Saturday, January 22, 2005
I added links to Poinography.com, a new blog, and the websites of two Oahu community publications, Koolau News (I'll try to find if it's online only or has a print edition) and Kaleo o Ko'olauloa (likewise).
Friday, January 21, 2005
Check 6 Honolulu Media Site May Go Offline Soon
At this point, with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin apparently healthy (not that it's trickling down to the troops!) and a very full plate of other projects, plus some health problems, it's doubtful this site will continue.--Burl Burlingame
I hope Burl finds the time and health to continue, if periodically.
Monday, January 17, 2005
Men's magazines
Men's magazines have broken a lot of ground.
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When I began my writing career in the 1970s, I wrote for what were then termed “men’s magazines.” At the time, the men’s magazines were a source of real, dependable income, and, unlike the “prestige” magazines, they paid on time, which was a comfort to landlords, utility companies, and other bill collectors who were less impressed by “prestige” than timeliness.--H. Williams
Knight Publications, who put out ADAM, PLAYERS, FILM WORLD, PRIME, CHOICE, KNIGHT and a host of other titles, had been the first company to publish Stephen King, among the first American companies to publish environmental “wacko” Jacques Costeau, and regularly published writers (often under pen names) of the order of John D. MacDonald, Norman Spinrad, Harlan Ellison, Richard Armour, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Silverberg, and many, many more. I did a lot of writing for them.
There was, inevitably, the question: how can you write for those HORRIBLE publications? This question, also inevitably, came from someone who never had actually READ one of those publications, and who were, literally, judging the books by their covers. So, one kept one’s paycheck writing to oneself, and, if asked, pointed to the “prestige” publications one was writing for, such as the LOS ANGELES TIMES, The HERALD-EXAMINER, NEW WEST MAGAZINE, LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE, et al.
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For good and sufficient reasons, such magazines lie outside the journalistic mainstream, and their articles don't show up in databases used by journalists. But such magazines do publish creditable investigative journalism, often on "macho" topics like crime, drugs, and espionage....The fringe status of such magazines also tends to make their editors see themselves as civil libertarians and political anti-establishmentarians -- and gives them less to lose. As a result, they often print what other mass-circulation publications won't...--Namebase
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Something for everybody, as this Baldo strip shows
Jan. 22 edit: The link has expired. If you just found this post, the comic strip I linked to showed each member of Baldo's family reading a different magazine geared to his or her interests. The last panel was of Baldo's abuela reading, if I recall, something called Kooky Abuelita Magazine.
Jan. 22 edit: The link has expired. If you just found this post, the comic strip I linked to showed each member of Baldo's family reading a different magazine geared to his or her interests. The last panel was of Baldo's abuela reading, if I recall, something called Kooky Abuelita Magazine.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
King Wenclas speaks about Lewis Lapham. I might look up that Griffin article sometime. (I added the links and italicized titles in Wenclas's post excerpted below.)
Here Lapham speaks on editing Harper's and contributing to other magazines, including Travel & Leisure Golf.
More Lapham---
Bryan F. Griffin's writing resembles Lapham's: a litany of sytlishly critical remarks which don't say much of anything.
Of course Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham should resign; for his fraudulent Republican Convention essay; for his silence about the Tom Bissell plagiarism case. He won't, because the world of literary wannabes remains silent. Has one of the hundreds of demi-puppet lit-blogs out there, all those strict grammarians, said ONE WORD about Bissell's misdeeds? Of course not! They won't; to do so would go against their demi-puppet nature.
When Katrina vanden Heuvel took over The Nation, she followed a pattern set by Lapham's elevation as Harper's Editor in 1977. One could see it coming. A well-connected aristocrat slumming far down at the masthead of a struggling publication. Suddenly, change. A coup leaving the aristocrat running the magazine. This is what happened when Willie Morris was bounced out at Harper's; an apparent mediocrity taking his place. But, blueblood Lewis was from an Old Money banking family, had been educated at Cambridge, had the right pedigree. Someone wanted him in that position. (This back when Harper's was still considered an important magazine.)
Katrina also leapfrogged to gain her standing. The result: two "Lefty" journals headed by upper-class bred-and-bonded Establishment Insiders. (Lapham and vanden Heuvel are both members of Establishment clubs reserved for the powerful and trusted.) After the takeovers their magazines were given "non-profit" status, becoming tax shelters for their wealthy benefactors, then fitted with plastic fangs. (The scenario is out of Orwell's 1984, where the character discovers the Opposition is run by the System.)
Here Lapham speaks on editing Harper's and contributing to other magazines, including Travel & Leisure Golf.
