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kottke.org posts about Ana Marie Cox

Big News Orgs Get New Public Editors (Against Their Wishes)

This fits into the burgeoning category of “this is cool but I wish it weren’t necessary”: the Columbia Journalism Review has appointed public editors for a group of four news organizations because they won’t do it themselves.

Public editors and ombudsmen have historically stood as critical advocates for consumers of news, identifying blind spots the outlets can’t see themselves and operating as collectors of critical opinion when decisions go awry. The flameout of public editors in the US, which reached a point of despair in 2017, when The New York Times sent its last public editor packing, is the most visible sign of the growing distance between news organizations and the people they serve. As attacks on the media have increased under the presidency of Donald Trump, the response of newsrooms has, more often than not, been to form a defensive huddle.

That stance is particularly dangerous now, as the nation braces for another presidential election, one that is almost certain to be more partisan, more vicious, and more focused on the perceived failings of the press than any other in the history of the country. It’s a bad time for newsrooms to retreat from their readers.

And what great choices for editors: Gabriel Snyder (NY Times), Ana Marie Cox (Washington Post), Maria Bustillos (MSNBC), and Emily Tamkin (CNN). Here’s CJR editor-in-chief Kyle Pope answering some questions about the project. And here’s Tamkin’s first piece, on CNN’s practice of regularly interviewing people without expertise or responsibility.

Guilfoyle has not worked as an economist. She has not crafted foreign or immigration policy. She is not an expert on Central America. What possible value, I wondered, were CNN’s viewers getting from watching Guilfoyle speak about this subject? If Cuomo wanted Trump talking points, couldn’t he have just played a clip of Trump himself? If Cuomo wanted someone behind Trump’s immigration policy to explain it, shouldn’t he have brought in a member of the administration?

But again, it’s a bummer that a small organization like CJR has to foot the bill for this on behalf of these media organizations’ readers and, you know, democracy.


A suck.com reunion

Proposed SXSW panel: a suck.com reunion organized by Ana Marie Cox, aka Ann O’Tate.

While its sarcasm traits set Suck apart from the great majority of (painfully earnest) West Coast-based technology “ezines”, Suck’s lasting legacy is only partially based on the words it contained. Rather, Suck changed forever the way people think about writing for the web โ€” they perfected, if not invented, the practice of embedding links not as explanatory reference points but as commentary in and of themselves. Suck imploded rather unspectacularly, but its journey offers lessons: From purchase by a deep-pocket media company (Wired) to a quick-hit book project, to its ultimately deadly jump into crowd-generated content. Is that a cycle most indie projects are doomed to complete? For a publication devoted to debunking Panglossian outlooks on the mediasphere, a shocking number of Suck alumni have turned up, closing on two decades later, as influential, even aspirational, figures in their own right, with careers based on bridging the still-extant (if narrowing) gap between old and new media.

As I told a friend a few months ago, if someone launched a site with Suck’s voice and spirit today, it would *kill*. (The Awl comes pretty close.)


Jeff Jarvis rightly recommends following Time.com’s

Jeff Jarvis rightly recommends following Time.com’s Ana Marie Cox’s Twitter feed as she follows the Republican Presidential candidates around the country. A recent, uh, tweet: “Myrtle Beach: McCain staffers very excited and pleased about the prospect of ‘Team McCain: California’ jackets.” These are the sort of details I wish made it to publication, but Twitter is, I suppose, a publication of its own, right?


The New York Times sure has a

The New York Times sure has a boner for Ana Marie Cox and her new book, Dog Days. They’ve reviewed it one, two, three times in the last five days…and that’s not counting Ms. Cox’s nicely timed op-ed about Jack Abramoff from last Thursday.


Ana Marie Cox leaves Wonkette to write books full-time.

Ana Marie Cox leaves Wonkette to write books full-time.


Long, long, long, but good, good, good

Long, long, long, but good, good, good piece on Suck, “the first great website”.


Dog Days, the much anticipated (by some)

Dog Days, the much anticipated (by some) novel by Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox, is available for preorder on Amazon.