What We're Reading: July 2024

July was a completely explosive month for news. People on social media are talking about how future historians will specialize in this era because so much has happened this summer so far. Suffice to say there are many spaces this month's edition of What We're Reading won't touch with a ten-foot pole, but we do have some articles that center the work we do as librarians at the Magazines and Newspapers Center. 

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Wait, does America really still employ a ton of news reporters?

Washington Post, July 12, 2024 online/July 21, 2024 in print

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SFPL database link

Print paper image link 

This article is enlightening for its reporting and also its format. First, it uses hard data to survey news industry jobs as a measurement of health of the journalism field. This ultimately tells us that jobs for traditional journalists are not keeping up with the population growth in the USA, and that some of our data gathering approaches are no longer accurate for representing the journalism profession in the year 2024. But secondly, in terms of format, there are essential differences between what you see on the WaPo website, what you get in the print paper, and what you get through library databases that provide the full text of the paper: the data charts. These charts are interactive on the WaPo website and are an integral aspect to an article filed under "Department of Data" and "analyzed" (not written) by Andrew Van Dam. In the print paper, the charts are present, but not interactive. In the library database, they are not included at all. Tricky indeed, but not insurmountable with the help of a Magazines and Newspapers librarian. 

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After 12 Years of Reviewing Restaurants, I’m Leaving the Table

New York Times, July 16, 2024 online/July 17, 2024 in print 

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SFPL database link (NYT replica version in PressReader)

How could a food critic in New York City want to give up his job? A visit to the doctor that rendered him technically obese is one motivator, but a close examination of his pathology for eating probably had more to do with Pete Wells's decision to step away from his food critic role at the Times. Besides interrogating humanity's sometimes complicated relationship with food, and making us all drool with descriptions of some of the food he's sampled, this article gives us the glorious phrase taco artery, in description of Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. Where's your city's significant taco artery? 

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‘A political earthquake’: Media coverage of Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race

Poynter, July 22, 2024  

Last month our WWR post was about the news outlets publishing calls for Biden to remove himself from candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. Since then Biden has done just that, while he was sick with covid and negotiating a historic release of prisoners from Russia. Yet, the most interesting aspect may be how his announcement was first released (on X, formerly known as Twitter) and when (while most of DC was sitting down to Sunday brunch) and then how it was subsequently covered. This opinion piece from Poynter's Tom Jones gives a thorough and rounded out summary of which outlet fumbled, which outlet scored, and what happened in between. 

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The Library Is a Commons

In These Times, July 15, 2024 

Outgoing president of the American Library Association (ALA) Emily Drabinski authored this feature article for the socialism issue of In These Times (which SFPL subscribes to in print). Drabinski, who ran for ALA president on a platform of being a queer Marxist, lays out the history of how U.S. public libraries came to be one of the most unique institutions in the world in that they are free for anyone to use and are wholly organized around contributing to the common good. Her main argument is that librarians are fighting capitalism by producing a public good every day they open the library.