{"id":2715,"date":"2025-09-04T12:13:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T19:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/?p=2715"},"modified":"2025-09-04T12:14:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T19:14:30","slug":"2715","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2025\/09\/04\/2715\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Zach Helfand’s article describing the history and sensibility of The New Yorker<\/em>‘s famous fact-checking department<\/a> is hilarious – and, to me, enthralling – from top to bottom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI find that often a fact checker forces you to tie a knot in the sentence unnecessarily,\u201d David Sedaris told me.\u00a0One of his essays<\/a>\u00a0describes a trip to a small-town Costco, where he bought \u201ca gross of condoms.\u201d The checker said that, actually, he hadn\u2019t: Costco doesn\u2019t sell a gross, which is a hundred and forty-four. \u201cSo I made it \u2018a mess\u2019 of condoms, which just made them sound used,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the essay was about how many condoms Costco sells, definitely, have the exact number. But this was about my experience being gay in a small Southern town. Can you let me have this?\u201d Humorists can infuriate the checkers, who recognize that even funny nonfiction has to be completely real; it\u2019s held to the same standard as anything else. Last year, Jane Bua checked\u00a0a Sedaris essay about meeting the Pope<\/a>. She checked a detail about the color of the buttons on a cardinal\u2019s cassock so assiduously (the department\u2019s perception), or maddeningly (Sedaris\u2019s), that he e-mailed his editor, \u201cCan you slip her a sedative?\u201d Sedaris has complained, \u201cChecking is like being fucked in the ass by a hot thermos.\u201d Bua mentioned this to the checker on Sedaris\u2019s next piece, Yinuo Shi. Shi considered the analogy and said, \u201cIf a thermos works, the outside wouldn\u2019t be hot.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I have always regarded this magazine’s fact-checking department as a working orgy where young editors are relieved of any restraint in their pursuit of what’s so really real it can be printed on paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zach Helfand’s article describing the history and sensibility of The New Yorker‘s famous fact-checking department is hilarious – and, to me, enthralling – from top to bottom. \u201cI find that often a fact checker forces you to tie a knot … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[55,83],"class_list":["post-2715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roberts-posts","tag-journalism","tag-publishing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2715"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2719,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715\/revisions\/2719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}