Numbers and Influence: book edition
While McEnaney and Todd call our attention to the manipulative maneuvers behind Spotify’s algorithms, Jordan Pruett explores the artifices behind the New York Times’ famous bestseller list (an investigation that pairs well with the NYT bestseller data that he curated and published in the Post45 Data Collective). Pruett lays bare how the seemingly authoritative list has long been shaped by distinct historical circumstances and editorial choices.
The last three essays all tackle important issues of cultural representation by turning to numbers. Howard Rambsy and Kenton Rambsy examine how, and how often, the New York Times discusses Black writers. They offer quantitative proof of the frequently leveled critique that elite white publishing outlets often cover only one Black writer at a time, and they show that this is especially true with writers like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Colson Whitehead.
Nora Shaalan explores the fiction section of the New Yorker, especially the view of the world imagined by its short stories over the past 70 years. Despite pretensions toward cosmopolitanism, the magazine, Shaalan reports, largely publishes short stories that are provincial, both domestically and globally.
