After reading about the wholesale cutting of syndicated cartoonists in the nation's alt-weekly, I had an emailed conversation with one of the best young cartoonists out there, Matt Bors, and he posted it on his blog and on the Cartoonists With Attitude site (which has become a daily [...]
I've become slightly totally obsessed tracking media layoffs -- according to PaperCuts, the casualty toll was more than 2000 in January alone, including 300 from the Los Angeles Times, which seems hell-bent to see which it can drive away fastest: readers, subscribers or advertisers.
The paper's latest move is to [...]
I've got a roundup of new mysteries in Sunday's Washington Post Book World. It'll be my last -- I'm not going away; they are. Book World as a stand-alone pullout will be no more in two weeks.
Not a surprise, unfortunately; as newspapers cut back, stand-alone book sections have [...]
I have a review of Tom Piazza's new novel, City of Refuge, in today's Washington Post.
This was a weird review to write for a few reasons. First, Piazza based his characters on some pretty recognizable folks, one of whom I know and several of whom are pretty [...]
Proving that they're on the cutting edge of social media, the Rocky Mountain News sent reporter Berny Morson to liveblog the funeral of a 3-year-old who was killed by an out-of-control car while he stood in line at an ice cream parlor...
family member says marten is [...]I'm back and safe and one of the fortunate few with electricity. Cellphones are still down, though, so the best way to whistle me up for a few days will be by email.
In the meantime, I'll still be dispatching at the Blog of New Orleans.
I'm back in the New Orleans area -- one of the fortunate few with electricity -- but the cell towers are still down. The most reliable way to contact me for the next few days is probably via email.
Thanks for all the good wishes. Please note that in all the [...]
I'm safe and fine, reporting on hurricane-related issues at the Blog of New Orleans and will be doing so until further notice.
Just missed John McCain and Sarah Palin. Damn.
[...]Read it at the Blog of New Orleans.
[...]Traffic was not bad - every hotel seems bursting at the seams. The lobby was full of stressed people pleading with the very nice clerk to find them a room in town somewhere, anywhere.
Please do not use my cellphone except in case of emergency. The lines are already jammed and [...]
Will update when possible, both here and at Blog of New Orleans.
Am now packing my computer and will not be reachable by email until I'm in situ.
;
[...]1. Email is likely best.
2. Try my (503) number first. If it's down, try text-messaging (I hate it but it worked better than voice calls during Katrina).
3. I also have a (504) number as backup, but see: #2.
4. If you're wondering what I'm doing, the best place to check is [...]
For those who have so nicely inquired: should Hurricane Gustav make evacuation seem prudent, I've got plans, a place to stay, a way to get there, the whole nine yards. Thanks.
This is also the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina:
Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post can't afford to pay the site's bloggers -- it's not part of the business model, don't you know, darling -- but somehow she can dig up the shekels for this:
[W]e've decided to demonstrate that a balanced life is possible even during the most [...]
Best journalism conference I've ever attended. Period, full stop. Absolutely blown away by the quality of the people, their work, and their welcoming camaraderie.
(And it wasn't even strictly a 'journalism' conference. Although a lot of j-conferences would benefit by studying this model.)
Thanks to [...]
Rising Tide III, A Conference on the Future of New Orleans, gets underway tomorrow night with a welcome reception at Buffa's on Esplanade (near the French Quarter) before launching into a long weekend of conferences, talks, panels, and parties.
Saturday [...]
I've got the cover story in the summer issue of Imagine Louisiana -- "On a Wing and a Sprayer," a look at the lives of cropdusters in a rural Louisiana parish, and a glimpse at the future of the industry (not good). Haven't [...]
I missed this editorial from last December, in which syndicated columnist Froma Harrop takes apart Arianna Huffington's electronic-sweatshop business model:
Paying bloggers is “not our financial model,” The Huffington Post’s co-founder, Ken Lerer, told USAToday. What a profitable business that must be.
The Huffington Post is a popular liberal blog site named for [...]
Steve Rhodes of The Beachwood Reporter seems as unthrilled with the new Huffington Post Chicago as I am, and his disenchantment made the front page of Romenesko's Medianews this a.m.
Letters...he gets letters:
From a Beachwood reader:"I submitted a comment to John Cusack's meandering love letter on the [...]
We've written before about the things that can happen when a paper like the Portland Tribune fires its copyediting staff to save a few bucks. Another example:
Automated spellcheck; it'll be the death of you yet, or at least the source [...]
Since I groused about Arianna Huffington's business model over at Romenesko's Medianews (nutshell: writers work for free while Arianna sells ads), Huffington Post Chicago has made its début. It's the first of many localized sites that Ms. Huffington is planning as online Internet newspapers of sorts, featuring a [...]
The Huffington Post makes its long-predicted foray into local journalism tomorrow with the début of a Chicago edition. Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune breaks it down here.
