Lost in Translation, Lost in Context
PEN America generated quite a controversy when it decided to honor French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo. Six authors called for a boycott of the gala and circulated a petition slamming the...
View ArticleEllen Pao: A Rumpus Roundup
On Friday, Ellen Pao resigned as CEO of Reddit, one of the largest sites in the world by traffic. She left amid a controversy created by efforts to civilize an online community often seen as hostile...
View ArticleWho Watches the Watchmen (and Women)?
The New Yorker looks at books that examine the blurry lines around intolerance, political correctness, and free speech. The authors ask if the very people policing intolerance and hate speech are...
View ArticlePlayboy to Focus on Writing
Ray Bradbury, Joseph Heller, Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac, and Kurt Vonnegut all found homes for their stories in Playboy. Now the publication better known for the highly photoshopped pictures of...
View ArticleReading the Fine Print
Traditional publishers provide many services for authors, including fact-checking and obtaining permission for intellectual property. Self-publishing platforms don’t provide these services, and because...
View ArticlePeter Thiel’s War on Free Speech: A Rumpus Roundup
Last week, tech billionaire Peter Thiel admitted to funding lawsuits against Gawker Media, including the lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan. Hogan won a $140 million judgment against Gawker after the site...
View ArticleWeekly Geekery
There is a looming rift in science journalism.Also, a looming rift in journalism journalism.Letting the robots take over.Brains are not computers.Death, plutonium, and our nuclear history.Related...
View ArticleLiberal Censorship
In May, Portland’s school board voted to ban textbooks that questioned the severity and human causes of climate change, drawing criticism not only from the right, but from free-speech advocates as...
View ArticleThe Past and Present of Banned Books
‘Banned books’ sounds like a thing of the past. But over at Lit Hub, Amy Brady details the ways that the fight against censorship continues in libraries and schools today:If school administrators are...
View ArticleDavid Biespiel’s Poetry Wire: 21 Poems That Shaped America (Pt. 12): “Shine,...
We will now have to suffer through hundreds and hundreds more days of the turgid presidency of Donald Trump. One can already hear the saccharine tones of “normalizers” saying to give Mr. Trump yet...
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