Note to the readers

Another Sunday, another edition. And as always, it started off with so much promise.

Our feature on The New York Times and Judy Miller was completed on Wednesday. We brought in C.I. of The Common Ills as usual and then C.I. suggested we bring in Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude for the piece as well. We were quite pleased. (And hats off to C.I. for coining the term "The New York Timid." One we'll do our best to popularize because it's so apt.)

Ava and Dona worked on a campus story and it's a good story. Hopefully one we'll run next week. But it was a case of it never coming together in any form during the draft stage. We were working on it until eight tonight when we realized we'd have to bail on it.


Which created a huge problem because we had intended to run an interview but the interview never took place. (Maybe next time.) C.I. and Rebecca were helping us with our editorial and we were still working on the Tori Amos cutting as well. Having just interviewed Rebecca last week, we didn't think we could so quickly put her back in this issue.

[Disclosure, Rebecca, Folding Star of A Winding Road, C.I. and all of us here at The Third Estate Sunday Review are Common Ills members.]

Since we were running a blog highlight featuring Folding Star, C.I. was able to get ahold of Folding Star and pull together a last minute interview. We really love it. Not just because we know it was a last minute save our ass kind of thing. Folding Star and C.I. really get a conversation going. (Ty says it's like reading a transcript to Terry Gross's Fresh Air.)

We had thought the Judy Miller & The Times would be our editiorial. But we finished that Wednesday and then on Thursday, those silly scamps at CJR Daily surprised us when Brian Montopoli decided to throw caution to the wind and make it appear that for the first time someone (Rebecca Blood) had noticed that their "Blog Reports" always focused on the same limited number of blogs. That was too good to pass up. And, as we note in the editorial, we called in C.I. for what we knew would be a heavy hitting editorial.

But we didn't know how heavy hitting. While C.I.'s interviewing Folding Star, Dallas (a Common Ills community member) sends us e-mails regarding Brian Montopoli's own blog. Before you can say, "Holy conflict of interest, Batman!" we suddenly had a much harder hitting editorial. One that backed up our concerns expressed in this editorial and the earlier one on CJR Daily.

As soon as C.I. transcribed the interview with Folding Star we read over it while we waited for feedback on the Tori Amos cutting. Then, when that was done, we discussed the editorial we were working on and what we'd just learned.

For the next four hours we worked on that with us, Rebecca and C.I. debating and discussing.
We note in the editorial that C.I. objected to a comment about Montopoli's necklace. We kept the comment in. We think it's funny. And then Rebecca or one of us would have a problem with another point. The thing just posted before we started on this note to the readers and I'm sure Rebecca and C.I. will be cursing us all day tomorrow since we kept them up way too long.

We appreciate their feedback. And we appreciate their generosity with their time. And it's funny because I don't think anyone reading it will be able to tell what C.I. fought to have included and what Rebecca fought to have included or what one of them fought to have taken out. It was a free for all (Dona has a "throbbing headache") among the seven of us with some point being objected to and some point being fought for.

What emerged was, to use Brian Montopoli's term, a "clusterfuck." But it's a glorious clusterfuck. And though I doubt the seven us can all agree 100% on every sentence included, we hope that overall it's got a little bit of something for everyone.

At one point, Rebecca noted, "You realize CJR Daily will now never report on any of us in their 'Blog Report.'" The laughter that greeted that remark was a great tension release. C.I. has already noted that it doesn't matter a bit whether The Common Ills is ever covered on CJR Daily. Though we lack C.I.'s level of readership judging by e-mails, we don't care either. Because we honestly feel that their "Blog Report" is superficial. (And we felt that way before we were working on this editorial.) CJR Daily seems to forget it's also a web site by the amount of space they give to the "Blog Report." It seems to also forget that as part of CJR proper, it needs to be very prudent about journalistic ethics, omissions, disclosures, etc. We said in our last editorial that great oversight was needed from CJR proper -- and we didn't know the half of it. Which left Rebecca who said, "I did a post called 'Cocks and Dicks' -- you think there was ever a chance they'd link to me!"

No "spoiler alert" because we aren't going to spoil it for you. But you really do need to read it to the end. We were already pretty much set with it when Dallas e-mailed the new information in.
Had it not been so late and had we not been debating over so many points, we would have moved the bigger issue up front. Instead we bury the lead. Or we give you a surprise ending.
See, it's all in the way you look at it.

Hopefully, next week will go more smoothly. But we'll probably hold off on the editorial until the last minute since CJR Daily ended up bumping the intended editorial.

The TV report (readers love that feature and it seems like we'll be doing one every edition) was another last minute thing. As of Saturday morning, we were still debating with some pushing for a syndicated show and some pushing for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As one of the ones against Buffy noted, "The show's been off for years!" To which it was noted Mutant X ended it's run last spring. Ava then pulled the ace out by dumping printed copies on the table. E-mail after e-mail noting the Medium review and requesting that we address Buffy the Vampire Slayer which they felt was a show that "cowed" the female lead. That settled the issue. And we want to thank C.I. for help on this as well as Folding Star.

If you don't see an early entry by C.I. blame us because C.I. was pulling twenty-four hours without sleep to help us. And should have already crashed as soon as we posted the editorial.
And Folding Star had better things to do on a Saturday night then sit down for an unscheduled, last minute interview. And poor Rebecca, we pulled her out of bed. But she reassured us that was fine since she'd finished having sex 15 minutes prior. We are really luck to be part of such a great community that always is willing to pull together to pull our ass out of the fire.

As always, we at The Third Estate Sunday Review hope there's something in this edition that makes you react: happy, angry, laugh, scream. See you next week.