ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

WORDS

Small Study: Readers Don’t Seem To Care If Writing Was Created By AI

"Throughout the study, writers expressed concerns about audiences' reactions to their use of AI assistance for their writing," the authors note. However, the survey results indicate readers didn't find that much difference in the writing samples. - ZDNet

How De-Gendering Language Works

“She’s an actor” simply phases out “actress” and sends it on its way, along with Studebakers, Koogle peanut butter and Red Skelton. It creates no new word poised to inherit the potentially dismissive air that “actress” implied. - The New York Times

The Art Of Amazon Reviews

He embraced all the stylistic quirks, choppy sentence fragments and run-ons, either darting from point to point like a distracted squirrel or leaning heavily into declarative statements. His voice is overly casual, conversational. - Cleveland Review of Books

Critics Have Always Hated/Loved/Worried-About Newspapers. Let’s Understand The History

The abolition of most forms of censorship, declining paper costs, railway expansion and universal primary education triggered a newspaper boom that saw total daily circulation rise from around 1.5 million in 1870 to nearly 10 million by 1914. - Aeon

Barnes & Noble’s Great Resurgence

The bookseller expects to open over 60 new bookstores in 2025, including five this month. - Geekwire

Alt-Weekly Chicago Reader Is At “Imminent Risk Of Closure”

The paper, which was owned by the Sun-Times for six years before being sold to a not-for-profit in 2018, has continued to be plagued by the issues facing local news generally in the US. Six non-union staffers have been laid off and the publisher has resigned. - Chicago Sun-Times

Can “The Conversation” Do For Local News What It’s Done For Academic Research?

"The nonprofit outlet has built a brand on connecting the knowledge of professors and researchers to both the news cycle and a general audience … But could it also work on a sub-national level ... and try to make a dent in the local news crisis? That’s the idea behind The Conversation Local." - Nieman Lab

The Tyranny Of Reading Lists

The urge to track our reading habits is never so strong as it is near the turn of the year, when cultural forces press us to revise ourselves. Like the things we eat or the ways we move our bodies, the books we consume get talked about as yet another avenue for self-improvement. - The Walrus

New Research On Circulation Of Audiobooks At US Libraries

"Digital audiobooks accounted for 70 percent of adult audio circulation and 56 percent of youth audio circulation in libraries queried in the time frame of the survey. Circulation patterns showed significant variation according to community size." - Publishing Perspectives

The Moral Decay Of One Of Post-Soviet Russia’s Finest Novelists

"At a time when many of his literary peers have fled Russia for political reasons, (Victor) Pelevin’s descent from dazzling young writer to misogynist crank mirrors the decline of mainstream Russian culture in a new era of authoritarian censorship." - The Guardian

US Book Sales Ticked Up In 2024

In 2024, sales gradually improved over the course of the year and saw a 1.6% increase in the fourth quarter. For the full year, the sales performance followed a familiar path, as adult fiction was once again the driver, with units rising 4.8%. - Publishers Weekly

The 1890s French Author Who Predicted The Rise Of The Audiobook

In the short story “The End of Books,” one character says, "I do not believe (and the progress of electricity and modern mechanism forbids me to believe) that Gutenberg’s invention can do otherwise than sooner or later fall into desuetude.” - Open Culture

What Does ‘Escapism’ In Reading Even Mean?

“I am not entirely sure if said snobbishness is about books or readers, and that, right there, is the ugly little thought that made me ask: Are conversations about escapism actually about what people read, or how they read it?” - Reactor

William Butler Yeats’ Ornate Stained Glass Lantern Comes Home From The United States To Ireland

Yeats used the lantern to light his way on a winding staircase in his castle’s tower. A century later, a multimedia artist “carried the fragile artefact from Provincetown, at the northern tip of Cape Cod, in a ‘Grow Greener’ shopping bag, protected by layers of bubble wrap.” - Irish Times

Let’s Be Honest – ‘Marry Well’ Is Still The Best Advice For Writers

“This is not a new story. Ernest Hemingway would not have had the time to write were it not for the rich women he was involved with. Marcel Proust would never have written In Search of Lost Time without generational wealth.” - Irish Times

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