The New Yorker beat my ass

Welcome to media_gossip, Embedded’s special weekly edition of … media gossip, sent every Friday. You’re getting this because you subscribe to Embedded, but you can opt out here.

I always thought Center For Fiction was the place where you were most likely be seated across from an old coworker or Twitter mutual, but after running into both Arielle Swedback (sorry I was naked) and Sonia Weiser (sorry I was talking about Lindsay Clancy) at the gym this week, I’m starting to think it’s Chelsea Piers?? If this is also you DM me and I’ll tell you about the time I hated an instructor so much I walked out mid-class… —Kate

Nick’s Riff This Week

How smoking weed paradoxically became “self-care”: “One of the worst coworkers of my professional life was openly—famously—a stoner, and she was either inexplicably hostile or zonked with bloodshot eyes, and always furiously undermining anyone who drifted too close to her jealousy hoarded contacts or stories.”

I did not know the media softball scene was still active (I had always assumed, like comped town cars and the concept of “going to print,” it was a relic from an earlier era of the industry) until Slate was short the amount of players it needed to play against The New Yorker. I asked if I could cover it for media_gossip and was told it probably wouldn’t happen at all unless I also volunteered to join.

I hadn’t played any kind of competitive group sports since quite literally high school, so I forgot about the unique kind of fear and nausea that ensues after being told you’re “up to bat.” But the stakes dissolved pretty quickly. It turns out this was Slate’s one and only game this season, whereas The New Yorker had custom shirts and hats, and were beating us so handily that at one point they just started sending in their kids to play instead. They were still gracious enough to invite us to eat their victory pizza with them after. If I knew we got pizza, I probably would have tried a little harder.