Jon Udell on the NYTimes: The newspaper industry has surely earned this kind of scathing criticism. And it may well fail to capitalize on the amazing opportunities for self-reinvention afforded by the Internet. But the Times is attracting an all-star team of information architects, interactive graphics designers, programmers, and media producers. And according to Gabriel [...]
I’m taking a Media Theory course at Concordia in their Media Studies MA program, which involves a fair bit of reading. I’ve come to the conclusion that all academics should blog. Here’s why: 1. You need to improve your writing I have never read such dismally bad writing as that which is prevalent in academia. [...]
I’m doing a Master’s in Concordia Media Studies program, or at least part of a Master’s (taking just one class at the moment). Below is a paper I just wrote for the Media Theory class I am taking (with Charles Acland). After doing much writing in the past years – blogging, novel writing, article-making, it [...]
Paul Boutin has a linkbait article up at Wired, about why you shouldn’t bother blogging. My response is: Don’t blog to get known, blog to be knowable. Twitter, identi.ca et al are great, and certainly they’ve eaten into bog posting significantly; the pros have (of course, what did you expect?) moved into what used to [...]
[cross-posted at the Book Oven Blog] Bookkake, is “an entirely print-on-demand, and web-oriented, publisher,” launched by James Birdle. Either he’s a pervert, or a good marketer, but he’s starting with … well, let’s call them saucy books. Interestingly his first batch of books are all old classics, and out of copyright, such as John Cleland’s [...]
[cross posted at the Book Oven Blog] There’s been much teeth gnashing and lamenting over the impending collapse of the publishing business. See, for instance, the exhaustive New York Magazine article titled The End, with the lede: “The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after.” Readers are reading less [...]
Every once in a while, for my own benefit, and for those of you who like to write, I republish this wonderful list from George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language“, which is some of the best advice to writers you’ll ever read: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you [...]
Matt just released his beautiful new book, Ojingogo. (I don’t think you can buy it online yet.) I’m not a great reader of graphic novels, but I must say I love Drawn & Quarterly’s store on Bernard, and the attention graphic novelists, their publishers, and their readers give to the object of the book. The [...]
I just spoke with someone in the publishing business about the discouraging state of Canadian fiction. Not the writing, but the business side. I’m not sure what has happened in the rest of the world, but: Chapters/Indigo has reduced space for books from 70% to 60%. The rest is candles and calendars and crap of [...]