Via a series of Tweets from
Tamara K. Nopper, I learned that
William Worthy recently died at the age of 92.
I knew very little about Worthy the man, but his name has been one I've known since childhood, because of a
Phil Ochs song about him,
"The Ballad of William Worthy".
My father was a DJ at a radio station in Massachusetts in the 1960s and played that song one day, because though his politics were rather different from those of Ochs or Worthy (he voted for Nixon and generally supported the Vietnam War), he loved to challenge authority and get in trouble. That he did. As he told it, a bunch of little old ladies wrote letters to the station to demand that this upstart DJ be fired. The station manager screamed at him never to play anything like that damned song ever again.
By the time I was old enough to be taught the contents of the record collection at home, I heard that story and listened to the song. It was a catchy tune, and because I associated it with my father's amusing rebellion, I took a particular liking to it and quickly learned the words. And thus I have carried William Worthy's name with me ever since.
William Worthy isn't worthy to enter our door
Went down to Cuba, he's not American anymore
But somehow it is strange to hear the State Department say
You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay
But Worthy was much more than just a journalist who went to Cuba. His is a story worth learning, a name worth remembering.
By Tony Harcup
Journalists are heroes to some and scumbags to others but the truth is that most are somewhere in the middle, trying to do as good a job as they can, often in difficult circumstances. That, at least, is the view of Tony Harcup, author of A Dictionary of Journalism. We asked him to tell us about some of the good – and not so good – things that journalists do. Do you agree with the below?
The nine best things about journalists:
- We tell you things that you didn’t even know you didn’t know.
- Our default position is healthy scepticism.
- We know that there’s no such thing as a stupid question.
- Our way with words translates jargon into language that actual people use.
- We juggle complex intellectual, legal, commercial and ethical issues every day, simultaneously and at high speed, all while giving the impression of being little deeper than a puddle.
- Our lateral thinking spots the significance of the dog that didn’t bark (noting in the process that Sherlock Holmes was created by a journalist).
- We speak truth to power (or, at least, we say boo to a goose).
- Our gallows humour keeps us going despite the grim stories we cover and the even grimmer people we work with (perhaps the most literal exponent of the art was journalist Ben Hecht who wrote the movies His Girl Friday and The Front Page about hacks covering a hanging).
- We identify with other journalists as fellow members of society’s awkward squad (which is why even those of us who have left the frontline of reporting and become “hackademics” still can’t stop saying “we”).
The nine worst things about journalists:
- We have a tendency to tell young hopefuls that all the quality has vanished from journalism compared to when we started out (journalists have been harking back to a mythical golden age for well over a century).
- Our scepticism can sometimes become cynicism.
- We routinely demand public apologies or resignations from anyone accused of misbehaviour (except ourselves).
- Our way with words is too often used to reduce individuals or communities to stereotypes.
- We have been known to conflate a popular touch with boorish anti-intellectualism.
- Our collective memory lets us down surprisingly often. (We won’t get fooled again? Don’t bet on it.)
- We are in danger of viewing the world through the eyes of whoever employs us, forgetting that, while they might hire us, they don’t own us.
- Our insistence that we are something of a special breed is a bit rich given that most journalistic jobs have more in common with The Office than with All The President’s Men.
- We eviscerate politicians for fiddling their expenses while celebrating hacks from the golden age (see no. 1) for doing exactly the same.
Tony Harcup is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield. A Dictionary of Journalism, first edition, will be published 15 May 2014. It covers over 1,400 wide-ranging entries on the terms that are likely to be encountered by students of the subject, and aims to offer a broad, accessible point of reference on an ever-topical and constantly-changing field that affects everyone’s knowledge and perception of the world.
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My first experience with Sarah Glidden’s work was via her debut, How To Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less (published by, of all people, DC Vertigo!). That book saw Glidden take the ‘Birthright Tour,’ an Israeli government funded initiative traversing through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Masada and other places, where she constantly finds a conflict between her pre-conceived notions and what she’s experiencing, and you can’t help but feel an affinity for her as she attempts to navigate knotty political and personal waters.
