In this week’s New Republic, Mark I. Pinsky suggests that Barack Obama bail out laid-off journalists with a modern version of the Federal Writers Project — the program launched by FDR to provide jobs to more than 6,000 out-of-work creative types in the late ’30s. The emphasis was on documentation; writers worked on everything from state travel guides to slave narratives. Pinksy points out that many of the people involved the first time around became some of the biggest names in the American cannon — John Steinbeck, John Cheever, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright — and used FWP funding to research the works that made them famous. … Read More