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Gene Weingarten is not amused, but in an amusing way:
Dear Leslie:
I am honored that you have chosen me as the subject of your journalism school graduate thesis. At the behest of your instructor, you e-mailed me to ask how I’ve “built my personal brand over the years.” I’m answering with this column.
The best way to build a brand is to take a three-foot length of malleable iron and get one end red-hot. Then, apply it vigorously to the buttocks of the instructor who gave you this question. You want a nice, meaty sizzle.
via Gene Weingarten: How branding is ruining journalism – The Washington Post.
Or perhaps we should just start shooting publishers:
Gregor Samsa, “waking up from anxious dreams”, is transformed not into a cockroach but into an “adorable kitten” in The Meowmorphosis, the latest attempt to “remix” classic literature from US publisher Quirk Books.
The pseudonymous Coleridge Cook has married the text of Franz Kafka’s masterpiece The Metamorphosis with his own story to create The Meowmorphosis, in which Gregor “wakes up late for work and discovers that he has inexplicably become an adorable kitten”. Out next week, the book, revealed Quirk, sees the Samsa family “admit that, yes, their son is now OMG so cute – but what good is cute when there are bills to pay? How can Gregor be so selfish as to devote his attention to a ball of yarn? And how dare he jump out the bedroom window to wander through Kafka’s literary landscape?”
The publisher has already enjoyed success with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which seamlessly combined Jane Austen’s text with zombie-fighting, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina. It has also spawned a trend for similar titles from other publishers, from I am Scrooge: A Zombie Story for Christmas to Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.
[more] via Kafka’s Metamorphosis given ‘OMG so cute’ makeover | Books | guardian.co.uk.
You might feel “more connected to your work.”
I’ve owned at least two typewriters over the years. They were passed down to me from other family members; I think one I discovered in my grandmother’s basement and begged her to let me take it home with me. She obliged and I used the thing, banging out random nonsense, until I ran out of tape. There’s something about the large, clunky, medieval device that appeals to the aspiring writers among us; they make you feel more connected to your work. When a story is done and has been pulled off the roller, you can still feel it in your fingers.
via Last Typewriter Factory in the World Shuts Its Doors – Nicholas Jackson – Technology – The Atlantic.
Quelle surprise. Story turns out to be completely wrong. Several companies are still making them (Brother, Royal, among others). Nice picture of Faulkner’s typewriter, though. I have one just like it (Underwood Universal Portable).
USA Today, aka Television You Can Wrap Fish In, goes for the Google:
USA Today had a conference call last night and according to a source, the paper outlined a plan in which it will pay annual bonuses to writers based on page views. The goal, obviously, is to get writers thinking digital. But once writers start scrutinizing their page view tallies, and realize slideshows, rumors, and celebrities drive traffic, what will be the impact? And will other newspapers follow?
via USA Today Takes the Plunge: Paper to Pay Bonuses to Writers Based on Page Views | The Big Lead.
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