She has since been making political, informative comics for various online platforms- Cartoon Movement, the Jewish Quarterly and Symbolia Magazine amongst others. This is going to sound incredibly stupid, but I find it very difficult to engage with long prose non-fiction texts, so I’m glad to see the slow expansion of the same genre in comics, and so I really appreciate Glidden’s presence in comics, and her smart, thoughtful, and clear take on things.
I was very pleased to hear, then, of Drawn and Quarterly’s announcement at the beginning of this year, regarding the publishing of her second book, Rolling Blackouts (due for release in 2014), another graphic journalism work which finds Glidden following reporters in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.
You can find Glidden’s website here and buy her work here.
By Alexander Ané
For those who don’t know, the Bleeding Alliance of Beat Reporters is four of the biggest names in comic book journalism in one panel held during Thursday evening of San Diego Comic-Con and moderated by another big name in comics journalism, Douglas Wolk. Andy Khouri of Comics Alliance, Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool, Heidi MacDonald of The Beat, and Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter filed into the panel for an evening of talking about their publications and beliefs about other side of the comics industry most people don’t consider often: reporting about it.
Most of the time, if you look behind the curtain, you might hear about those individuals pecking at each other over various stories and events, but the level of professionalism shown among those panelists was something to be admired. Their job that evening was to inform us about comics journalism and the what life becomes when you follow that profession.
There was a great discussion about readership and how each publication handles their own followers. It clearly reflected each of their aims toward journalism and writing in general. In the end while all the panelists agreed that journalists write for themselves and writing news for the sake of numbers was a secondary priority there is a fine line where good quality reporting does become news or ratings worthy.
When asked about how each of them would make a living on journalism alone, it was mentioned that there has to be a sort of diversifaction in writing professions to be able to stay afloat. The fact that they emphasized being able to maintain a varied skill set was interesting because that seems to be a common topic in the comics industry when acquiring work.
posted by Neil
I interviewed Stephen King for the UK Sunday Times Magazine. The interview appeared a few weeks ago. The Times keeps its site paywalled, so I thought I'd post the original version of the interview here. (This is the raw copy, and it's somewhat longer than the interview as published.)
I don't do much journalism any more, and this was mostly an excuse to drive across Florida back in February and spend a day with some very nice people I do not get to see enough.
I hope you enjoy it.
Edit to add - the Sunday Times asked me to write something small and personal about King and me for the contributors' notes, and I wrote this:
“I think the most important thing I learned from Stephen King I learned as a teenager, reading King's book of essays on horror and on writing, Danse Macabre. In there he points out that if you just write a page a day, just 300 words, at the end of a year you'd have a novel. It was immensely reassuring - suddenly something huge and impossible became strangely easy. As an adult, it's how I've written books I haven't had the time to write, like my children's novel Coraline.”
“Meeting Stephen King this time, the thing that struck me is how very comfortable he is with what he does. All the talk of retiring from writing, of quitting, the suggestions that maybe it's time to stop before he starts repeating himself, seems to be done. He likes writing, likes it more than anything else that he could be doing, and does not seem at all inclined to stop. Except perhaps at gunpoint.”
The first time I met Stephen King was in Boston, in 1992. I sat in his hotel suite, met his wife Tabitha, who is Tabby in conversation, and his then-teenage sons Joe and Owen, and we talked about writing and about authors, about fans and about fame.
“If I had my life over again,” said King. “I'd've done everything the same. Even the bad bits. But I wouldn't have done the American Express “Do You Know Me?” TV ad. After that, everyone in America knew what I looked like.”
He was tall and dark haired, and Joe and Owen looked like much younger clones of their father, fresh out of the cloning vat.
The next time I met Stephen King, in 2002, he pulled me up onstage to play kazoo with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a ramshackle assemblage of authors who can play instruments and sing and, in the case of author Amy Tan, impersonate a dominatrix while singing Nancy Sinatra's “These Boots are Made For Walkin'”.
