Summer is on my mind. While the thermostat is creeping up far too slowly for my liking, it is rising. I work in academia, so summer also means I have more hours of my day back for thinking, writing and, most importantly, reading.

Here’s a couple books to help you revel in the horror, the ecstasy, and yes, the nostalgia of the summers of youth.

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker: This short novel knocked me on my ass when I read it a few months ago. It follows Janet, the eldest daughter of an eccentric family who can’t fit in wherever she goes. It’s a deeply feminist work concerned with how girls push back against authority, and how they are punished for doing so.

Penance by Eliza Clark: Why do girls kill? That’s the central question in this novel by Eliza Clarke. The book is written like it’s a controversial non-fiction true-crime novel — the imagined journalist writing the book fabricated fictional scenes based on interviews sources say were wildly misinterpreted. But the reader can see past the misogyny that underpins what the imagined writer thinks drove a murder.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? By Lorrie Moore: I had never heard of this book untill it was recommended to me by one of my MFA mentors. But it should be a classic: it’s a heat-soaked piece of nostalgia, a book about listless summers and coming of age in a small-town. Fans of the film Adventureland will also appreciate the amusement park setting.

The Honeys by Ryan La Sala: I love this book for centering a non-binary teen finding themselves at the summer camp where a hate crime was committed against them AND for being a totally unique and weird horror concept. La Sala also does a brilliant job subverting our expectations of what a clique might do.

Jawbone by Monica Ojeda: Fair warning that this book is not for the faint of heart — it goes into some truly dark places. Ojeda’s book follows the intense relationships between a group of teen girls, the teacher that is barely hanging on to sanity, and the god the clique creates. Like I said: not for the faint of heart.

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman: The first intense relationship a girl has will likely be with a friend. Girls On Fire, a criminally underated book released in the mid-aughts, goes all the way into the murder and mayhem that can be unleashed when those friendships ratchet up into intensity.

Plucky Notes

…is on hiatus until June 16th!

I have been very distracted for the last four months. You see, I have a trip coming up.

Not too long after sending this email, I’ll be hiking 150 km across Scotland. Afterwards, I’ll be doing some slightly more bougie travelling in the area. It’s partially a gift to myself for graduating from my MFA program last year, and to celebrate my upcoming—gulp—40th birthday. (I’m still 39 for about six months, a fact I am white knuckling on to.)

But it’s not just the opportunity to relax. The pressures of life have been a lot lately. It’s not that you can’t write under those circumstances; certainly I have been able to get the writing done that I have to do for work. But every time I’ve opened my fiction-works-in-progress, my palms get a bit sweaty. I haven’t had an idea for a new short story, novel or movie that makes me go “hell yeah, I want to write that” in what feels like ages. In short, it fucking sucks.

I realized something recently. All of my creative fiction and nonfiction is somehow related to travel. One short story I’m shopping right now takes place at Disneyland. I wrote it a few months after I visited the theme park. Another story was inspired by a passing conversation I overheard between two Met Museum security guards in New York. (That was a work trip, but I still managed to sneak some downtime in.) A new personal essay of mine is the story of a haunting experience I had in Hiroshima. I wrote a majority of the first draft while travelling through Greece a few years ago, a trip where the only goal was supposed to be swimming and eating.

It appears my version of relaxing is getting away somewhere to see and do enough that creative ideas spark. I know it’s definitely what I hope comes out of this upcoming trip. I’ve been thinking about how I create those conditions that blow the creative cobwebs out. Here are a few suggestions on how to create a writing trip of your very own.

A destination that fits your vibe

I don’t know how most other people pick vacation destinations, but for me, it often starts with a feeling. For example: I’m hiking not because I’m such a great outdoors person, but because I have become enthralled with the idea of challenging myself physically. I also wanted to see the landscape of the Scottish Highlands on foot. Given both the hiking infrastructure in the UK and the lack of apex predators, it felt like a good, safe place to give it a try.

I don’t necessarily recommend picking a place to go with the specific intent to write about it, unless you’re doing research or nonfiction travel writing. Instead, try to tune into what it is that’s calling you to escape. Do you want get lost in massive crowds? Do you want to eat the freshest fish you’ve ever had? Do you just want to stare at the ocean while gently buzzed on all-inclusive booze? Follow that feeling and see where it takes you.

A good walking shoe

My preferred mode of sight seeing is to walk as much as possible. I can easily do 20k steps a day on vacation. So I encourage it if you’re able. (If you’re not, using transit like buses, or even keeping the windows down while you cab also can give you a similar experience.)

It helps if you can rock some cute shoes while you do it. I’d look for one that have a solid cushion, good structure and that can transition to all types of settings.

I officially joined the Salomon cult last year and pretty much walk and hike everywhere in XT-6s. They tout something called pronation control. Could be clever marketing, but, as someone with a lot of hypermobility issues, I have never once rolled my ankles while wearing these. Salomon’s are really popular right now, for good reason—they can be styled up or down with ease. The price point isn’t low, but you can find last year’s styles on sale. I’ve picked pairs at Winners and I often see them on Poshmark.

A bit more cushioning can be handy if you’re doing a lot of days on gravel or hard cobbles. Aside from Salomon’s Aero Glide line, I also have had a lot of success with Asics Novablasts and Adidas Ultraboosts. (Adidas tends to have good mark downs, so can be a more economical choice if you’re not married to colour.) These also double as my running shoe for trip jogs.

Birkenstocks are a classic for a reason. They are comfy yet solid, and come in enough colourways and styles that you can use them for long walks or to go out. My Arizona Big Buckles spent all night at Mykonos clubs a few years ago.

Lastly, any shoe can be super comfortable if you have either custom orthotics or an insert like Dr. Scholl’s. I use mine in my Dr. Marten’s and can walk for hours in them during cooler weather.

A notebook, or two, or three…

Listen, do most of us end up travelling with a laptop or tablet? Of course. But if the goal is to get the muse to strike, you won’t have control over where that happens—or that you’ll have your WIP handy. And sure, we all have phones. But let’s romanticize our lives a bit. Let’s log off while we travel. Bring a damn notebook.

There is a rabbit hole of notebook systems and styles you can travel down. (I still am!) I’ve tried some, like the Traveler’s Journal notebook, but eventually found that I found that size constricting. Hobonichi notebooks have a rabid fandom and, it must be said, some gorgeous covers and pockets that definitely suit travel. That said, if you’re just getting into this, I recommend trying more affordable options and playing around with what works for you.

My travel journal system now looks like this: A very small Moleskine pocketbook that can be stashed in almost any purse, my daily-ish Lechturn A5 sized journal, and an B5 Stalogy notebook I use for working on creative projects. I also carry a small Midori pencil case with pencils (I like to annotate as I read — see next section), small tabs, fountain pen refills, and maybe, depending on the length of trip, my Canon Ivy Mini-Printer. It’s also where I save any paper ephermera I may want to paste into any of the journals. I’m big on multimedia scapbooking or junk journaling, whatever you want to call it.

There’s so many of these brands to get into, but I’d also recommend using the trip as an excuse to go stationery shopping abroad—what better souvenir to bring home than a notebook!

A book that tells you about where you are

The first time I went to France, it was on a family trip my parents spent years saving up for. One of our first stops was the famous bookstore Shakespeare and Co. — in the pre-Instagram era, there were no lines to get in. I bought The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Three Musketeers. Reading both novels there, in the city the authors set them in, brought Paris to life for me that just sightseeing never could.

Ever since, I try to bring at least one fiction book by an author from the country I’m visiting. Not only does it diversify my reading lists, but it adds a depth to the travel experience. I can’t explain what it does on a creative level, exactly, but it does make me want to write more, even if it just informs my journal reflections through the trip.

As for this trip, I’m doing something I’ve never done before: I’m waiting till I get to Scotland to find something local to read.

A bag for keeping it all in

I spend way more time than I should stressing about bags before trips. You’d think, with all these kilometres under my belt, I’d have a go-to. Well, I don’t. My need to bring some fashion is often at odds with the fact that I also want to card around a book, a journal, some writing tools, plus medications and a wallet.

Some people are down to wear a backpack at all times. I am not one of them. Yes, a pack for hiking, wonderful. But I hate using a backpack even at home when I need to bring my laptop to work. Why would I use one on vacation?

So I opt for a larger sling bag or belt bag. Right now, my go-to is the large version of this Anello bag that used to be carried at Toronto boutique Te Koop. Unfortunately I haven’t seen it there in a while. It’s water resistant and big enough to stash anything you might need on a long day of walking around, but light and flexible for throwing into luggage. That said, I still think I can do better. I’ve been eyeing this oversized Rains bum bag that has a cool techwear vibe.

I’ve also been thinking it’s time to expand my vintage Coach bag collection. The Fletcher or the Court bag are both mid-size beauties. But unless I find a hot deal, it will have to wait.

A playlist to fit the mood

I’m a packing procrastinator—I usually end up doing the night before. To avoid it, I spend a lot of time perfecting my trip playlist. It’s got to be long enough that it can see me through flights, train trips and long walks without boring me—four hours is usually what I’m aiming for.

