Maggie Smith Despite his secret funding of lawsuits against Gawker Media, Peter Thiel will remain on the board of Facebook—a potential conflict of interest given Facebook’s increasing influence on web traffic to news and media sites. Mark Zuckerberg, who controls 60 percent of the board, cast the decisive vote to keep Thiel. The controversy is complicated: Gawker argues that its disclosure of Thiel’s sexual orientation in 2007 was a legitimate example of freedom of the press, while Thiel sees it as a private matter, and has sought—privately—to bankrupt the company. “Peter did what he did on his own and not

Lois Duncan The New York Times has an in-depth profile of Ho Pin, the publisher of Mirror Media Group. Based in Great Neck, NY, Ho’s Chinese-language list is a mixture of politically daring and just-plain-salacious books. “One of Mirror’s latest additions is a 334-page book about Chinese leaders and their offshore accounts that were uncovered by the Panama Papers only weeks earlier. Another book on its shelves is a 2009 volume that claims to depict the extramarital sex lives of China’s top leaders, including Mr. Xi.” Dave Eggers attended a rally for Trump. “When I parked, I glanced at the

Phil Klay Charles Aaron and Erik Roldan have put together a three-and-a-half-hour-long playlist of Latin dance songs and club hits “to honor the Orlando victims, who were just looking for a place to dance and feel free that night.” At a cocktail reception last night, Johnny Temple, the publisher of Akashic Books, announced some of the highlights of this year’s Brooklyn Book Festival. BKBF events will begin taking place on September 12, and will culminate on September 18, which will feature more than three hundred authors—including Joyce Carol Oates, Sherman Alexie, Margaret Atwood, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and Phil Klay—in a variety

Dan Savage In an interview with Chris Hayes, author and columnist Dan Savage reflected on politicians’ responses to the massacre in Orlando, and stated: “Donald Trump is the enemy of the LGBT community.” In a conversation at the New York Public Library with author Masha Gessen, Svetlana Alexievich, the author of Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets and the winner of the 2015 Nobel prize, described the traumatic childhood experiences in the former Soviet Union that led her to specialize in oral history. “I grew up in a village after the war and in the village there were

The Ramones “At its peak, the Orlando Sentinel had more than 350 journalists in the newsroom. On Sunday, as it ramped up to cover the nation’s deadliest mass shooting, it had about 100. It’s still the largest news organization in Orlando.” Poynter has a moving story about how breaking news gets reported by newsrooms contending with budget cuts and slashed manpower. The Sentinel spent the first part of the weekend covering the murder of the singer Christina Grimmie, and has, in recent years, done in-depth reporting on the trials of George Zimmerman and Casey Anthony. A Gallup poll shows

Emma Cline After the Washington Post used the headline “Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting” on its front page, Trump announced in a Facebook post that he was revoking the “phony and dishonest” newspaper’s press credentials. The Post has since changed the headline to read “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando shooting.” It referred to Trump’s appearance on Fox News on Monday, during which he suggested Obama ought to resign for not using the term “radical Islam” in his address to the nation on Sunday. “He doesn’t get it or he gets

Marilynne Robinson At The Nation, Richard Kim remembers the first gay bar he went to, and notes that the Pulse, the Orlando gay club where a gunman killed fifty people and wounded at least fifty more this weekend, was a “utopia” and a “safe haven”—qualities that he fervently hopes will not go away: “To all the bartenders and bar-backs and bouncers and gogo boys and drag queens and club kids and freaks who make the nightlife—I love you. Stay strong.” This weekend, novelist Jennifer Weiner, the author of Good in Bed and other bestsellers, describes going to her college

In a YouTube video posted on hillaryclinton.com, President Barack Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for the highest office in the land. “Look, I know how hard this job can be. That’s why I know Hillary will be so good at it,” Obama said confidently. “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.” In response, Clinton tweeted that she was “fired up and ready to go” and got into a flame war (or skirmish) with Donald Trump and other Republicans. After Trump tweeted that Clinton was “Crooked,” she told him to “Delete your account”—her most

Bill Simmons The Hollywood Reporter profiles Bill Simmons, the popular sportswriter, podcaster, and TV personality who founded Grantland. Simmons was fired from ESPN last year after making disparaging comments about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. The Reporter takes evident delight in detailing the hurt feelings and corporate machinations that led to Simmons’s departure, and in narrating his comeback—the Beverly Hills dinners and meetings with high-rolling network and tech executives who were desperate to hire him. He’s landed at HBO with a new weekly TV show, Any Given Wednesday, and has started a new sports and pop culture site, The Ringer.

