Here are some articles that grabbed the attention of Magazines and Newspapers Center staff this month. It's a fun balance of cheerful articles, surprising reportage, and more developments in the realm of artificial intelligence, which is already affecting newspapers, magazines, and other online information sources. Resources are available with an SFPL card in most cases.
Two Of a Kind
Apollo: The International Art Magazine, January 2024
Apollo's cover story talks about the final months in the life of the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh, when he was under the care of a doctor that was pretty similar to himself. Depressive and battling his own mental illness according to Van Gogh, Gachet was a patron of the arts, a collector, and an amateur print maker. As part of the treatment, Gachet prescribed Van Gogh to paint and accepted the artist's paintings as payment for his medical treatment. Gachet had a very impressive collection of paintings that he had amassed, and fifteen years after Van Gogh's death, Gachet loaned the two paintings in the image above—a portrait Van Gogh painted of Gachet and a Van Gogh self portrait—to a major retrospective of Van Gogh's work.
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I Am Going to Miss Pitchfork, but That’s Only Half the Problem
New York Times, January 21, 2024
(Note: this opinion piece is linked as a gift article; you can set up your own free NYT access with a 72 hr access code to view website-only content. See instructions.)
Another one bites the dust—this time Pitchfork is being folded into GQ—but opinion columnist Ezra Klein points out the bigger problem in journalism and media.
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Sports Illustrated’s Strange Merger
Bloomberg, January 23, 2024
(Note: you might need to create a free account on Bloomberg to read this article. Our apologies that we're not able to link this one through SFPL resources.)
Levine gets down to the convoluted financial reasons that contributed to Sports Illustrated publishing AI-generated stories on its website last year. Less convoluted will be the webinar we host next week featuring Maggie Harrison Dupré, journalist at Futurism.com, who broke the original story of the AI pieces on the SI site. Read Levine's piece and join us on Feb. 9 at 11 a.m. PST for the Harrison Dupré talk. See more details and register on the SFPL event listing.
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These women discovered they were siblings. Then, they found hundreds more. It has taken a toll.
USA Today, January 23, 2024
Thanks to 23andMe, Jaclyn Frosolone discovered she had hundreds of siblings because her mother used an anonymous sperm donor to conceive her. What's more, the donor's DNA was riddled with genetic predispositions for a variety of painful medical conditions that she shares with these newly discovered siblings. This piece dives into the mind-boggling ways and means of sperm banks while profiling one brave woman who stepped forward to tell her story.
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A Master of Cold Cases: Sunnyvale Detective Has Cracked Killings That Go Unsolved For Years
San Francisco Chronicle, Dec 31, 2023
Matt Hutchison, member of the Sunnyvale public safety task force, has solved eight cold cases when he has free time away from his other assignments. The elaborate plans and dogged thinking covered in the story are fascinating--like how he managed to orchestrate collecting DNA evidence by posing as a trash man. Also interesting is the way Sunnyvale manages its public safety employees, cycling them through police duties, firefighting duties, and EMT duties. When it's easy to see the gulf between the plot of a detective television show and real life, a person like Hutchison gets profiled in way that restores your faith in humanity.
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The Rebirth of Local Journalism
New York Times Morning Newsletter, December 22, 2023
(Note: this NYT newsletter piece is linked as a gift article; you can set up
your own free NYT access with a 72 hr access code to view website-only
content. See instructions.)
Speaking of restoring one's faith in humanity, how about some restoration in the faith of journalism? In an era beleagured by newsroom staff layoffs and the folding of magazine publications, we take delight in this round up of the best pieces investigated and written up by local journalists. Take for instance reporters Justin Hicks and Jess Clark who followed an impossible school bus route for a story by Louisville Public Media.
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Thank You For Screaming
Meanjin Magazine, Summer 2023
We have this Australian literary/cultural magazine on display in our beautiful reading room on the 5th floor of the Main Library (link to catalog record), which is where you'll have to come to read this short memoir. (Or, email mnc@sfpl.org for some help.) The author finds herself in a Berlin U-Bahn station with an unconscious person on the tracks and a train fast approaching. Will the person survive? Is the author a good person? All important moments of suspense driving the narrative.
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I Must Be Dreaming
Bloomsbury, 2023
Ok ok, it's not an article from a magazine or newspaper, but it's a book from everyone's favorite New Yorker cartoonist, Roz Chast! As Library Journal puts it, "[Chast presents a] wide-ranging and thoroughly charming exploration of her lifelong fascination with deciphering the dream world inside her mind at night." After all the seriousness in the world, we appreciate the levity. Follow the link in the title to get it as a physical or electronic book through the SFPL catalog.
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