The playlist isn’t as much about the location as it is the vibe. Are you going to Iceland to stare at moody landscapes to work out your moody mood? You need some moody tunes. Are you going to New York to get lost in the crowds? Maybe you want something that feels as frantic as the city. Whatever is, ask yourself: would you want to write to this?

An open and adventurous mind

Really good writing often requires the author to push themselves out of their comfort zone. I think this is why traveling works so well as a muse for me; out of my familiar environs, pushed to figure out new directions, my brain starts sparking new connections.

Never eaten alone before? Vacation is a good time to try. Go on a walk without consulting a map. Throw out the itinerary. Or do whatever breaching the comfort zone looks like for you, even if it’s just eating something new at a foreign McDonald’s. You never know where story inspiration will strike.

Plucky Notes

…is on hiatus until the week of June 16!

The Devil Wears Prada 2 begins at a journalism awards event. Andy Sachs, now a serious journalist (though, having clearly learned some lessons from her time at Runway, a very-well dressed one) is waiting to find out if she’s going to win an award. But then the phones around her start beeping. She and her team have been laid off by the massive corporation that now owns their paper.

I went to the theatre for the “magic” (TM Nicole Kidman) of enjoying the reheated version of the comfort movie I often watch while doing chores. Instead, I got slapped in the face with a scenario I’ve born witness to, too many times. When I was the managing editor of J-Source, I attended an award ceremony after reporting all day on layoffs at one of the major Canadian media companies. Around me, people from banks and hedge funds clinked glasses while their financial contributions to journalism were celebrated. Meanwhile, hundreds were wondering where their next pay cheque was going to come from.

So I was definitely intrigued when I heard that The Devil Wears Prada 2 was a reflection of the current media environment. Miranda Priestly is getting “cancelled” at the beginning of the film—though the crime isn’t her bad behaviour to employees, but rather featuring a designer who uses sweatshops. (If only that were a cancellable offense.) We see the great lady forced to sit through meetings where editors say words like “metrics,” “views” and “gorpcore.” Andy spies Miranda struggling to take off her own jacket—she’s no longer allowed to toss clothes at the assistants.

What made the first film endure, aside from the amazing acting performances, was how it played with aspiration. “A million girls would kill for this job,” Nigel tells Andy, a phrase oft-referenced in the sequel. The thing is, that was true in 2006. In the 90s and 2000s, working in magazine publishing—particularly fashion magazines—was a dream job because of how the roles were glamourized. Everyone knew the stories of editors being chauffeured around in town cars to fashion shows, of massive beauty and clothing closets, of meeting celebrities. Magazine editor was often the chosen job of romantic-comedy heroines. (Though, like Andy, they often would end up quitting to pursue more “serious” work by the end of the film.)

That’s because The Devil Wears Prada sliced through that aspiration to show the very real, very tough conditions many staffers toiled under. Yes, it’s played for comedic effect, but editors really did expect everything from staffers. The book the film was based on was written by Lauren Weisberger, a former assistant to Anna Wintour. Whether or not you buy her depiction of her former boss, the systemic issues of overworked and underpaid editorial staff in fashion magazines at true. In the mid-2010s, many interns and young workers across North America started pushing back, starting the first wave of 21st-century union organizing in media.

In The Devil Wears Prada 2, all those sharp edge sanded down. Andy, back at Runway as the features editor, smiles fondly at what should probably be horrible memories and worries that Miranda…is no longer abusing the people around her anymore? When Runway comes under threat of closure, the saviour ends up being benevolent billionaires. The film frames it as a win for real journalism. But it doesn’t inspire any warm feelings in me, given billionaires track record when it comes to owning media outlets.

But the main thing that the film skirts around is that most kids don’t aspire to work in fashion magazines anymore—if anything, they want to be fashion influencers, who now live the glamorous lives the editors once did. Content is king, and we are constantly trying to pump out more of it to see what will hit.

I realized, after leaving the theatre and walking by an a sign noting that Cineplex was out of the Devil Wears Prada popcorn buckets, that The Devil Wears Prada 2 is just more content. The main goal of the film is providing easter eggs that people can turn into TikToks and gifs Look, Andy is wearing cerulean again! Emily is bitchy again! Miranda Priestly finally smiled…again!

According to Amy Odell, Wintour’s biographer, Vogue staffers were neutral to horrified on the portrayal of their boss in Weisberger’s book. Later, much of the fashion industry refused to work with the first film production out of fear of crossing Wintour. Odell reports that, at least publicly, Wintour was mostly indifferent to all of it. However, once the first film came out, all of a sudden Wintour was also a star.

Now Wintour is on the cover of the magazine with Meryl Streep in costume as Miranda, not to mention all the online content Vogue did in advance of the movie releasing. The film has brand deals with Starbucks, Google, and—gasp—Old Navy. What would Miranda say? And at American movie theatres, you could even buy a real issue of Runway.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 does exactly what the first one did in holding up a mirror to the media environment. Except this time, it has nothing to do with the plot—it’s about the opportunity for content that the film represents.

Plucky Notes

The Seattle Times Union has been in contract negotiations, and it seems like a real sticking point is going to be AI in the newsroom. Expect this to come up more and more.

Have you been avoiding the news? Well, you’re not alone. A new study has found that most people are stressed out by news that isn’t local news.

Another day, another lawsuit against Meta. This time, five publishers—Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan and McGraw Hill—along with one author are suing the tech giant for using their books to train large language models.

It’s also a good time to share a programming note: I’m going on vacation May 16-June 9. My goal is to schedule at least three Pluckys, with perhaps a break towards the end. During the period, Plucky Notes will go on hiatus.

See you around the magazine stand!

Every time I return to Hamilton to visit my parents, I drive past the city’s omnipresent steel mills. The towers belch flame and smoke into the sky, making for a dramatic entrance. Of course, it’s not nearly as busy as it was over half a century ago during the rust belt’s heyday.

But the rhythms of steel town work still inform the lives of all Hamiltonians. The roads will be busy during shift change; the kids of steelworkers will stumble into home daycares late at night to be watched sleeping by babysitters while mom and dad work. The smokestacks are always visible out of the corner of your eye, no matter if you’re at a Hamilton Forge game or hiking the Bruce Trail.

I’m a writer. My hands are soft, and yes, I like a $10 latte from time-to-time. And I know proclaiming yourself “writer” doesn’t scream blue collar. But what many people don’t understand is that our payrates put most of us in the creative working class. And despite how easy AI chatbots make creation seem, we in fact have much more in common with our brothers and sisters in trade industries.

Read the rest of this essay on J-Source, where it was first published.

Plucky Notes

The Grind documents a troubling trend in Toronto: police keep showing up at arts events about Palestine.

Julia Fox is leading a creative writing group at Rikers Island jail. Her memoir is one of my favourite reads from the last few years. I love that she’s using her celebrity in such interesting ways.

Meet the Gen-Zs saying goodbye to beige and hello to pink leopard print. The Y2K-bedroom is back, baby!

Here are the details from W magazine’s press release:

Enter WYouth (pronounced double youth), W Magazine’s upcoming teenage sister publication rooted in W’s rich archives and thoughtfully reimagined for a new generation. Ava Nirui, the former creative director of Heaven by Marc Jacobs—the brand’s youth-focused line—will helm the project alongside W Editor in Chief Sara Moonves. “The idea for WYouth came from a conversation with Sofia Coppola and Sara Moonves, where we were thinking about the magazines we grew up with when we were teenagers,” says Nirui. “They were so influential and shaped all of the things we were obsessed with. We want to bring back that spirit, but for today—through pop culture experimentation and physical media, inspiring the next generation on style, beauty, and fashion history through the perspective of W Magazine.” Coppola, alongside her teenage daughter Cosima Croquet, have been enlisted as contributing editors.

This reminds me quite a bit of the original launch announcement for Teen Vogue. As I recall, Anna Wintour noted that she was creating something that her daughter Bee Shaffer and her friends would like. It’s important to note that said daughter was an extremely-privileged NYC private-school girl. But Teen Vogue evolved with the demands of its audience. No reason WYouth (double youth?) couldn’t do the same.

Online magazine SheKnows interviewed Sassy founding editor Jane Pratt, who told them she has “heard about the other teen mags brewing recently (and would love to help in any way she can), but has had more people ask her to restart Sassy than she can count.” And then there’s trend forecaster Casey Lewis, cited in the SheKnows piece, who says she knows of at least four (!) teen mags in the works.

The theory is that Gen Alpha and Gen Z are keen for analogue products—certainly the popularity of BookTok, journal culture and dumb phones suggest there is an audience for it. But is that audience big enough to support a print publication? Studies have shown over and over that people in every age group are reading less. It also looks like inflation and the wealth gap are just going to get worse. Can kids afford to buy a monthly or quarterly magazine, even if it is beautifully made?

Success in this category will really depend on how well the digital strategy meshes with the print one, plus that old ephemeral idea all marketers chase: the coolness factor.

Plucky Notes

A few weeks ago, new online food magazine Ravenous launched with the goal of covering restaurants and food with “the sort of depth, edge, curiosity, and care that are increasingly disappearing from food media.” The Objective has all the details on the co-op run outlet.

“If given the opportunity, radio becomes a really important agent of change for women, in particular, especially in cultures where to speak out and to be open and to have an opinion, to have a say, can kill you.” Meet the women creating space on the radio waves in male-dominated societies.

