kaitlyn Wells commented, “The collective strength of our unit is incredible. Despite the roadblocks of the pandemic and the Time’s continuous union-busting tactics, we didn’t give an inch in the vision of making Wirecutter the best place to work.”
Tyler Stovall, the author of White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea, has died at age sixty-seven. In an interview earlier this year for The Nation, Stovall said of his latest book: “I argue that white freedom, which is a concept of freedom conceived and defined in racial terms, underlies and reflects both white identity and white supremacy: To be free is to be white, and to be white is to be free.”
For the New Yorker, Julian Lucas investigates “distraction free” writing tools, devices, and apps: “The quest to match writer and machine may be as necessary, in its way, as literature’s unending effort to reconcile experience and expression—or so I tell myself.”
The Los Angeles Times looks back at ten years of the Los Angeles Review of Books. The review’s founder, Tom Lutz, recently noted at a virtual birthday party for the publication: “Some people scoffed in the New York publishing establishment, literally scoffed, and we were energized by that kind of provinciality.”
Tammie Teclemariam is becoming New York magazine’s first diner-at-large. The author will write a weekly newsletter and column about her experiences eating around the city.