After more than two years of negotiation, the New Yorker Union has secured a new agreement, averting a strike. According to the union’s Twitter account, the agreement includes provisions on compensation, job security, benefits, diversity and inclusion, and workplace safety. Bloomberg reports that New Yorker fact-checkers have won employee status rather than being hired as subcontractors. Earlier this week, Ben Smith reported on the New Yorker’s union drive for the New York Times, and offered a look inside meetings held by the magazine’s marquee writers, some of whom were hesitant to join NewsGuild.
Tonight at 6pm EDT, The Point magazine and the Seminary Co-op bookstore are hosting a conversation with Jesse McCarthy and Lauren Michele Jackson to celebrate McCarthy’s debut essay collection, Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?
For the Times, Lovia Gyarkye explains why “It’s Not Too Late to Discover Louise Meriwether,” the ninety-eight year old author of the 1970 novel Daddy Was a Number Runner. Gyarkye writes, “The themes Meriwether explored in her bracing coming-of-age novel have never been more relevant or radical. And the way she navigated her art and career can offer lessons too, especially to Black artists eager to balance their creative ambition with their commitments to community.”
Hanna Phifer writes about the Pulitzer board’s decision to award a special citation to Darnella Frazier, the teenager who recorded the murder of George Floyd by police: “It’s much easier to believe that Darnella was ordained for some higher moral purpose instead of having to confront the fact that policing in America is an inherently immoral system that negatively impacts even those not directly targeted by the police. Deification too, can be its own form of violence.”
At Independent Book Review, Mara Franzen highlights thirty indie press books released since the start of the pandemic that you may have missed. Among the selections are titles published by Meerkat Press, Autumn House Press, Dzanc Books, Tin House, and Split Lip Press.