Connie Walker, the Pulitzer and Peabody-prize winning journalist (and my colleague at TMU), is creating a crucial archive of “testimonies of abuse at residential schools.”

There was also the Princess Diana box.

I was eleven-years-old when Princess Diana died in 1997. I wasn’t a fan of Diana. My mom is French Canadian and Irish, and my dad is a socialist, so no, no monarchists in our household. I was dimly aware of her from seeing her face on magazines in the grocery checkout line magazines, glimpses in my parents newspaper, or on the 6 o’clock news, which I liked to watch. I definitely knew who Prince William was — he was already appearing in the teen mags I had just started to read.

But when Diana was killed in a car chase with paparazzi, I collected any reporting I could find about what happened. In my box, I found copies of the Toronto Star from the day of the funeral, a People magazine special edition recounting events, stacks more articles I had clipped out of papers and magazines dealing the death investigation. Somewhat morbid for a preteen, I admit. But it wasn’t the death that fascinated me; it was the news, the fact that so many people were interested in it. While I couldn’t have intellectualized my interest then, I know now I was trying to better understand why so many people were talking about a princess who died. Why her? Why not the other people who died in car accidents that I saw on my parents TV news programs?

Kids and teens deserve to understand the news. There’s no hiding it from them — even in the pre-internet era, children were absorbing news just from overhearing in the next room. But parents are not always going to be safe source to get that information. Some believe there are stories kids shouldn’t understand. Others have, shall we say, a skewed idea of what the news is. (I truly wonder what growing up in Fox News home does to young minds.) Today, these kids can find communities on the internet — though they need to learn how to filter the bots, influencers and bad actors.

But back in my day, I had teen magazines.

The nostalgia around teen magazines often centres around the fashion and pop culture elements. But between that very important content was magazine journalism written with a tween and teen audience in mind.

If we are in unprecedented times now, the 1990s and early 2000s was a hell of prologue. Some people might think of 9/11 as the real turning point, but I think many kids going to school in North America might actually tell you things started feeling dark around the time school shootings became a common occurrence. After Columbine, anyone who dressed “goth” was looked at askance. The edgy-tween boys would joke about bringing guns to class. I read in my Seventeen magazine a guide on what to do if my locker was searched. (The advice was of course for American teens, but recommended contacting the American Civil Liberties Union as one step — pretty impressive coming from a magazine that also encouraged me to buy inflatable furniture.)

Not all teen magazines grappled with issues of the time. During the Bonnie Fuller-era of YM, most of the news was the sort you’d find in tabloids — lots of sex and death. Others focused more on service-journalism features, an term editors use to describe pieces that teach the reader something. You might find a story on how to deal with jealous friends, for example; less likely was something about how teens were dealing with school shootings.

But as the 90s churned on, the reporting showed up. Early Sassy, which assumed it’s readers were smart cookies, often spoke about the news with the understanding their readers already knew the basics. Seventeen integrated it in features and occasionally in how-to guides, like the locker search guide. Teen People, however, was probably the furthest along, often telling stories about teens impacted by big news issues facing the nation.

I’m not going to sit here and say every attempt at teen mag journalism was great. As any journalism professor likes to tell students: journalism is the first-draft of history. It gets a lot wrong, or reads as closed-minded in retrospect, or attempts to tell stories in way we would today recognize as problematic.

Rather than shield tweens and teens from the reality, teen mags gave us information in a way we could relate to. I realize now, as an adult, how great it was to have my curiosity about the world affirmed in the media I was consuming. And one of the great successes of Teen Vogue was understanding that teens not only understand politics, but that they are idealistic and want to be involved.

Over the past several weeks, I have wondered how Gen Alpha and very young Gen Z is getting good information. I’m not talking about what the algorithm is serving up which, if my own feed is any indication, is mostly influencers at Coachella. Who is reaching teens on their level about what is happening in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran? Has someone explained to the tweens what a TACO is? Or why the president of the United States tweets about annihilating whole civilizations like it’s nothing?

I don’t know. I wish I did.

Plucky Notes

Speaking of kids and access to information: Canada’s federal Liberal party has voted in favour of restricting social media use to those over 16. Lots to unpack here — I’ll tackle it in an upcoming issue.

The first newsroom strike over AI usage took place last week. The ProPublica Guild participated in a 24-hour work stoppage, fighting for a say in how AI is used in its newsroom.

Looks like Canada is finally getting an online independent book marketplace! The Quebec-based Booksellers.ca launched earlier this year.

Probably the definitive account of whatever has been going on at Canadaland dropped at Press Progress. At least, the definitive account so far.

CBC’s ombudsman released a decision earlier last week about the use of the word “occupation” when reporting on Gaza. It’s worth a read, if only as a reminder of the importance of language in our work. “By using the word “ended” without qualification, the CBC effectively resolved a major international legal dispute in favour of one party’s narrative,” wrote ombudsman Maxime Bertrand. “This may well have been an editorial attempt at brevity in a photo cutline, but brevity is a dangerous line to walk in a context as legally and politically contested as this one.”

I love a good story about how the journalistic sausage is made. This New York magazine piece on the lengths people go to to get into the Vogue weddings section is particularly juicy.

Oh Alberta, why must your politicians continue to ban books and have dystopian-sounding inspectors to enforce said bans?

The Weston’s, Canada’s first family of groceries, is pouring their billions into a new digital-media startup. It’s the oldest media model in the world!

Yes, it’s tax time.

When I decided to jump into freelance writing, I imagined writing essays at my desk, a cup of hot coffee at hand and a dog at my feet. I did not imagine staring at Google Sheets, cursing myself as I added up dinners from eight months ago.

Very few people tell you that becoming a freelancer is, essentially, starting a small business. Here’s what I wish I had known, way back when.

• You have to make time for administration: I’d say about 50 per cent of being a freelancer is actually reporting and writing. The other 50 is the drudgery of running a business. In any given week, I might spend time invoicing, writing grant or residency applications, hunting down editor emails so I can pitch to new clients, sending short stories out on submission, emailing back and forth with current clients or my agent about various things, and probably about a million more tasks I’m forgetting. It means I also spend a lot of time creating lists and sheets to track all this activity.

• More money, more problems: Biggie was right about that, though possibly we had different problems in mind. I’ve been very fortunate to crack low six-figures annually a few times in my freelance career. (This has only happened with a combination of steady part-time work and freelance, never solely from freelance. That’s a rarity. Another thing I wish I knew.) But with that increase in salary, I also had to start charging my clients taxes. My personal income tax rate also went up. As a result, I ended up owing so much in taxes over the past three years that I also make instalment payments through the calendar year, not just on April 30. Which brings me to another thing I wish I knew…

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• Money will be tight: Yes, you can pull it together and make a decent living as a freelancer. But that income will not come in a steady, dependable flow. You might wait weeks, living off credit cards, until a bunch of payments hit at once—ask me how I know! Freelancers have little control over when payments arrive, except for sending increasingly terse letters to clients. I have heard of rare examples of lawyers getting involved, but those cases usually involve large sums and creatives who have the financial power to pay legal representation. Where you live will also factor into this. For me, making six-figures was an accomplishment, but also a necessity: I live in Toronto, solo, with a dog who has a tendency to get a mystery illness once a year that requires pricey vet visits. So as much as those payments feel great, getting them to a point where you can live a little takes budgeting and forethought.

• Save money, save money, save money: Here’s an example of “do as I say, not as I do.” Smart freelancers put money away so tax season doesn’t totally kick their ass. I am not smart people. However, I’m also a person that, as I said, still has to make rent and other expenses. It can all sneak up on you shockingly fast. To that end: you can reach out to the CRA and negotiate payment plans so you don’t have to take the shock of giant payment all at once.

I sent all my tax information off to my accountant yesterday, so all there is to do now is sit back and wait to see how bad the damage is. In a way, the worst is over. I’ll repress this again till next March, when I start wondering why I’m so tense and realize: oh god, it’s tax season again.

Plucky Notes

ProPublica’s union has authorized a strike over AI protections in the newsroom. I’d guess this will be the first of many such disputes.

Other not great news from the AI front: the Verge reports that Google is using AI to replace headlines in Search.

I think you all need to see John Water’s sign from the Provincetown No Kings March.

Since January, I’ve been teaching a graduate-level course called “Journalism Innovation.” The goal is to get students to think about how to build what we call “editorial products”: podcasts, apps, social media feeds…newsletters.

It’s here where the once sacrosanct division between business and journalism fades. We teach the students how to think about things like marketing funnels and lean canvas models.

If my students had gone to school 15 or 20 years ago, it’s unlikely that they would have learned much of this. If you wanted to be a reporter, you stayed on one career track; if you wanted to be an editor, you stayed on another. People in the business and marketing sides of journalism weren’t very often from the journalism world.

But all that shifted over the last two decades. In the attention economy, the goal is to try and steal some precious clicks and views. To do that, you need editors who can think like marketers to some extent. I’m not saying that this is right, necessarily, but it is how many newsrooms are trying to pivot management—at least for now.

My lecture this week is supposed to be about what is coming next for editorial products. This could be a talk about AI tools for journalism; tech companies are keen enough to sell us on them. It would be easy enough, I suppose, to go through Google Gemini and call it a day.