Ben Goldberger, 25, a former Chicago Sun-Times staffer, will be the only paid [...]
Rolling Stone to go to a smaller "standard-sized" magazine format in October.
And it'll be perfect-bound instead of saddle-stitched.
Ad sales are down 33 percent, and newsstand sales are also in nosedive. This is probably a smart move to improve things on both counts.
It'll be a little weird at first, [...]
I've been fascinated by Slate.com music critic Jody Rosen's story, "Dude, You Stole My Article." Rosen discovered that a "Mark Williams," a writer for a small alt-weekly in Texas (its website is now down), the Montgomery County Bulletin, had plagiarized a Jimmy Buffett feature that Rosen had written. [...]
Here it is: "Rising Tide: a conference, a party and an opportunity to help New Orleans. Join us in helping to rebuild this city after Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood." I blogged about it last month.
Lots of impressive speakers, interesting panels, and smart people. (And lunch catered by [...]
Years ago, I worked at a beleaguered big-city daily where the managers decided that the best way to address sagging morale was to restate the already-existing dress code. Such a move, of course, was a red flag in front of a bunch of badly-dressed bulls, and it was promptly ignored...except [...]
Surely KGW would've taken down that Red Bull press release that the station credited to (and tried to pass off as) a staff news report. It's been more than 24 hours, after all. Or perhaps they rewrote the story honestly and apologized? You remember the one:
Thirty-one teams were selected to strut, soar and ultimately splash into the Willamette’s waters, including a final wildcard team chosen by a public vote.
Flugtag, which means “flying day” in German, gives everyday Joes (and Janes!) the chance to be heroes for the day when they launch their homemade human-powered [...]
There's been a lot of fuss in the last couple of days about Cuil, the latest Google-slayer in the search-engine business. Good luck to them, but I entered my own name and got this:
That's my biography, and my LinkedIn page, but the photo? [...]
Rising Tide logo by Greg Peters
I'm going to be on a media panel at this year's Rising Tide Conference, which will be held Aug. 22-24 at New Orleans' Zeitgeist Arts Center. What's Rising Tide?
Rising Tide is a gathering for all who [...]
I've been scarce around here lately because I've been guestblogging over at Gambit Weekly's site, Blog of New Orleans (aka "Gambit Daily"). The New Orleans alt-weekly has been ramping up its web presence recently, the blog has been redesigned, and there are some fun and funny people contributing [...]
I've got a Q&A with Ann Rogers Tuennerman and her husband Paul Tuennerman in this month's New Orleans Living. We talk about this weekend's enormous Tales of the Cocktail convention, which Ann started in her living room about six years ago and has managed to grow into an [...]
I have a review of Paul Beatty's fun new novel Slumberland in the Sunday Washington Post.
[...]In Publishers Weekly, Rachel Deahl speculates as to what the sale of the Tribune newspapers and the upcoming redesign (has there ever been a time where there wasn't an "upcoming redesign"?) could mean for those papers' book sections:
The tough times in the newspaper industry could spell more trouble for [...]
Almost forgot to blog this: the staff at Gambit Weekly was nice enough to ask me to contribute to their cover story on New Orleans' Top 50 Bars. The selection process was a ton of fun -- it took three lunches and a lot of emails and phone [...]
I wanted to write about the week of layoffs in the newspaper world, but Mark Potts summed it up well on his site Recovering Journalist:
This has been a particularly rough week for the newspaper industry, whose decline seems to be gathering speed....
Total: Roughly 900 jobs eliminated just this week [...]
I'm a sucker for stories about people who self-publish their books and somehow, against all odds, manage to find success. In today's New York Times, Motoko Rich writes about William P. Young, a former hotel night clerk who self-published his novel The Shack, and found it move from [...]
Last month, in a terribly misguided attempt to save a few bucks, the Portland Tribune fired its copyediting staff. This was the result on day one:
Things don't seem to have improved, as Matt Davis discovered this morning:
[...]
Entertainment Weekly has published one of those all-lists issues that claims to identify "The New Classics" in various genres of the arts; their list of the Top 100 books of the last 25 years is here.
As usual, it's plenty silly and there's lots of room for argument, starting [...]
Rachel Deahl of Publishers Weekly has the story:
A few weeks ago John Mitzel, proprietor of Calamus Books in Boston, was surprised to open his mail and discover he'd been named in a lawsuit filed by an author. The suit, filed by Larry Townsend's attorney for copyright infringement, stems from a dispute over unpaid fees allegedly owed the author by his [...]
I've got a fairly lengthy article in the current issue of Gambit Weekly examining the state of Internet radio, the future of home broadcasting, and the implications for Louisiana music (which isn't represented on either terrestrial or satellite radio).
The outlook for Internet radio? Not good, according to most [...]
