Month: June 2017

Vega is one of the lucky ones; he has since been paid the $10,000. But plenty of his fellow journalists who worked for the magazine, myself included, are still awaiting checks. More than a dozen writers, most of them black, have broadcast the company’s mistreatment of freelancers on Twitter using the hashtag #EbonyOwes, sharing stories of ignored calls and excuses from Ebony’s accounts-payable department. Fourteen such writers have enlisted the National Writers Union, an industry association representing freelance journalists, to go after Ebony to recover $30,000 the magazine owes them collectively.

Many journalists say their ordeal has been distinctly painful because of their reverence and love for the 72-year-old Ebony brand, which has struggled to retain its relevance in the digital age and among younger audiences. They suspect the publication’s new owners may be taking advantage of their loyalty to the legendary magazine. Adding insult to injury, Ebony’s Twitter account has blocked many of its unpaid writers. “This company is riding a legacy,” Vega tells CJR, “and I don’t know how long you can ride a legacy.”

Trump is facing science-focused problems and issues with a key limitation: lack of staffing. As of June 6, Trump had announced a nominee for just seven, or 15 percent, of 46 top science posts in the federal government that require Senate confirmation, according to a Post analysis.

This failure to fill top science jobs across the federal government has become even more pointed in light of his Paris choice. Recaps of Trump’s decision-making process have highlighted many influences upon it, but none of them principally scientific in nature.

It’s also not clear whom he would consult for advice about climate change: Trump has not appointed a presidential science adviser, nor has he appointed a head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a lead federal agency that focuses on climate change science, or a chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Trump tweeted Monday that Democrats were “taking forever to approve my people,” but that wouldn’t apply in the case of these science jobs — because no one has been formally nominated yet.

Here’s a thought exercise: Imagine a Trump presidency without him tweeting. He wouldn’t have publicly accused Barack Obama of wiretapping him; he wouldn’t have threatened former FBI Director James Comey of possibly having “tapes” of their conversations; he recently wouldn’t have undermined the legal defense of his travel ban; and he wouldn’t have attacked London’s mayor after the terrorist attack on that city. Now he might have actually SAID these things in interviews or public comments (though when was the last time he held a news conference?). But we know about these controversial statements because he tweeted about them, and that’s been a significant problem for the White House.

The Alt Right is not a thing; it’s a number of things, all with white supremacy at their core. Southern Poverty Law Center categorizes far-right hate groups into 11 different categories: anti-immigration, anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, anti-government, Christian identity, Holocaust denial, Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead, and white nationalist.

“The word ‘Alt Right’ is repeated too much without a true understanding of the hate involved,” Heidi Beirich, who tracks far-right groups for SLPC’s Intelligence Project, told me. She is concerned that “the frequent use of the term is giving too much power to what is essentially just a rebranding of white supremacy—and the rebranding was done by white supremacists who know being called that is not good for their involvement in mainstream media.”

There was a brief lull as Nicola outlined a few policies that were never going to happen, and a few heads did go down at this point. But then she got to the crucial bit. When she’d previously said that she wanted a second independence referendum before the spring of 2019, she hadn’t quite absorbed the fact that most Scots didn’t appear to be in the mood for thinking about a second referendum right now.

So she wanted to be more flexible. She wasn’t saying no to a second referendum. Just that she’d like to be a little vaguer about her timings. The SNP would now only demand a second referendum when the time was right. And that time would be when Theresa May had messed up the Brexit negotiations so badly, every Scot would be begging for independence so they could remain in the EU. Then and only then.

After a quick flirty Q&A with the press, Nicola left the stage as another power ballad filled the hall. It had gone OK. Better than OK. Two people could play at being Supreme Leader. A fight to the death with the Pretender over who had the bigger mandate. When the time was right. Never forgetting that.

Four weeks ago, Wonder Woman arrived on tracking at $65M and just grew from there — to $75M three weeks out, and $90M a few days before its opening. Not only is that evidence of Warner Bros’ marketing machine working effectively, but it’s also an example of what happens when Rotten Tomatoes works in a tentpole’s favor, especially as there’s a groundswell of great reviews days before a film opens.

Against the Russia news onslaught the administration has adopted a novel stonewalling strategy. Henceforth, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the White House will now refer all questions about the investigation to Trump’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, as a classic crisis-communications fix. Spicer might as well have told the pressies that he was depositing all of their Russia questions in a black hole in a galaxy far, far away. Unfortunately for the president, he doesn’t turn invisible whenever he covers his eyes with his hands.