the publishing & media stories of mercury rx

writers' strikes, book bans, blue checks, and more

This Mercury Rx in Taurus, which finally ends today, has been a doozy. Running alongside eclipse season, it delivered some intense news for folks in media and publishing between April 21-May 14.

Mercury is the trickster who is in charge of all things writing and communication, and retrogrades are an opportunity to revise and rethink strategy — although sometimes, it’s also a time when negotiations go sideways, when we don’t hear each other, when we tell on ourselves, and when the bill otherwise comes due.

Here are some of the headlines, in chronological order. Interesting articles that I enjoyed throughout Mercury Rx are collected at the end for your reading pleasure.

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Buzzfeed Newsroom Shut Down

So technically this came April 20th, the day before Rx officially began, right at the seam between the shadow period and the official transit. But it’s major and has had an enormous ricochet across the field. Buzzfeed’s newsroom is Pulitzer Prize winning. This decision was a further gut of the new media landscape.

In addition, Buzzfeed laid off 15% of their staff — yet more media layoffs demonstrating the instability of the industry. This comes in the wake of Vox laying off 7% of its staff in January and of Vice currently seeking a buyer.

Twitter Blue Check Rapture (& Return?) 

Perhaps better known as the industry’s water cooler, Twitter’s demise has been bemoaned by me and virtually every writer, author, and freelancer I know. The blue check rapture was just the latest in a series of signs that the place so many of us have historically used to build and further our relationships in this industry is no longer available.  

But also, curiously, some blue checks returned? See lil nas x:

Tucker Carlson Out at Fox News

A spot of good news! Your least fave getting retrograded out of a job — purportedly, for a very Mercury Rx reason of racist texts coming to light.

The eclipses, however, were also at work. Carlson is a Taurus sun/moon with Saturn in Taurus (in the 11th house of community and friendships that support; he’s a Cancer rising). The Taurus/Scorpio eclipse cycle of these last few years has been hammering his (literal) network’s ability to cover for him — whatever it is they were covering.

He was fired two days before the Scorpio eclipse was exact. 

Florida Book Ban Targets Nora Roberts

A Moms for Liberty activist is mad that some Nora Roberts romances that literally end in heterosexual marriage are in school libraries. 

I’m tired, but let me say this. Dame Roberts does not often deign to get involved with the riff raff, but when she does, she wins. Of all the other white women in the world, Nora Roberts is the last one I would mess with. She sued a Brazilian author for (truly egregious) plagiarism in 2019 and immediately won an injunction blocking the sale of that author’s books. In 2018, author Tomi Adeyemi accused Roberts of copying a book title from one of Adeyemi’s books, and Roberts’ response so thoroughly decimated the accusation that it’s still something I think about. In the late 90s, Roberts took Janet Dailey to court for plagiarizing and settled out of court for what I presume was a lot of money because Roberts donated it all to literary organizations and charities.

Roberts has famously said, “If you plagiarize, I will come for you.” And I think we can add book bans to the list of things Roberts will fight. 

“All of it is shocking,” Roberts told The Washington Post of this attempted book ban. “If you don’t want your teenager reading this book, that’s your right as a mom — and good luck with that. But you don’t have the right to say nobody’s kid can read this book.”

Word.

Workers at Barnes & Noble Union Square Push for Union

The workers at the largest Barnes & Noble in the world are advocating for unionization here in New York City. Store management chose to not voluntarily recognize the union, so the 100+ workers have filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. 

This comes on the heels of B&N workers at Rutgers University and workers at a B&N in Hadley, Massachusetts also filing for their own union elections.

Solidarity with booksellers and unions now and always!

WGA Goes On Strike

Arguably the biggest news of Mercury Rx, with potentially the longest-lasting cultural consequences: the Writer’s Guild of America is officially on strike, shutting down production after production, show across show across Hollywood. 

On the off chance you aren’t familiar with the WGA strike, watch any interview with Brittani Nichols, a brilliant queer writer whose career I have avidly followed for years, who is a writer on Abbott Elementary and a captain for WGA and consequently one of the faces of the strike on the media circuit: 

Also, Vulture’s coverage and especially their daily recaps of what’s at the picket and what’s shutting down are some of the best out there.

The strike’s impact: You probably know that late night shows are all down. Already, the MTV Movie Awards had to go virtual because of the strike, and the Tony Awards are probably next. Shows whose production is delayed until writers return include The Last of Us, P-Valley, Stranger Things, Severance, Daredevil, Billions, Evil, American Horror Story, Blade, Good Trouble, and more. 

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Important Reads

For the New York Times, children’s author Maggie Tokuda-Hall was interviewed about her refusal to allow Scholastic to license her book Love in the Library after they required that she edit her author’s note to remove references to racism.  

In “tell me something I didn’t know,” Bookseller Survey Finds Debut Authors Struggle with Mental Health. But hey, at least studies back it up!

Tajja Isen, former EIC of Catapult, published an important, very Mercury Rx retrospective in The Walrus in the wake of media shutdowns and layoffs: All the Exciting Media Outlets are Dying. What Comes Next?

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On a personal note

In a season of queer book bans, I am honored that my memoir Heretic was a part of major book ban coverage as a part of Cosmopolitan’s first-ever Pride issue (both print and digital). Baby Jeanna would be, forgive me, so proud.

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P.S. I have 3 brand new, one-day seminars that I’ll be teaching over the next two months:

• How to Write a Query Letter, for nonfiction writers getting ready to query agents

• Writing the Hybrid Memoir, for memoirists who are also fans of Maggie Nelson and Melissa Febos

• Tell It Slant: Uncovering the Truth in Memoir, for memoirists who feel like, in telling their own story, they are betraying others

I hope to see you there!

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