I have a review of David Guterson's new novel, The Other, in today's book section of The Oregonian.
[...]
I have a cover interview with the magician Criss Angel in the June issue of Muscle & Body magazine. Criss was nice enough on the phone with me, and answered most of my questions without complaint, but the interview occurred right before he [...]
No, I didn't fake the whole thing. No, the book isn't a safety hazard. No, there's nothing substantively wrong with the book. But the book is an editing mess. There are [...]
"Consideration: In consideration of the Services, you will be provided exposure of your name and the Web [...]
For nearly 12 years, I've been paid real American money to read magazines and [...]
Dakin was a dependably colorful addition to the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, in his offbeat theatrics (once playing Blanche Du Bois in [...]
We are under constraints to reduce our expenses and must reduce the fee we pay to reviewers. Any reviews assigned after June 15 [...]
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a notoriously poor speller; it's one of those endearing details of the legend of a great writer. But none of us are Fitzgeralds, so to work on the mechanics of your writing, you can get started with [...]
Matt Bors has an interesting item about The New York Times and its policy regarding editorial cartoonists: it seems the paper Photoshops out their signatures before running them in the paper. I'd never heard of such a thing, but commenters on his blog say that it's not [...]
Why should people outside the New Orleans viewing area be deprived of the "ABC26 News Wheel of Justice" and the station's newest correspondent Tat-2 the Bounty Hunter?
[...]Was it just last week that I was congratulating the local TV news for some excellent work? Yes.
Dumb me.
WDSU has a new "crime and safety" expert, Howard Robertson, the sort of crusader whose entire journalistic raison d'être is keeping good citizens like you, Mr. and Ms. Good [...]
The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies announced its finalist list for this year's AAN Awards, and one of the nominees is Willamette Week's 2007 Restaurant Guide (which I helped work on). Congrats to the WW and to restaurant guide editor Byron Beck.
Also on the nominee list (for [...]
Just the highlights, ma'am....
As employees were preparing to open Sunday at about 4 a.m., a tall, slender redhead, dressed in a colorful floral dress and pink necklace, entered the store.
But the figure wasn't a mother popping in for a warm Mother's Day breakfast. "She" wasn't even a [...]
Two days ago, Kathy Price-Robinson, who writes the "Pardon Our Dust" remodeling blog for the Los Angeles Times, asked her readers if they'd be interested in following the progress of a flood-damaged home in New Orleans' Holy Cross neighborhood:
I'm enthralled with this region and the fact that [...]
I've got a story in the new issue of Get Active! magazine...a consumer piece on the best smoothies for the gym.
[...]South Louisiana has always had some much better reporters and media than one would expect (or, some would argue, much better than it deserves). The collective bullshit detector of the populace is strong and finely tuned, and it's reflected in both the print and electronic media (well, in a lot [...]
I have a cover story in this week's Gambit Weekly about the New Orleans Craft Mafia, a group of young(ish) women who are leading the D.I.Y. craft movement in the city.
This was my first piece for Gambit, and I was really pleased with [...]
Dave Walker of The Times-Picayune broke the news this morning that Tom Benson, the very interesting owner of the New Orleans Saints, is buying WVUE-TV, the New Orleans Fox affiliate. (See a photo here.) One commenter/wag on the newspaper website wanted to know:
Will he move [...]
KPTV-TV, Portland's Fox affiliate, covered the ch-ch-changes at the Portland Tribune in a nice story that put a pleasant-as-possible spin on the paper's scaling-back of its print edition:
The Tribune described this move as freeing its staff up to post more news online and eliminate some of the - [...]
Last week, the Portland Tribune fired most of its copyediting staff and announced:
On Monday, May 5, the Portland Tribune enters its next phase of innovative, cutting-edge journalism as the newspaper launches a more complete daily online newspaper...
Too bad there wasn't a copy editor [...]
Please tell me that someone, anyone is awake at the switch of the Toronto Star's op-ed page....
As expected, the Portland Tribune announced to its readers this morning that it's cutting jobs and going from a twice-a-week publication schedule to a weekly. The letter to its readers, from Portland Tribune president Steve Clark, tries to put a pretty bow on the move by spinning it [...]
Yesterday's news that The Oregonian is attempting to slash costs by offering a buyout to every part-time employee in the place was just the latest tremor (or death throe) in the newspaper world; but in light of that announcement, a publisher's memo from last August seems a [...]
I like Fletcher Mackel's New Orleans sports blog at WDSU. I just do.
This headline about the Saints coach made me laugh out loud. Really, Fletcher?
First Oregon Media Insiders reported, then the Willamette Week's Byron Beck confirmed, that The Oregonian is about to offer all its part-time employees, in all departments, a buyout:
In an unprecedented move, every part-time employee at The O (that tallies up to around 300 people company-wide) is being offered a [...]