Afterwards we talked in the tiny toilet in the back of the theatre, the only place King could smoke a furtive cigarette. He seemed frail, then, and gr
By: Kirsty,
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This Day in World History
November 14, 1889
Nellie Bly begins record round-the-world trip
At 9:40:30 in the morning of November 14, 1889, an American woman began a trip abroad. It was not just any trip, though: journalist Nellie Bly was out to best the legendary journey of Phileas Fogg, the British gentleman who was the hero of Victor Hugo’s bestselling novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Bly’s whirlwind world trip was heavily promoted by Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper the New York World.
Born Elizabeth Cochran, the writer who became Nellie Bly became a journalist at 21 when she wrote a letter to the editor of a Pittsburgh paper complaining about his dismissive statements about women in the workplace. Impressed by her writing, he hired her. She gained fame from a series of articles describing corruption and poverty in Mexico, leading the outraged Mexican government to force her to leave the country. Working for Pulitzer’s World, she had herself committed to an insane asylum and then wrote a searing exposé of horrible conditions there. The articles prompted a government investigation.
Bly proposed the round-the-world trip in 1888, but the World demurred initially at having a woman make the journey. Once she left, though, the paper covered the story to the hilt, even running a contest to have viewers guess her return date. Almost a million entries were received. Using steamships and sampans, trains and rickshaws, horses and burros, Bly made rapid time—although she did stop in Paris to meet Verne and his wife. She finished her journey 72 days, 6 hours, and some minutes after her departure. She described the scene: “The station was packed with thousands of people, and the moment I landed on the platform, one yell went up from them, and the cannons at the Battery and Fort Greene boomed out the news of my arrival.”
“This Day in World History” is brought to you by USA Higher Education.
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By: John Mark Boling,
on 10/27/2011
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A big thanks to everyone who joined us last night at the Housing Works Bookstore to enjoy the "Changing World of the Foreign Correspondent" panel moderated by The Paris Correspondent author Alan S. Cowell. Joining the panel to discuss the rapidly changing world of journalism in the digital age were Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large of Reuters News; John Darnton, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of Almost a Family and Black and White and Dead All Over; and Peter Godwin, author of Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun.
How does the job of the foreign correspondent change over time? Will on the ground foreign correspondence be necessary in the future? Does the rapid pace of web journalism compromise credibility in foreign reporting? Last night's panelists tackled these big questions about the state of global journalism in the age of Twitter and shared stories from their backgrounds as pioneers in the field of digital media.
The Clarion reminded me a bit of V.V.’s Eyes, and also of K. It’s not really as smart as either of those, but it’s mostly pretty delightful. It turns out that Samuel Hopkins Adams can be charming even when dealing with disease, corruption, betrayal, and the loss of ideals. Although I guess it’s less about the loss of ideal than about their creation, or about growing into them. That’s mostly where my V.V.’s Eyes comparisons come in. I’m comparing it to K mostly because a lot of silly, melodramatic things happen in a sympathetic way.
Whatever is happening to the ideals in question, most of them belong to Harrington Surtaine, who will henceforth be referred to as Hal. Hal is the son of itinerant quack turned millionaire patent medicine manufacturer Dr. L. André Surtaine, formerly Andy Certain, and when the book opens — after a prologue I’m choosing to ignore — the two are reunited after the trip abroad with which Hal has capped his long boarding school and college education. They’ve spent time together on vacations, but Hal has never been to his father’s new home base, the city of Worthington.
Dr. Surtaine hopes Hal will want to join the family business, but if I were him I’d be trying to keep Hal as far away from the Certina factory as I could. Dr. Surtaine’s business is founded on two things: the tasty, alcoholic recipe for Certina, and his amazing skill at advertising. Hal, however, believes that the medicine really works. It’s clear from the beginning that Hal is eventually going to have to learn and deal with the truth; his impulse purchase of the trashiest newspaper in town only raises the stakes.
It’s not a surprise to me that The Clarion was made into a movie only a couple of years after it was first published. It is surprising that it hasn’t been filmed since. I mean, really: a naive young man buys a newspaper and is taken under the wing of a cranky, secretly idealistic journalist and the two of them set out to publish a honest paper in a town full of corrupt ones. Add in the father and son stuff, the inevitable romance, and a moderate amount of gunshots and explosions, and you would think it would be catnip for filmmakers.