And yet.

—

I’ve been reading How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa. She’s the founder of Rappler, an online news outlet in the Philippines that has fought corruption to the extent that its reporters and founders, particularly Ressa, are routinely harassed and threatened.

Ressa was an early adopter of tech, enthusiastic for its potential to change the world. And it made sense in the Philippines where social media use was massive—by the aughts, more Filipinos were spending more time on Facebook than watching broadcast TV. “If the search button [on Facebook] had worked better, perhaps we would never have launched our own website,” Ressa wrote in Dictator.

But then she watched as the tech companies moved fast and broke things, using the same marketing mentalities taught to business students, communications students…and now journalism students. She also witnessed how human behaviour was changing. “Participation in the platforms had the effect of tweaking our emotions by increasing the dopamine levels in our brains,” Ressa wrote. Sensationalism produced more happy hormones, thus, the social platforms amplified it. Others noticed; they started building bot farms, using them to amplify messages on Facebook that stoked fear, making it possible for Rodrigo Duterte to be elected president in 2016.

Ressa is no longer enamoured of tech—she calls it the “nuclear holocaust” in the information system, and advocates for better regulations to be placed on it.

All this reminds me very much of the current rush to adopt AI. We have been told that it is an inevitability, that it will change the way we will work. As far as I can tell, all it actually has resulted in is unnecessary layoffs and people outsourcing email writing to a word-prediction machine.

AI is not a force of nature. It is another product that the move-fast-and-break-things tech CEOs are trying to sell us, with little concern over what it may bring into the world

—

Ressa’s genius is that she saw how to squeeze the good out of these platforms. In Dictator, she explains how Rappler used Facebook to track the network of misinformation accounts attempting to sway elections, or to galvanize groups of people using crowdsourcing.

That’s where I think the future of journalism lies: in the network, in the archive, and in engagement.

Mapping how information and power networks work is what journalists do, even though it doesn’t always look like a map. As people fall for AI hallucinations, I think this work will become even more critical. We need to now how information is moving, and who is directing it. Showing that work will also help people understand what the work of journalism is.

AI companies gobble up books and Reddit posts to train their large language models. While people have sued to stop this happening, I think journalism has a role to play in protecting the archive. We depend on libraries to do much of our work. (It actually used to be standard in most newsrooms to have an on-staff librarian — many of these positions have been cut.) I’ve always thought that librarians and journalists should be collaborating in more formal ways. Imagine the power of a media outlet based in a library.

In audience engagement roles, we know a large percentage of site views comes from chat apps like WhatsApp or Messenger. But there’s few ways to meaningfully track those numbers. It’s likely why there hasn’t been as much investment in developing chat as an audience tool. However, there have been fantastic successes, like Bellingcat’s massive Discord community. In this space there are also viable nonprofit options like Signal. We don’t have to depend on for-profit tech giants.

And what about AI? I’m not 100 per cent against it. There have been useful applications, like how the New York Times used AI to sort and summarize scads of manosphere podcasts, saving their reporters from traumatic listens.

I’m not particularly interested in training young journalists on how to massage AI writing into something passably human. What I am interested in is teaching them how to be resilient reporters who can critique tech and power, while building better media outlets. If they are going to use AI, let them find clever ways to use it to make our jobs better, and not to replace journalism.

Plucky Notes

Something is rotten in the state of Canadaland. A number of Canadian journalists and Redditors have accused Canadaland founder Jessse Brown of phishing them for IP info. Former Canadaland editor Karyn Pugliese has broken down everything here, with some of her insights on the operation of the outlet.

How are we all surviving the 24-second news cycle? Badly? Yeah, me too. Poynter has tips from reporters and editors on how to keep some shreds of sanity during these times.

For a brief and glorious moment this weekend, I got to relive 2015-style Twitter drama. Lindy West’s new memoir Adult Braces has turned into a debate over, in no particular order: millenial feminism, polyamory, body positivity, ethics of memoir writing and probably a few more topics that I’m forgetting. There’s been enough takes on this; you don’t need mine. That said, I did enjoy the conversation about it all on ICYMI pod.

While teen girl magazines flourished in the 1990s and 2000s, a similar product was never successfully developed for young men. I recall my male friends reading things Maxim, Playboy, Details and, for the bougie boy, Esquire — even though they were still kids. Girls were still allowed a period of childhood; boys were pushed right into embracing manhood.

But in that information vacuum, other people created media that appealed directly to young men.

—

In the opening scenes of Louis Theroux’s new documnetary Inside the Manosphere, he visits Harrison Sullivan, aka HSTikkyTokky, a manosphere influencer who makes money managing OnlyFans creators while claiming that sex workers are disgusting. Sullivan had to relocate to Spain to avoid dangerous driving charges in the United Kingdom. (What a prince.) As Theroux and Sullivan walk around a Spanish beach town, they are constantly approached by young men — some just children — asking for selfies. HSTikkyTokky is a big star.

For those of you unfamiliar, the manosphere is an ecosystem of media geared towards young men. It consists of influencers like Sullivan who espouse a neanderthalic vision of masculinity. Monogamy is out, “harems” (their word not mine) are in, women are for housework and sex, and men should be breadwinners — ideally by investing in cryptocurrency through one of many online firms promoted by various manosphere content creators.

Misogynists have always found each other online. Their numbers initially grew on websites like 4chan. In those corners of the internet, anything went. Misogynists could couch their hatred in Pepe memes. For a while, they were a fringe group — though the impact of their online rage did result in real-world violence.

But the combination of the rising wealth gap, fascist political movements, and a whole other host of factors have taken the manosphere out of the fringes and into a movement. Two wannabe influencers tell Theroux that 9 to 5 jobs offer them nothing — are they wrong? You can work hard and still afford nothing promised by the capitalist dream.

The current influence of the manosphere cannot be understated. Justin Waller, another content creator in Theroux’s doc, shows pictures from his many visits to Mar-a-Lago, including one with alleged fan Barron Trump. Rumble, an online video platform that hosts much of the manosphere, hit 135 million users a month at its peak, according to Maclean’s. Its founder is deeply embedded in Trump world, and is even credited with helping to push Trump back in the White House. It's not better among the next generation. A recent Ipsos poll found that 57 per cent of Canadian men under 35 think gender equality has gone “far enough.”

What the manosphere offers is a promise: all you have to do it pull up your bootstraps and act like a man. Then you too can be wrapped in the glamour of flashy cars, massive social followings and beautiful women.

Ah, the girls. One of the hardest parts of watching this documentary is seeing how many women willingly attach themselves to manosphere influencers. Some are content creators who are hoping to profit off the audience of chauvinists. Others are what we might call “trad wives;” women who believe their “lane,” as the Waller’s wife puts it, is cooking, cleaning and child-rearing. Clearly, young men aren’t the only audience enjoying the manosphere; women are watching it, or getting exposed to its offshoots, the trad wives and the “feminine-energy” ladies.

We’re not immune to the same hopelessness that men face; and if someone offers wealth, safety and fame in a convenient package, it can look very attractive. It’s not even the first time that’s been the case. In the 1950s and 1960s, when women staying home was key to boosting the economy, magazines promoted similar ideas.

But we’re in what, the fourth, fifth-wave of feminism? Shouldn’t we be past this?!

—

Big, groundbreaking feminist media often arrives at the crest of big, groundbreaking feminist moments. Ms. magazine debuted in 1972, at the same time women were fighting for equal rights. Sassy launched in 1987 and became closely aligned with Riot Grrrl (at least in the eyes of the public, if not in reality). Bitch magazine launched in 1996, one of the first media outlets to understand that snark, pop culture critique and feminism belong together. Tumblr and LiveJournal were a safe home for the teenage girl and queer weirdos in a misogynist internet landscape. And Teen Vogue rose to prominence in the aftermath of Trumps election; a teen mag for girls who went to Women’s Marches and knitted pink pussyhats.

Every single one of these outlets or platforms is either gone or greatly diminished. There are excellent feminist creators on TikTok and other social platforms. (Greetings from my Substack.) But they compete with manosphere, with the trad wives, with the feminine-energy ladies, in an attention economy that rewards outrageous content. I wonder how today’s tweens and teens navigate classrooms filled with boys who have watched manosphere influencers on YouTube or Rumble, or have been radicalized on Roblox or Fortnite (yes, that’s a thing), without having their own sources of information, their own media where they are accurately reflected back.

Now, if there is an information vacuum, it exists in women’s media; absent any alternative, it makes sense that young women would end up watching the same media the boys in their classrooms consume.

—

What would a girlosphere look like? I imagine creative make-up content creators who follow their imagination, not what is demanded by the male gaze. I imagine book and movie tokkers dedicated to sharing what is cool, and fun, and maybe a little underground. I imagine fashion influencers that care about the history of the art, and are disdainful of waste. Many of those people do already exist — but I’m constantly fighting the algorithm to get to see them. So I imagine an alternative to the right-wing video platform Rumble, that takes more care in who it platforms. I imagine media outlets — maybe some that are already around, and some that are yet to be created — that take up the challenge of the moment. Their content is unafraid of the manosphere, and unabashedly joyful when it comes to the world of teen girls. (And, a reminder: the word girls here has nothing to do with gender assigned at birth, but everything to do with how a person identifies, and what they find happiness in.)

