So about 20 years ago, I was in school and, of course, in need of money, so I wrote this column of radio, television, and film criticism for something called Focus magazine in the Columbus/Dayton/Cincinnati area.
And a short while ago, my sister-in-law asked if she could borrow the name I used, Media Rare, for her column of media musings in what was then called Poets, Artists, and Madmen.
At some point in the process, the struggling paper became Atlanta Press, and then, in May of 2000, it became nothing at all.
The folks at Poets (as I liked to call them) were unfailingly patient with my late transmission of copy, my blatant pushing and bending of deadlines. So it’s ironic (perhaps) that the last piece I wrote for them never made it into the last issue of the paper at all. I was too late for their own funeral.
It’s always sad when a newspaper goes away, even when, in the Internet age, the words can live on in a sort of packet-switched amber. But we go on, separately, and I leave this little alcove of my world here, preserved.
(The dates listed here by the way are the dates the columns are written, not when they appeared.)
They’re collected here for your convenience. Critiques are welcome.
They (and the rest of the site) are searchable (see that window over there on the left?). That’s kinda cool.
My wife, as usual, made the cogent comment: “if a newspaper sells enough advertising, it doesn’t matter how good or bad it is, right?”Right. Exactly. Because after all, the first amendment has always uncomfortably shared a bed with the capitalist ethic in this country. You raise money to publish, or you perish. There are a [...]
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Read more...A recent Wired brought us the success story of Times Digital, the soon-to-be-independent arm of The New York Times. Under the command of Martin Niesenholtz, they were able to bring the oldest and most venerable of old media—the great gray lady of New York—into our new age. The Times site is everything a newspaper of [...]
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Read more...It just doesn’t seem that long ago when I was reading in Patrick’s column a heartfelt goodbye to Rebecca Poynor Burns. The one-time Atlanta Press managing editor—and Media Rare columnist—was off to Atlanta magazine, leaving her weekly column in the hands of, well…me, some guy who hadn’t done this kind of thing in many, many [...]
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Read more...The next time Atlanta gets some freezing rain and ice, I wish the city’s news directors would treat it as a four-way stop. Around 3 am early Sunday morning, a series of cracking sounds led me downstairs to turn the TV—and my web browser—on, just to see how bad things were outside. What I could [...]
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