"Tortoise agreed to invest £25 million ($31.9 million) in the British title over the next five years and has pledged to keep publishing the print edition of the approximately 230-year-old paper. Under the terms of the deal, the Scott Trust will become a key shareholder in Tortoise Media." - Bloomberg (MSN)
Lianhuanhua, read by children and adults alike, are palm-sized books with two or three lines of text and one image per page, and they became hugely popular in the early 20th century. But their storylines, often traditional tales, frequently incorporated magic and the supernatural — anathema to Mao Zedong Thought. - History Today
"Nearly 500 journalists are on strike at The Guardian and its sister paper, the Sunday-only Observer, to protest the planned sale of The Observer to a small digital startup. … Says (star reporter) Carole Cadwalladr, 'The sale of The Observer to a loss-making startup is potentially the death of this historic brand." - NPR
As AI-powered publishing balloons, the sheer market volume may make it difficult for these publishers to stand out. They’ll have to adapt. - Fast Company
Forensic linguistics, as the practice is called, has been a key tool in both identifying perpetrators (most famously, the Unabomber) and exonerating the wrongly accused. - The Dial
“In total, ChatGPT returned partially or entirely incorrect responses on 153 occasions, though it only acknowledged an inability to accurately respond to a query seven times,” said the researchers. - TechCrunch
The series at the Free Library of Philadelphia regularly attracted both A-list authors and large, enthusiastic audiences. Then, this past summer, the entire Author Events staff resigned with one month's notice but were fired the next day. Here's a look into why that happened and what's come since. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
Lisa Ko “was subjected to weeks of harassment as well as a broader smear campaign in the media which resulted in a loss of professional opportunities,” and many of her fellow authors will not have it. - LitHub
What would Jane Austen - who adored Lizzy - “have made of her modern readers’ more recent obsession with the middle Bennet sister, the plain and unremarkable Mary?” - The New York Times
At least, at the OED. "It’s been quite a journey for “brain rot,” which triumphed over a shortlist of contenders including 'lore,’ 'demure,' 'romantasy,' 'dynamic pricing' and 'slop.'" - The New York Times
"The author was Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, just 23 years old when his novel was published in 1938 and a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. In 1935, he had made his way across Europe to reach Britain, where he was promptly classified as an 'enemy alien' and interned.” - The Observer (UK)
Robin Wall Kimmerer takes her students out on two-week-long foraging field trips, plants trees that will better meet the climate changing nature of her area - and writes another book. - The New York Times
Instead, it’s time. “Pundits and parents alike have emphasized preprofessional courses and downplayed the importance of humanistic study. ... In this environment, spending hours reading a novel may seem unproductive.” - The Atlantic
The company is seemingly “just trying to speed up” self-publishing “in a way that won’t work well, and of course, they don’t want to call it that”, said Marco Rinaldi, co-host of Page One – The Writer’s Podcast, in a post on Bluesky. - The Guardian
