I do not entirely understand this story, but in trying to, I've been reminded of Harper's mind-blowingly appalling history with HIV denialism and now I'm both angry and confused so it's like I'm Trump himself or some shit.
Anyone who could glance at the bloviated patrician stylings of Lewis Lapham over the past 20 years and still decide thay Harpers was worth reading has only himself to blame. Still, good on Cliffe - perhaps she can raise enough to prevent anyone from publishing Harpers ever again.
Of course, Lapham has been gone for a while but they now are apt to publish noted of-this-moment fool and horrible person Thomas Frank, so let them be destroyed, and painfully so.
I promised myself not to comment in this vein anymore so I should stop, but fuck Harpers.
When I was in college, I sent a short story to Harper's and got a really nice handwritten rejection, encouraging me to keep trying and saying nice things. I have no clue what I said in the cover letter but I probably admitted I was in college and didn't know what I was doing. So I have warm feelings towards Harper's for whatever entry level reader took the time to write me back.
Then I never submitted anything ever again.
That probably saved you tons of time.
Before you stop entirely, can you remind me why I'm supposed to hate Thomas Frank?
I wanted to be a writer when I was in high school and college, but I made the calculated decision that I'd loathe the hustle and rejection, and since I also enjoyed math, I could focus on math and get my writing fix on the side, nonprofessionally. That ended up working out pretty well for me, what with the invention of the world's most perfect writing outlet, the blog.
tbh, I feel some gratitude about the big HIV-is-a-hoax Harper's story b/c at the time I was a fairly new right-to-left convert and I needed a smack in the face to be reminded that just because somebody was part of my (new) tribe didn't mean they weren't full of shit. I became much more wary of lefty media after that and all for the better.
10 - not interested in a giant diversion of thread and won't participate in one, but if you're interested start here for the recent updates and then go back to this for the debunking of his most popular work.
14: K thanks, no further thread diversion necessary, will read on my own time
Sorry. That was my fault for indulging in ambient commenting bitchitude, not yours for responding. Cliffe is a good person doing a good thing and that should be the end of it.
Ambient Bitchitude needs to be a band or something.
As noted, Lapham hasn't worked there in years -- James Marcus is the current editor's name.
It's extra fucked up because it was a crowd-sourced list, the person who started it didn't make the list. I don't see what possible reason the editors have for thinking that one person's name is newsworthy.
Right. To be clear, the author's name is "newsworthy" enough in the narrow sense of being sufficient to avoid any legal liability for, eg, public disclosure of private facts. But Cliffe's response is exactly right - you can publish this stuff, but we don't have to let you publish our articles or read our magazine.
Also consider what this says about how little Harper's pays its authors. Unless Cliffe is quite wealthy indeed (from family money, one would have to assume) there is no way she could make the offer if Harpers paid more than, say, $1,000 per article.
Harpers, as recently as a few years ago, paid $2/word, which was very near the best out there. You don't get rich writing for magazines (especially as a freelancer).
Cliffe's husband is rich and retired at age 40 from a high level job at DE Shaw.
Well, then shelling out $40,000 (20,000 words per magazine? Roughly right? or so is nbd).
Well, in that case, what she's doing is just more neoliberal virtue signaling, I guess.
25 to 23.
24: yeah, the content side is probably pretty cheap at Harpers, though they pay their contributing editors a salary (or did), which is much costlier.
Yeah, as she put it on twitter explaining why she doesn't want to talk about it with other news outlets "having money doesn't make you that interesting and it definitely makes you NOT Norma Rae." She also got several offers from people to chip in to pay the writers (which she's declining because it'd be logistically annoying, which also tells you the amount is nbd).
That said, it's sure a better use of extra money than trying to discourage Puerto Ricans in Florida from voting or whatever else rich assholes are up to these days.
My prediction is that the endgame here is going to be news breaking that Jo/hn Ma/cAr/th/ur is a harrasser? That's gotta be why they're pushing this story, right?
Too direct. More likely, one of MacArthur's (or whoever the editor-in-chief is now) friends at some other publication either has been or is about to be exposed, and so clamping down on the movement (but thoughtfully! in soul-searching style from Kate Roiphe!) is just doing the right and necessary thing for a comrade-in-arms. Noble, really, when you think about it, and it can focus the true left back on the real issues of the day.
As a reminder, we also owe The Toast, for the time we had it, to that household's wealth.
