MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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A story on Hale had been in the hopper since the Smith shooting spree, especially as MATT SHARKEY & TOM LEYLAND attended East Peoria Community High School along with Hale. The sidebar is a personal reminiscence which speaks to the banality of evil. How each person out there could be part of a nascent "Trenchcoat Mafia."
Considering how the Mouthpiece Media trivialize these sort of real concerns, I could not *not* run this piece.
By my lights, that meant that it was an interview which fit our new mandate. I hope you will agree.
THE NEW DESIGN: In this edition, we also premiere our new cover design and a sleeker version of the magazine. Redundant or outmoded features have been eliminated from our navigational system and from the architecture of this new version.
Finally, it will be clear from our JavaScript navigational tool which rests in the navigation bar on most pages that we have pulled away from being a humor magazine. Not that we won't feature good humor in our commentary, but that we shall no longer use the definition "Humor" as what we are primarily about. Many of you probably noted that our new "Title" refers to us as a News & Commentary magazine.
When I first went into electronic publishing, almost four years ago in San Francisco, it was my good fortune to meet a man named David Hudson. David and I had both been recruited to bring our hard-copy efforts to the launch of the San Francisco Bay Guardian Online, a project which had a lot of promise at the time. Our two 'Zines would be value-added offerings to the subscribers of the Guardian's BBS was the idea. A friendship developed which I cherished over the years. It was through David that I met G21 Irregular and Andover News colleague Robin Miller.
But I'm mercurial, as you know, and every now and again I do something really stupid which I sorely regret. Guilt is one of the core facets of my personality, in fact. I carry guilt like a mantle.
Such is the case with my relationship with David. I killed it earlier this year by sending him an e-mail regarding his WWW project REWIRED. David launched REWIRED on the Web approximately three months after I launched G21. It was a weekly of commentary about things digital and, in the beginning, a site highly favored by the digerati. The thing was, I noticed this year that David's focus and publication schedule was starting to falter. The first sign for me was when he letter the cracker/phreaker kids basically take over his on-site Bulletin Board. He promised that a new interface would replace the thrashed one, but it never materialized. Then weeks would go by without a new issue appearing at REWIRED. I took this latter as a sign that David was either too busy with other concerns or simply losing his enthusiasm for publishing on the Web.
SO in my e-mail, I wrote David that he should admit that the rigors of producing a weekly site were becoming too much for him. That he should sign-off on his Ezine and focus on his family and his others projects. (I know, extremely presumptuous of me --- but there you are.) David had the grace not to respond...
As you'll see if you visit it, REWIRED has now joined that long list of "Ghost Sites" on the Web. No farewell, no graceful exit, just the long-standing 19 April issue hanging without fanfare.
So I was right as well as wrong. The wrong eats at me, and I hope that David and I will be in touch again. The last I heard he was writing for Der Spiegel. I hope he is doing well.
Work like you don't need the money,
Baltimore - 1 August, 1999 - As you might imagine, a lot of soul-searching went into our featuring the Matt Hale interview which appears in AMERICAN DREAMS this edition. Both MATT SHARKEY, the writer who conducted the interview, and Yours Unruly debated whether we were exposing a virulent form of hate-mongering to the light of day in order to help it wilt or giving this organization another platform from which to spread their poison.
The real issue, from my perspective at least, was whether this was the type of material I wanted to appear in The World's Magazine in the edition where we began re-defining our focus. I decided it was for two reasons:
Most ironic for me is that the "new" cover design harkens back to a model I experimented with --- only briefly --- back in 1997. Even as the idea of highlighting two "leads" popped into my head, I resisted it. But the synergy was too compelling. I felt that both the features deserved equal status. It will be interesting to me, as I review the server logs over the next week --- poring over them as though they are entrails which will reveal the arcane secrets of "reader preference" --- which of the leads most of you opt for.
The World's Magazine: g21.net
Event #177: Take the New View
LAST WEEK's EDITION
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A Benediction: Writing is a tough business; you have to have "brass balls," as the saying goes. But publishing is even tougher. I've been at it for almost a decade now, so I know. To publish, think titanium.
Thanks for coming back this week.
Love like you've never been hurt,
Dance like no one is watching,
Rod
Rod is a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he writes on web design and development issues every Thursday. He is principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviews technology issues five days a week. His opinions on the Info Age began appearing on MethodFive's HYPER technology newsletter in March.
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