press clips vol. 2 no. 4: DEATH TO FOSTERTALK.
the time has come. and i will destroy it.
Hey -
So. Here we are again.
Or here you are, for the first time. In which case, everyone else has heard this, so you need to, too: I have no idea what you think you’re doing here.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: If you don’t understand what’s going on here, neither do I. The whole point of this was to just start writing, a lot, again. Mostly for people I already know, a way smaller group than I’ve got now. And most of what I wanted to write had nothing to do with media, and media gossip, and ways to understand media, and everything to do with things I’ve had in my head for the last eight months. The media gossip, I figured, would be a way to sneak in all the other stuff, the peanut butter hiding the pill.
But the media gossip became The Thing. It got too long. It needs to get shorter. It needs to be about different things. I’m honored to have so many of your eyes, and to that end, this is going to just be an ongoing embarrassment for me. To that end, yes, four issues in now, and one thing has become entirely clear to me:
FOSTERTALK needs to die.
See, being the brilliant, forward-thinking media industry galaxybrain I am, I did this whole thing relatively ad hoc, named it, and just slammed the publish button, waiting to see what’d happen. And I’ve now run headlong into an existential problem, a mortal roadblock, one I need to just plow through, and end, for good:
Look at these selfish, adoptive child-rearing assholes, tapping into the collective consciousness before I could plunder my own meaningless bullshit from it. Make no mistake: This is war, and I will absolutely destroy them. Growing up in Las Vegas, there’s a saying: Never make a bet you can’t lose. Well, fuckers, bet on this: I would crush these pieces of shit like the supportive independent community of children’s caregivers that they are. You fuck with this bull’s SEO, you would get the horns, you guileless Samaritan assbags.
But it’s Thanksgiving.
So maybe I’ll just rename this thing instead. Suggestions go here.
Deep breath.
Okay. FOSTERTALK or whatever, Pre-Thanksgiving Edition, starts now, here, like this:
Line Edits, Pt. 1:
Dept. of You Love To See It: Marquee star profiler writer Vanessa Grigoriadis gracefully conceding defeat to LA Mag EIC Maer Roshan for nailing the coveted Charlotte Kirk interview. Truly: What a get, and a story.
Via Vashti Media editor Rivkah Brown, here’s a lede if I’ve ever read one: “Talia Lavin is that thing I have always wanted to be: a divorcée.” Rivkah Brown makes me want to be the thing that ruined my childhood: A divorce lawyer. But really, the rest of this interview with former New Yorker fact-checker Talia Lavin is also, somehow, a fantastic read as well. The Times (among others) gave her new book a rave. This interview got me to order it.
Reminder, from last Wednesday’s FOSTERTALK:
“Carolyn Ryan, a deputy managing editor, edits Nellie Bowles, Michael Powell, and Ben Smith. LOL! Must be special, being the kind of writer who requires so much handholding and/or bureaucratic protecting that they gotta have someone of Ryan’s caliber [edit them] as opposed to, you know, the editor on their respective desk, like everyone else. […] Flashback: David Carr was edited by media editor Bruce Hedlam, and not, like, the deputy managing editor of the paper. Carr also didn’t attempt to cast himself prominently into every single story he wrote, so I get the push, I guess?”
The lede on this week’s Ben Smith filing?
“One afternoon in the spring of 2009, Jon Meacham sat in front of the freighted wooden bookshelf in his office and talked to me about a job writing for Newsweek.”
Previously, in Ben Smith: “I own a second home,” “I still read Andrew Sullivan,” “I offered this paper’s publisher a job,” “I’m friends with Maggie Haberman.” Carolyn, I know you’re reading this, and all I gotta say is: I hope the paper’s vision insurance covers one’s eyes rolling so hard they escape out of the top of one’s head. Over/under on the pop-out date is a year.
SUBSTACKENING, NOW! SOON! Before we get into the items: I’m working on a big ol’ story about what Substackers are making, which is why you won’t see any of this week’s new here. It will be in your inboxes soon! There will be a lot in your inboxes this week from The Email Soon To Be Previously Known As Fosterletter. That said, if you know anything about Substack, you know where to put it.
Et tu, Brocaster? There’s an episode of How Long Gone hosts Chris Black and Jason Stewart have occasionally vaguely alluded to disappearing into the ether, at the request of their guest. Who was their too-hot-for-pod-publishing guest? Allegedly, none other than Hunter Harris, who just left Vulture/NY Mag to launch her own Substack! I’d sure like to find out what the hell she said that she didn’t want people (including, presumably, her now-former employer) to hear!