I don’t know that a true print teen mag would survive or thrive today, as much as I personally would be a fan. Any new product for girls would have to meet them where they are. But most media companies do not see any financial or political advantage in products that support women’s, queer, POC or disabled rights. (Remember, during the Obama era, when NBC TV shows had to have environmental messages? Many campaigns along these lines have been cancelled during the second Trump presidency.) So, like their foremothers, I think any new media will have to come from a movement; from people who want change.

I just hope they come up with a better name then girlsophere. I’ve never been great at titles.

Hey, so this newsletter didn’t come on Sunday!

I’ve decided to publish on Monday mornings. I was beginning to feel a bit rushed, and for posts like today’s, I want to take my times so I can copy edit and double check sourcing. It also means I can properly take some time off on the weekends.

So see you Monday mornings from here on out.

Plucky Notes

Some good news: women are leaving the manosphere, and they are bringing with them insights on how it operates.

The New York Times published a fascinating look at what went on behind-the-scenes at the Washington Post in the last two years.

In Canada, the first recipients of the Journalism Futures Fund were announced in February. The fund combines efforts by several Canadian foundations to support small- and medium-sized journalism outlets. But I’m curious how this will impact outlets that got funds from the individual foundations previously — drop me a line if you have any details.

When I was about 12, I really got into hockey. The Toronto Maple Leafs, my hometown team, were playing well. They had an exciting team of strong players, including Mats Sundin, Curtis Joseph, Darcy Tucker and Bryan McCabe. And, perhaps most importantly, my dad was an avid fan. He encouraged me to watch with him. Every Saturday night we’d hunker down for Hockey Night in Canada, and he’d explain the finer points of the game to me.

Never one to do thing in half measures, I wondered if I could play hockey. But I didn’t see any women on the hockey shows; and the commentators never spoke about women’s sports.

But I knew they were out there — because I saw them in my magazines.

While women have been playing sports since forever, however privately they had to do it, I think it’s fair to say that the first real “moment” came in the 1990s.

In the United States, Title IX was enacted in 1972. It prohibited sex-based discrimination in education programs. The result was that women’s sports were funded at higher level; through the 70s and 80s, female participation in elite athletics grew at a rapid pace. By the 90s, it was primed to reach new levels.

In teen magazines, articles about physical activity focused on working out. If sports did appear in ads or editorial, most often it cast girls as the onlookers, not participants.

But by 1996, the fruits of Title IX were paying off. The WNBA was founded, and women’s soccer debuted at the Atlanta Summer Olympics — the United States, led by newly-minted superstar Mia Hamm, won gold. Women’s hockey debuted at the Nagano Winter Olympics two years later. Watching Canada’s women’s team is where I learned the names Hayley Wickenheiser, Cheryl Pounder, and, my favourite women’s hockey player ever, Cassie Campbell. The players on the ice had ponytails streaming out of their helmets, like mine did when I ice skated.

The magazines were shifting their coverage too. While the work out tips would remain, they began to take on a tinge that sounded more like a coach than a fitness instructor.

I don’t love that teen mags had work out plans at all, but the tone of this one is certainly a more positive direction than the diet plans regularly featured in Young Miss pre-1990.

You only have to fast foward another two years to find articles outright encouraging sports just for sports sake.

Women’s visibility in sports were also helped by the growing popularity of "extreme sports.” (Imagine you’re drinking a Mountain Dew and doing a kick flip when you read that.) I’m no expert in that area — my exposure to surfing is limited to repeat viewings of Blue Crush — but it definitely seems like an area of sports where women had more opportunity to make inroads. You saw it all over the ads, where women featured prominently as participants not viewers.

But as the scattered references to “great bodies” show, things weren’t great. Sports were sometimes promoted as one of the ways we could shape ourselves into a feminine ideal. Often the athletes chosen for profiles or lucrative sponsorships had it “going on” in the traditional sense.

It’s a fundamental tension of growing up in a woman-shaped body in the 90s and 2000s: we had people telling us we could do anything! But there was another group, just as loud and sometimes louder, who said: not so fast. You can only do it if you act a certain way, and look a certain way.

So, on the bad side, we have a generation who grew up dealing with high rates of eating disorders and body-image issues. But on the good side: kids saw all of these pro-sports stars and thought: I want to do that.

Being a girl has never been a simple task.

When I was 14, I enrolled in skating lessons. A year later, I joined a house league hockey team. The league was so small that each line was actually a different age group of players. They weren’t enough of us to have proper age divisions. And, I sucked — I could barely stop, and had trouble skating backwards. Kind of fundamental for a hockey player. But damn, did I still have fun trying.

But there were other girls who were inspired to play, and they turned out to be pretty fucking good. So good, in fact, that new pro leagues have launched and are selling out NHL stadiums. I can go see a PWHL game and yell at my team, my female players, that they need to shoot the goddamn puck. (I’m a Sceptres fan.) And next year, I can go scream my heart out for the newest WNBA expansion, the Toronto Tempo. Players on these teams are also advancing the next generation of openly queer and trans athletes. (There are multiple instances of IRL Heated Rivalry-style romances between PWHL players.)

We have this growth, in part, because the media we were consuming told us, enthusiastically, play sports. Join a team. Sometimes they did it messily, but the fundamental message was there.

I’ve always loved the imagery of feminism coming in waves because it suggests a building upon; we are constantly taking up a mantle, constantly having discussions in how we can make better what came before. When we look at some of our most celebrated female athletes, like Alysa Liu, Ilona Maher, A’ja Wilson, Marie-Philip Poulin, they represent a range of what joy and competition look like, in a diverse array of bodies. In short: it got better.

Plucky Notes

I haven’t yet had the opportunity to read Rachel and Harrison Browne’s book Let Us Play, but it looks like a great resource for understanding gender-diverse representation in sports. (I’m putting it on hold ASAP.)

One of the reasons I want to write a book about teen magazines is we are badly lacking an archive that represents how young woman lived in the 1990s. The lack of archives of Black youth and hip-hop culture in the same time period is an overlapping issue, well documented here by Abe Beame in Defector.

Take away my writer card, because I still haven’t read a Sally Rooney novel. That said, I am a big fan of her nonfiction essays, often published in The Guardian. She often writes about income equality and, recently, solidarity with Gaza. To that end, a recent speech of hers is worth watching.

A Plucky Contest! Win an original 1998 Titanic Poster

In doing research for this week’s issue, I found this beauty tucked into the pages of a 1998 Seventeen.

New subscribers to Plucky can win this just by signing up. For my original subscribers, share this Instagram post to your stories, or tag someone you know who might like Plucky. I’ll mail the poster anywhere in the world.

JK. That happened…maybe like ten times? While I did dedicate an hour every morning to writing, often was spent staring at the blinking cursor, trying to will out a paltry 100 words. If not that, I was flipping over to other tabs: answering emails, reading Reddit, online shopping. Then I’d remember what I was supposed to be doing. Back to the staring.

Somehow, a thesis was completed this way. Like any student, I had many a weekend and evening that was taken over by schoolwork. But without that dedicated time in the morning for my creativity, I doubt I would have been able to balance the demands of grad school with work and life.

That brings me to today. I’m six months out of my MFA, and while I kept up my writing practice through the summer and fall, this winter, the wheels fell off. No morning writing; instead it has been morning emails, morning marking, and morning TV watching.

It has been, personally and professionally, a very busy time. But that never stopped me writing before. While I would like to blame the weight of the world for making me feel heavy, I’m not sure I can. Hell, I finished my first short story during pandemic lockdown, when I wasn’t even on the right anxiety med dose yet.

If I look back through the years, a trend emerges: January, February and March suck the goddamn life out of me. I’m not actually a cold-weather hater; when you have a dog from Canada’s north, like I do, you have to learn to love it. And in December, I do! But this time of year is a yawn stretching on until the thermostat finally stays above zero. (That’s Celsius for my American readers.) My reaction to the weather? Hibernation: socially and creatively. As a workaholic who tends to wrap up my self-esteem in what I am producing and doing, it makes me feel guilty.

Some winters ago, I read Katherine May’s Wintering. In it, she makes the case for treating winter as a time of retreat and rest. Rather than force ourselves to make resolutions on New Year’s, we step back into ourselves, and wait for the sun and leaves to return to make our fresh starts. But much like sitting in front of the computer every morning for an hour, it requires intention. While some element of rest is just being bored, or staring at a screen (you’ll take my evening TikTok doomscroll out of my cold dead hands!) there are other kinds of rest that can refuel us.

When the first feelings of guilt crept in, as they always do in early January, I decided to stop beating myself up for once, and to think about what intentional creative rest would look like for me.

It started with just taking care of myself. I made a bunch of appointments I’d been putting off for too long. Teeth were cleaned, hair was trimmed, doctors were consulted. I recommitted myself to going back to therapy at least once a month. I kept up the running habits I started last year, not asking much more of myself than just to do the two workouts a week I needed to do to feel good—and lo and behold, my pace times got faster.

