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).
« Dept. of Unfortunate Headlines Dept. | Main | The Portland Tribune and KPTV: why no conflict-of-interest disclosure? »
Last week, the Portland Tribune fired most of its copyediting staff and announced:
On Monday, May 5, the Portland Tribune enters its next phase of innovative, cutting-edge journalism as the newspaper launches a more complete daily online newspaper...
Too bad there wasn't a copy editor around to cry foul on that dec.
The comments to this entry are closed.
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?".
Agh!
Posted by: nancy | May 05, 2008 at 01:42 PM
Ha ha! Off to a great start, Mr. Pamplin.
Posted by: Alan C | May 05, 2008 at 07:14 PM
Copy editors are certainly undervalued. We don't even have any at my job (I write news for a TV station's web site). So every time I write a story and hit the publish button I say a little prayer inside my head that I didn't typo, use improper grammar or get the facts wrong. When no one's looking at what you're doing, though, it does happen. Doesn't mean I'm stupid or can't write... just means that I'm human and make mistakes.
Posted by: Shannon | May 05, 2008 at 10:00 PM
Exactly, Shannon - and I know the feeling. Even on blogposts, I hit "send" and immediately see something that could've been more artfully phrased. We can all use an editor in our corner.
That's what makes me so sad about the Trib-ulations; the author of the story with the misspelling in the dec had done a good job with his piece (as you know, reporters don't often write their own heds and decs - although who knows how that's changing). And the editor who wrote the hed and the dec certainly knows how to spell. But that level of polish, when it's missing, casts a pall over the whole enterprise among readers who don't understand the granularity of the editorial process. It ends up reflecting badly on the writer, the hed writer, and the paper as a whole.
The latter may deserve it (in this case), but the other two certainly don't.
And, in my deepest heart, I have to admit that I wonder the same thing. Judith Miller's stories at the NY Times were undoubtedly models of spelling and grammar, yet they were wrong tip to tail. Yet I always wonder: if the paper can't get the itsy details right, who's to say that they're getting the big picture right?
Posted by: Kevin | May 05, 2008 at 11:35 PM
What's a "hed writer"?
Posted by: Bobb | May 06, 2008 at 08:21 AM
Wow and me working for a paper, I should have known. I have been informed that there is such a thing as a "hed writer".
My apologies.
Posted by: Bobb | May 06, 2008 at 08:36 AM
This is why you try not to make those "one small mistakes" that will happen when you make big mistakes, like cashiering all your copy editors.
Of course it's possible that after being stranded 30 miles from home she'd walk down the road yelling "chicken!" "Turkey!" "Cornish game hen!" "pheasant!".
If it were me, I'd use different words, of course.
Posted by: Samuel John Klein | May 07, 2008 at 04:39 PM
A good copy editor is worth their weight in gold. Bad move, Trib.
Posted by: Kate | May 07, 2008 at 04:53 PM