Much has been made of how the Daily Show is capturing the young, 18-34 year old demographic which newspapers would love to get their hairy palms on. For some reason, the big newspaper companies across the land think the way to do this is to print bigger pictures and fewer words and vulgar jokes. If … Read more
There’s been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth among the people who write about media concerning the case of NY Times reporter Judith Miller and Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper, who are facing prison time for doing what they think of as their jobs. In case you haven’t been paying attention to such … Read more
We have always had mixed feelings about Michael Wolff, the media critic and self-appointed expert on the nexus of Internet, media, and business. His main credential has always been his spectacular failure at publishing on the web, so it has always seemed odd that his judgment is considered golden when it comes to all things … Read more
Brave new world, but in actuality not terribly brave and hardly new. At any rate: welcome to my world. I’ve crawled into a new hole, a new little closet where I’ll play my out-of-tune piano for the wee beasties in the floor boards. And for you –whether you exist or not is really no sweat … Read more
In yesterday’s Times Book Review, A.J. Jacobs was allowed a rare privilege—he wrote a review of his Times reviewer, the alleged humorist Joe Queenan, and it was better than the original review. Heck, it was better than Jacobs’ book. You may recall that A.J. Jacobs was a front-of-book editor at Entertainment Weekly and then at … Read more
James Rainey writes in the Los Angeles Times today about bylines—the credit writers receive at the top (or the bottom) of their work. It’s an interesting world of arcana, and one of those professional vanities we afford ourselves. We used to think that most readers frankly don’t give a toss about bylines, and we still … Read more
We were saddened the Mark Dayton won’t be running again for the Senate. Oh, we didn’t harbor any illusions about his winning. He would have had a six year record as an unapologetic liberal to run against, he’s not the best speaker in the world, and he can’t finance his own campaign this time. Although … Read more
We hereby summarize a couple of Rakish get-togethers in the last two days. Last night, we made our way to the monthly writers’ round table with the usual wits, including a very punchy Irish lad, JC, who is touched with the gift of blarney, and occasionally joins us. Also, we were surprised to learn of … Read more
The Editor in Cheese beat us to the punch today in commenting on Verlyn Klinkenborg’s essay in the NY Times on the Iowa brain drain. Klinkenborg blames it a lot on the state’s encouragement of industrial farming and the resultant slaughtering not only of pigs, but also the family farm and all the real jobs … Read more
We’ve never understood what, exactly, Verlyn Klinkenborg did to land on the Times editorial board. Besides, what kind of a name is “Verlyn”? Anyway, it becomes clear from his editorial today that his main achievement seems to have been moving from Iowa to California in 1966. Ever since then, he’s been hopscotching around the country … Read more