New Yorker magazine alert thread

OK.

this post is kinda SPOILERY- which is to say that i think the article's really good & that scanning it might sorta foreshadow some of its finer bon mots:

i thought it was really moving! i guess we could have a girls-thread style interrogation into to what degree something is maybe only rewarding if particularly familiar, ie if you are eligible for it, but i found it very affecting (& new yorker-ish in tone, really, re: n/a's comment, ie have your cake and tweet it too). stupid happy, the line about rolled-up sleeves, reading enough of a thing only to determine that its author was smart, capturing the minutiae of parner's-watchful-parents dynamics (she noticed that i pick all the carrots out of my stir fry); i was entertained. it mightn't have fit in w/the magazine more generally, in the sense that it says fucking and dick-slapped in the first graf, but it seems so redolent of those tenderly-handled, semi-wistful memories you have of early romance, to me, part aware of its naivete but super evocative of its rapture - "i would watch his strong back as he rose from bed to get a mason jar of water and think, That's mine".

i thought the bossypants extracts were good also so ymmv

xpost I don't get it, Que, are you looking to play "gotcha" with that Trillin quote? All I said was the style of Fey's and Dunham's pieces stood out for me, but I didn't say it was unprecedented within the hallowed annals of the magazine or anything. And I found them all fairly entertaining, anyhow, so no big deal.

i just thought it was funny that you used the word casual to describe the pieces when the New Yorker has been running these kinds of pieces for a long time.

. . . and even called them casuals!

now ON IPHONE, current issue free

Speaking of mobile NYer, anyone know why my Asus Transformer (Android) can't use the Android app?

I cannot believe how hard it is to log in to the iPhone app. I've subscribed for years and there is no way in hell I'm getting into this thing. I can get into the archives online just fine.

I logged in okay, but it logged me out again, so could be a bug. btw nice that the editions are 27 mb and not 270 mb

It doesn't help that Conde is partially running the back end, so you can have two logins (NYer and NYer Archives) ... the UI on this thing is annoying (filled out an entire form, hit 'done' which of course didn't submit the form, it erased it). I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume their servers are being hammered by fanboys like me, and try again tomorrow

Feel free to describe the wonderful world which I am forbidden to enter

it's nice, I've not explored properly yet (sick) but the interface is more considered than slapdash

Just read Ryan Lizza's Paul Ryan article, pretty useless boilerplate bio stuff.

Just the latest in a recent string of know thine enemy pieces (see also: Newt, Koch Bros., other billionaire LA Republican fundraiser guy)

this no work 4 me

Looks like Claressa shields, the boxer profiled a couple months ago, will be trying to win gold tmrw.

hey, this is the fucking worst
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTiCulvL-lA

Fareed Zakaria: "Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 23rd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers."

"Time has suspended Zakaria for his offense"

i always kinda wonder if anyone ever genuinely does that by mistake -- like, reads something, silently absorbs its exact phrasing, and unknowingly regurgitates it -- or if the journalism industry is just filled with lazy ppl who believe they'll be the one who gets away with it, or 'everybody does it' or something. i assume zakaria's in the latter group, since his paragraph is virtually word-for-word plagiarism.

I was kind of idly wondering in the Zakaria thread about the chance it was unintentional. Part of my job involves writing, and sometimes a word will strike me as particularly apt or evocative, and then I'll realize/discover that it was in a source I just consulted. But usually it's just a single word or maybe a short phrase. I think you're right, though, about Zakaria -- it's hard for me to imagine someone unwittingly copying the shape and structure of a whole paragraph.

not every publication can have the same level of fact checking as the new yorker

i cant say i really care that zakaria barely reworded another writers paraphrasing of a book

otm

I think our obsession with punishing plagiarism is becoming hysterical.

I can't believe people do this? Like I don't even understand the impulse to steal words like that.

I think our obsession with punishing plagiarism is becoming hysterical.

Would you say the same thing about shoplifting? Probably not, right?

no because they're not the same thing

so plagiarism isn't stealing? what is it then?

Like jaymc said, anyone who writes a lot will unconsciously borrow words or even consciously emulate the way in which someone else's graceful or zingy sentence works. The trick is to catch it and rearrange it just so. It's Zakaria's misfortune to be caught stealing boilerplate.

Like jaymc said, anyone who writes a lot will unconsciously borrow words or even consciously emulate the way in which someone else's graceful or zingy sentence works.

This isn't just stealing, its lazy writing. It's too hard to take fifteen minutes and rework someone's words? Lazy.

it's kind of hysterical to imagine zakaria reading the original and, presumably, trying to think of a way to put his own spin on it, and then coming up with this:

lepore:

As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.

zakaria:

As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."

as least as lazy as your not reading my second sentence, def.

xpost

Fareed Zakaria, Author of the Texas.

this type of out-and-out plagiarism is some real bullshit but i'm kinda wary of the whole recent trend of charging writers with 'self-plagiarism' for stuff they've written for different publications -- if only because i, like i assume most writers, have a bunch of pet phrases that i use over and over again.

no i read your sentence. you seem to be suggesting that this in unconscious for anyone who writes a lot. i disagree.

Have recent self-plagiarism charges been about "pet phrases", though?

Like jaymc said, anyone who writes a lot will unconsciously borrow words or even consciously emulate the way in which someone else's graceful or zingy sentence works. The trick is to catch it and rearrange it just so. It's Zakaria's misfortune to be caught stealing boilerplate.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 10, 2012 8:53 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He's not "consciously emulating." He's stealing whole paragraphs and coming up with lazy little changes.

it's of course possible that Zakaria thinks the original sentence is worth steadling.

he didn't steal a "sentence." Did you even read what he wrote?

Yeah there isn't much graceful or zingy (zingy!) about the sentences he copied.

I'm referring to the sentences J.D. put side by side.

Have recent self-plagiarism charges been about "pet phrases", though?

― boxall, Friday, August 10, 2012 8:59 PM (5 minutes ago)

more on the order of reusing entire paragraphs (obv a very bad idea), but i worry that it's a slipper slope.

slippery, even.

has fareed zakaria ever had an original thought? every time i've read him he's sounded like the 'international studies' majors i knew in college who read the economist and would say things like 'well, you know, globalization has really changed the whole game.'

On "This Week" for a while in the mid 2000s he was like their pet Middle Easterner.

i cant say i really care that zakaria barely reworded another writers paraphrasing of a book
― max, Friday, August 10, 2012 8:43 PM

I don't "care," but I also think TIME should fire him.

with the whole shortage of paying jobs for ppl who write professionally thing i don't have any problems w/ one-strike plagiarism dismissals. plenty of talented writers out there who will always make up their own sentences.

i think it says something that it's the mediocre writers who always get caught doing this -- like, you can't imagine jill lepore ripping off a fareed zakaria piece.

uh-oh!

CNN also said it was suspending Zakaria because he plagiarized the same material for a CNN.com blog post:

“We have reviewed Fareed Zakaria’s TIME column, for which he has apologized. He wrote a shorter blog post on CNN.com on the same issue which included similar unattributed excerpts. That blog post has been removed and CNN has suspended Fareed Zakaria while this matter is under review.”

who are some writers that haven't been caught plagiarizing yet but you wouldn't be surprised if they were? tom friedman? david brooks? really most of the NYT op-ed ppl. my only consideration is that w/out googling i'm not sure friedman + brooks haven't already been busted.