Hi!
I’m Hanaa’ Tameez and I’m a reporter covering journalism innovation and, more broadly, the future of news. Welcome to Close Tabs, a newsletter to hold me accountable to exactly one, bare minimum task every week: closing all of my tabs.
By virtue of what I do, I spend a lot of time online. I’m always texting people links to great stories about things I’m interested in or keeping close tabs on (see what I did there?).
Each week (?) you’ll get a few links to stories I read and (maybe) what especially stood out to me about them. At minimum, I’ll include the information about the writer and their publication.
I love talking about why certain stories are important, writing, story structure, reporting processes, and just the “oh shit” moments that make stories stick with me and/or want to share them. I hope to do that here and not sound pretentious.
Some of the stories will be media industry-related (meaning I read them on the clock) but hopefully most of them will be about other topics (I opened the tab on the clock to read later). Some stories could be about data privacy, others could be about clean beauty. I contain multitudes.
This newsletter is free because I’m not a capitalist and you should support the people who did the agonizing work of making words make sense, but if I introduced you to a new writer or publication and you’d like to buy me a coffee, feel free 😗
Close Tabs is really a celebration of great writing on the internet. I hope it only inspires more.
What I read this week (in no particular order)
A guide to being an ethical online investigator by Tanya Basu in MIT Technology Review
I’ve been fascinated by the ways private citizens have been trying to help in the aftermath of the insurrection in Capitol Hill but I’ve also been concerned about the mistakes that could be made by untrained eyes in the rush or the certain “excitement” to be involved. I felt like we should all be forwarding these tips to everyone we know, because I can’t help but feel that this will only become more common after major news events in the future.
In online stan spaces, the unspoken rule of anonymity empowers women in Pakistan by Rameeza Ahmad in Digital Rights Monitor
Writing about K-Pop and the fandom by people who are unfamiliar with them can run the risk of being infantilizing and condescending. This piece is a prime example of how being a member of a certain community informs and illuminates the reporting. I love how it highlights the ways that women in Pakistan are carving out places to be themselves online and forging friendships with others on Twitter. Digital Rights Monitor has had really interesting coverage of Pakistan’s internet culture that’s helped me better understand issues that are important to young people today.
Music and Moonlight by Imaan Sheikh in The Juggernaut
This story is a beautiful literary and cultural analysis of the moon’s starring role in South Asian music. I had such a facepalm DUH moment reading this because I grew up listening to so many of these Bollywood moon songs but never stopped to consider the moon’s place in the secret relationships between two lovers. Sheikh also has the skill I am supremely jealous of: to end a story in her own words, instead of with a quote by someone else.
“Moonlit nights may be considered romantic the world over, but rarely does art see the moon come alive the way it does in South Asian poetry,” Sheikh writes. “It ceases to be an inanimate object far, far away and takes the shape of a very close friend — sometimes becoming one’s only companion in moments of loneliness.”
May you live in text-your-ex times by Helena Fitzgerald in Griefbacon
I don’t really have anything particularly insightful to point out about this other than that you should read it because you probably feel this too in these days of daily collective tragedy. “There is nothing like a big historical event to remind us that love left uninterrogated is almost always myopic; I want everyone I have ever cared about, even the people I hate now, to be standing as far from history as possible.”
‘Bollywood Wives’ is an accidental documentary about India’s gilded class by Iva Dixit in The New York Times Magazine
This is such a good take on how the absurdities of this show are deeply rooted in the Bollywood film industry’s nepotism. Perhaps the thing that upset me the most about the show is that the women, who seem to just barely be part of the elite class, have no problem perpetuating the rules of the system that have worked against them. This is a good perspective to read for people both familiar and unfamiliar with the Hindi film industry’s inner workings.
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I’d love it if you’d to write me back or comment to let me know what you thought of these stories and the newsletter, or even better: send me a story that you think I’d like.
Happy reading,
Hanaa’