The Breakfast Meeting
What’s making news in media.
A report from the Federal Trade Commission found that hundreds of the most popular educational and game mobile apps for children failed to inform parents about the information the apps gathered during use, Natasha Singer reports. That information can be used to track children as they use different apps and browse the Internet. The report did not disclose the names of the apps that were studied, because, in the words of Jessica Rich, an official at the commission, the point was to emphasize that parents could not navigate the system themselves, thinking “if they avoid certain apps, they are home free.” The commission is preparing stronger rules on parental notification.
Ayana Mathis’s path to becoming a celebrated author was hardly by the book, even if it culminated in acceptance at the Iowa Writers’ workshop, Felicia Lee writes. At 39, she is publishing her first novel, “The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” after years of trying to find her voice in writing. “Twelve Tribes” tells the story of an extended family that experienced the Great Migration, which carried waves of African-Americans from the terror of the South to the promise of Northern cities. Now that the novel has been selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book club, its first printing was increased to 125,000 copies from 50,000; and she will be discussing a work in which “I also set out to write a novel about family, but being alone.”
Jenni Rivera, the Mexican-American singer who died in a plane crash on Sunday outside of Monterrey, Mexico, was born and raised in California but also a “proud citizen of Latino America,” Lawrence Downes writes in an appreciation for The Times’s Opinion Pages. In 2010, he writes, Ms. Rivera marched five miles along with tens of thousands of protesters who converged on Phoenix to denounce Arizona’s tough new immigration law, while “other big musicians stayed away, or just signed the petition.”
He writes:
When a worried organizer texted her — “are u still marching?” — she replied: “Of course. … I’m a gangster chick.”
The Russian best seller “America — What a Life!” by Nikolai V. Zlobin offers a guide to the strange customs of the United States, Ellen Barry writes, including grandparents who “are busy with their own lives” and thus don’t raise their grandchildren, and a generalized fear of losing personal space. For example, of Russians’ reactions to the American ideal of living on a cul-de-sac, Mr. Zlobin writes: “It’s such a new concept for them, that you can get security by putting distance between yourself and the others. The Russian concept is that you’re safe when you’re with the crowd.” There is now a fifth print run of “America — What a Life!” and second volume is planned.