Who’s in charge around here?
I’m a former daily newspaper journalist who worked in the Pacific Northwest and New England. Now a book reviewer, writer, editor, iMac user. I founded Rich Litho Media, which provides writing/editing and publishing services for authors and small businesses.
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Email me at kimberly@typelikethewind.com
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Category Archives: The Press
Goodbye Senator Byrd. Be glad you missed the news today.
One of the faceless commentators talking during the solemn carrying of Senator Robert Byrd’s coffin this morning observed that the most significant thing about the late Senator’s tenure is the enormous social change on his long watch. Byrd himself exemplified that change, moving from membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young West Virginian [...]
Also posted in Death, Government, Ruminations, TV & Radio Leave a comment
All the news that fits. And solves.
I’ve only read some of the stories and ads in three sections in Sunday’s New York Times (Book Review, Business and Week in Review) and here’s what I’ve already learned: Most new fiction is deeply flawed. A five-line letter from Ronald Reagan to his old actress friend Kitty Carlisle Hart is worth $6,100. Whales and [...]
Also posted in Advertising, Animals, Authors, Business, Economy, Ethics, Gender Mysteries, Government, Health, Human nature, Politics, Publishing, Research, Science Leave a comment
A snapshot of us.
Sometimes an hour with the newspaper is all I need to see the immense contradictions and ironies of this country. These New York Times pieces are a case in point. A story by Katie Zernike ponders polling of resentful Tea Party supporters. I am ashamed of these fellow citizens; their racism, their short-sighted, self-serving demands [...]
Also posted in Heroes, History, Human nature, Politics, Race & Class 1 Comment
Pulitzer winners: Yes, we’re doing a victory dance in our PJs
When a newsroom wins a Pulitzer, it is a moment like no other. The suits are happy, the mid-level managers are happy, the worker bees are happy. If there’s any other event as uniting and uniformly appreciated, I have not witnessed it. I’ve never so much as spell-checked a Pulitzer entry. But I am proud [...]
Posted in The Press 2 Comments
Sursum corda…and your voices too.
I’m not always wowed by what Maureen Dowd writes in her column for The New York Times. But when she nails it, she nails it. She’s been a fiery commentator about the Roman Catholic Church and its sinful cover-ups of clergy who prey on children and adult parishioners. The more pundits, pulpits and parents who [...]
Also posted in Ethics, Faith, Organized Religion Leave a comment
Reviewing the reviewer.
Michiko Kakutani is a powerful book reviewer, whose work in The New York Times can kill book sales or torpedo an author’s career in a few column inches. I’ve been reading Kakutani’s reviews more closely these days, considering the pieces’ success as essays rather than endorsements or rejections of new books. I now picture Kakutani [...]
Also posted in Authors, Books, Publishing Leave a comment
Man hits tree; hell breaks loose
Ah, yes, the Tiger Woods accident story. It was only a generation ago that the only really big news story likely to feature a black man and a tree was one about lynching. Still, it’s too much of a stretch for me to call it “progress” just because every newspaper, “news” broadcast, chat room, social [...]
Also posted in Sports Leave a comment
Scribe pride
Now and then I read something that makes me proud to have anything to do with writing and newspapers. The work of United Kingdom reporter Lester Haines is a case in point. His stuff appears on the hugely enjoyable and hard-to-pigeonhole tech-ish site called The Register. (The site carries the motto: “Biting the hand that [...]
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Flogging the help: Let’s do it right
It’s time to re-think this “public editor” stuff. Public editors, or ombudsmen as they were called for a time, investigate and write about coverage decisions and mistakes made at their own papers. It’s a great principle that’s not so hot in practice. The New York Times had a monstrous example of such un-hot execution in [...]
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I, blogger
“Microcelebrity” is what we bloggers want, and each of us defines that evocative term in our own way. I discovered that word in a terrific piece of commentary by author Bill Wasik in The New York Times. Wasik compares internet ventures with a young adult’s idealistic move to New York City. He writes: “The experience [...]
Also posted in Writing & Words Leave a comment
Retooling journalism
A friend sent me the URL for Malcolm Gladwell’s book review in The New Yorker. (A magazine I get in print form, and which I read about two weeks after it arrives.) Gladwell comments on Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (Hyperion; $26.99), The book makes the case, as Gladwell [...]
Also posted in Books Leave a comment
Sad news: AP jargon gets the shove.