This Week’s Highlights:
The week’s most encouraging data is people rebuilding discovery of culture by hand. Bookstores are booming even as literacy declines (Lit Hub), summer box office has surged (Deadline), and the Book of the Month Club is somehow cool again (Publishers Weekly).
Against that, the machinery of choosing is consolidating fast. Penske Media swallowed what was left of Vox to become the world’s largest digital publisher (TheWrap), Fox spent $22 billion on Roku (Hollywood Reporter), and the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger approval drags on (MSN). Consolidation everywhere.
In Washington, a federal court ordered the Kennedy Center to produce a plan just to stay open (The New York Times). Then the Center board created an endowment named for Trump (CBS News). A House committee moved to axe the Education Department’s only arts grant program (Hyperallergic).
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