It’s almost too formulaic, but the characters make it work. Hal is flawed and sympathetic and makes enough bad decisions to be believable, while Dr. Surtaine is more likeable than he has any right to be. Esmé Elliott, the love interest, is sort of a toned down version of Carlisle Heth from V.V.’s Eyes, although I was never able to like her as much as I wanted to. Milly Neal, Dr. Surtaine’s smartest employee, did not get the ending she deserved, but she did get to be more interesting than anyone else for most of the book. And I’m not really sure how to talk about Hal’s journalistic mentor, McGuire Ellis, because I kind of adore him. I kind of want a whole book of Mac Ellis being awesome, only — well, this is that book.
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By: HannaO,
on 7/19/2011
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China has long been criticized for its limits on press freedom; one journalist, He Qinglian, has even described Chinese journalists as “dancing in shackles.” In the collection of essays, Changing Media, Changing China, China experts weigh in on the state of Chinese journalism today and discuss the transformation it has undergone in recent years. In this excerpt from the book, editor Susan L. Shirk sheds some light on the factors that have brought about these changes.
Beginning in the early 1980s, the structure of Chinese media changed. Newspapers, magazines, and television stations received cuts in their government subsidies and were driven to enter the market and to earn revenue. In 1979 they were permitted to sell advertising, and in 1983 they were allowed to retain the profits from the sale of ads. Because people were eager for information and businesses wanted to advertise their products, profits were good and the number of publications grew rapidly. As Qian Gang and David Bandurski note in chapter 2, the commercialization of the media accelerated after 2000 as the government sought to strengthen Chinese media organizations to withstand competition from foreign media companies.
By 2005, China published more than two thousand newspapers and nine thousand magazines. In 2003, the CCP eliminated mandatory subscriptions to official newspapers and ended subsidies to all but a few such papers in every province. Even nationally circulated, official papers like People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, and Economics Daily are now sold at retail stalls and compete for audiences. According to their editors, Guangming Daily sells itself as “a spiritual homeland for intellectuals”; Economics Daily markets its timely economic reports; and the People’s Daily promotes its authoritativeness.
About a dozen commercial newspapers with national circulations of over 1 million readers are printed in multiple locations throughout the country. The southern province Guangdong is the headquarters of the cutting-edge commercial media, with three newspaper groups fiercely competing for audiences. Nanjing now has five newspapers competing for the evening readership. People buy the new tabloids and magazines on the newsstands and read them at home in the evening.
Though almost all of these commercial publications are part of media groups led by party or government newspapers, they look and sound completely different. In contrast to the stilted and formulaic language of official publications, the language of the commercial press is lively and colloquial. Because of this difference in style, people are more apt to believe that the content of commercial media is true. Daniela Stockmann’s research shows that consumers seek out commercial publications because they consider them more credible than their counterparts from the official media. According to her research, even in Beijing, which has a particularly large proportion of government employees, only about 36 percent of residents read official papers such as the People’s Daily; the rest read only semiofficial or commercialized papers.
Advertisers and many of the commercial media groups target young and middle-aged urbanites who are well-educated, affluent consumers. But publications also seek to differentiate themselves and appeal to specific audiences. The Guangdong-based publications use domestic muckraking to attract a business-oriented, cosmopolitan audience. Because they push the
Who better than Peggy Noonan to ask to read an early copy of DEADLINE ARTISTS: The Greatest Newspaper Columns by America's Greatest Newspaper Columnists, edited by Jesse Angelo, John P. Avlon, and Errol Louis? We loved her reaction:
"An indispensible anthology of an American art form — a broad and brilliantly chosen compilation of the best newspaper column writing past and present — and a real feast. I couldn't stop reading. The stories, yarns, insights and characters — the immediacy and passion — still resonate, still make you laugh, and think."
Deadline Artists goes on-sale on September 1, 2011, but fans of American journalism's greatest hits can pre-order now.