I once completed, and mailed in the solution to, their double acrostic puzzle, and then received a year's subscription to Harper's, for my sins. I'm pretty sure that was the first and last time I've ever bothered to send in my answers to a magazine.
I'd have thought Harper's would be more worried about libel than that. If they publicise and link to this list, and it turns out that one of the names on it is innocent, liability would ensue...
Do you think I can convince Nicole Cliffe that Harpers was going to publish my article on the suffering of middle-aged nice guys in the #MeToo era?
33: I'm sure Harper's won't publish or link the actual list. As far as I know, the list is no longer available -- and wasn't even available when it was initially publicized weeks ago. But if anybody knows where the list can be found, let us know! I'm really curious ...
35: Where was it available when it was available? How was it circulated?
It was a google spreadsheet that was crowd-sourced and shared among friends.
37: So, there was someone who started it, but other people added to it and/or amended it.
I just found a video where someone scrolled through it. Didn't recognize most of the names, and the comments were so vague that I would be very very nervous about using it as the basis of anything, but it did include Lizza and Wieseltier.
If we have another kid, and she's a girl, we're going to name her "Lizza Wieseltier." Also, just to clarify, I was being sarcastic in 25.
I don't know if approaching it as "Harper's, you fuckers, fuck off" is the right approach, since probably nobody at Harper's is under 50 or has any conception of what doxxing is, but for that very reason if they become aware of it there's a good chance that they will be convinced the article is a bad idea. Then we just wait until some edgy and disruptive outfit like Gawker publishes the name instead.
Roiphe has apparently claimed that she's not planning to out anyone: https://twitter.com/TomKludt/status/951123921042137088
But who knows what that means, she's awful.
The two main options are that 1) They changed the article in response to the backlash or 2) They were never planning on literally releasing the name but are still planning to release enough identifying information that it might as well be the name.
I keep seeing the post title and thinking there's a band called The Doxxie Clicks.
44: Yeah. my strong guess is 1).
44: Or it was just a bullshit Internet rumor, and Harper's is being castigated unfairly.
Oddly, this prospect doesn't bother me at all. In this country, it is wise to kill a news outlet from time to time pour encourager les autres.
But then they would have denied it immediately.
34: I have these horrible ideas for jokes that I'm sorry that I feel compelled to share.
My latest is that now Ms. Roiphe is thinking she has to go with Plan B for how to generate buzz for her article -- list all the Shitty Media Men she's slept with.
Would cliffe's tactic have worked? I suppose if journalists hadn't submitted copy yet, they could withhold it, but once the copy is in the editor's hands I'm not sure the journalist has much power over it.
50: I demand vivid descriptions of weinstein in a sexy bathrobe. maybe a furry, melon-like gut.
51: She could be lying, but she's said it did work -- that she now 'has' a group of articles that had been accepted by Harpers and that she would be willing to matchmake with new outlets. Let me look for the tweet.
Here's her twitter -- if you read down she talks about having paid for articles to be pulled. The specific tweet I was thinking of must be a ways down. https://twitter.com/Nicole_Cliffe
Does she still need a furry, melon-like gut?
And here it is: https://twitter.com/Nicole_Cliffe/status/950881781896499200
And seems roiphe was going to id the list creator: https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/951192252306599937
And she paid for my "Reflections of a Middle-Aged Male Librarian on the MeToo era" article! That I haven't even written!
Non-clickers note 57 is a screengrab of the NYT article that just came out in this; they got a Harpers factchecking email that seems to corroborate the story.
I want in on some of peep's "pay me not to do stuff" game.
Or should that be "pay me to not do stuff"? Either way, it's a good game.
I had no idea writers had the ability to say "I'm taking my work back and here's your money." I don't see how this information will be useful to me, but I'm glad to have learned it.
Their ability to do so depends on DUH DUH DUHN copyright law.
Or rather, on exactly what moment they sign over copyright. Once it's signed over the authors have no say about anything.
Do they get the money before the sign? Or was Cliffe/Cliffle just paying them what they would have gotten, not what they had to give back?
Her tweet about getting paid by her being faster money than invoicing sure makes it sound like you don't get the money until after it's published. My only relevant experience is the NYTimes crossword, where I think that's how it worked (paid after publishing, not at acceptance).
