Another Sunday edition and, as usual, we get in one good edition of planning and finishing early only to find the following week a mad scramble.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. We had a piece we were going to do on "Franks" and we'll hopefully pull from the notes on that for next week. We had a tremendous amount of e-mails from people wanting to play along with "Dear Third Estate Sunday Review" and intended to do a column on that. We'd gotten e-mails on how Slate and CJR Daily both missed the big story in the blogosphere and, on Friday, we knew we'd make that our editorial. We knew we'd do something on Jane Fonda's book My Life So Far. And we had already picked our blog spotlight piece.
But how things can change quickly. Though The Third Estate Sunday Review gang proper (Dona, Jess, Ty, Ava and Jim) were together, our various helpers were far flung and when we all began hooking up digitally, we were surprised, happily, to be joined by Kat of Kat's Korner. We love Kat. And we were in the process of pulling together an Indy Media piece when Kat joined us.
Due to the "brownout" on Blogger, C.I. wasn't able to post an Indy Media Review Thursday and we always enjoy those so we had planned to do that. We'd all found a piece to emphasize and then Kat joined us. We were filling her in on what we were doing and Ty offered the piece he'd found as an example when we all began talking about the media, about Air America (the subject of the piece Ty found), about CJR Daily and a number of other issues. When Ava asked someone to repeat something, C.I. must have caught on as to what was going on because while the rest of us continued speaking at our normal speeds, C.I. began speaking slowly. We asked why, and, as C.I. suspected, Ava was taking notes.
That's how you ended up with a roundtable in this edition. We spent four hours discussing that topic. What resulted was a lengthy transcription that we then edited down to stay closer to the topics. If we thought something was funny, we left in regardless. For instance, at one point, C.I. went off topic (as C.I. notes) but used "for the record" and that became something that popped up later so we left that in. Kat was off the phone after the roundtable (thanks for hanging in for the four hours, Kat, we appreciated it) while the rest of us worked on the first edit.
Then as Betty, Rebecca, Jess, Ty, Dona and Jim continued to work on shaping that and shortening it, Ava and C.I. went off to write their TV review. Readers probably won't be pleased to read this, but Jim and Ty both offered that they could skip that if they were too tired. Everyone was tired at this point. But the e-mails on the TV review indicate it's one of the most read features and Ava and C.I. had their notes and were ready to "churn out something." What you're reading, Ava asks that we note, is a first draft. There was no time for a re-read or for any other drafts. So consider that "live" blogging. (As usual, they handed it over expecting that we add input but what we've learned from readers is that you don't like it when we muck up Ava & C.I.'s voices so we try to stay hands off there.)
They read over the final draft of the roundtable. C.I. felt that there was way too much C.I. (we disagree) but said, "Fine, put it up so we can get started on the editorial."
That's the kind of non-perfection attitude we strive for at The Third Estate Sunday Review!
For the editorial, we need to thank Ron (Why Are We Back In Iraq?) who helped us out when we were trying to get statistics. We, tried Blogger Support, and we're still waiting on a reply.
But Ron tracked down some stuff for us and we appreciate that. We'll also thank Common Ills community member Dallas who throughout the night tracked down links for us. Our roundtable may be our most link filled entry ever. That was Dallas, whom C.I. suggested we e-mail and see if he was up. He was and while we were finishing what ended up being the last draft, he found the last of the links we were looking for. (Though honestly, we were in a linking mood and, if there had been more time, we would have done even more.) Wait, you can't find links?
Yes, we can find links. And the person typing can also pick up a dictionary. But when you're scrambling, it's easier to scream out, "Look this word up!" or e-mail a list of sites, people, what have you that we need links to and then just copy and paste from that.
The editorial could have gone on longer but we were all jolted by a loud noise. "What the hell was that?" screamed Rebecca. And we all wondered if someone had been shot. No, said C.I., that was The New York Times delivery person throwing the paper not on the doorstep or on the door but on the wall. We at The Third Estate Sunday Review love the all nighters (well, okay not Ava, and the consensus is that only Jim really finds the "exciting") but when the Times has been delivered, it's time for us to wrap it up.
For this edition, we thank our readers. And we thank for Kat for particpating in the round table. We thank Folding Star for giving us some comments on Jane Fonda's book and for the comments on Blogger in the editorial. We thank Ron for his help with the editorial and Dallas for his help with links. We thank Betty and Rebecca for all their help on everything (except the TV review). And we thank our own Ava for realizing a roundtable was occurring and we thank her and C.I. for the TV review which is funny and on the money (as usual). We also thank C.I. and we swear that next week, we won't pull an all nighter. (Like everyone hasn't heard that one before!) C.I.'s now blogging on this morning's Times while Rebecca and Betty are probably fast asleep and we'll be joining them (in the non-clusterfuck sense, we won't be getting into bed with them, we'll just also be going to sleep) shortly.
As always, we hope you find something here that makes you laugh or makes you think. And if you can find both, we're thrilled.
-- Dona, Ty, Ava, Jess and Jim