RELATED: Pogue’s unethical meltdown.
Author / Edward Champion
I Love the Smell of Right-Wing Media Consolidation in the Morning
The Business: “Rupert Murdoch has succeeded with his $5 billion bid for Dow Jones, owners of the Wall Street Journal, according to sources acting for the Dow Jones board. Negotiations have been completed and the board is confident the terms of the deal will be accepted by the Bancroft family, which controls a majority of voting shares in Dow Jones, over the next few days. A formal announcement is expected next week.”
Does this mean we’ll see Bill O’Reilly’s web column in the Wall Street Journal now?
A deal, incidentally, has not yet been reached.
_________ Is/Are Killing the Novel
Here’s a helpful list for New York freelancers who need to write a needlessly alarmist newspaper piece about what may be killing the novel. So if you’ve run out of ideas and don’t quite know an angle, here are some casuistic ideas for your future pitches! Remember, if you collect a check from any of these ideas, I’m only asking 5%. Be sure to send a check to me within 45 days after the piece runs. Good luck and Allah’s speed!
- Global warming
- David Hasselhoff
- Sudoku puzzles
- People who are really into Settlers of Catan
- Tao Lin
- The bottled water industry
- Right-wing French joggers
- Waffles and pancakes
- Men who leave the toilet seat up
- Women who leave the toilet seat up
- Pet dogs who have been trained by their masters to keep the toilet seat up with their paws
- Marxists
- Eucharists
- Tom Cruise (or any famous Scientologist, really)
- Eco-friendly organic pizzeria owners
- Pot smokers
- Golfers
- Matt and Daniel Mendelsohn
- Lev and Austin Grossman
- Edward Champion
- Killroy
Attention to Correspondents
I have been receiving letters sent to my address from people hoping to reach Norman Mailer and a few other authors. I am not Norman Mailer. Nor do I have any way of contacting Mr. Mailer. I am Edward Champion. I’m just some bastard with a blog who happens to interview authors. If you hope to reach an author, please direct your correspondence to the publishers. Not me. Thank you.
Google Maps Street View: Deplorable Exploration
I’ve had reservations about the Google Maps Street View option — similar to Annalee’s objections. But I offer one more: Where’s the sense of adventure? Part of the fun in having a vague idea about where you’re going is that you get the opportunity to explore a neighborhood you don’t know, discovering places, people, and details that you might not otherwise have known about. What of the wandering impulses that Rebecca Solnit has written extensively about? The street corners where one can stand for about an hour and simply listen? The way that one can walk into a bodega and ask a random stranger about the neighborhood? (The latter rhetorical question assumes that the explorer is not a jaded misanthrope.)
It’s bad enough that Google Maps has become the ipso facto reference point to meeting up with someone. Much like Google itself, we willingly abdicate our memory banks to Google Maps, which has all the answers. We follow the directions and, if we’re in a rush, we might immediately forget the street names, little realizing that there might be a history to these streets or an enchanting public place few know about to be found behind a set of doors.
Now with the Street View option, Google has granted us the option of pre-judging a particular neighborhood and it diminishes this sense of mystery. A random snapshot, which doesn’t necessarily reflect the neighborhood at its best or its worst, determines whether one should go out and explore it.
It’s precisely because of these reasons that I’ll be avoiding the Street View option whenever possible. While a picture can certainly reveal visual qualities, it is by no means truly representative of a location’s complexities. And some things in life simply aren’t meant to be discovered exclusively from a laptop.