Sunday, June 20, 2010

A note to our readers

Good morning --

Another Sunday. We made it through, how about you? We is Dallas and 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),
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen
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?


Michele Norris got it this week. Either we're blanking or there wasn't a great deal of competition. Even in a stiff week, she would have gotten it.
This is our Iraq editorial. The edition got away from us. We had planned to do an Iraq article and a Gulf article. Didn't happen that way. So we went with Iraq which is falling off the radar with each passing week. I (Jim) think this is our best editorial in weeks.

Could, I asked politely, Ava and C.I. please do a light commentary? Why? It wasn't a busy news week. But they will come. And when they do, I'll be begging for them to do public affairs shows. They looked at the list of shows they want to weigh in on this summer and went with Justified. If you haven't seen the show, go to Hulu and check it out.

This was not what put us behind. It actually moved fairly quick. Ava and C.I. suggested this at the start of last week. Dona was all on board so that gave enough Third votes for the piece. But even being on board, Dona pointed out that we have a history here of championing women and we've probably done more articles on women musicians in the last five years than any other site -- "larger percentage," Dona just corrected me. And it's true. We've done cuttings of lyrics to spotlight various women. We've done roundtables on just the work of Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell (each artist had their own roundtable). We've written articles on Laura Nyro, career retrospectives on Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks. We've reviewed a Tori Amos Boston concert. And that's just the ones rolling off the top of our heads. So when Pat Benatar puts out her book, her life story, we have to weigh in. After we finished this, Dona pointed out that Belinda Carlisle also has a book out. We'll grab that before the end of summer. Maybe next weekend, maybe later than that. But we will grab Belinda Carlisle's as well.

This was another reason I wanted a lighter TV piece. Ava and C.I. do a great job here but I was looking for some balance and felt we needed lightness in the TV piece. Here they are doing the job Alicia Shepard refuses to. This almost didn't get written. It was done at the last moment when I asked them where that piece was and they said, "You wanted that? We thought you were joking."

Dona came up with this. She and Betty talked last week repeatedly about Calderon's remark. As the edition was winding down, Dona pointed out we had no short pieces. She wasn't thrilled by that. So I made some saracastic remark and she replied that Calderon was perfect for a short feature. She was right.

We went with the eyeball grabbing headline on this one.

After Dona and the gang worked on the short feature, Mike said if she wanted another short feature, he had an idea. There was one story last week that he felt should have gotten traction but never did. So this is just a repost.

We revisted the political mags (and music mags) at the request of our reader serving in Iraq. We've promised to do those once a month at least. We've been doing that a little more frequently than that.

Those not participating in the roundtable on Pat's book weighed in with this feature. And Ava and C.I. worked on both pieces.

Veterans' issues.

Mike, Elaine, Rebecca, Betty, Ruth, Kat, Cedric, Wally, Marcia, Stan and Ann worked on this and we thank them for it.


And that's what we ended up with. Hope there's something that got a reaction -- joy, laughter, anger, whatever. Remember that it is now summer and we will be doing our annual summer read edition. When? We've got it penciled in for Fourth of July weekend but that's subject to change based on current events. (And that's why I felt we needed the light this week from Ava and C.I. If we end up doing fiction on a busy news week, the editorial and Ava and C.I.'s TV piece will be the only things covering that while the rest of the edition is fiction.)


Peace.

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