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Jul 02, 2023

Comments: Week of August 28, 2023

1. For New York’s latest cover story, Jordan Salama documented the lives of migrant children selling candy underground. ProPublica’s Pamela Colloff wrote, “I miss newsstands, and magazines, and

1.

For New York’s latest cover story, Jordan Salama documented the lives of migrant children selling candy underground. ProPublica’s Pamela Colloff wrote, “I miss newsstands, and magazines, and magazine covers. I especially miss the magazine covers that stop you in your tracks, like this one.” Khalid El Khatib tweeted, “When you live in New York long enough, you start to only … notice changes to the city when someone points them out. This … does so heartbreakingly.” The Atlantic’s Caitlin Dickerson called the story “a must read for New Yorkers (and anyone concerned about the U.S. border) … This story had a narrow focus, which I think is very valuable for those who view border crossers as an indistinguishable, threatening mass.” She added that it left her “craving more context on homelessness and poverty in NYC, especially among kids.” The complicated nature of the migrants’ work troubled some readers. Candice Marie Martinez wrote, “This is disturbing. These kids are being brought here to be abused by their own families.” @TheBronxPulse added, “What are the odds they were better off in their origin country before coming here thinking life would be easier? Selling candy in the subways with children on their backs is not the American dream they imagined.” @ZiaJD commended Salama for “amplifying the voices of the women and children trying to survive.” And Kelli María Korducki said, “I’d been wondering about the candy sellers. I will be thinking about this thorough, compassionate feature … for a long time.”

2.

In “Is David Solomon Too Big a Jerk to Run Goldman Sachs?,” Jen Wieczner investigated whether the CEO can hang on. Dow Jones’s Justin Cash wrote, “Often, when I read a headline like this, the piece disappoints. This does not disappoint.” “This is a dagger of an article,” tweeted Marc A. Ross, and Ben Brooks said, “I couldn’t imagine anything more devastating to a CEO’s ego than a profile like this.” “A detailed example of anti-leadership and how not to run an organization,” tweeted @GrumpyBunnyCap. “Particularly one full of coin-operated, sharp-elbowed people.” Ashley Bez joked, “Is Satan too evil to run hell.” Commenter gothtopus added, “It’s so telling about the banking world that having a glaring lack of relational competence is not a barrier to success — maybe it’s even an asset where he is. It’s a problem then that our society values and rewards his abilities so highly … while underpaying our relational workforce — like childcare workers and teachers — to the point where they can barely make ends meet. Depressing.” The article was widely read across Wall Street and led to a round of follow-up coverage. In an article for the Financial Times, “In Defence of David Solomon,” Rupak Ghose responded, “Goldman’s board will have to make a call about whether this is too much bad karma and whether there is a better captain for this team. But there isn’t an obvious successor, which complicates any attempted coup.” Referencing an anecdote in the article, @MeurerD wrote, “Getting called paunchy by a journalist and then seeing her IRL and grabbing your stomach and asking if ‘it looks like paunch’ is iconic.” Lauren Tara LaCapra, the journalist who wrote the “paunchy” comment, tweeted, “I somehow made a cameo in this article about what a jerk David Solomon is and I find it pretty hilarious. I don’t know the author or how she found out about that incident, but it is accurate lol.”

3.

Nicholas Quah wrote about the making of the reality-TV survival competition Alone. The New Yorker’s Kyle Chayka tweeted that the article was the one “that everyone wanted, full of great details.” In a letter to New York, Sallie Tisdale, author of The Lie About the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze, wrote, “Alone became my antidote for too much Survivor. This is a serious show about a lot more than bushcraft. The solitude can be the most difficult part for contestants — people who are surviving just fine quit out of loneliness. And the most conventionally masculine contestants do not often win. They tend to be rigid, and fear failure. The show challenges people to keep going after failure and mistakes. The softer, more flexible players go furthest: the ones who laugh and make spoons and enjoy the sunrise. The hugely challenging Frozen season was won by a 46-year-old woman. That’s my kind of survival show.” And @missalexander tweeted, “After Housewives, Alone is my favorite reality show ever. I actually think Alone transcends genre and is maybe the most faithful documentation we have of what it means to be human. It’s what I would show the aliens.”

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Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 28, 2023, issue of New York Magazine.

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