A New Crop of Geniuses
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced this year’s additions to its Fellows Program, popularly known as the “genius grants,” and it’s interesting (to me, anyway) to see how different media outlets cover the news. Felicia Lee’s NYT recap starts broad, then dips into a few winners’ backgrounds, starting with local author (and Friend of Laurel) Adrian Nicole Leblanc (left), then swerving to New York jazz artists Regina Carter and John Zorn before zooming out to include a pair of Pennsylvanian doctors, a Harvard astronomer, and a Chicago psychologist, among others. Personally, I’m somewhat astounded that short-story writer George Saunders gets buried in the “and everybody else” graf, along with fellow authors Atul Gawande and David Macaulay, but these things happen, I guess.
USA Today’s coverage leads with a short-and-sweet story about deep-sea diver Edith Widder, then churns out the full list. The Associated Press, realizing most of us have no idea who these people are, ruuns with descriptors: “a doctor treating children with genetic diseases in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, a New England turtle expert and a former child math prodigy from Australia,” while Reuters sticks to brief glimpses at Carter and stem-cell researcher Kevin Eggan.
Anita Huslin of the Washington Post is saddled with the most local of headlines—”Two U-Md. Grads Among MacArthur ‘Genius’ Awardees“—but actually manages to get quotes from Carter and Leblanc as well. (“All the everyday battles, I just won’t have to fight so hard, or worry about how to do it all,” Leblanc comments. “The part I find so baffling is how I got it.”) The Boston Globe also keeps things local (“Eight From New England Make ‘Genius’ Rank“), while the LA Times story focuses on four Californian winners while mentioning only one in its headline: “Mathematician Is Chosen for `Genius’ Grant“.
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