By: Lauren,
on 3/11/2011
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Following the lead of papers like the Los Angeles Free Press, the East Village Other, and the Berkeley Barb, young Americans in the 1960s launched hundreds of mimeographed pamphlets and flyers, small press magazines, and underground newspapers. New, cheaper printing technologies democratized the publishing process and by the decade’s end the combined circulation of underground papers stretched into the millions. Though not technically illegal, these papers were often genuinely subversive, and many of those who produced and sold them-on street-corners, at poetry readings, gallery openings, and coffeehouses-became targets of harassment from local and federal authorities. With writers who actively participated in the events they described, underground newspapers captured the zeitgeist of the ’60s, speaking directly to their readers, and reflecting and magnifying the spirit of cultural and political protest.
In the deeply researched and eloquently written volume Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, author John McMillian captures all the youthful idealism and vibrant tumult of the 1960s as it delivers a brilliant reappraisal of the origins and development of the New Left rebellion. McMillian pays special attention to the ways underground newspapers fostered a sense of community and played a vital role in shaping the New Left’s highly democratic “movement culture.” Below, we present a conversation with McMillian, who is also Assistant Professor of History at Georgia State University and the co-editor of The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of an American Radical Tradition, The New Left Revisited, Protest Nation: The Radical Roots of Modern America, The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture
* * * * *
How did you get interested in the 60s, and what made you want to write about that period?
I’ve had a longstanding layperson’s interest in the 1960s, going all the way back to high school, when I became a huge Beatles fan. I read about them obsessively, and then a little later on started getting interested in other iconic groups and personalities from the era: Abbie Hoffman, the Black Panthers, even Charles Manson (as weird as that sounds). But it wasn’t until a bit later – after I started my Ph.D. at Columbia in the mid-to-late 1990s – that it even occurred to me that this was a topic I could study professionally.
Up until that point, most of the writing on the 60s had been accomplished by people who had lived through the decade, and who (at least by some accounts) seemed a little protective of the field. But soon I discovered that a newer generation of scholars – made up of people who are just a little bit older than myself – were beginning to do some really fascinating work on the period. Meanwhile, I’d encountered essays by Maurice Isserman and Rick Perlstein, both of which were persuasive and encouraging about the idea that the scholarship on the 60s scholarship could use an infusion of fresh voices and new approaches. And then once I started doing just a little bit of work on the New Left, I realized there were so many amazing troves of untapped primary sources relating to the 60s (the underground newspapers are foremost among then). Most of the time, I really enjoy doing archival w
I have slightly mixed feelings about this as I occasionally teach a class on how to write a press release that is so like a 'proper' news story that it will get published just the way you've written it. Good PR is about getting the message across and winning those all important column inches, of course, and in the case of my students the message is usually something along the lines of local-author-signs-books-at-out-of-town-community-centre and they need all the help they can get to have anyone pop along who hasn't been bribed by the promise of a pint afterwards or is related by blood...
But what about the big stories? Are they the product of a journalist asking questions or a very biased press release?
You can find out by visiting Churnalism, an independant website set up by a media charity. (Click on the title of this post to go straight there.) All you have do is paste in any news story that raises your suspicions.
‘Churnalism’ is defined as a news article that is published as journalism, but is essentially a press release without much added.
I predict that we are going to see more and more churned out stories as staffing levels in editorial departments are slashed. And when it comes to things that matter we do need people to ask questions.
It's a snowy day here in NYC, but we got some great news this morning when we opened ForeWord's review of The Piano Player in the Brothel: The Future of Journalism, by Juan Luis Cebrian. The review says that the book is "a thoughtful collection of essays exploring the storied past and shifting present of reporting, a call to encourage what is best in journalism as we move into the tumultuous era of online news." It goes on to conclude that Cebrian's work is "a thoughtful collection of essays exploring the storied past and shifting present of reporting, a call to encourage what is best in journalism as we move into the tumultuous era of online news."
The whole review is below. This book goes on sale March 3, so current and aspiring journalists and media-watchers, take note. Happy reading!
The Piano Player in the Brothel: The Future of Journalism
Juan Luis Cebrian
Eduardo Schmid, translator
Overlook Press
Hardcover $24.95 (192pp)
978-1-59020-394-1
Veteran journalist Juan Luis Cebrain finds his occupation embattled on many fronts: Newspapers losing readers to the immediate news available online; the globalizing effects of the world wide web are reshaping languages all over the globe; one hundred million blogs exists, with roughly one thousand added each day. What is the role of journalism, and journalists, in a landscape that changes so rapidly? The Piano Player in the Brothel is Cebrain’s answer, a thoughtful collection of essays exploring the storied past and shifting present of reporting, a call to encourage what is best in journalism as we move into the tumultuous era of online news.
