Writer Salman Rushdie is coming to town, and I recalled I wrote a column about his troubles. It was a peach, in my fuzzy memory, so surely I had posted it online, right? Well, it is there, now. It was from 1989, and I had to type it in earlier today because I wrote it […]
Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock Can a fortnight’s worth of writer topics fit together, and should they? Why, it depends on the size of your tent. Preferrers of small tents closely define their parameters. A writer must have New York-based publications to his credit. A journalist must be a full-time employee of a news factory. […]
The New Republic (subscription-only) reports that humorist, memoirist, monologist David Sedaris embellishes. A number of otherwise sensible commentators, like Slate’s Jack Shafer, jump on the fellow. Their point: If you laugh, it’s not journalism. If it has a coherent beginning, middle and end, it’s too good to be true. [Casablanca: Captain Renault: “I’m shocked, shocked […]
This has been quite a week for culture in the Ozarks. Just a while ago KHOG interrupted ABC’s The View for a news bulletin: Was another cop shot? Last week, a couple of local stations broadcast a slain police officer’s funeral live. Today, it was to report that sources have identified the new basketball coach […]
We go around on things like this, My Beloved and I: Consumer Reports likes the Great Value ground decaf. Not the whole bean and not the regular coffee, where the magazine prefers Eight O’Clock whole bean. The Wal-Mart house brand Great Value in other foods seems very much like the more expensive name brands. Then […]
OKLAHOMA CITY — Assorted thoughts. The professionals among the conferees and the speakers all were pessimistic about the future of the newspaper business. It was just a matter of degree. The most hopeful see journalism shifting mostly to the Internet with a minority paper presence. The dourest — and they actually were in a position […]