Journalism: My work has appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Globe & Mail (Canada), The Times- Picayune (New Orleans), The Oregonian, and Willamette Week, as well as in magazines including Details, Vogue, Publishers Weekly, and Portland Monthly.
Publishing: Tight Shot, my first novel, was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Its sequel, Hot Shot, was roundly ignored by everyone, but was a far better book. I'm also a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
Stage: I was a member of the Groundlings and Circle Repertory West in Los Angeles, and am a playwright (see "Stage" in the right-hand rail).
So far I have successfully avoided getting a Facebook page. Not that I'm against the concept, but I am on LinkedIn and contribute to the paper's Twitter feed, which seems like plenty.
I've got my own reasons for not wanting to be on Facebook, but perhaps there are some good arguments for it. Anyone care to talk me into taking the plunge?
After reading about the wholesale cutting of syndicated cartoonists in the nation's alt-weekly, I had an emailed conversation with one of the best young cartoonists out there, Matt Bors, and he posted it on his blog and on the Cartoonists With Attitude site (which has become a daily read for me). We talked about the crisis in the newspaper industry, shrinking page sizes, why cartoons are disappearing, and even managed to talk some smack about the evil that resides in the faux-populist Arianna Huffington.
The conversation got linked by The Daily Cartoonist and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies; you can read it on Matt's site here.
I've become slightly totally obsessed tracking media layoffs -- according to PaperCuts, the casualty toll was more than 2000 in January alone, including 300 from the Los Angeles Times, which seems hell-bent to see which it can drive away fastest: readers, subscribers or advertisers.
The paper's latest move is to discontinue its decades-old Metro section (which has been called "California" in recent years), folding all local coverage inside Section One and mushing it together with national, international and op-ed. From PaperCuts, here's the letter from publisher Eddy Hartenstein:
Beginning March 2nd the paper will be presented in four main news sections:
A/Main News will be repositioned to present local, national and international coverage and opinion together - as each informs, impacts and shapes the others in our everyday lives. The California section report will lead A, followed by The Nation, The World and then Opinion. The result will combine the stories and reporting of our two most widely-read print sections into one cohesive section.
Business will be the second section in the paper, and the report will be enhanced by bringing back the “Company Town” feature, which will serve as the anchor for our “business of entertainment” coverage. The obituaries and weather pages will remain at the back of this new B section.
Sports will be the third section, and we’ll be moving the classified advertising pages to the back of this new C section.
Calendar will be the fourth section, and this move allows its deadlines to be pushed deep into the evening (aka “second-daily”), allowing us to make our primary space for entertainment coverage more news-driven. This will enrich this current “must read” section even further, enabling us to add features such as overnight reviews.
And it struck me where I'd seen this exact same lineup before:
The new L.A. Times:
News/Opinion • Business • Sports • Calendar
The old (and new) USA Today:
News/Opinion • Business • Sports • Life
The only thing missing is the spiffy weather map, and the color-coding. I don't think the Times can compete with USA Today's weather map, but Calendar will look lovely in purple.
I've got a roundup of new mysteries in Sunday's Washington Post Book World. It'll be my last -- I'm not going away; they are. Book World as a stand-alone pullout will be no more in two weeks.
Not a surprise, unfortunately; as newspapers cut back, stand-alone book sections have become regarded as a luxury that don't support themselves through advertising. (The Los Angeles Times dissolved its book section in 2007, and dismantled its Metro/California section this week, showing the difference between the two papers; the Post is reacting to nearly inexorable market forces, while the Times is being run by chimpanzees who shouldn't be in charge of watering a ficus, much less running a once-great newspaper.)
A group of readers and critics signed a "Keep Book World" petition written by the National Book Critics Circle, but it didn't change things. The only thing that could've saved the situation was more print advertising by publishers, and they're spending their promotional budgets in other places these days and probably forever.
So the Post's book criticism and news is going to move into other sections -- Style, Opinion, etc. -- and the staff (which was already down) is going to remain in place, at least for now. I'll miss the good writing in Book World, and I want to thank my fine editors, Dennis Drabelle and Ron Charles, as well as the others I worked with who have gone on to other things: Jabari Asim, Chris Lehmann, Marie Arana, and the rest. Good luck to all of you, and thanks for your utter and complete professionalism.
Dear Reader,
Hi there. It's been three months. So...how you been?