Notes from the US presidential campaign trail:
Asked who she'd go out with on a date -- with any celebrity, living or dead -- and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton chose . . . a Republican.
Her fantasy date would be with President Abraham Lincoln, Clinton said in an interview being published in the People [...]
Great piece by Susan Larson, books editor at The Times-Picayune, about the booksigning tent at this year's Jazz Fest...including the story of Hunter S. Thompson and the golf cart.
[...]Journalist Harry Allen has uncovered a fascinating piece of the Margaret Jones/Peggy Seltzer puzzle: a video that seems to be a promotional vehicle for her now-discredited memoir Love and Consequences:
These days, publishers often commission promo videos to be posted on MySpace or YouTube; I don't know [...]
In Sunday's New York Times, Elizabeth Edwards wrote a guest editorial titled "Bowling 1, Health Care 0," which limned the press for (among other things) its "shallow news coverage" of the 2008 presidential campaign:
The problem today unfortunately is that voters who take their responsibility to be informed seriously enough [...]
This weekend brought the annual White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner, where the press gathers to yuk it up with the people they're supposed to be covering. Frank James of the Chicago Tribune provides a wrapup that's as good, or at least as typical, as any. Not [...]
Nola.com had an online chat today with several Times-Picayune writers and editors about the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, so I asked restaurant writer Brett Anderson and food editor Judy Walker about the issue of serving imported frozen Chinese crawfish at a Louisiana heritage [...]
So you're coming to New Orleans for the Jazz & Heritage Festival! Great. And of course you're going to be sampling all the great indigenous food at the Fairgrounds...crawfish bisque, crawfish Monica, crawfish sacks, crawfish bread....
Would you be surprised to know that the crawfish you're eating is likely from [...]
- I found Ethan Brown after his piece in Radar this month about the ongoing crime crisis in New Orleans. At first I hated it for the sensationalistic treatment and photos (including a photo caption of the sidewalk in front of my old house as "a notorious drug [...]
From the Associated Press report on this weekend's wedding of quarterback Eli Manning:
The Daily News reported that the minister looked down at Eli Manning's hands during the ceremony and joked that they were "quite large."
You know what they say...big hands, big passes.
[...]Coordinating story, headline, and photo can be a complicated affair. Just ask The New York Times....
At the moment, it's been fixed...but it's not much better, to be honest.
[...]I Want Media has an interview with Lee Abrams, "the noted music and radio industry executive," who has been brought aboard the Tribune Company as its "first-ever chief innovation officer" at a time when the Trib is hemorrhaging newsroom staff at its various holdings...
IWM: You're known [...]
Sometimes larceny is more comical than outrageous:
This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentiis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only [...]
From LA Observed comes the news that the L.A. Daily Journal fired its entire copy desk, leaving the writers and editors to read each other's work for typos, style, and all those silly little deets. What's the worst that could happen?
Apparently the state that pioneered the drive-thru daiquiri shop is just too damn prop-ah to designate an official state cocktail, even one that was invented there....
The Louisiana Senate on Tuesday rejected a proposal to honor the New Orleans cocktail known as the Sazerac.
The bill by Sen. Ed Murray [...]
Once again, Nancy Nall analyzes What's Wrong With Newspapers, and shows that she should not only be writing for one (again), but should probably be running one:
The other day I took a left turn (oh, never mind how) and happened upon a porn blog. Immediately I was served a banner [...]
The new issue of Radar has a hilarious article by Matt Thompson reimagining all sorts of books repackaged with chick-lit covers. They're all really funny (especially The Diary of Anne Frank), but this one takes the pink, overdecorated, flouncy-fonted, high-heeled cake:
I'd been hearing that Andre Trevigne, the longtime New Orleans broadcaster, hadn't survived as her station transformed its identity from "The New 99.5 FM" to "Rush Radio." And though I haven't been able to speak to Andre to confirm the tale, and station manager James Fisher [...]
The ever-intrepid Loki of HumidCity has created Remember Ashley Morris, a website for remembrances of New Orleans' most voluble (and volatile) blogger, as well as being a place where his fans can donate to Ashley's family via PayPal.
[...]
My friend Ann Tuennerman is lobbying the Louisiana Senate to have the Sazerac designated the official state cocktail, and this week it was sent to the full Senate for debate. Gov. Bobby Jindal is expected to sign the bill.
The excellence of this idea [...]
Chris Cadelago of the San Francisco Chronicle has a story about Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood, two novelists whose knack for Internet self-promotion is paying off with impressive sales and -- in Sigler's case -- a major book deal:
Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood have spent the past [...]
I've got a roundup review of some new mystery/suspense titles in this Sunday's Washington Post Book World (available online now), including Bill Floyd's promising debut The Killer's Wife, as well as Linda Fairstein's latest, which is a horrorshow for all the [...]
[...]