Bob Mehr, photo by Kevin Scanlon. The company AuthorEarnings, which uses data services to determine how much writers make from book sales, has released its “most comprehensive and definitive” report yet. The survey, based on Amazon sales (which account for 50 percent of sales in the US), notes that approximately 9,900 authors are earning more than $10,000 through Amazon sales, while 4,500 authors make $25,000 or more. As Flavorwire points out, 1,340 authors make more than $100,000 from Amazon, versus “only 115 from Big Publishing, at least among authors who debuted within the last five years.” A letter that

Sloane Crosley Sloane Crosley, the author of How Did You Get This Number and The Clasp, will be the new “Hot Type” columnist at Vanity Fair. The position became open when Elissa Schappell left last month. Crosley’s first column will appear in the October issue. BuzzFeed has decided to back out of a $1.3 million ad agreement with the Republican National Party, now that Trump has become the presumptive nominee. “We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company,” BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in a memo. “However, in

Marianne Moore and Muhammad Ali In a profile pegged to the publication of his new novel, Our Young Man, Edmund White stops to say of Donald Trump: “He’s unbearably rude and tragically spontaneous.”  “It’s kind of an old-fashioned book. It’s long; it has a lot of characters; it takes a big theme. It isn’t a navel-staring, dysfunctional-family thing that’s so beloved of most American writers.” Pulitzer winner Annie Proulx, author of the novel The Shipping News and the story “Brokeback Mountain,” talks about her new book, Barkskins, which features a large cast of characters, high drama, and, yes, a

Douglas Wolk In Vanity Fair, Sarah Ellison has a story on the future of the New York Times, as the paper tries to cope with declining revenue and the industry’s shift to digital media. The Times offered a round of buyouts in May and layoffs are said to be imminent. In the meantime, Times executives are investing in future-leaning—and possibly money-making—ventures like podcasting, virtual reality, and a meal-delivery service linked to the paper’s recipe pages. Ellison’s take is bleak: It begins with a longtime print editor weeping and ends by noting that executive editor Dean Baquet has said “the

Porochista Khakpour Showtime has announced that it will air a twenty-episode series based on Jonathan Franzen’s novel Purity. Daniel Craig will play the role of Andreas Wolf. Franzen will serve as executive producer, and Todd Field will direct. Production will begin in 2017. Tonight, PEN launches a new reading series in the room above the East Village’s KGB Bar. The inaugural event, called Nothing Compares 2 U, is about Prince, and will feature readings by Porochista Khakpour, Lincoln Michel, Elissa Schappell, and James Yeh. At the Washington Post, Carlos Lozada wonders why Hillary Clinton “associates works by female authors,

J. K. Rowling Salman Rushdie believes that schoolchildren should learn poems by heart. But will this make kids hate poetry? The Guardian seeks out expert opinions. Marcel Proust’s letters to his lovers, many of which have never been published, are being auctioned by his great grand-niece at Sotheby’s Paris. Robert Marshall has won the Hazel Rowley Prize, which is awarded every two years by the Biographers International Organization to “the best proposal from a first-time biographer.” Marshall, the author of the novel A Separate Reality, is working on a biography of the controversial author Carlos Castaneda, who wrote The

David Mitchell David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks, etc.) has just entered a novel in the Future Library project, in which selected authors bury a manuscript in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest. No one will read these books until 2014, when the texts will, if all goes according to plan, be retrieved and printed on paper made from trees recently planted in the area. Mitchell is the second writer to participate; Margaret Atwood buried the inaugural book, Scribbler Moon, last year. Eric Weisbard’s book Top 40 America has won the Woody Guthrie Award for Outstanding Book on Popular Music. After

Andrew Sullivan Facebook has been urging media outlets to publish directly on its platform. Which raises a question: What does the social-media site have to say about board member Peter Thiel’s secret attempts to put Gawker Media out of business by investing about $10 million to support Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against the company? The answer, for now, is “no comment.” Gawker founder Nick Denton, however, is eager to comment: He has written an open letter to Thiel. Amazon has announced that it will air the pilot of a new TV series based on Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings. Another pilot

Hari Kunzru In a new video, Elaine Showalter—the author of Hystories and many other critical studies—delves into the context and innovations that shaped Virginia Woolf’s modernist classic Mrs. Dalloway. A judge has denied Gawker’s request for a retrial of the notorious Hulk Hogan case, in which the former wrestler was awarded $140 million after suing Gawker media for posting a sex tape on its site. Meanwhile, reports have been surfacing that Paypal cofounder and billionaire Peter Thiel has been secretly bankrolling Hogan’s efforts to sue Gawker media. Gawker founder Nick Denton had already said that he had a “personal

Rikki Ducornet Facebook has completed an internal investigation of its “Trending Topics” feature, which has recently been accused of bias against conservative news sources. In a letter posted on Facebook’s press page, the company says they’ve found no evidence of “systemic bias” and that conservative and liberal stories have trended at “virtually identical” rates. Still, Facebook has announced changes to how the section works, including a quaint Orwellian renaming of its moderators’ internal tools: The most controversial function, once called “blacklisting,” is now named “revisit.” Vice has announced a reorganization that includes a promotion for Josh Tyrangiel (who will now supervise

Leanne Shapton Delightful news: The Washington Post’s union has analyzed its members’ salaries and found that among reporters, men make an average of $7,000 more than women, and among columnists, the gap is $23,000. If you’re an editorial assistant there, being male will get you an extra $7,000, too. What’s more, The Cut notes, “assistant editors who identify as people of color make about 15 percent less than their white counterparts.” Tonight, writer and artist Leanne Shapton will read from her book Swimming Studies at McNally Jackson, followed by a reception nearby at which the paintings reproduced in the