We do nothing with our time.
"You can be quite famous in Serbia if you just dress up like a tennis player."
And then he plays tennis while standing on the wing of a flying airplane.
She arrived at lunch early, seemingly without makeup, and immediately started talking about her dog, Paco, a rescued cross-breed that has appeared in Old Navy commercials.
Even Page Six is bored today
Ivanka Trump apologized to her 2-week-old daughter, Arabella, for a bumpy ride along Park Avenue. A witness told us that Trump, wearing flats and a beautiful red dress, was walking with her mother-in-law and wheeling a Bugaboo stroller with her sleeping daughter in it along the avenue in the 60s, when she accidentally went over a big bump. Ivanka leaned over to her newborn and exclaimed, “I’m sorwwy!" in a little baby voice. Little Arabella was happily unscathed.
Smart thoughts →
Many from Paul. None from me.
LCD Soundsystem
“All My Friends”
This is a shot-for-shot remake of the original “All My Friends” video in Lego. It is no less emotional!
The keyboardist really is the best.
Awwwwwww
The World Cup spirit is more alive in that green square than it is in Soccer City, illustrating how real transfiguration often happens far from the cathedrals we build for it.
It must be hard to shoot jumpers with all those swirling colors.
To think, they said no one reads newspapers anymore.
When I lived there we just had bed bugs
A worldwide crackdown on the hacker group known as Anonymous touched down in the McKibbin Lofts in East Williamsburg early on Tuesday — but the target of the FBI raid there had already flown the coop, residents and authorities said.
The blitz was part of a counterattack against the elusive global hacker collective that has allegedly coordinated large-scale attacks on corporate and government websites, including PayPal, MasterCard and Visa. Authorities arrested 16 alleged hackers across the globe and also searched buildings in Long Island.
But they were late to the party in Williamsburg.
“They were looking for the old tenants,” said Meaghan Ralph, 21, who had just moved into the sprawling artist colony two weeks before and had only gotten three hours of sleep when a half-dozen armed agents pounded her door.
“They were trying to be nice when they realized I wasn’t a criminal mastermind.”
This story is all kinds of awesome.
I’m no good at the ritual of pitches, and that’s not just because it’s wholly unnatural. It’s hard, on a regular basis, to send several editors several different ideas that will be among the best they see that day. Nobody has that many stories that strong, especially if they’re well-considered or hinge on reporting. Like, nobody.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with pitches. It’s probably better for everyone involved if editors vet ideas—editors in general are a good idea, despite what a lot of the Internet may think. The point of this post is not to insist that my life be made easier and certainly, I’m in a better position that a lot of freelancers. But there’s no trend in journalism that can’t take into account the erosion of staff positions, and even the assumption of steady, stable work. There are more truly freelance folks out there than ever, and more talent. By all sorts of laws of economics and sharing fish-shaped cookies, editors should err on the side of an open door policy, as much as sanity will allow.
I understand that staff positions still do exist, and I’m lucky enough to have particularly good relationships with several editors. Trust and a writer/editor rapport are the ideal state for any kind of word-making. Still, I pitch them very much like I pitch anyone else, just maybe first, with more informal emails, and with more of a willingness to take risks. These are more “freelance with privileges” than staff-lite, and that’s wholly a function of how unstable the field has become. As I’m fond of recalling (and probably romanticizing), I got my start in 2001, at a Knight Ridder paper that was a few years away from making major cuts. Today, we’re at the the other end of the spectrum.
Full disclosure: I have standing arrangements with a few places, so again, don’t feel too bad for me. But I still send out pitches. Very few people get rich writing these days, though as my shrink pointed out, “get a real job” isn’t as easy as it once was.
However, writers like myself, who benefited immensely from blogging on our own, haven’t exactly helped ourselves. Personal blogs, however you want to define them, are at heart narcissistic. Increasingly, I wonder if this is the sole defining quality of “blogging”. It doesn’t matter whether the angle is strict first-person or there’s a genuine attempt at commentary—the blog answers only to itself, and the audience accepts this. In theory, topics can be addressed whenever. Sure, many blogs chase the news cycle, and certainly, corporate blogging has doubled down on this aspect. And yet there’s still the assumption that voice, or some ongoing, nebulous project, remains implicit in all but the most mechanical paid blog work. It also encourages self-indulgence and promotes bad habits, and in many ways resembles the tenured, out-of-touch columnist we all revile.
Blogging, as defined here, is almost certainly the enemy of pitching. Pitches require taking into account the needs of the publication, its audience, and in many cases, what’s both timely (even popular) and still underdeveloped. Blogging puts voice, or perspective, first; a pitch assumes your voice, but substance wins out over style every time. Essence precedes existence, even. Voice can give you an edge, and mutually beneficial brand synergy counts for something. But if you’re used to being accountable to no one’s perspective but your own (your audience buys into that), pitching in this environment can be a particularly harsh experience.
I have no idea what the answer is, especially when economics and craft don’t always share the same interests. I do know this: Voice both matters more and less than ever before. You can make a name for yourself while developing skills that will not serve you well as a freelancer. Having survived and sort of assimilated the web, journalism is getting closer and closer to being whole again. That’s impressive, but sometimes simmering contradiction can cause more damage than all-out war.
The picture really makes this post. Well, that and the smartness of it all.
That leopard is pissed.
Sub-thought: What is the largest animal would you have a reasonable chance killing in a one-on-one battle to the death? (Thanks to the hike out of Tayrona Park for inspiring this discussion.)
Plenty of stoners have had a similar idea. Few have followed through.
During.
I’ll be honest, Brian. “During” looks a lot like “Before.” And where are the kids throwing limes over the roof?
It’s going to be a long day.