The [Tuesday] Media Diet with Julia Vitale

On FT Weekend, King, Jonathan Eig’s M.L.K. Jr. biography, and Alba de Céspedes

Air Mail is consistently excellent and we at WITI are fans. This week we are joined by Julia Vitale, the publication’s deputy editor, who kindly shared what she’s paying attention lately. Have a wonderful short week. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a Deputy Editor at Air Mail, where I edit features as well as the books and culture sections. Before that, I was an editor at Vanity Fair. I live in Greenwich Village, around the corner from our offices.

Describe your media diet. 

I don’t really like newsletters aggregating stories for me, so I prefer to read my favorite newspapers—The New York Times, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Times of London, The Guardian, and the Italian and French papers—top to bottom every day. I supplement those with whichever Substacks feel relevant to me at the moment—right now it’s Casey Lewis’s “After School,” Rusty Foster’s “Today in Tabs,” and Delia Cai’s “Deez Links”—plus The Daily Mail (consumed strictly via Snapchat) and too much TikTok.

What’s the last great book you read?

King, Jonathan Eig’s M.L.K. Jr. biography, was revelatory and added to the existing literature with a bunch of recently declassified F.B.I. files. Honorable mentions go to Elsa Morante’s first novel Lies and Sorcery, lauded by my distant relative Natalia Ginzburg and masterfully translated from the Italian for the first time by Jenny McPhee, and Britney Spears’s memoir, worth revisiting post-Chateau Marmont saga.

What are you reading now?

Advanced copies of Lili Anolik’s latest book, on Eve Babitz and Joan Didion, publishing in November; a new biography of Dorothy Parker, history’s funniest writer, publishing in October; Ina Garten’s memoir, also publishing in October; and a tell-all by art-world fraudster Inigo Philbrick’s ex-best friend, publishing in August. I also just started the new novels by Claire Messud and Colm Tóibín.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

The F.T.’s How to Spend It magazine—petition to lose the H.T.S.I. rebranding—is my guilty pleasure every Saturday morning and the first thing I pick up, before reading the paper.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

Alba de Céspedes. She wrote in the 20th century but her books feel so current. She’s loved by Elena Ferrante, Jhumpa Lahiri, and my favorite translator, Ann Goldstein, and is finally available to read in English, thanks to Astra House.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone? 

Is Yuka famous? You can use it to scan food and cosmetic products before buying something filled with toxins. The best (and terrifying) part is seeing what’s banned in Europe but not here.

Plane or train?

I love trains when I can take them—can someone explain the L.A. to Vegas thing, though?—but, for the most part, planes.

What is one place everyone should visit? 

The Egadi islands, off of Sicily, are as idyllic as you can get, and have so far managed to escape tourists.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

My obsession with the trad wives of TikTok knows no bounds and I can’t say with a clear conscience that they’re all hate follows. (JV)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Julia (JV)

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