If I wasn’t putting pressure on myself to finish my novel or screenplay, I figured I could at least put some pressure on myself to watch and read interesting things. Instead of reading to stack up a pile of books, I grabbed some of the big tomes on my TBR and got to work, sometimes annotating along; sometimes not. My goal was not to finish a certain amount of books per month, but instead to read the ones that I’ve wanted to, but put off because of the challenge. As a result, I feel like I’ve been free to make some more interesting reading choices. I even finally hit the halfway point of The Mirror and The Light. Will I finish in March? Maybe—but no pressure.

With Toronto stuck in a deep freeze, I also worked on making my own space more comfortable. I did a massive closet clean out; five bags went to Value Village, and another five to my local consignment store. I detailed my bathroom and kitchen. Decluttering and cleaning freed up some mental space. I felt I could breathe better in my home.

Anytime I’ve taken a break from writing, I worry that somehow the pause will become permanent. Look how nice life is when you aren’t stressing over the cadence of a sentence! But in actively deciding to step back, and in giving a time limit—the winter—some of the pressure eased.

Just this week, the temperature has started to rise. I can wear a lighter jacket. I can walk my dog a bit later, and the sun will still be out. On Saturday, I woke up and decided: it’s time to sit in front of my computer and write. I got about 300 words down. I feel like writing again; I think I’ll sit and stare at that blinking cursor every morning this week.

Plucky Notes

What a week, huh? Not to be super-millenial about it, but this tweet is truly a big mood.

A disturbing, thought not entirely surprising, resignation note from a CBS producer gives a good sense of what is going on behind-the-scenes at the network.

Hey, at least the New Yorker is making record profits! All you need to do to be successful in journalism is be a legacy brand based in NYC — no problem!

See you next week, and as per usual, drop any notes, tips or feedback to hgwatson7@gmail.com.

This is about hockey. I won’t bore you with the details.

Plucky Notes

Another strike against AI companies: not only are they reading our chats, but apparently, OpenAI had enough details about what the Tumbler Ridge shooter was discussing with ChatGPT that staff debated contacting authorities—and chose not to.

While we’re on the topic of Tumbler Ridge, a group of Canadian journalists are raising funds to support independent reporter Trent Ernst, who first responded to the shooting and has put reporting aside to help their community.

Something I’ve learned from a decade of working in newsrooms is that talented colleagues hide all sorts of stories. Here’s one about a writer who found out his colleague was a legendary speculative fiction writer.

To close on a positive note, let’s let Jessica Valenti explain why so many of us sobbed over Alysa Liu’s joyful short program and free skate at the Winter Olympics. “That’s what makes the young skater so terrifying to conservatives: her power and presence are undeniable. In a sport known for its hyperfemininity—all sparkles and flippy skirts—and in a time when social media is rife with perfectly coiffed tradwives who don’t speak unless spoken to, here’s an alternative-looking young woman whose first words to the camera after skating were, “That’s what I’m fucking talking about!” It’s the kind of joy and resistance that doesn’t just inspire—it threatens.”

I’ll be back next week with a full length Plucky!

It was a fascinating book that taught me a lot about how to read film and literature critically. It also undid some assumptions I had about Clover’s final girl thesis: she used it to describe a masculine-coded character that male fans could psycho-sexually identify with, not necessarily a girl who has to remain a virgin through the film. (Please tell that to the next film bro you meet who throws around final girl willy nilly. You’ll have so much fun doing it.)

However, there’s a brief line from Men, Women and Chainsaws that has really stuck with me as I delve into teen mag research. Clover notes that, despite the masculine-coding of the female protagonist, there are still many female horror fans. (Keep in mind here that she was writing in the late 1980s, era of many an exploitation film and mass market horror.) Her explanation was simple: women, lacking narratives that represent them accurately, are accustomed to picking up the scraps.*

Something I have had to explain with as I pitch this book is why teen mags matter, and for me, it boils down to the fact that they were far more than scraps. While imperfect, the magazines took girls as they were: weird, mean, funny, fearless. It was one of the few places we had where there was some chance of seeing ourselves reflected accurately.

But where teen mags let us down, we created our own meaning. What did most of us do with a copy of Seventeen? We cut it up! We tore out pictures for our walls. We pasted the images into agendas, journals and scrapbooks. Collage became our artistic medium, a way of pulling out what was interesting for us. We made meaning out of literal scraps.

This is why it also makes so much sense that millenial and Gen Z shes and theys have made an effort to reclaim and defend “girlie” media. Culture has rarely prioritized female-codified narratives. So we go to the mat for the narratives where we found meaning.

A very fun part of my teen mag research has been reading other authors takes on the girlie media: everything from Clueless to One Direction. Here’s a few of the books I’ve really enjoyed.

Come Fly The World by Julia Cooke: The real history of Pan Am stewardesses. These women were a pop culture moment in the sixties and seventies. The image left to history is often still of the glamour the flight attendants conveyed, and not of the unique stories they had, the harassment they endured, and the labour rights they fought for. Cooke’s book does much to rectify that.

Everything I Need I Get From You by Kaitlyn Tiffany: This book, about how One Direction fans created much of the internet’s architecture, was one that made me believe I could write about teen mags. Tiffany does a great job outlining how girls can take a piece of pop culture and create a world around it.

Ugh! As If! by Veronica Litt: I just recently finished this book about the legacy of Clueless. It’s Litt that used the word girlie media (gender inclusive) to describe pop culture that rests in the female-identified gaze, and where optimism is offered as a valid choice in perspective. I’m definitely using girlie media as a term in my book.

The Housewives by Brian Moylan: Like a lot of people, I got into the Real Housewives in a big way over the pandemic, and am still a dedicated viewer.** Moylan, the longtime recapper of several iterations of the franchise for Vulture, gives all the dishy behind the scenes details a reader would expect. But he also grapples with why we care about these women. It’s more than a reality soap; it’s 40-plus-year-old women doing all the things women aren’t supposed to do, like throwing wine, flipping tables, and smoking e-cigarettes while predicting the demise of another character’s marriage. (Know that.)

Wannabe by Aisha Harris: I deeply related to this book of essays by Harris, the co-host of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. In her book, she recalls a childhood shaped by Spice Girls and 90s TV, feeling her way through both the good and the bad of it all.

Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus: This book has been waiting on my shelves for years till I was ready for it, and that moment was when I decided to write a history of a piece of media from the 90s. Marcus’ history of Riot Grrrl shows how girls strained under the backlash to feminism, and went to music and, critically, zines to scream their anger.

*I don’t have my copy of the book handy to pull the exact quote, so this is a paraphrase from memory.

**My favourite Housewives series are: Salt Lake for pure soap drama, seasons 1-7 of Beverly Hills for it’s Lynchian darkness, glory years New York because they really did find some good damn characters for that show, and Atlanta for the star power of Nene Leakes. (I’m still early in my Atlanta watch so no spoilers please!) I need to give Potomac another try, and I really enjoyed the first season of London.

Plucky Notes

Remember last week when I said the destruction of free press came when private equity started slashing newsrooms? Well, Alden Global Capital is now hitting the New York Daily News with mass layoffs.

Perhaps I’m feeling charitable because it’s a long weekend up here in Canada, and I have a few days off. But I am compelled to point out one good thing AI did: the New York Times is using LLMs to summarize dozens of manosphere podcasts and send contents to political reporters. It saves the reporters tons of man hours, and probably protects their sanity.

A programming note: next week, barring any breaking news I want to respond to, I’ll be publishing a mini-version of Plucky so I can take a few days off this week. Expect a good list of Plucky notes, and not too much else.

It’s bad. It’s very bad. What else is there to say? Smarter people than I have pointed this out over the last few days. “In our current kleptocracy, there is no need for a multibillionaire with tons of business before the government to invest in or have a media company focused on journalism about the administration or about the rich and powerful,” wrote Jason Koebler in 404.

But here’s what I would like to offer to the discourse: it’s critical that we view the Washington Post cuts as the latest in a trend that has defined the 2000s. As media companies merged and became massive conglomerates, cuts started. Digital media was taking a huge bite out of journalism then — many of those social media companies are owned by people we know now to have a fairly tenuous relationship with accountability. Those same owners are currently cozying up to authoritarians. What did they ever care about journalism?

In the mid-aughts, private equity and hedge funds started buying poorly performing media companies with the goal of stripping them for parts, all to maximize profits for investors. The move is often read as an indifference to industry; after all, private equity does the same thing to toy stores and medical clinics. But indifference is political; the founder of Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund described as the “vampire that bleeds newspapers dry” has donated to Trump.

How can you defend democracy if the ownership of one of its accountability mechanisms stays in the hands of oligarchs, private equity, or wannabe authoritarians? The goals will always be to a) maximize shareholder value and b) do whatever the owner wants. Yes, you may have the odd publisher who values journalism. It seemed like Jeff Bezos might be that man when he bought the Post. But it’s become clear that he values it only as a vehicle for influence. It has no influence, thus it has no value to him anymore. Capitalists gonna capitalism.

You could even argue the rot goes back much further. Journalism in North America has always been rooted in capitalist aims. It wasn’t uncommon for newspaper publishers to also own lumber yards and pulp mills; they were the early innovators in vertical integration. Citizen Kane, a film about an ambitious publisher who loses his humanity pursuing power, was partially based on publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.

