Second Gear, Second Verse
by T. Hodler
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The audio of the panel mentioned earlier is now up, for anyone who’s interested. It’s going to be a while before I have time to listen to it myself, fortunately, but I am sure of two things: (1) I sound like an idiot trying to answer Tom Spurgeon’s first question to me, and (2) at the time, I was greatly depressed by some of the things being said, openly, freely, in front of an audience, and on tape, seemingly with little awareness of or concern for the ethical and journalistic implications. (To be clear, it wasn’t the audience or recording devices that bothered me, but the fact that even their presence couldn’t inspire the barest lip service to be paid to the ideal of journalistic independence.) All this doesn’t mean that it was a particularly exciting discussion, so don’t expect fireworks.
(By the way, one of the other panelists, Johanna Draper Carlson, has posted her thoughts as well.)
UPDATE: And now a third panelist, Heidi MacDonald, has also weighed in.
UPDATE II: This guy is making sense! And he’s even more persuasive because of his DEFT use of CAPITAL FUCKING LETTERS!
UPDATE III: Update II was juvenile.
Labels: audio, Draper Carlson, ethics, Heidi MacDonald, Heroes Con, T. Hodler, Tom Spurgeon
God, this is depressing. How can intelligent people say this stuff and not acknowledge what’s coming out of their mouths? This isn’t journalism, or criticism, this is public relations. Promotion. It’s disgusting.
Jesus, this shit just gets even worse when you get to the “will you do this in five years” bullshit.
That creative loafing guy is a class act. He talks and sounds like a grown-up.
Halo and Warcraft are “cool” things to do with a computer?
I thought I’d throw in that this panel kind of depressed me too. I think it was all good to hear though. It put some things into perspective as far a comics coverage and those covering them goes.
Dear Tim,
If you ever fucking review any of my friends negatively I’m not talking to you.
Love,
Your wife,
Lauren R. Weinstein
I work at a small town newspaper. Even though I’m in the art dept. I attend the weekly “Press Club” lunch which is a sort of meeting of small town ‘intelligentsia’ getting together to discuss each week’s paper and local govt., etc. It included the editor and a reporter ow two along with some local politicians and other invited guests.
While many accused the editor of cavorting with govt. officials and being in a “conspiracy” of sorts, I found that in our group we were willing to take someone to task for things they’d said in a public meeting or article in the paper. Even though we were friends we clearly and openly disagreed on issues- sometimes even stating so in letters to the editor. If we can do that in politics where things actually matter then why can’t we do it comics? I understand negative reviews suck, but comics people have excessively thin skins.
I also think the reluctance to allow any open discussion of business matters might be one of the things that has actually stunted the growth of comics over the years.
Also, I second the praise of the Creative Loafing guy.