Committee Recommends: Week 0

Our ‘Committee Recommends’ selection of content from across the media is back for Michaelmas Term.

This carefully curated list provides a range of articles from myriad voices, giving you something to read and explore that might easily have been missed in a news week suffocated by coverage of the American election and the ongoing pandemic, as well as podcast and social media picks.

We hope you find something that catches your eye, and welcome back to Oxford from everyone at the Media Society.

Long Reads

Net Zero 2030: a Tortoise Moonshot

“The pandemic seemed to warrant shutting down the world economy in a way that climate change never has and maybe never will. But it has left millions of people wondering: what if?”

An open-journalism project from Tortoise Media, written by its members and featuring the Media Society’s own Sophie Littlewood, asking the question: “What would it take to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030?”

How my mother and I became Chinese propaganda

“I find a story about my mother and me in the Global Times, a state-controlled Chinese newspaper with twenty-eight million followers on Weibo.”

A brilliant article from The New Yorker’s Jiayang Fan on her and her mother’s complicated relationship in China amidst rising Chinese-American tensions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The longform patriarchs, and their accomplices

“This essay imagines the novel as a metaphoric metamorphic creature that inserts itself inside the hearts and minds of the people who want to be consumed by it, as it prowls around their psyche”

Booker Prize winning author Bernadine Evaristo takes her turn looking at the state of the novel in her New Statesman / Goldsmith Prize lecture.

The healing power of the wilderness

“Mountains hold an endless fascination to the modern mind. They embody what it means to escape, take risks, endeavor, and achieve”

Indulge your corona-induced wanderlust with mountaineer Ruth Allen’s beautifully drawn and affectionately written love letter to the natural balm of the wilderness, accompanied by photographs that will take your breath away whilst also reminding you of the wonder of the world that exists beyond computer screens.

In the News

FinCEN leak

Buzzfeed’s remarkable exposé of global financial malpractice, involving trillions of dollars of money laundering and brought about by the tireless cooperation of journalists across the globe, would have been this month’s, and perhaps this year’s, biggest news story, were it not for the crazy times we’re living in. In any case, this flashy and fascinating article is well worth the read.

Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict

The decades-old tension in the Caucuses has again flared up into actual violence. This concise BBC article provides valuable background to this latest development.

A Bit of Listening

Season 2 of “13 Minutes to the Moon”

If you’re looking for an escape from planet Earth entirely, this seven-episode podcast series is the binge-worthy story of the Apollo 13 mission, told by the people who flew it and saved it.

On Social Media

@nowhitesaviors

Through touching on a wide range of topics from overseas adoption, poverty porn and voluntourism, to the dehumanising depictions of black bodies in the media, the education and activist organisation shine a light on the damaging impact of the ‘white saviour’ mentality on multiple scales.  @nowhitesaviors deserves a place on the Instagram feed of anyone committed to increasing their consciousness of racism around the globe.

That’s all for this week. Interested in writing for us? Contact us to chat about submissions.