I’m having difficulty recalling what William Burroughs (who died in Lawrence, Kan. in 1997) is best known for—being an unabashed (rehabilitated) junkie, being a unrepentant homo (Alan Ginsberg wrote Burroughs was the only real homosexual he knew; I leave it to you to figure out why), having shot
They are dropping like flies: Last week Kirkus and Editor & Publisher, this week ID, the venerable design magazine. As a recent TMN headline noted, over four hundred magazines closed in 2009 (including Blender, Giant, Gourmet, Portfolio, Vibe, and Metropolitan Home), which may make Forestry professionals happy, but what about
If journalism is, as conventional wisdom holds, the first draft of history, then we are fortunate to have a practitioner such as the New Yorker’sHendrik Hertzberg involved in its creation. Hertzberg’s inestimable CV includes duty as a U.S. Naval officer, service in the White House as chief
Though mayhem, war, mass murder, civil unrest, homicidal acts of God (known as natural disasters), famine, plague, and genocide seem to be growth industries, the population of brave men and women (naysayers may say "thrill-seeking adrenaline junkies") who report the news (before service journalism infected a once-
At almost any given moment one may stroll the streets of urban America (unfortunately, I can't speak for the hinterlands) and observe what appear to be human beings perambulating (the boulevards) while staring at their palms. This, you may guess, is the voodoo mojo of the smartphone in
One wonders what it would take to shock the American (or any public) to action with revelations of wrongdoing, corruption, or human and animal abuse as the muckrakers of a long-bygone era were able. Or if it is any longer possible. (For example, shouldn't the relatively small
If you need a reminder of how degraded, sycophantic, lazy, smug, boring, and predictable contemporary journalism has become, San Francisco State University mentor Peter Richardson's (American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams) A Bomb in Every Issue: How the Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed
