Shoot it vertically
Stay in on rainy days
Dear friends,
I have this New York Times account that I log into once in a while.
It belongs to a(n) (ex-) fellow journalist who works for an American wire service – standard one without Games or Cooking subscriptions.
Since Behind the Cover – the video series by Gail Bicher and Jake Silverstein in which they discussed the making of NYT mag covers (typeface curation, photo distortion, object illustration and all) – went on hiatus, I’ve catched feature stories once in a while via its official Instagram.
Key coverages are now also curated and shared on the conglomerate’s Youtube feed. As I browsed the app yesterday, nonchalantly looking for some new faces of “a-day-in-my-life” girlies to heal my small-town soul, I bumped into an Instagram-alike post of an NYT story – first slide with a lede set in classic Georgia followed by square stunning pictures.
I’ve not intentionally watched TV for more than a decade now, first because there was no TV in my dormitory and then because I spent early years in my career sitting in front of a monitor covered by headlines flooding in from dozens of news agencies worldwide.
How do people get the news these days?
Unplugged from social media for one week and I find myself lagged behind easily. What’s going on in the Gaza Strip. I honestly don’t know.
Is it morally wrong to do so – being apathetic about one of the gravest current humanitarian crises as a consequence of minimizing my screen time?
Is staying online a firm form of activism?
Can you imagine people resharing Reels 3.5 billion (billion!) times per day?
A friend complained on her Instagram story the other day that the platform just silently removed a Palestine-related video she reposted.
The person had dived into her own world for so long we sometimes thought of her and wondered out loud where she was at.
Suddenly, she was everywhere in NYC parades, holding a watermelon sign cut out of cardboard.
It’s a profound belief among news folks that those Games and Cooking subscriptions have fueled extremely expensive investigations and reportages.
For those who are from inside, how can they cover their 3G bills?
Till next time,
T.
P/S: send me some words for the old/new year!
This week’s top picks
Now that Pitchfork is merged with GQ
Ownership of the right to tell a story well discussed
A song for the last couple days of the year