Sort of. Freelancers generally don't assign or grant the entire copyright (or even part of it) in their work to a magazine publisher, they generally grant an exclusive license the work for first publication and retain the copyright. Since the license can usually be revoked by the copyright owner (the author) the author generally retains a lot of leverage until the publication occurs. After publication occurs, depending on the contract the author can get royalties from the publication in electronic databases, or not, and usually has full control over other uses of the work.
Of course, they could theoretically grant the entire copyright to publishers, or agree that the work was a "work for hire," but that's not generally the way the business is set up.
67 to 64. 65 I don't know from experience but I bet almost anything the actual payment doesn't happen until after publication.
Wait, do you have a published NYT crossword puzzle?
70: If I understand nicknames, her name is Alexander Alexander.
Which seems odd, is what I'm saying.
Going back, I guess the twitter account has been too active for too long to be fake.
Why can't her given name be Lexi ab initio? Culturist.
Going back, I guess the twitter account has been too active for too long to be fake.
According to wikipedia
She is a former World Karate Association world champion in karate-point fighting. Since 2014, she has also been an advocate for feminist issues in Hollywood.
Yup! Just one though, and it was a while ago. I think I mentioned it here the day it was out.
NYT definitely has the copyright for that and exploits the hell out of it without paying more for any later publications (syndication, books, etc.)
I think I would have remembered that. It must have been before I started here.
Okay, falling down the wikipedia rabbit hole . . . this is kind of interesting.
Alexander continued to work as a stunt performer while studying acting and directing at the Piero Dusa Acting Conservatory and UCLA. The first short film she directed, Johnny Flynton, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2003.
Johnny Flynton is a short film directed and co-written by Lexi Alexander. It was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 75th Academy Awards. Based on a true story and starring Dash Mihok in the title role . . . The film was shot on location in Birmingham, Alabama with a budget under $100,000. Alexander approached Hunter Films for assistance and self-financed the production, raising the money through her work in martial arts coaching over a course of six months.
In 1997, Dash Mihok met Alanis Morissette through friend Leonardo DiCaprio during a trip to Cuba. The lyrics to the songs "So Pure" from Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie and "That Particular Time" from Under Rug Swept are about him.
And just like that, I have gone from the news story of the day to Alanis Morissette in three steps.
Anyway, she doesn't sound like an easily intimidated person.
That not ironic, given how shitty that Not-John-Stamos guy treated her.
20k! Wow. Presumably that comes with the proviso to repay her out of any subsequent sales to the extent possible.
77 - that is a genuinely impressive and bad-ass achievement, (belated) congratulations. I had missed it, but will now look for the puzzle. I had heard that the NYT exploits the crossword submitters pretty horribly, especially since it's got to be a major profit center for them (at least, it's the only aspect of their business that currently gets any money from me, and I suspect I'm not alone).
83: So, is Lexi the only one coming forward as the creator or is this, as Nicole says, a Spartacus situation. Should I be preparing my confession?
We all already know you created the Shitty Library Men list.
What was 70?
I follow her on twitter, sorry to see she has deleted her account.
It was a Twitter account saying "I'm Spartacus."
88: https://thinkprogress.org/bad-media-men-creator-doxxes-herself-256d9a2c4b71/
Yup!
Hey, that's awesome. I had never done a grown-up crossword in my life, and we just a couple of weeks ago happened upon a book of NY Times crosswords that must have been a gift in some distant past, and have been really enjoying working on it.
Thanks, having followed her for a while 81 is very true.
OT: A very young woman just came into the bar. She.was dressed like an extremely colorful bag lady or a hippie who decided to carry her shopping bags She had a rainbow hola hoop, for example. Anyway, she asked the price of a shot of vodka before ordering, paid exact change for the shot, fended off two guys trying to chat her up, drank her shot, drank a glass of water, and left.
https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/moira-donegan-i-started-the-media-men-list.html
Turns out the puzzle was 10 years ago this week! And I shouldn't take too much credit, it's co-written with spouse (hrm, should have picked a married president).
Just did the puzzle. It was a good themer! And I don't know why more authors don't clue the CRUE -- seems like a useful crossword word. I mean not quite as useful as RATT.
Glad you enjoyed it! Took us 6 submissions, with 4 ejects, one revise and resubmit (turned out to be unfixable), and one accept.
I don't know who you are and I don't subscribe anymore, so I can't do it.
I'm losing track - so there are now three women who say they created the list? Alexander, Donegan, and whoever contacted Cliffe? (Because since she was "terrified" at the prospect of being named, I'm assuming she is not one of the other two who named themselves...)
