Text I received today (with photo).
Only in journalism.
To preface: Yes, I get emails from the AP Stylebook now. Just another perk of my new job.
In case you didn’t hear, people can now use “hopefully” as they’ve been using it for the last couple of decades and not technically be incorrect. I guess I should be happy that I will no longer waste time changing “hopefully” to “I hope that” when I edit, but I’m a little sad the times took over. Call me a dinosaur.
What’s next — “since” being allowed in purely causal situations? “Towards” being completely fine?
Fun fact: I remember being about 8 and reading a Baby-sitters’ Club book that contained a scenario of Claudia speaking with her genius older sister. She used the word “hopefully” and the sister (Janine? that sounds right) corrected her, saying “hopefully” should only be used to mean “in a hopeful manner.” It wasn’t until grad school that I offically learned she was right. Wish I’d paid more attention to that ghost writer’s grammar lessons back in the day.
From 18 to 22, music was like oxygen for me, as it was for many of my peers. In one three-day period in March 2009, I acquired 24 new albums, by artists ranging from Yo La Tengo to Neil Young. I listened happily at every hour of the day and night. But now, when reading or writing or thinking, I tend to go radio silent. Music is still important to me, but it no longer consumes me.
These days, being alone increasingly means letting my wall of sound come down.
“Yeah, so, this is funny. So, I drive down to Zanesville. My first interview is with Sheriff Lutz at one o’clock on a Monday afternoon. We talk for almost two hours, and I’m getting really excited about the story. I know I have one on the line, you know? So I said something like, “You know, it’d be awesome if you didn’t talk to anyone else about this.” And the sheriff said he had one more interview to do at three o’clock, and then he was done. I jokingly said, “So long as it isn’t GQ.” And he just kind of had a look on his face. I said, “Wait. Is it GQ?” And he said it was. I just about shit. I asked him four times if he was joking. What are the odds?”
The Classifieds: A Workplace Confidential
I found this New York Magazine piece absolutely fascinating. It’s exactly the kind of stuff I like: sort of gossipy back-room secrets from people in every walk of life. It feels like you get to peek inside different worlds.
Digging this.
| Stephen Colbert: | You used to be the managing editor of Newsweek, correct? |
| Mark Whitaker: | I was. |
| Stephen Colbert: | Okay, for some of my younger viewers, what was a “magazine”? |
2011 was a shitstorm, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. Nature behaved like an adolescent crystal-meth addict with rage issues. Tempests shook. Foundations trembled. It was the year when all that was solid melted into air and all that was clear grew cloudy and all that we assumed to be safe and obvious turned out to be dangerous and confusing. The world’s inner unpredictability, the chaotic messiness of the whole business, shuddered to the surface and ruined the luxury of calm and order. This year things simply refused to do what we expected. We zipped from one crisis to another, without time to grasp or to digest or to consider.
2011 really has been an insane year. Really, really, really, it has. This essay does a great job of summing it up. And on a more positive note, there were some pretty cool things that happened this year, too.