ON POD. Another podcast item! Now, here is a quote! One that actually stopped me dead in my tracks. It comes to us from a recent Throwing Fits interview with Complex editor-in-chief Maurice Peebles, in response to host James Harris’s question:
Does he feel the pressure of his colleagues’ livelihoods riding on his decisions as a leader?
“I do. Look, full disclosure, I spoke to all the highest-ranking editors about this explicitly, because it’s unfair for people to always dance around the fact that, like: If you work in media, you work in advertising. No one wants to talk about it, because everyone wants to feel good about what they do. We all went to journalism school. We all wanna write our passions. But in the end, we’re selling things on this website, and our job is to get people to come to the website, so they can sell those things. And it sucks to sort of say it that way, and again, I love Complex […] but you have to make sure that people keep getting paid, and have a job. I don’t want my friends to get fired every two to three years. That shit sucks. So let’s do what we gotta do to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
While I don’t think his statement is an entirely broad truth that applies to everyone, for a large swath of people working in media, it comes pretty goddamn close.
Montez Radio Is…a Sound Salvation? Final audio-oriented item! Look, people: I really didn’t know what to expect when I heard that the Clare Hollingworth of Clandestino, Kaitlin Phillips, was hosting a podcast last Wednesday with newly-minted Times obit desk writer Alex Vadukul, and would be joined by Vadukul’s colleague Alex Traub (senior news assistant on the And Now They’re Dead beat at the paper with him).
What I heard was…genuinely wonderful. No joke, here. Phillips was a lovely, funny, curious interviewer, able to get the best of her guests, who were no slouches themselves. Vadukul and Traub talk about their beat in a way that made me love the paper, New York, excited for where the section is going, and finally, served as an excellent reminder of just where a great Obits desk can sit: Somewhere at the intersection of journalism, biography, and artfulness. One they plugged on the pod, that’s worth a read, is an obit of an artist named Frederick Weston. A line:
As he survived day-to-day in New York, Mr. Weston created his art privately. He worked on his bed, trimming clippings from magazines, fabrics and Polaroid photos to use in his collages. Almost daily he visited Kinko’s to photocopy money, body parts, sunglasses and practically anything else he could slide under the machine’s lid.
That’s just solid writing. I look forward to reading more of this, and hearing more from the likes of the podcast. Listen to it over at Montez Radio, if uh you can figure out how the site works. Their next episode shows up soon.
Line Edits, Pt. 2:
Radhika Jones’s Vanity Fair continues to bulk up. Per Kerry Flynn, some decent hires were made. Poaching targets included Hearst, The Daily Beast, and Buzzfeed.
And oh, yeah, speaking of Buzzfeed: I really don’t have shit to say on the Buzzfeed/Huffington Post merger and Jonah Peretti long-con news cycle except: 1. Something I heard from another writer, quoting a former editor of his, working on a story about a merger: “This is like tying two rocks together to see if they float.” 2. Actually, after careful consideration, that’s the only thing I’ve got to say on it beyond “good luck to all involved (who are not Peretti, who will not need it).”
The far more interesting merger? Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster, a $2.175B deal. See, that is a merger. I don’t know enough about the books business to give you a read on this, but I’m sure a whole hell of a lot of us would love to know what it portends, without any of the release-ready quotable bullshit. Publishing people, do you have a read on this, or a take? I’d love to hear it.
I’ll Never Run A Ringer Past You: Credit to Lindsay Zoladz for speaking up as one of the sources that spoke to the NYT for this line about staffers at The Ringer being sidelined by Bill Simmons:
Yes, you’re reading that correctly: Simmons, who really comes off like an unfathomably petty piece of shit here, unfollowed the writers over at The Ringer after they tried to unionize, effectively freezing them out. I can totally see not even wanting to talk about that, because how absurd does the complaint that one’s boss unfollowed them on Twitter seem? Zoladz knows it herself:
How could she not feel a little, I guess, gaslit? It bears repeating: She isn’t wrong. The site is powered by, to a not-insignificant degree, the cache of Simmons’ influence, which includes his Twitter (which has 5.7M followers, or 5.2M more than @TheRinger). Tellingly, Simmons didn’t comment to the NYT at all — at all! — on this story. Real stand-up stuff. Remember when this guy was the leader of an insurgency at ESPN? Flashback to five years ago, November 5, 2015, Simmons is speaking on the demise of Grantland, and how poorly ESPN handled it, emphasis mine:
"It was the fact they didn't communicate with the staff," Simmons told [Malcolm] Gladwell, who was an original Grantland contributor. "The staff was really scared for the future of the site. They were scared for where it was going," Simmons continued. […] Grantland, Simmons said, was "this little boutique place" that gave "[ESPN] a little bit of soul."
