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All Done: For “Inexplicable Reasons” Mockingbird Won’t Return To Broadway

Aaron Sorkin and Bartlett Sher emailed the play’s cast and crew late Thursday to inform them of the decision, and they blamed the original lead producer, Scott Rudin, who had stepped away from an active role in the show after being accused of mistreating collaborators. - The New York Times

Inside The Bitter Battle Over Dividing Streaming Revenue

This uneven division of the revenue was originally calculated to account for the expenses that labels incurred in the manufacture and distribution of vinyl, CDs and cassette tapes. That lopsided split may or may not still make sense in the streaming age, depending on whom you ask. - Variety

Ibram X Kendi’s Binaries On Race

If you have read one Kendi book, you have read them all. And whether one agrees or disagrees with his arguments, they are the very opposite of complex. He thinks in binaries. For Kendi, there are no ambiguities when it comes to understanding racism, no shades of grey. - New Statesman

Decline of The Glossy Magazine

With the churn of digital publishing pushing magazines into the financial and cultural doldrums, the luster of the legacy media job has only gotten duller. Yet there is still a magic in print magazines that does not seem to exist in newspapers or book publishing. - The Nation

What Happened To Newspaper Book Reviews

What many readers encounter are cautious judgments affixed to a skeletal summary, leaving little opening for the decisive and expansive claims on a reader’s attention that make a piece of criticism valuable on its own, or even simply viral. - The Nation

Why Do We Have To Spell It That Way? (English Is Messy)

We can shrug and chalk up English’s many quirks to tradition. Or we can try to think beyond our own time, as President Theodore Roosevelt tried to when he sent a letter in 1906 to the public printer, Charles Stillings, directing him to use in various official communications the simplified spellings. - The New York Times

Dreams Of A Common Language: A History Of Esperanto

Grammatically, Esperanto was primarily influenced by European languages, but interestingly, some of Esperanto’s innovations bear a striking resemblance to features found in some Asian languages, such as Chinese. - The Conversation

Reality Has Become A Game Played Online

What we haven’t figured out how to make sense of yet is the fun that many Americans act like they’re having with the national fracture. - The New Atlantis

Our Best Writers Challenge And Discomfit Us

Our best writers can unfreeze us. They override the notion that we’re helpless, and sometimes they do it paradoxically, by depicting people who are paralyzed and stuck. - Tablet

The Co-opting Of Art In A Changing World

“Our art has become exhaustively political, but it is no longer discernibly subversive,” observed the writer Greg Jackson about the literature of the Trump years, “It is what major cultural institutions, foundations, and media organizations find congenial.” - Liberties Journal

This Year Even Music By The Biggest Stars Isn’t Selling

Beyoncé isn’t the only superstar who’s struggling to make a hit with staying power. The past year has seen superstars release new music to weaker-than-expected sales or reviews. - The Wall Street Journal

The Meaning Of Purgatory

While the idea of an intermediate state after death is present in many religions – Buddhism has its bardo, Judaism its Sheol, Islam its A’raf – Purgatory stands out precisely for its ambiguity, an ambiguity rooted in the fact that there is scant scriptural evidence for its existence. - Aeon

Facebook Stops Paying Publishers For News

Facebook has paid publishers who participate in the News program. The company signed deals worth tens of millions of dollars with news organizations such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, the Journal reported. - The Wall Street Journal

Trial Over Mega-Book Publisher Merger Set To Begin

The closely watched case holds major implications for a publishing industry that has been grappling with consolidation for years. It also looms as a key test for the government amid growing calls for more vigilant antitrust enforcement. - Publishers Weekly

Qin Yi, Last Of China’s “Four Great Actresses” And Whose Career Spanned Chinese Cinema History, Dead At 100

"She weathered the ups and downs of 20th-century Chinese history, and thrived under different political realities. ... Her remarkable onscreen life spanned the Chinese Republican regime (and Mao's revolutions) right through to the modern commercial blockbuster period." - The Guardian

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