Author
Monica Hesse and Dan Zak’s 2013 edition of The Washington Post’s annual List is out, and it’s a good one.
This is the 35th year that the Style section has put out an “in/out” List, a tradition begun by Nina Hyde and Jura Koncius in 1978. It was my great pleasure (and huge headache) to pen The List in 2000 and then from 2003-2009. It is my greater pleasure that Dan and Monica are now in charge of doing it. Like anything worthwhile, it’s much harder than it looks.
Girl with "Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson)" / Institute of Contemporary Art
Gently onward, talking once more about great criticism and its role as a valid form of journalism. When it works, it’s a piece of art in and of itself — useful to the reader, filled with context and beautifully written. But try telling to that all those editors and publishers who, when faced with the first hint of the media upending that came rolling in, immediately cut jobs for critics. In the news business, we talk a whole lot about the damages done to investigative, fourth-estate journalism. I firmly believe the loss of critics has been just as devastating, but with so much newsroom suffering, who wants to hear it?
My very good friends Leslie Yazel (deputy editor of the “Personal Journal” features section of the Wall Street Journal) and her husband Jeremy Egner (producer and writer in the arts & leisure department of the New York Times) came to class on Monday to talk about their careers, their work, the state of online and print journalism, editing (being an editor; being edited), how to get story ideas, how to conduct yourself in a big news operation, and how to keep up with popular culture and, most of all, how to stay ahead. That’s a lot to talk about and they were both funny, friendly and, most of all, hopeful.
Will you indulge me? I need to bid a sorrowful goodbye to my good friend, Barbara Kerr Page, 62, who died Wednesday morning, April 27, 2011, after a gallant struggle with kidney failure and other health issues. She was preceded in death by The Albuquerque Tribune, which died in February 2008 after its own gallant struggle with a JOA-related illness.
My broader analysis of the cultural zombie fixation, vis-a-vis my Walking Dead review on Sunday.
And another nice use of art on the section front (see below), courtesy of illustrator Zohar Lazar. The print edition of the newspaper is still a bargain and a visual treat that the web site just frankly still isn’t. However, with the web version, you get a brief slide show of zombies. In a perfect world, you’d get both the lovely freelance illo AND the web extras. Maybe iPad will somehow deliver on the promise of principled design and neat, new geegaws…