Me, I've been busy. As I said in my last post, I was hired in October as editor of New Orleans' weekly paper, Gambit. Since then, I've been
• learning on the job (helped by a great staff)
• going through a punishing election season (dozens of candidate interviews)
• helping launch the paper's new Web site (functional, multimedia, all that stuff)
• blogging daily on Gambit's Blog of New Orleans, and on Twitter (The_Gambit)
• planning a 2009 budget (I do not excel at Excel)
• helping with a complete redesign of the dead-tree edition (reaction has been mixed, but mostly positive, and everyone seems to like the new tabloid size)
• being there while the paper rebranded from Gambit Weekly to The Gambit (for various reasons, some obvious)
• and putting out a weekly paper in one week. Every week. Week after week after week.
All this against the backdrop of the publishing industry imploding -- magazines folding and newspapers collapsing, the Great Depression of Media. In some cases, it's market forces at work, business evolution in action; in others, it's gross mismanagement on a Wall Street scale of incompetence. (And I can't stop tracking it all, rather obsessively.)
I've been concentrating on the paper's blog, but I'll be writing more here in the year to come. Topics on my mind these days: the dissolution of the Washington Post Book World (one of my oldest freelance relationships), the grim future for alt-weekly cartoonists (the poor bastards), and why New Orleans, of all places, still has an attraction to, and an affection for, real news. Backwards as we are.
See you back here soon, and regularly.
My postings here have been scarce of late, for a couple of reasons. The main one is this, which was announced this evening:
“I’ve read Gambit Weekly since I came to town in 1993, and I’m really pleased and thankful to be offered the opportunity to join the paper’s editorial team,” Allman says. “New Orleans in 2008 is an exciting place and time to be a journalist. There’s great work being done at the city’s papers, on its TV news and on the local blogs, and they’re working together in interesting ways — some ways that are actually ahead of the rest of the nation in their hyper-local focus. I’m looking forward to suiting up and joining the fray.”
More here, including a couple of staff promotions and hires (congratulations, David, Noah, and Alex). I'm humbled as hell, obviously, but there's more to the story.
For out-of-towners: Gambit is the city's alt-weekly and #2 paper. It's synonymous with Clancy and Margo DuBos, who founded it more than two decades ago. There have been other editors (including the very talented Michael Tisserand), but Clancy has always been identified with the paper and has served as editor for long stretches. He's a quadruple threat: a lawyer, a political expert (and commentator on WWL News here in New Orleans), a writer, and a hell of an editor. Margo handles the business operations and is proving that a newspaper can succeed (contrary to popular opinion) if the people running it know what they're doing and are nimble and smart.
But Clancy is the face of the paper, in the minds and hearts of many New Orleanians. His commentaries are read every week; his endorsements carry weight; and his mug is on the most-watched TV news in the city. He's a one-name figure in New Orleans; people know who you mean when you say 'Clancy.' So, when he approached me about this over a sushi lunch, I was apprehensive -- and my first reaction was "I'm not even going to consider this unless you're staying on to cover politics." That was what he wanted to do, so it worked out perfectly and we explored the idea. (Yeah, I'll be hounding him to post on the blog with tidbits and personal observations that may not make the newsprint edition. Insights. Anecdotes. Gossip.)
I didn't know Clancy well at that time. But he let me contribute to the paper's blog, Blog of New Orleans. Never once a conversation about content or whether something was appropriate: just do it. That was cool. The paper let me bring in guest bloggers -- writers in the community who had proven they had something to say and the chops to say it -- and they agreed with my core belief that guest writers and bloggers should be paid. Even cooler. (Give me a smart, engaged, local writer over Maureen Dowd any day.)
This summer, I filled in for some vacationing writers and editors when they were shorthanded, and the staff was talented and smart and au courant without the disease of Terminal Hipsterosis that has infected so many alt-weeklies. That was the coolest of all. I liked these people, and I liked their work. There are journalists in this country that would kill to be able to enterprise their own stories, work their own beats, and get the space they need to do their craft. They can do that at Gambit.
Now I get to join them, and I can't tell you how happy I am about that.
There's a saying in New Orleans -- so far behind, we're ahead -- and in no way is that truer than when it comes to the written word. People in this bassackwards city still read books and newspapers. They like writing, and they like writers. They even respect them.
