Slate Plus

Sentient Bag of Money

The Slate Plus Digest for Oct. 27.

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Relax! It’s the Slate Plus Digest.

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I emailed you about this already today, but you’re listening to the first episode of Reconstruction: A Slate Academy, right? It’s in your feed. When you’ve finished, here is some reading to tide you over until the next episode.

From Slate

This week we asked Slatesters to recommend their colleagues’ work, in the kind of mutual back-pattery that has made the media industry so widely beloved. Executive editor Allison Benedikt picks Heather Schwedel on James Comey’s recent tweets: “This is a perfect Heather post—she’s not just making fun of Comey, she kind of likes him and his tweets.” And staff writer Katy Waldman liked Ruth Graham’s review of Ivana Trump’s memoir. “Tonally, it’s perfect—this merry dissection of terrible people.”

Director of strategy Bill Carey points to editorial director Josh Levin’s post about an online dispute between basketball players: “He spotted something the rest of us hadn’t seen and wrote a hilarious post with a great headline and kicker. What more could you ask?” Levin himself cites Mark Joseph Stern on the Jane Doe abortion case: “Mark was the first to make the comparison to Dred Scott, which was borne out by opinions of the D.C. Circuit court.” Stern calls senior editor Jeremy Stahl’s reporting on Colin Kaepernick’s possible lawsuit against the NFL “the clearest, strongest piece on the issue. After reading it I felt really smart and talked about it authoritatively on the radio as though it was my idea. Thanks, Jeremy!” Stahl points to the latest episode of our video series Who’s Afraid of Aymann Ismail? “I really admire Aymann’s interview style—this episode highlights how good he is at confronting people with interesting and difficult questions. His natural empathy shines through and forces them to face these things.”

Associate art director Lisa Larson-Walker praises Justin Peters’ close-reading of Fox News’ Eric Trump coverage. “I will be thinking about the phrase sentient bag of money for the next 40 years.” Meanwhile, science editor Susan Matthews thinks you should read Peters’ review of a $60 Bluetooth-enabled fork. “He found so many good ways into the subject! Every line is funny.” Justin wins the week, apparently.

Future Tense editor Torie Bosch brings up Aaron Mak’s post on why Lil B was suspended from Facebook: “It’s a terrific scoop, wonderfully written.” And news editor Chad Lorenz was relieved by Willa Paskin’s review of Stranger Things Season 2: “The first season was so great, and Willa wrote this review that captured what was so great about it and reassured us that the next season was also good.”

Not From Slate

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Gabriel Roth
Editorial director, Slate Plus