Where ESPN might’ve needed soul, The Ringer on the other hand apparently needs none, at least from the top, at least when Simmons is on it. People who pull the ladder up are gross. Also: If you got any good Simmons stories, you know where to find me.
Line Edits, Pt. 3:
Imagination exercise: How many writers can you name who’d be willing to interrogate their previous work in public, and cop to once getting something wrong, if not short of the mark? Right: Me neither. Hardheadedness and digging one’s heels in is such a predictable mode of brand-building by writers these days (more on this, lol, below), as opposed to anything along the lines of “so I uh maybe got this wrong.” The few of them willing to show their fallibility (even a little) is — seriously — such a rare occurrence, it bears noting. To that end: Helen Rosner recently self-flaggelated a little in public recently on the topic of covering female chefs. It’s worth reading. Maybe I’m an easy target, but this kind of thing makes it a little harder for me to believe that someone’s as intrinsically full of shit than the rest of their supposedly unimpeachable cohort. Related: Wanna know how long it takes a regular contributor to The New Yorker to finally be ordained a staff writer? Three years, at least given Rosner’s example. Per her Twitter, Rosner was formally bumped up a couple of weeks ago. You would’ve thought re-inventing the hair dryer would’ve done it, but alas: Respect. Her latest, which I just read before filing this — you probably already know if you’ve been reading this, — I related to. Deeply. It it great.
Founder Ezra Klein, co-founder/star writer Matt Yglesias, and editor-in-chief/senior VP Lauren Williams all left Vox last week. Klein’s going to the New York Times, Yglesias will keep podcasting at Vox but has gone to Substack, and Williams is starting a Black community-focused journalism non-profit called Capital B. An Axios filing would have you believe a rosy picture of the company, and maybe that’s true. But three key players leaving all at once like this? I’ll say it again: What the hell do these three know that everyone at Vox doesn’t?
Finally, out of respect to the truly innocent bystanders involved, I’m gonna take a soft pass on this, but, LOL, FYI, like the last month of this person’s subtweets, it’saboutme. Flattered! Here’s to…keeping a good bit going? Honestly, ‘far as line edits go, I’ve certainly heard worse, though the people in her @’s could use some work. Anyway, don’t forget, for all your poorly-edited infantile artistically-striving raw copy needs: Subscribe to FOSTERTALK. :)
I, Too, Have Something To Tell You. A wonderful interview with writer and critic Lauren Oyler? Sure! Here are a few select quotes from it:
Political memoirs that may or may not be ghostwritten are legitimate books. They’re products. If that person wants their story on the page, and it’s a good story, then that’s no less a book to me than Proust or whatever.
Also!
When I see publicity campaigns, I’m very affected by them, even though I know how they work! I’ve sat in on publicity for commercial books that I ghostwrote.
Also!
[Then-Vice COO Alyssa Mastromonaco] reached out because she needed someone to help her write her book. It was a bestseller, so I got more ghostwriting jobs, and Alyssa and I did another book together.
For the record, the book that Oyler’s coyly referring to has long, long been rumored to be Chasten Buttigieg’s memoir, I Have Something To Tell You. How long? I’d heard about this back in May. And I remember hearing about it, because I remember Oyler starting off a firestorm about Alison Roman, with some now-deleted Tweets about Alison Roman and pay transparency:
“I love when a slightly off center but nevertheless extremely popular social media figure declares she is not making much money right now and no one questions it. What was your book advance, what were your royalties, you sold a TV show, how much is your speaking fee?
[…] money is fine. a class of creatives has earned their money by branding themselves relatable and honest; now they're all (kinda desperately) misrepresenting their circumstances to further that image. manipulative, bc outsiders don't have the info to determine they're full of shit.”
