Sunday, April 18, 2010

A note to our readers

Hey --

Sunday, Sunday. Just barely. This morning, little was working out. We'd leaned heavy on Ava and C.I. to write epic. They did but they were sure there were deep cuts that needed to be made and they couldn't stand to look at what they'd written another moment. We finally decided to halt everything and regroup tonight.

Which is what we did and, along with Dallas, the following helped on this edition:


The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with?

Justin Raimondo. And what a powerful excerpt. Use the link and read in full if you haven't already.
Bob Somerby also got a truest. This goes to several features we offer this week. We were ending the regrouping part of the writing edition and only going to have one truest when C.I. quoted Bob (word for word, though she wasn't sure) and said that might fit with the general thrust of this edition. It did.



This is largely Elaine and C.I. and, were we smart, we would have shut up and let them write it. As is, the Iraq section was ruined by me in editing (C.I. and Jess fixed it somewhat but weren't able to restore the cuts I made -- I'd tossed the original thinking this feature was done). The second part is stronger. We weren't sure for most of the morning what the editorial would be and as we neared the end of the writing edition, it was decided that the Iraq thing could be paired with what Elaine was bringing to the table for an editorial on listening. I think it's a good editorial but I do think it would have been stronger had I not edited down the Iraq section (which I had done -- this is Jim -- because I thought it was too long to be part of an editorial).

They wrote an epic. We asked them too. This is actually a third of what they wrote. When they were done they dropped it in my lap and I immediately read it out loud to everyone. They were not pleased by the reaction which was hugely positive. They said that it needed severe cuts and they were hoping that those would be suggested. No one could think of any. At which point, they said it wasn't going up as is and that there were serious problems with it. One example? They were "on the nose" about the subjective and the universal. They wanted to indicate that, to lead the reader through that but they did not want to sit there and, as they had done in five paragraphs which they cut from the published version, explain it in a cut and dry fashion. They said they needed to sleep on it in order to figure out where the cuts were (again, what's published is one-third of the essay they wrote). I pointed out that that would delay posting at The Common Ills tonight (it's now tonight) and that was "fine" because it had "to be right or it's not worth publishing." I think it's epic and I think it works the reader through the maze without being obvious about it.

This was group writing. Readers are e-mailing us about the financial help books they are seeking out in these tough economic times and especially about ones that offer nothing. So Wednesday night, Betty, Dona, Ty, Jess, Betty's kids, Ty's boyfriend and I went to Borders to hunt down some of the books people were writing about. We bought what we could find and included it in this article.

A magazine round up and Jenette asked if we could just do the next one with "left magazines and no center and no right. As a proud leftist it's bad enough that we don't have a single magazine worth reading, it's even worse when center and right mags get praised." So for this article, we only focused on the left.

Another e-mail inspired selection for a regular feature.

As the headline says, "True Story." We were like, WTF? Even Betty's kids were. And when the couple walked off, everyone immediately began asking, "Can you believe that? She hates books, what's she's doing in a bookstore?"

A short feature. Dona insisted we have at least one.

Mike, Elaine, Cedric, Ann, Ruth, Marcia, Rebecca, Betty, Trina, Stan and Wally wrote this and we thank them for it.

And that's what we ended up with. We actually could have published this morning. Ava and C.I. wouldn't have liked their piece but readers would have loved it and we could have left the Iraq piece alone and made it an editorial. But I really do think we benefitted from the lengthy break and were able to offer a better edition as a result.


Peace.

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
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