Cebrian’s title is taken from a popular joke: one man admits to another that he is a journalist, but pleads “Don’t tell my mother I’m a journalist. She thinks I play piano at the whorehouse.” A comments on the fluid state of journalism, at times contemptible, other times noble, always changing in relation to the people it serves. No one knows this better than Cebrain. After starting his career under the Franco regime and becoming the director of El Pais, Spain’s largest newspaper, Cebrain is an authority on the democratizing effects of an open press.
Cebrian uses this first-hand knowledge to color his essays, mapping the historically tenuous relationship between journalist, government, and reader. He visits America for his example of maintaining journalistic integrity, noting, “Watergate was a reminder of journalism’s role as a watchdog against corruption and has come to symbolize journalistic independence, a check against political power.” He describes the difficulty of telling the truth under the Franco regime, where journalists were routinely bullied by the government’s Press Agency. Cebrain’s analysis of the role of journalism in the war on terror is nuanced and thoughtful: he applauds the media’s show of respect by not showing the bodies of victims on television, but finds reprehensible the large television networks’ manipulation of viewers while covering the Iraq War..
Some of the most salient questions in modern journalism are raised in this collection. What is the role of traditional journalism in a world of blogs? Can a society retain its unique culture in the face of the globalizing behemoth of the Internet? Is it possible for newspapers to maint
By: Lauren,
on 12/13/2010
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Images of people about to die surface repeatedly in the news and their appearance raises questions: What equips an image to deliver the news; how much does the public need to know to make sense of what they see; and what do these images contribute to historical memory? These images call on us to rethink both journalism and its public response, and in so doing they suggest both an alternative voice in the news – a subjunctive voice of the visual that pushes the ‘as if’ of news over its ‘as is’ dimensions – and an alternative mode of public engagement with journalism – an engagement fueled not by reason and understanding but by imagination and emotion.
In About to Die: How News Images Move the Public, Barbie Zelizer suggests that a different kind of news relay, producing a different kind of public response, has settled into our information environment.
Click here to view the embedded video.
This video is posted courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communication (c) 2010.
Barbie Zelizer is Raymond Williams Chair of Communication and the Director of the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor of several collections and the author of Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera’s Eye, Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory, and most recently About to Die: How News Images Move the Public.
If you’d like to learn more, you can watch Zelizer’s lecture from this December at McNally Jackson Books.
Over the past two weeks, my writing has shifted somewhat toward journalism. I can’t define the why or when of the shift in emphasis. I can merely observe it and see where it takes me.
One of those destinations was Associated Content. I began writing for them, an article here, one there, finding my way by instinct and inclination. I’ve enjoyed it and look forward to doing many more each month. If you’d like to check out what I’ve been up to on that front, you can check out two of my articles at:
www.associatedcontent.com/article/5627856/glaciers centennial crowds find a changing.htm/
and also www.associatedcontent.com/article/5645172/remodelingcliches.htm/
I hope you enjoy them or can use something within them.
I’ve also arrived at a point where I miss doing my writer/editor/illustrator interviews each week. I can say that now that my life is somewhat more settled than it has been in a long while.
So that feature is going to come back. I’ve decided to begin with one interview each week, and work my way back up to more frequent segments as work allows. I look forward to talking with so many people in the publishing business, whether behind the desk or on the submission’s end. Hopefully, I will be able to begin those interviews within a couple of weeks.
For those interested in what I’m actually spending my time on other than the occasional article for online reading, I am working on three books at the moment. One children’s easy reader chapter book, one book of poetry for adults, and another book of specially designed poetry for readers 13 to just this side of the beyond.
Queries will be going out to agents on the chapter book within the week. I have my own deadline for the special poetry book placed at Aug. 31, and the other one should come together and be ready for query duty by the end of the month as well.
Besides those projects I have two YA fantasy novels, one urban and the other high fantasy, that I’m working on at this time. I waffle between manuscripts to keep things interesting.
