Musings from the basement...

Why journalists hate their life, redux

December 13, 2012 0 Comments

A few days ago I shared why journalists hate life, namely, the sheer ineptitude of management that seems hellbent on driving papers to extinction, kicking employee morale in the face while doing it. This is an industry-wide problem that is killing newsroom after newsroom and making reporters, frankly, not really give a damn about their job anymore. Well, here’s another story, courtesy of KC Confidential: The Kansas City Star has told reporters Karen Dillon and Dawn Bormann that one of them has to leave the paper, and they — not management — have to decide who goes. “Dillon has seniority, so she has the option of taking it or not taking it,” says a KCConfidential.com source. “And if she does, Dawn gets laid off. Dawn’s…
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Random Musings, Rants, Uncategorized

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Are you a writer if no one reads you?

December 8, 2012 3 Comments

The question seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? If you write, you’re a writer … right? Isn’t that how it works? But the fact is, whether they admit it or not, every writer has grappled with a variation of this question, subtle or otherwise. After all, we don’t simply want to write, we want to be read. We want to be experienced. We want to be RECOGNIZED … … as a writer. And there’s the crux. What separates “a writer” from someone else? When can Joe say it when Bob can’t? The basic answer is that if you write you’re a writer. If the statement isn’t presented in the context of “what do you do for a living” then that’s probably fine. You’re a writer if you…
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Random Musings, Writing

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Why journalists hate their life

December 5, 2012 1 Comment

It’s no secret that the world of journalism is in flux. I spent over a decade in the world of newspapers, those fussy, papery things created by ink-stained wretches, and while I can’t say I don’t have an extreme fondness for those old relics — I think they’re wonderful, actually — I can say that I don’t have an extreme fondness for the visionless people who so often run news organizations. My friends still in the news business don’t disagree. A good friend who is an investigative journalist with a fairly large regional daily has seen his office withering under layoff after layoff. Hey, that’s par for the course with the news business these days … but this story is beyond the pale. At his…
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Random Musings, Rants, Uncategorized

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So what’s next?

December 1, 2012 0 Comments

Wait, what? One of my huge problems is attention span. Always has been. Always will be. Just ask the people who had the unfortunate job of being my teacher back in Lakehurst. What this means is that even when neck-deep in a major project or three, my mind is on what’s next rather than what is right in front of me. This is true even right now. It’s not like I’m not busy. I’m currently working on a follow-up to A Year of Hitchcock with Jim McDevitt, the third installment of the Pitched! anthology series with a number of fantastic artists, a series on living through Hurricane Sandy, and whatever odds and ends come my way. And yet still my mind is on what’s next….
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Random Musings, Writing

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Videos from Hurricane Sandy

November 25, 2012 0 Comments

In the days to come I’ll be blogging on another site about this, but for now enjoy these visuals of what I enjoyed when waking up the morning after Hurricane Sandy struck. “Waking up” is a simple explanation, of course, but I’ll tell the full story later. For now, here is what I saw when I opened my bedroom window in the morning: Looks worrisome, but by this time the water had come down by between a foot to two feet, so we were pretty calm by this point. Really! Still, this is how the backyard looked (you may recognize the railing if you read my beer blog): To give you some perspective, the previous night the fire hydrant you see here was completely invisible,…
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Uncategorized, Videos

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