Virginia Heffernan

Virginia Heffernan (born August 8, 1969) is an American journalist and cultural critic. Since 2015, she has been a political columnist at the ''Los Angeles Times'' and a cultural columnist at ''Wired''. From 2003 to 2011, she worked as a staff writer for ''The New York Times'', first as a television critic, then as a magazine columnist, and then as an opinion writer. She has also worked as a senior editor for ''Harper's Magazine'', as a founding editor of '' Talk'', and as a TV critic for ''Slate''. Her 2016 book ''Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art'' argued that the Internet is a "massive and collective work of art", one that is a "work in progress",''Magic and Loss''
Simon and Schuster. and that the suggested deterioration of attention spans in response to it is a myth.

Early life and education

Virginia Heffernan was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. She is a 1991 graduate, ''summa cum laude'', from the University of Virginia. She is also a dual graduate of Harvard University with a master's degree in English literature in 1993 and a Ph.D. in 2002.

Career

Journalism

Heffernan began her career as a fact checker with ''The New Yorker'' magazine. She served as a senior editor at ''Harper's Magazine'' and was a founding editor of '' Talk'' magazine.

In June 2002, the ''Columbia Journalism Review'' named Heffernan one of its "Ten Young Editors to Watch." In September of the following year, Heffernan departed ''Slate'' to join ''The New York Times.'' While there, she started the blog "Screens" for the ''New York Times'' website, which eventually became "The Medium" blog (named after her column).

In February 2012, Heffernan became a national correspondent for ''Yahoo News,'' where she covered the 2012 presidential election and wrote about subjects related to media, technology, politics, and culture. In June 2013, Heffernan began a series of articles for ''Yahoo News'' entitled "Glass Menagerie," which involved her experiences using Google Glass OHMD.

Heffernan is a regular contributor to ''The New York Times,'' as well as ''The Wall Street Journal,'' ''Wired,'' '' Mother Jones,'' ''Politico,'' and many other publications.

In her journalism, Heffernan writes about culture and technology using methods of literary criticism. Her work often centers on the human side of technology and culture in general, and she advocates broader and more critical thinking regarding newer technologies.

In parallel to writing on the subject, Heffernan also participates actively in social media. She openly befriends her readers on Facebook, tweets frequently, and maintains an active Tumblr account.

In July 2013, Heffernan published an article entitled "Why I'm a creationist," saying she was "considerably less amused and moved by the character-free Big Bang story ("something exploded") than by the twisted and picturesque misadventures of Eve and Adam." Heffernan received much criticism for her column. Critics responded to her postmodern stance, several quoting Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts". However, writing in ''The Guardian'', Andrew Brown dismissed Heffernan's critique of evolution, but noted that: " e is certainly not a young-earth creationist ... t she wants stories where people find hope and courage in the events of the world around them, and she finds them in religion, not in science".

In 2014 Ben Yagoda in the ''Chronicle of Higher Education'' named Heffernan among his top candidates for "best living writer of English prose."

On February 5, 2021, Heffernan published an opinion piece in the ''Los Angeles Times'' entitled "What can you do about the Trumpites next door?" in which she wondered, self-critically, how to respond to kindness from rightwing neighbors. Heffernan received criticism from right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.

Podcasts

From October 2018, Heffernan was the host of Slate's ''Trumpcast'' podcast. In it, she evaluated and critiqued the presidency of Donald Trump, interviewing guests like Yascha Mounk, Fareed Zakaria, David Corn and more. On January 30, 2021, the final episode was released.

In April 2021, Heffernan began a new podcast, ''After Trump'' with '' Lawfare'' following on from her work on Trumpcast.

Books and TV

In 2005, Heffernan published ''The Underminer,'' a comic novel she co-wrote with Mike Albo. She also scripted ''Matthew's Murder,'' an Emmy award-nominated, MTV documentary on the murder of Matthew Shepard.

''Magic and Loss''

Heffernan has been online since the age of ten, when she used a Zenith computer terminal and dial-up modem at home to play a MUD at Dartmouth College. Simon & Schuster published her book about digital culture, ''Magic and Loss: The Internet As Art,'' in June 2016. In this, Heffernan argued that the Internet is "the great masterpiece of civilization, a massive and collective work of art". The book was well received, earning a starred Kirkus review and appearing on the summer reading lists of Gwyneth Paltrow and '' Lenny Letter.'' Paltrow called Heffernan, "One of the writers I most admire." ''The New York Review of Books'' called Heffernan's book "an ecstatic narrative of submission," while ''The Wall Street Journal'' described the book as "(a)n illuminating guide to the internet." In ''The New Yorker,'' Louis Menand wrote that "Heffernan is smart, her writing has flair, she can refer intelligently to Barthes, Derrida, and Benjamin—also to Aquinas, Dante, and Proust—and she knows a lot about the Internet and its history. She is good company."

Bibliography

Books

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* Heffernan, Virginia (2016). ''Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art.'' .

Essays and reporting

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Theses

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References

External links

VPHeffernan.com

Virginia Heffernan Interview on Media Bistro



Virginia Heffernan Archive, Slate Magazine

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heffernan, Virginia
1969 births
Living people
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American women writers
American political podcasters
American television critics
Women television critics
American women columnists
American women critics
American women podcasters
The New York Times journalists
Harvard University alumni
The New York Times columnists
Writers from Hanover, New Hampshire
University of Virginia alumni
Wired (magazine) people
Writers from New Hampshire