The odd blog and short story also get thrown into the mix each week and I write poetry for FB’s Micro Poetry and WD’s Poetic Asides.
So, you can see that I’m keeping busy. When I’m not at the keyboard, I’m usually out with my sister on photo shoots. She just became a professional fine art photographer. And a fine job she does, too. While I’m out with her, I get lots of material for poetry and storylines. Amazing how that works.
And there you have it. My normal week. I socialize online and off. Have the occasional meal. [There are those who say I never skip one.] I do my household chores when necessary. And try, above all else, to enjoy life while I have one.
I hope everyone has a marvelous week. I have to take a few days away on a wee trip. So while I’m gone, enjoy yourselves. I’ll be back on the weekend with something new. Who knows what, but something.
Take care, all, and God bless.
A bientot,
Claudsy
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A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA that happened last week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference. I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC. The site allows citizens outside of the UK access to the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists. It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks. This week I have posted a clip in which Kevin shares why he choose journalism as a career. Read Kevin’s blog here. Watch the other videos in this series here and here.
Click here to view the embedded video.
A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA that happened last week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference. I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC. The site allows citizens outside of the UK access to the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists. It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks. This week I have posted a clip which emphasizes the true hard work that journalism involves. Read Kevin’s blog here. Watch last week’s video here.
Click here to view the embedded video.
A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA happening this week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference. I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC. The site allows citizens outside of the UK access to the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists. It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks. To start us off I have posted a clip which emphasizes the value of truth in journalism. Read Kevin’s blog here.
Click here to view the embedded video.
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Yay for Sarah Glidden!
All are brilliant, but nonetheless: Wake me up when you get to the two greatest living female cartoonists in the world, Posy Simmonds and Ai Yazawa…
Also: A shout-out to Phoebe Gloeckner would be nice. She’s pretty goddamned amazing herself.
Hi Dirk,
It’s supposed to be a selection of great women creators, chosen by the various contributors on The Beat, not a comprehensive list, otherwise we’d be here a LONG time!
And, really: If I have to even say the words “Lynda Barry” to you without you already having an essay in place, I’m coming over there and taking away your license to commit comics criticism. Don’t make me say this twice.
Hi, Zainab,
Screw all of that. There are STANDARDS to maintain, here. People need to be reminded, on every occasion possible, that some women just fucking kick ass every time they put pen to paper.
That is all. Or else.
Ha, well, we’e blowing your standards outta the water, my friend :)
Dirk Deppey’s back! Finally!! The world of comics has been a much poorer place without you, good sir!
I know this could sound like hyperbole, but I think Ai Yazawa is one of the best cartoonists on the planet.
I don’t know the work of Posy Simmonds or Phoebe Gloeckner, but I see that as being Deppey’s fault since he abandoned us after TCJ.com changed.
You should definitely check out Posy Simmonds’ stuff, Chris- Literary Life, Tamara Drewe and Gemma Bovery are all very, very good.
Hi, Chris. I’m afraid that you missed a word. For “abandoned’,” please instead see “Purged.” I didn’t walk away — I was fired.
– and, for the record, of course Ai Yazawa fucking rocks like a heart attack. I only wish that more Western comics fans knew this, if for no other reason that I really, really want to walk up to her in San Diego and shake her hand, y’know? What a brilliant goddamned cartoonist…
Dirk,
I know you were unceremoniously let go. I was trying to be diplomatic because I kinda know someone on the TCJ really well. I vastly prefer your work to anyone currently on staff at TCJ. Even though I think highly of the person I know, I find the current TCJ unreadable.
Basically, I *really* miss your writing. I wish you’d come back, but I understand if you have bad feelings about getting back in the game.
Zainab,
If you and Dirk are signing off on Posy Simmonds, I’m going to have one of her books in my hands ASAP. Seriously, I’m going to look for anything by her I can find tomorrow. If I can’t find anything this weekend while I’m in Manhattan, I’m going straight to Amazon on Sunday night.
Okay everyone – let’s not get too distracted from the article, okay? Let’s keep focus on Sarah Glidden’s brilliant work!