And there are journalism jobs here, at a time when the rest of the country is discarding talented people because the beancounters can't figure out a way to make money in newspapers. (Laying off the beancounters who run the papers into the ground never seems to occur to them.)
Like I said: so far behind, we're ahead.
Last add: Clancy announced the news not in the weekly edition, but on the paper's blog tonight. That was no accident. He felt - strongly - that some of the city's best writing and most insightful stuff was D.I.Y. -- that the Internet had spawned some damned incredible thinkers and reporters and analysts in post-Katrina New Orleans. I agree with him. Blogs and websites are the natural evolution of broadsheets and alt-weeklies and zines, and some of the most trenchant writing produced these days is done with electrons, not on (increasingly expensive) newspaper. I read the blogs, I value bloggers' opinions, and I do (and will) talk back, even when we're unhappy with one another.
So, thanks, Clancy, and thanks, Margo, and thanks to the staff and freelancers at Gambit, who were the ones who really made me want this job so we could work together. I'm looking forward to Monday.
I have a review of Tom Piazza's new novel, City of Refuge, in today's Washington Post.
This was a weird review to write for a few reasons. First, Piazza based his characters on some pretty recognizable folks, one of whom I know and several of whom are pretty recognizable. (Tom himself I've met exactly once, many years ago.) Second: I was reading the book while evacuated for Hurricane Gustav, in the same city where several of the characters evacuated during Hurricane Katrina...on the third anniversary of Katrina. Not an experience I want to repeat again in any respect.
Anyway, it's a pretty good novel. I just wouldn't recommend reading it when you're evacuated from a hurricane.
Proving that they're on the cutting edge of social media, the Rocky Mountain News sent reporter Berny Morson to liveblog the funeral of a 3-year-old who was killed by an out-of-control car while he stood in line at an ice cream parlor...
Did this jackass really sit in the back of a funeral home with his Blackberry, text-messaging this to the Internet?!?!?!?
I figure that's good for, oh, about 1000 cancelled subscriptions by tomorrow night. And nationwide headlines.
I'm back and safe and one of the fortunate few with electricity. Cellphones are still down, though, so the best way to whistle me up for a few days will be by email.
In the meantime, I'll still be dispatching at the Blog of New Orleans.
I'm back in the New Orleans area -- one of the fortunate few with electricity -- but the cell towers are still down. The most reliable way to contact me for the next few days is probably via email.
Thanks for all the good wishes. Please note that in all the media coverage of "dodging the bullet" that tens of thousands of people living near the coast of Louisiana did no such thing; they lost much, are not sure when they can come home, and (I'm sure) don't appreciate the national media portraying this as a close call.
I'm still contributing to the Blog of New Orleans, so check there for locally specific stuff as well as some fine and funny writing by other people.
I'm safe and fine, reporting on hurricane-related issues at the Blog of New Orleans and will be doing so until further notice.
Just missed John McCain and Sarah Palin. Damn.
Read it at the Blog of New Orleans.
Traffic was not bad - every hotel seems bursting at the seams. The lobby was full of stressed people pleading with the very nice clerk to find them a room in town somewhere, anywhere.
Please do not use my cellphone except in case of emergency. The lines are already jammed and should be reserved for emergency personnel.
More later.
Will update when possible, both here and at Blog of New Orleans.
Am now packing my computer and will not be reachable by email until I'm in situ.
;
1. Email is likely best.
2. Try my (503) number first. If it's down, try text-messaging (I hate it but it worked better than voice calls during Katrina).
3. I also have a (504) number as backup, but see: #2.
4. If you're wondering what I'm doing, the best place to check is this website or Blog of New Orleans, where I will be guest-blogging and reporting with others. Bookmark it.
5. If I evac, I will post that here.
Patty Friedmann: A Little Bit Ruined
One of the first post-Katrina novels, and probably destined to be one of the best. Friedmann's sequel to Eleanor Rushing finds her crazy heroine still holding everything together after the storm (after a fashion), until she has to leave New Orleans and she falls apart physically as well as mentally. Mordantly, morbidly funny.
Tom Piazza: Why New Orleans Matters
The best post-Katrina book I've read. In 150 small pages, Piazza explicates the New Orleans experience simply and beautifully. I'll be passing this one on to anyone who wonders "But why would anyone want to live there?".
