The New York Times - USA (2020-08-09)

2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020

CORRECTIONS PAGE 17

CROSSWORD THE MAGAZINE, PAGE 46 OBITUARIES PAGES 26-

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WEATHER PAGE 24

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VIDEO What happens now that no one has a reason to dress up? This week’s “Behind the Cover” video previews The Times Magazine cover story, “Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Col- lapsed,” which examines the pandemic’s impact on clothing trends. nytimes.com/magazine

AUDIO The latest playlistby our music critics includes the first collabora- tion between Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, plus new tracks from Jamila Woods, Chika, beabadoobee, Mary Chapin Carpenter and more. nytimes.com/music

LEARNING NETWORK Ready to write?The Learning Network has posted 18 photos and illustrations from its “Picture Prompts” series to inspire stu- dents to create short stories. nytimes.com/learning

QUIZ Anosmia is what defining symp- tom of Covid-19? In a South Kore- an study of mostly younger adults infected with the coronavirus, what percentage never developed symptoms? Challenge your knowledge with our weekly health quiz. nytimes.com/well

August 9, 1942.Six Nazi saboteurs, who arrived in the United States from U-boats with a mission to attack civil infrastructure, were executed in the electric chair in the District of Columbia. Two other members of the plot were given prison sentences. When the men rowed ashore in New York and Florida in June 1942, they were “armed with explosives to wreck United States war industries,” The Times reported. A member of the Coast Guard helped foil the plan when he confronted four of the infiltrators on a Long Island beach. Subscribers can browse the complete Times archives through 2002 at timesmachine.nytimes.com.

On This Day in History A MEMORABLE HEADLINE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

6 NAZI SPIES DIE

In 2012, Jason Stallman, then The Times’s deputy sports editor, invited a few colleagues to join his new magazine-article discussion group, which he called Pop-up Book Club. The first rule of Pop-up Book Club was: You do not talk about books. The name was meant to be ironic, based on Jason’s theory of book clubs. They have three kinds of people in them, he explained when I asked him recently: those who openly admit to not reading the book, those who pretend they read it but didn’t, and then one annoying person “who actually read the whole thing and is eager to rumi- nate on all its contours.” (As is so often the case when someone who doesn’t belong to a book club opines on the subject, that theory was not 100 percent true, but never mind. The point was that Jason didn’t want to talk about books; he wanted to talk about journalism.) What he proposed wasn’t really a club, either: It was open to anyone who was willing to come to work a little early and felt excited about having an away-from- the-daily-schedule conversation. Pop-up Book Club was terrific. We listened to podcasts, read prizewinning newspaper articles, revisited classic pieces, unearthed hidden delights and slogged through long, self-indulgent, first-person magazine articles by writers who believed they were more important than the subject. We argued about what worked and what did not. The fun part was the talking. Ben- jamin Weiser, a Manhattan federal court reporter and a Pop-up Book Club enthusi- ast, said, “What’s great is that we decon- struct articles that none of us is involved in, and we get to think hard and talk about what we do and how we do it.” Word got around. The group moved from meeting every morning for a few minutes to meeting three times a week to meeting once a week for maybe 20 minutes or more. People from a number of depart- ments came, an unusual occurrence in a large, segmented newsroom. We learned how our colleagues went about their jobs, and more. “I learned what my boss at the time, Joe Sexton” — then The Times’s sports editor, now a senior editor at ProPublica — “considered a fraud and how various people felt about the word

‘twee,’ ” said Naila-Jean Meyers, an origi- nal member who is now a sports editor at The Star Tribune in Minneapolis. Several authors came in to talk about their pieces, including the veteran Times reporter John Noble Wilford. He presented his historic front-page article from July 21,

Its quiet opening paragraph was
thrilling, stunning in its simplicity: “Men
have landed and walked on the moon.”
Then there was the urbane Gay Talese,
who swanned in to discuss his legendary
Esquire article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,”
a New Journalism gem from 1966. He
appeared in full Talese-ian regalia — the
hat, the suit — and carried with him an
arsenal of delicious anecdotes as well as
the notebooks and storyboards he used.
“It was like a time capsule of journalism
from the 1960s,” Naila said.
What came out of Pop-up Book Club?
Romance: At least one marriage and one
(that I know of ) fling emerged from the
excitement of those early-morning discus-
sions. Podcast Club: a renegade spinoff.
And now, This Is Good, essentially Pop-up
Book Club under another name, moved to
YouTube and repurposed for the pandemic
era with a smaller cast of characters.
Every Wednesday, we talk to one an-
other from our living rooms (or, in the case
of Azam Ahmed, our bureau chief for Mex-
ico, Central America and the Caribbean,
from what appear to be mysterious undis-
closed locations) to discuss a work. Once a
month, readers can sign up to watch from
home. The next meeting is on Aug. 12.
I miss my colleagues, and it’s nice, when
the world feels so uncertain, to have this
little slice of time to consider together the
things that made us want to be journalists.
Our group comprises writers (like me) and
editors (like Jason). We bring different
perspectives to the table, by which I mean
that the editors are meaner, more impa-
tient and less forgiving than the writers.
One of our favorite things so far was
“The Watcher,” a 2018 piece from New
York Magazine. We all loved it but had
conflicting views about the author’s bold
decision to withhold a crucial detail until
the very end. We never resolved the issue,
but that was the point.

Inside The Times

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Club That Sharpens Our Craft

This Is Good will meet on Aug. 12 at noon E.D.T. To watch, R.S.V.P. at timesevents.nytimes.com.

It began as a way to discuss great journalism. Now you can view a meeting.

By SARAH LYALL

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