October surprises
I had no idea, when I planted it, that this blueberry bush would turn such a glorious crimson in the fall. It blazes like a torch in the back yard, and I’ve admired it every day for a couple of weeks now, along with the yellow leaves of the native catalpa (a volunteer) and the Eastern redbud (planted by the excellent folks at Casey Trees).
I see red and yellow when I step outside, but I’m manifesting blue in next week’s election. DC’s a safe bet for the Democrats, so I’ve channeled my election energy, a jittery mix of anxiety and optimism, into writing letters to voters in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (all actual states, unlike poor disenfranchised DC) with the nonprofit group Vote Forward. I don’t know if a handwritten letter will motivate someone to get up and vote, but it’s worth some hours of my time to give it a shot.
One big, very bad October surprise close to home: The Washington Post’s publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, made the shocking announcement that the paper would not endorse a presidential candidate, even though the editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris.
The Washington Post’s publisher said Friday that the paper will not make an endorsement in this year’s presidential contest, for the first time in 36 years, or in future presidential races.
The decision, announced 11 days before an election that most polls show as too close to call, drew immediate and heated condemnation from a wide swath of subscribers, political figures and media commentators.
The decision not to endorse was an unreservedly terrible (and terribly timed) move on the part of the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, who then made the situation worse by writing an op-ed about how Americans don’t trust the news media and how endorsements don’t matter anyway. As of today, there are more than 22,000 comments on that op-ed, most of them scathing.
Oh, but it gets worse. NPR’s David Folkenflik reported on Monday that more than 200,000 Post readers had cancelled their subscriptions in protest. Today on X (FKA Twitter), he updated that number to about 250,000, or approximately 10 percent of paying readers. Even for Jeff Bezos, that’s got to be a tough number to swallow Folkenflik’s piece also talks about the Post editors and writers who have publicly protested the decision, many of them using their Post platforms to do that.
Here’s humor columnist Alexandra Petri on the situation:
But if I were the paper, I would be a little embarrassed that it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to make our presidential endorsement. I will spare you the suspense: I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them.
I admire the integrity and courage of Petri and the other journalists (including the Post Guild) who have pushed back hard against management. They should never have been put in this position—and at a time when the fate of the nation stands on a knife’s edge. Editorial boards have a duty, I think, to weigh in. The Post’s non-endorsement has gotten the most pushback, but unfortunately it’s not the only major paper to wimp out. The Los Angeles Times and USA Today have also announced they won’t endorse a candidate. I’m not cancelling my Post or LAT subscriptions, but I understand the impulse. If you do cancel, please put those $$ toward supporting another outlet (like The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Guardian, Pro Publica, or a local media source you admire) doing the good and necessary work of holding power accountable.
The Post fiasco has been hard to watch for personal as well as civic reasons. It makes me sad, and angry. I worked at the paper for 10 years and still write for it sometimes. I have friends who do great journalism there, and it’s one of the first news sources I check in with every day. Of course I love the books coverage, and the Post Climate team has been breaking some of the best stories on the ever-more-important environment beat. I could go on.
New work this month: The NEH’s Humanities magazine asked me to do a quick profile of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which just won a National Humanities Medal. I was glad to have a chance to catch up with what’s happening at Mellon—the nation’s largest private funder of arts, culture, and the humanities, with an endowment of $7.9 billion as of late 2023. It played an outsize role in a lot of the work I wrote about as the humanities reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Ed back in the day. A lot’s changed in the last few years, as Mellon has shifted from a more behind-the-scenes grantmaking approach to one that emphasizes social justice:
The Mellon Foundation began investing in the arts and humanities at the end of a turbulent decade in American history. Now it’s being honored with a National Humanities Medal for its work during another tumultuous era for the country.
Mellon has often wielded its considerable influence more behind the scenes than in public. In June 2020, a month after the murder of a Black man, George Floyd, by white police officers in Minneapolis set off nationwide protests, the foundation announced a “major strategic evolution” that put social justice front and center, under the auspices of its president, Elizabeth Alexander.
For a deeper dive into where Mellon’s putting its dollars these days, read this excellent Los Angeles Times profile by Carolina A. Miranda about Alexander and the Monuments Project, a $500 million investment in reshaping the country’s public memorial spaces:
The project is incredibly ambitious, a national effort to make sure that the commemorative landscape “more accurately tells our collective histories.” It has led to shifts — big and small — in how public places are presented and what is even considered a monument. In Idaho, a $1.5 million grant from Mellon is supporting the physical preservation of El Milagro, a labor camp built by the Farm Security Administration in 1939 that housed migrant workers from around the U.S. and the world. In New Jersey, the foundation contributed $350,000 toward the creation of a monument to honor abolitionist Harriet Tubman, installed last spring. In Kansas, it helped fund the relocation of a 28-ton boulder that was sacred to the Kaw Nation to parkland owned by the Kaw.
Reading: I’m partway through the audiobook of Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. I listen to a chapter a day, as he recommends. Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals hit me hard, in a clarifying way, and I’m finding this one salutary as well. Better to get something done, however small, than sit around and dither about all the things I could and should do.
Watching: I had a solo week last week while my spouse was out of town helping his parents, which gave me absolute command of the remote control. I took the chance to finish up S2 of “The Rings of Power,” and to my surprise I would up kind of liking it. I’d even watch a third season.
Voting: Of course I did. I hope you will too if you haven’t already, even if the Post won’t tell you who to vote for. I think you already know.
Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Jen
Thank you for the update on the Mellon Foundation and Elizabeth Alexander! I hadn't heard they received this award.