I remember thinking at the time: Funny, Lauren Oyler, this is galling, as you don’t say anything about your uncredited ghostwriting income that is a (poorly kept) industry secret, which seems manipulative to the outsiders on Twitter watching who don’t know you’ve ghostwritten a book and ergo can’t determine how full of shit you are. And no, Oyler hadn’t publicly said anything about her ghostwriting income. So it’s nice to see her coming clean, albeit, like, six months late?
I’ve heard from plenty of people that Oyler’s forthcoming book is very good. No punchline there, in fact: I’ve heard it’s great. She’s a plainly great writer, far better than most, definitely me (low bar, I know). She’s got a ferocious rapier of an intellect. Anyway: I hope the book represents a cleaner hewing to I don’t know, less double-standard bullshit than the above. She’s obviously not unimpeachable, but if nothing else, she’s taken some large dice rolls before, like her attempted London Review of Books shot-licking at Jia Tolentino (which even Tolentino, an exceptionally decent sport, admired in her own way). All of which is to say: I wasn’t a fan of that piece. I’m not a fan of a few of her takes. But I’ll buy it if I don’t get a galley before then. It’s hard to entirely hate someone that smart, with that kind of moxie, especially if they’re willing to evolve. This is an increasingly rare quantity.
And Now, Something Only Mildly Unrelated That You Do Not See Coming: A very successful queer writer and publicly ordained genius who shall go unnamed here once told me that, at one of this writer’s public events, he was introduced to Chasten Buttigieg, and can attest to his having enormous “chaotic power bottom” energy. This is one of those hilarious, terrible things you will never been able to unhear. Do with it what you will! Remember people, you opened this shit! Not me!
Here’s some good news I didn’t get to last week: Cord Jefferson, whose Emmy/Golden Globe/Peabody-strewn post-Gawker resume (oh, just: The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, The Good Place, Master of None, Succession, Watchmen)scored his own multi-year production deal with Warner Bros. TV.
I got into a conversation with someone recently about how we don’t celebrate people earnestly and honestly enough in the business of writing, how so much of so often feels so painfully performative, so Congrats Twitter, or whatever, and when we do celebrate writers, most people can’t tell you why they love someone’s work, or what they love about it, which is just so odd. Blurb culture, you know? So maybe you’ve noticed more of that here. You’ll see more like it.
To that end, lemme just say, here, for the record, that Cord? Cord is the goddamn fucking worst. This disgustingly handsome shitbag, with his stupid fucking million-dollar smile, and that soft, coffee-splashed-lowfat-oat-milk skin. This insipid, charming Hollywood scum has long written his goddamn ass off, and more often than not, finds material in his seemingly endless, abyss-like well of empathy, from which he often palpates this terrible world and its terrible past to show some sliver of promise, of potential, of the light just beyond irradiating the worst of our malignancies if we all let the best of our better angels loose more often. This motherfucker, this wretched scumdick is funny, never myopic, never cheap, and always makes it worth the read. He has always, always been one of my favorite writers. So, yeah, he deserves his deal.
So: Let us use the occasion to go back in time, and highlight what good writing looks like, some of my favorite manifestations of what his trashass produces, like this essay on his mother from 2014 (locked behind Medium, sadly, but is — yes — actually worth paying for) and that time he predicted what Kanye would become from 2012 (which would also foreshadow some of the ways his gestalt would later include themes of race and revolution on Watchmen). He also wrote one of the only acceptable I’m Leaving New York For LA essays, and this thing about writers writing for free that still rings true (hi). All of which is to say: I celebrate this terrible motherfucker’s ass, and so should you, because it’s nice to see long-deserving people notch big wins, even if, like the other FosterTalk, I hope they both die. Also, Cord, I want Chalamet for my bit role, full method, 2009 Vyvance dosage and all.
Cord stopped regularly being on Twitter years ago. I often wonder: If I were a better writer, would I be on Twitter so much? And: If I weren’t on Twitter so much, would I be a better writer?
I know I’m not the only one who asks myself this. I also know exactly how rhetorical these questions are.
Okay, now we’re done. Any ideas for what I should rename this thing? I came across some old stationary today, and, well, how’s this look for a logo?
Has a nice ring to it, right? Nah, I’m kidding this was just an excuse to give you a Thanksgiving surprise. I made you this:
You’re welcome, and thank you, as ever, for your continued support of FOSTERTALK, or whatever we’re gonna call it. Bless this mess, and yours. Have a lovely holiday, and please: Stay safe, and think of others.
As ever, -f.