Since I’ve done two media-related posts in a row, let’s talk writing. Starting with former reporter Fred Clark’s comment that “bias often isn’t a left-right spectrum thing. It’s usually a Good News/Bad News thing. It’s about what news is celebrated as good and what news is lamented as bad.” (“cuo b
IIRC the example he once gave was when the painkiller Vioxx turned out to be dangerous. Newspapers focused on how this was bad for the company that made it — no more profits from Vioxx, stock prices falling — and not on the people who relied on Vioxx to ease their manage their pain. I thought that was a good point.
Stretching the topic, I can think of examples of that in fiction writing. The countless films and pulp adventures that assumed stopping an independence movement in the British Empire was good news — the rebels were either evil or misguided and the British Empire was a kind, caring overlord. Or stories were something awful happens to someone, wrecking their life, and it’s treated as, not necessarily good, but just. One of British writer Enid Blyton’s old school stories had the school snob all set to go to finishing school in Paris when her father gets seriously ill. It’s presented as good news for those of us who hated the character (I think I took it as such) even though it’s obviously a tragedy.
Likewise there’s no end of stories in which male-on-male rape is presented as a good thing. Sure, it’s horrible, but he’s learned now not to be so contemptuous of women who get raped. Or it’s the old “well we couldn’t get him locked up for more than six months but at least he’ll get sodomized a lot before he gets out!” I hate these tropes.
Now, links. First, Shannon A. Thompson on the difference between chosen ones and secret heirs.
“Viewers everywhere, all around the world, pay attention. They say, ‘Here’s this badass, I want to be that cool.’ When that happens, fictional bad guys stop being the precautionary tales they were intended to be. God help us, they’ve become aspirational.” — Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan on the problem of making bad guys look like the cool ones.
Can you copyright your joke, even if it’s original?
Marvel’s Tom Brevoort on how buying bad comics series subsidizes mediocrity. Vox looks at another variation on this.
“it was all squandered to prop up a plagiarism machine” — NanoWriMo dies after embracing AI.
The copyright battle between the old comic-strip character Skippy and Skippy peanut butter.
“Fandom certainly isn’t a space where these fans can escape from race/racism even if it is not something that is engaged with publicly or vocally.”
Why there’s lots of Christian rock on the radio.
The evolution of a paperback cover.
Gen Z rediscovers the library.
A BookTok influencer has been accused of scamming authors.
