And the show’s differences from the books may be less significant here than their differences from Jackson’s movies. A multiseason series can’t live in the operatic intensity of a fantasy film; it needs to build a world, evolve character and develop story arcs over time.

So as Galadriel seeks allies in her hunt for Sauron, the two premiere episodes, directed luminously by J.A. Bayona, establish several story lines with Entish deliberateness. (Númenor, the Atlantis-like kingdom of humans whose rise and fall dominates the Second Age, doesn’t even figure into the opening hours.)

The ruling elves, who live in a series of Thomas Kinkade paintings, have their own ambitions. These involve sending Elrond to negotiate a pact with Durin (Owain Arthur), the gruff dwarf prince of Khazad-dûm — in the films, a ruin with a nasty Balrog infestation but here a thriving, cavernous marvel. And in an outpost deep in human country, the elf warrior Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) nurses a forbidden crush on a mortal healer, Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), whose downtrodden neighbors picked Sauron’s side in the last war.

So far, so high-fantasy. But as Tolkien realized, without characters of human scale (or smaller) that have the spark of personality, the doings of the high and mighty risk becoming stiff. (This is a lesson so far lost on HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” which practically begs for an Arya Stark or Hot Pie to cut the genealogical grimness.)

That’s where the hobbits come in — or here, the Harfoots, a woodsy, secretive, nomadic band of small wanderers who live more precariously than their domesticated descendants did in Bilbo’s Shire. Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) is a variation on another Tolkien type: the young dreamer who longs for adventures. One day, fate serves one up in the form of a meteor. In its burning crater she finds a mysterious stranger (Daniel Weyman) with wizardly tendencies, whose identity remains a riddle. (Speak, friend, if you have a guess.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/arts/television/the-rings-of-power-lotr-review.html

“We face a female opponent, so we’ve added prominent female politicians who have endorsed Ted,” Mr. Felts said. (Mr. Budd’s Democratic opponent is Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.)

Other differences have been more subtle. Mr. Budd, for example, has made no changes to a page that outlines his views on abortion, but he has moved the link to that page lower on his website’s list of his positions; it was second as of July 23, but is now fifth.

J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio, once listed abortion sixth on his “issues” page, but now lists it 10th.

Sometime between Aug. 7 and Aug. 26, Mr. Vance also expanded his abortion language on that page to emphasize government support — including an expanded child tax credit — to ensure “that every young mother has the resources to bring new life into the world.” He has made no changes, however, to his description of himself as “100 percent pro-life.”

Recent polls and elections underscore the dangers of the current political environment for Republicans. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June and abortion bans took effect in many states, Democrats have exceeded expectations in four special House elections, and Kansans decisively rejected a constitutional amendment that would have paved the way for an abortion ban or major restrictions.

And now, the widening F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents is shining a light on the former president when Republicans would rather have voters focus on the current one.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/us/politics/abortion-trump-gop-midterms.html

“I’ve been going through a deep depression the last few months,” he continued. “And my friends, who are some of the most famous people in the world, send me 77 texts until I answer. The night of my last show, Joshua Bassett showed up at my studio within 40 minutes, on the night before New Year’s Eve, to be with me while I literally cried on the floor of my studio. And then after that, who was there for me was Ariana, who was on me to figure out what my next step was.”

Losing his syndicated show forced him to assess whether he was in the business of radio, or the business of Zach Sang. When his contract ended, he’d already been having conversations with Amazon for a few months, and he began to see Amp as an opportunity to spread his gospel of the power of radio even more widely.

The very nature of radio is changing and has been for the past two decades. First came the rise of satellite radio, which jeopardized local specificity. Same went for market consolidation. Finally, the ascension of the internet, especially as a facilitator for livestreaming and playlists, threatens — or maybe promises — to undermine the primacy of radio as a delivery system for new music. By July, Sang and his team had relocated to a more substantial studio, the one that Rick Dees, the countdown show kingpin, previously used to broadcast out of. But even though Sang knew how to operate all of the fancy equipment in the room, the entire show was run off his iPad.

“The way I view a microphone at this point in my life is, when I lost the show, it’s like I lost every friend I’ve ever made,” he said, in between playing Beyoncé songs. “It’s about regaining chemistry — it takes time. People find out every day we’re not on the radio.”

He referred to the Sang universe as a “friend group” — the combination of the characters with him in the studio and the listeners.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/arts/music/zach-sang-radio-amazon-amp.html

Mr. Bezos is still engaged, however, weighing in during budgeting season and participating in calls. He declined to comment for this article, but the Post spokeswoman said any suggestion that Mr. Bezos had become less interested in The Post was “absolutely false.”

Much of the decision-making, though, falls on Mr. Ryan, 67. A former official in the Reagan administration and chief executive of Politico, he came to The Post in 2014. He replaced Katharine Weymouth, a scion of the Graham family, which was The Post’s longtime owner. When Mr. Bezos selected him in 2014, he thanked him for taking the job, adding that Mr. Ryan was “excited to roll up his sleeves.”

The Post’s efforts to diversify its journalism beyond political coverage extends back until at least the summer of 2016. At that time, senior editors considered a plan that would expand the newspaper’s coverage to temper a decline in readership during what they thought would be the presidential administration of Hillary Clinton, according to two people with knowledge of the proposal.

The plan, code-named Operation Skyfall, was set aside after Mr. Trump won the presidential election.

As the importance of moving beyond Washington coverage became more urgent over the past year, Mr. Ryan has given some mixed signals about how ambitiously he wanted to move.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/business/media/washington-post-jeff-bezos-revenue.html

In 2017, British Vogue “had languished creatively and tonally, speaking almost exclusively to an upper-middle-to-upper-class pocket of Britishness,” he writes. “The magazine felt to me like it was drifting ever further from the beating heart of the country — to say nothing of the world at large. I didn’t think it reflected the Britain I knew and felt a part of.”

This Britain is one that celebrates the diversity of its people, something Enninful has worked to highlight not only at British Vogue but throughout his three decades in fashion, an industry he describes as “borderless.” He acknowledges that when he got to Vogue he stopped rebelling against commercial fashion, accepting that he was now a part of it. Still, his commitment to inclusivity, to portraying a world that is real and welcoming to those who’ve previously been excluded, has never waned. “I became known to the staff as ‘the guy who shoots Black girls,’” he writes, “which was pretty reductive, but fine by me if it at least meant more women of color in the pages.”

The industry insights are intriguing, but some of the most memorable and endearing passages in this book consist of Enninful’s more personal disclosures. There’s the time he “wanted to make a show of domesticity” for Maxwell, but his skills in the kitchen were so nonexistent that he “ordered in some homey-looking fare from a local restaurant and passed it off as my own”; and there’s the wardrobe malfunction at Buckingham Palace the day he became a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He writes poignantly about his close relationship with his mother, his adoration of his siblings and his tense relationship with his father, who “told us all that if he found out we were gay he’d slit our throats,” and who kicked Edward out of the house when he learned he’d been skipping school to go to showroom appointments and photo shoots. The memoir truly shines in its most intimate revelations of Enninful’s sobriety and depression, of what it felt like to soar professionally while struggling personally — and of how he learned to lean on those who love him most.

“A Visible Man” is about a life in the media and fashion worlds, but it is also about a man of many identities finding his voice in a world that has not always wanted to hear it. Enninful is making that world a more beautiful and welcoming place than he found it.

Tariro Mzezewa, a former national correspondent at The Times, is a reporter who writes about culture and style.

A VISIBLE MAN: A Memoir | By Edward Enninful | Illustrated | 270 pp. | Penguin Press | $30

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/29/books/review/edward-enninful-a-visible-man.html