At Columbia Journalism Review, Bill Grueskin looks into the editorial decisions made by former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet on a 2017 story that linked a map circulated by Sarah Palin’s PAC with the actions of gunman Jared Lee Loughner, who shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others. Bennet rewrote a draft by Times writer Elizabeth Williamson, claiming that “the link to political incitement was clear.” Palin sued the Times for defamation, and the case is set to go to trial in five months.
Belarusian Nobel Prize–winning author Svetlana Alexievich has been subject to intimidation and a criminal investigation by dictator Alexander Lukashenka’s regime. Following an attempted break-in to her apartment, the author called on her supporters to show “resistance through presence,” and has no plans to leave the country.
At the New York Review of Books, Hari Kunzru writes about “The Wages of Whiteness,” looking at ideas about white privilege and allyship in a wide-ranging essay that moves from the Weather Underground to Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: “Very often the liberal version of identity politics, shorn of the radical goals of its founders, takes on the familiar contours of American Protestantism. People get to play at smiting the devil and enjoy the satisfactions of moral purity.”
Eviction Lab, a project of Princeton University, is helping journalists track the current eviction and housing crisis. In July, law professor and Eviction Lab co-creator Emily Benfer estimated that 28 million Americans would face eviction in the coming months.
The Nation is hosting a virtual journalism conference for students and young writers of traditional college age. The event, featuring speakers such as Katrina vanden Heuvel, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Ken Klippenstein, will focus on covering social movements. Applications are due by October 2nd.
The Schomburg Center Literary Festival will take place virtually this year, from September 21–26th. There will be panels and discussions about Audre Lorde, Nicole R. Fleetwood’s book Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, the poetry of Sterling A. Brown and much more. There is also a pre-festival event on September 17th, about the new anthology, Lift Every Voice: 250 Years of African American Poetic Traditions.