I think any serious attempt at bringing journalism into the future has to reckon with ownership models. That’s already happening at a small scale. Non-profit newsrooms like the Philadelphia Inquirer are boasting 200-strong newsrooms. Nieman Lab has reported that at least 18 outlets in the U.S.A. have now adopted co-op models (though not without their own challenges.)

But we need to figure something out on a large-scale, soon. We know that communities without functioning media are less likely to vote, and more likely to fall prey to misinformation. And we don’t need anymore of that right now.

There’s a GoFundMe up to support the Washington Post’s international staff, who do not have union protections or funds to return to their homes. Wow, sure sounds like something a billionaire owner could help with!

Plucky Notes

I really like this approach to the deluge of information we all face, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal: Critical Ignoring.

A certain brand of people online got very excited about Moltbook this week: a social media site purported to be only for AI bots. The problem? It was all theatre.

I’m always searching for books that will fit in my purse. That’s about to get much harder: the mass market paperback is dying. (I guess the solution is a bigger purse?)

A former colleague of mine who has been courageously reporting on transnational organized crime on the U.S.-Mexican border needs a new laptop. You’ll find his GoFundMe here.

Email me thoughts, tips and other notes at hgwatson7@gmail.com

The latest volley in this eternal back and forth started with TikTokker Maddie Clark, who posted a video a few weeks ago pointing out how poorly written so many TikTok popular books are.

@maddie_m_clarkEnglish teachers you are the heroes of our society please help the kids #booktok #reading #literature #kindleunlimited #bookrecommendations

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Clark wasn’t specifically calling romance bad — she notes she loves romantasy — but it kicked off another big TikTok debate over the intellectual value of romance.

The cycle around this debate usually goes something like this. After the initial call-out, the hardcore romance and romantasy stans will get their backs up against the wall and demand to know why they aren’t allowed to just “enjoy things.” Then the lit-fic side of TikTok will fire back accusations of anti-intellectualism. Eventually, the furor will die down, and we’ll all do it again in five to six months.

So where do I stand? Well, call me Switzerland baby, because I think both sides are right and wrong! (Though now I’m getting involved, I guess I can’t be Switzerland anymore. Does my late entry to this debate mean I’m the USA?!)

The case for romance

When I teach journalism, one of the things I try to impress upon students it that seeing something on social media does not make it a verifiable trend. For example: a few videos of a violent incident on Toronto’s subway does not mean Toronto’s subways are seeing a rise in crime. To prove that, you need to back it up with proof like stats or reporting. But TikTok and Instagram algorithms demand outrage. Virality then gives the impression of a verified trend.

We know book reading rates are massively down. College students struggle with finishing movies, much less a book. Yet TikTok gives the impression there are hundreds of millions of romance readers, each amassing huge collections of expensive books with painted edges. The reality is that the algorithm is serving us a much smaller handful of influencers, many of whom are also trying to cultivate an audience regardless of their genuine enjoyment of these books.

That said, romance is a huge genre — but another thing social media gives us the impression is that this is newly the case. It’s not. Romance has been one of the best selling genres in publishing for well on a century. (Fun fact: Harlequin, the grandma of all romance imprints, was owned for many years by Torstar, the company that owns the Toronto Star and various other newspapers. So it supported journalism too.)

What was different is that reading romance was often done furtively. It was a maligned genre because it was associated with women. People didn’t boast about their collections or build libraries for them. They hid the books in bedside tables.

“Stereotypically, feminine art doesn’t have a great reputation,” writes Veronica Litt in her critical appraisal of the film Clueless. “This is why girly media is often called a ‘guilty pleasure.’” She goes on to note that this impression is unfair, because what girly media often does is explore realms of emotion in a way other media does not.

Litt’s not the only one who feels this way. Let’s turn it over to feminist theorist bell hooks:

Feminist author bell hooks has had a love jones for Harlequin Romances for more than 20 years. She says she's still got about a two-a-day habit. "I would credit Harlequin Romances as much as I would credit Emily Dickinson as being a factor in my enchantment with words," hooks says. Harlequins serve as an important fantasy vehicle that offers an escape route for women trapped in dysfunctional families, she says. Not because someday your prince will come, but because "you will triumph over it and it will all come right in the end." She bristles at the notion that the books set women up for disappointment and promote unrealistic fantasies about being rescued. "Only a crazy person doesn't want to be rescued," hooks says. Romance readers aren't stupid; they simply take from these books what they need at a given time. "When I interview somebody like Lil' Kim, she is like, Love, what's that?' It's fantasy." Harlequins provide a different kind of fantasy. The books, she says, simply offer "a moment of restoration. . . . The central therapeutic message in Harlequin romances is you will not be abandoned. What I am still seeking is that love that will not let me down."

Romance is fantasy, but it can also be a way for sexual violence survivors to safely work through emotions; it can be a place to explore sexual preferences; and it presents a world where women’s stories are front and centre, their wants and needs and desires in full flourish.

What’s changed is now there are many people who are owning this fandom! Women and LGTBQ-folks online have made spaces where they no longer feel embarrassed. So when someone comes after the things they love, I fully get why hackles are raised.

That said: do all romance books deserve defending?

The case for intellectual rigour

I have never been a huge fan of the “just let people enjoy things” argument. “[It] is usually deployed to imply that all art objects are created equal and any suggestion to the contrary smacks of snobbery,” writes Washington Post book critic Becca Rothfeld in her book of essays All Things Are Too Small. Her argument is that while access to art should absolutely be equalized, not all art is created equal, and we are well within our rights to judge it.

Romance books are objects of art like any other and they can be engaged with on critical levels. I’m not talking about whether a reader liked or didn’t like a book; those are personal preferences we bring to everything in life. I’m talking about looking at these books on a craft level and on a political level. I’ve noticed in a few popular series not just bad writing, like Clark notes, but also everything from a troubling lack of creativity to an unwillingness to grapple with the political implications of the work.

The resistance to critique among a certain set of Booktok influencers is what I find troubling, and what is at the root of the anti-intellectualism argument. If you’re not asking questions about the art you enjoy, it becomes, at best, mindless consumerism, and at worst, the kind of disengagement that gives people permission to look away from the heavier, political issues in the world.

How to really read romance

This TikTok debate boils down to two camps with people lobbing accusations at individuals. “You need to read things other than romance!” “Just let me enjoy things!” As often happens, we have shifted blame to the individual instead of where it belongs: the system. Patriarchy made people feel ashamed of reading romance; now they defend the genre, ten toes down.

But whoever said romance was not worthy of intellectual rigour?

We’re really blessed to be connected through some fantastic readers and writers through the interest, many of whom have been critically reading romance for years. The Reformed Rakes podcast delves into classic historical romance, unpacking the tropes, themes and history. (Co-host Chelsea Upton’s TikTok was actually one of the things that really got me into historical romance.) Fated Mates is another podcast example, hosted by two romance writers. Rare book dealer Rebecca Romney — you may know her from Pawn Stars — is teaching people how to collect rare romance novels, and why it matters. Troll long enough through your social media of choice, and you’ll find more examples.

I think if more people can decide to really critically engage with romance, it will point us to better books and perhaps encourage a more diverse set of people to join the fold, not only as readers, but as writers.

Two more random thoughts, that didn’t quite fit in this essay.

First, I also think it’s worth considering that social media is a snapshot of a person at one point in their life. Much of the romance fandom are young women who may just be finding their way into literature. Right now it feels like everything; will it be the same for them two, five, ten years in the future? Basically I’m saying: everyone take a breath.

Second, I do think it’s okay to like something that perhaps has little critical worth, or that we would call “trash.” There is no accounting for taste! But having some intellectual framework at least helps us understand why we like what’s bad for us. A sense of humour helps even more; John Waters has made a whole career over funny trash.

If I were to recommend you some romance writers who I think are at the top of their craft, I’d send you to: Courtney Milan, Elizabeth Hoyt, Katherine Arden, India Holton, Alexis Hall, Chuck Tingle, Cat Sebastian, Tessa Dare, Beverly Jenkins, Saraa El-Arifi, Scarlett Peckham, T. Kingfisher, and Kell Woods. Just off the top of my head.

Plucky Notes

Today in horrifying news out of the United States: several Black journalists were arrested after covering a protest in Minneapolis, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, and independent journalist Georgia Fort. Here’s what Fort had to say after her release.

If it turns out that one of AI’s many crimes is screwing up the Internet Archive, I’ll be furious.

I’m still very sad that we lost Catherine O’Hara this week. What a beacon for smart funny girls. Here she is singing “God Loves a Terrier” which I sing to my terrier-mix once a week, at least.

Email me thoughts, tips and other notes at hgwatson7@gmail.com

But what happens when the helpers are the ones being killed?

I am, of course, talking about the death of Alex Pretti. Another horrific murder posted over and over on social media. A good man—an ICU nurse—shot while trying to help someone, while legally recording in public. Meanwhile, ICE and the US federal government are trying to paint him as a would-be assassin.