Maybe they really are doing the Spartacus thing.
Just did the puzzle
My wife and I have been working on our first one for a week. I know practice helps, but...
Donegan seems to be the actual person.
102: Alexander is an ex-kickboxing champion -- I have the impression that her claim of authorship is less a serious attempt to take credit, and more an 'I am Spartacus' effort to attract some negative attention away from the actual author. On Donegan, I'm not sure what about the piece she wrote makes it implausible that she would have said she was frightened of being outed -- once Roiphe had her name, she was going to be outed whether she came forward or not.
once Roiphe had her name, she was going to be outed whether she came forward or not.
But surely stopping Roiphe publishing the author's name was the whole point of Cliffe's effort on the author's behalf? And it succeeded!
105: Sunday, which I gather means Thursday difficulty.
It just seems odd that Donegan would get in touch with Cliffe and say "I'm terrified of my name being linked to this list by Harper's" and Cliffe replies "I understand, I am going to throw $20k of my own money at pressuring Harper's not to do that"... and then Donegan says "thanks for doing all that to stop me being outed but you know what, I'm going to out myself".
110: Saturday isn't even fun for me.
109: Cliffe was trying to make a point that identifying this woman under these circumstances was something a decent publication shouldn't do or pay to have done, and if Harpers was going to pay for that sort of thing writers and advertisers would refuse to associate with it. But by the time Katie Roiphe and a bunch of Harpers editiors and factcheckers knew the name, keeping it actually secret long-term was hopeless. That's just too many people, at least one of them, Roiphe, actively hostile, to keep a secret.
So having Donegan step forward before the inevitsble leak doesn't seem weird to me at all.
People really do seem to be going out of their way to make #MeToo about anything but sexual harassment/assault. Between this and the "they're trying to outlaw flirting", I don't know which is worse.
113: ah, fair enough. I misunderstood Cliffe's objective in that case.
One of Cliffe's earlier tweets had said she hadn't spoken to the originator of the list but had gotten this information from two different people she'd reached out to after the fact-checker thing, ajay, and I can find it for you if you care but writing this is easier than bothering.
115: And I overstated about Cliffe's intent -- maybe she thought she could actually keep the name secret, and the stuff she said does read that way. But if she did think that, it seems patently silly to hope for, and completely unsurprising that Donegan assumed she was inevitably outed at this point.
My impression was that Cliffe had not spoken directly to Monegan (she said previously she didn't know who originated the list), and that the information she got was by talking to people who knew Monegan. She said relatively early on that if the originator of the list chose to out herself, that was fine with her and not contrary to her goals. https://twitter.com/Nicole_Cliffe/status/951156534100160512
I believe cliffe from the beginning articulated two different goals: 1) preventing the outing of the author of the list; and 2) laying down a marker within the industry to hold to account a widely-respected publication, pre-publication, face-to-face with the risks of doxxing monegan. goal #2 achieved and worth achieving.
Also want to hark back to recent passing convo hear on whether the political journalism at e.g., teen vogue is some *new* edgy innovation in the women's pages/beauty-fashion press - donegan's ny mag piece is posted in the cut, the fashion-beauty section. Current side at headlines include Brenda firing her corsetière, a Kardashian falling off a twig,* a plutocratic brownstone redecoration, and a what's up around town re design. Just below donegan's piece a think piece on id politics & pop culture. As a long time reader of women's journalism (I think I've got credibility on that front round these parts) this is representative of the range of topics on a week not dominated by fashion shows, a holiday run up or seasonal beauty launches. Including the politics and think pieces.
* I.e., doing something commercial with makeup.
I had been wondering why it was at The Cut.
Given the pace of Twitter vs. publication cycles, it's fun to see response pieces dropping today (there was just one at the Post) that treat Roiphe like she's not an enormous bald-faced liar. Roiphe's claim seems to have moved on from "I didn't know who wrote it and wouldn't have outed them" to "Donegan wouldn't talk to me, but I thought she might be willing to explain herself to a Harper's fact-checker".
Most freelancers are paid by invoice, and whether you raise the invoice the day you're accepted or published is kinda immaterial 'cause accounts payable are dicks and won't pay until the 20th of the month following three blue moons.
"accounts payable are dicks and won't pay until the 20th of the month following three blue moons."
If they happen to be in the mood.
So very much this.
That reminds me, I need to send in an invoice if I want money before taxes are due.