I’m Canadian. Why do I care so deeply about this? Well, because I have a beating heart, for one. I went to school in the U.S., many of my friends live there, and I worry for their safety. But I also care because racism and authoritarianism do not acknowledge borders. These ideas spread like a virus, infecting people who believe they are disenfranchised or unheard (even when that’s not really the case). I care because you fight injustice when you see it, whether it’s genocide in Gaza, people freezing to death on Toronto streets, or civil liberties torn asunder in Minnesota.

So what do we do when the helpers are the ones being shot?

Pretti is a hero because he was a helper. And after he died, there were more helpers yet: the doctors that tried to save him, the people that kept recording, and the protesters who didn’t stop. (New York Magazine has a great story about the protesters. It was written before Pretti’s death, but it tells readers a lot about the down-to-earth folks doing relentless organizing in sub-zero temperatures.)

I had planned another essay for today’s Plucky—something a bit fun, a bit gossipy. But after events in Minnesota, it didn’t feel right. So today, I’ve compiled an extended Plucky Notes, with some resources for supporting Minnesotans. I’m going to keep looking, in ways that are safe, while still trying to stay (a little) sane.

If you are far away from Minnesota, but want to do something more than just feel dread, the website standwithminnesota.com has compiled a massive list of charities and mutual aid calls for people impacted by ICE raids and the protests. For journalism-specific support, last week I directed readers to independent outlet MinnPost. I also want to commend the journalists at the Minnesota Star Tribune, who have been tirelessly reporting in what has become essentially a war zone. Unicorn Riot is an independent media outlet I’ve followed for some time that has some great zoom-outs on what is happening country wide.

Is there an outlet or organization I missed here? Let me know, and I’ll include it in the next newsletter.

Another reason I care about what happens in the States is because Canada, despite elbows up rhetoric, is still so tied to our southern neighbours. I encourage my fellow Canadians to learn more about these ties, and organizing going on in our neck of the woods. For example: Ricochet has good story up about how two pieces of legislation now being debated in Parliament could “open the door for American law enforcement agencies to expand their reach into Canada, allowing U.S. investigators to peer into our country to investigate conduct that is legal within our borders.” And another: A Canadian arms manufacturer makes the armoured trucks ICE tool around in—and they just got an order for 20 more. Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, called it “fantastic news.”

Well, in other state of democracy and media news: it looks like massive, gutting cuts are coming to the Washington Post.

This also came with news that the Post isn’t sending a single reporter to the Olympics next month. Not one!

The New York Times reported that the Post has lost $100 million in 2023. But when your owner is a billionaire many times over, I feel like that should be…less of a big deal?

Back in my J-Source days, I reported on how the Post under Jeff Bezos was heavily embedded in created web products for newspapers. One of the things that caught publishers so off-guard by the advent of the internet was they thought they could just put the paper online with no changes. They invested nothing in building the architecture of the internet—a poor choice, since that’s where the money was. I’d be so curious to know how the cuts relate, if at all, to those Post efforts to rectify the mistake.

What’s up next for Plucky? Here’s some of the things in my docket for essays.

• What was planned for today, and what I’m hoping to get into next week, is a look at the bi-monthly TikTok and social media debates over anti-intellectualism. My Instagram readers know me to be a wide and varied reader; I am not anti-romantasy in the least. But there’s some element of reading online that is always going to be a little performative. This is what I’m hoping to flesh out more.

• I’ll include an excerpt from an essay I wrote about AI and labour that will be published somewhere…soon? Just waiting for edits.

• It’s been a minute since I had teen mag content! I’m going to delve into my personal collection to show you some of the themes I’ll be exploring in my book.

• Vague ideas I’ve been kicking around: journaling culture and ecosystems, etc; print mag reviews; book reviews, particularly if they are feminism and media adjacent.

What would you like to see? Let me know at hgwatson7@gmail.com

When Renee Good was murdered in Minneapolis, the video of her death hit social media with haste. That in itself is not a bad thing. To bear witness to truth is a political act. While Donald Trump and other U.S. government officials have tried to spin Good as an agitator who allegedly was attempting to run down the ICE agent who killed her, the videos show truth: a woman trying to escape.

After scrolling past the video for what felt like the 100th time, seeing it from different angles, and watching it come before and after other horrors—Russian ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine, a Venezuelan leader deposed, people sifting through rubble in Gaza looking for the bones of their loved ones—I desperately wanted only to look away. I couldn’t sleep, thinking about the weight of the world.

At what point does bearing witness become an act of self-harm? Are we were meant, as a species, to have this much pain available to swipe through on a on-demand basis?

Let’s first understand how much information we are processing daily. The average TikTok user spends over an hour and half daily scrolling. Let’s assume an average length of 90 seconds a TikTok video. That’s 73 separate videos a day. User time spent on X is much lower—about 34 minutes according to the best source I could find—but consider how much you can scroll in just 34 minutes. Maybe on its own it wouldn’t be that bad. But most people don’t check just one social app, they check many.

When I scroll, I get a decent amount of news; the algorithm knows what to give a news junkie like me. But I’ve noticed in the last two years that much more of this news is being disseminated by what we’d call news influencers—people whose social media cache is news aggregation. (There are excellent independent news reporters like Rachel Gilmore, but they are often the exception, not the norm.) The Pew Research Centre has found that 39 per cent of under-30s get their news from these influencers. And if you’re an influencer set on getting views, you’re going to post content that racks them up, even if its a video of a woman being shot that’s already been posted hundreds of times.

Sharing this type of content is not new. It is also important. Videos and eyewitness accounts that recorded the deaths of Black people at the hands of police or citizens is what helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. These videos and accounts were also shared on social media. But ten plus years ago, I seem to recall the algorithms were a bit gentler in showing them to us. It wasn’t every post. And those that had the videos often came from reporters—not just the big players, like the New York Times, but independent and local media. I remember raptly following Vice reporters livestreaming the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, MO—a stream I found on Twitter. Seeing protesters beaten by police officers was deeply disturbing. But it was mediated by reporters who were giving consideration by adding context, adding interviews, adding storytelling. It wasn’t just a constant stream of pain.

My response to the current stream of pain is one I am ashamed to admit: I turn away. I knit, I journal, I read—anything that keeps my phone out of my hands. My instinct is to hibernate. I want to witness, I do, but how much witnessing can I do before the psychic weight becomes too much to bear?

I suspect I am not the only one who feels this way. As I scroll through my 73 plus TikTok videos a day, I see quite a few people elaborating on the same theme. On Instagram I frequently see ads for a device called Brick, which can block apps from your phone. Many of my friends have deleted social media, some to regain their attention-spans back, and others to undo the Faustian-bargain we made with deeply unethical tech founders.

I’m not advocating for any of these as a way for dealing with social media burnout. On the contrary, I worry that the point of this deluge of trauma is to get us to look away. In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein posits that the fear and chaos that comes after a disaster is the perfect cover for governments to ram through exploitative and authoritarian laws. Fear and chaos: that could be X’s tagline. Is there a social media app that’s much better? Is there a point to social media at all aside from getting us worked up?

Yes, there is a point—the humans on social media have carved out good, and I’d argue necessary, spaces for community. They created social movements and moved economic forces. And hell; they’ve brought fun too. (Who can forget the Moonlight Best Picture night on Twitter?) I guess what I’m saying is that for all the horrible things about social media—and there are many—I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There are individual strategies we can use to reclaim our attention while still reading the news, while still bearing witness. (And I’ll mention a couple after this essay.) But I’m less interested in those outside of necessary self-care. Blaming the individual for their time online is a bit like blaming the individual for climate change: yes, we do have personal responsibilities, but at the end of the day, we need the system to change.

What does that look like? I wish I knew—I’d be well on my way to becoming an evil and rich tech founder myself, instead of writing this Substack. What I suspect, however, is that it won’t be one answer but many. And what I hope, perhaps Pollyanna-ishly, is that those answers won’t originate in Palo Alto board rooms, but with the communities who have made the internet and social media necessary.

The Plucky Guide to Not Being Crushed by the Weight of Your Social Media Feed

Curate, don’t aggregate: If you’re going to stick to using social media, you could create lists of users to follow or check, rather than letting the algorithm decide what you view. That also means you give your favourite creators or news organizations a precious analytics bump.

Support local and independent: Want to follow news from Minneapolis? Why not MinnPost, an independent, nonprofit newsroom? Many communities now have some source of news that isn’t a big chain. (And even those big chains have really solid individual reporters.) Follow them directly, sign up for newsletters, or, if you can, support them financially—especially important for your local media.

Find something to do with your hands: Phones are addictive! And a lot of TV is being produced that sounds a lot more like radio because producers know we are scrolling as we watch. So find something to do with your hands. I knit or junk journal; I know cross-stitchers and embroiders; there’s no end of crafts out there!

Plucky Notes

“If we want to keep reading from going extinct, then the best thing we could do is tell young people what so many great writers readily admit: Literature doesn’t make you a better citizen or a more successful person.” Ugh, yes. I agree with the premise of this Atlantic essay: Reading is a vice.

Gourmet magazine is coming back all because Conde Nast forgot to renew the trademark! Incredible hunting from some young journalists who will launch the new Gourmet as a newsletter.

I learned the most attractive thing a man can do is eloquently express the issues with AI.

How are you managing with the dread? Email me thoughts, tips and other notes at hgwatson7@gmail.com

See you a week from now!