Heather Booth and Jacob Brancasi are doing a genius little project. And what I like an awful lot about it is that you can do it with them.
Open Sound New Orleans asks you – in what is a slightly evolving and definitely getting easier manner – to put a sound up from the city. Not a story; a sound. Raw and rough is how they like it.
Apr 2, 01:47 PM | Comment
A few years back I did a story about environmental impacts at the border. In part it was prompted by the Real ID act, which had a provision in it that would give Homeland Security waiver power over environmental and labor laws. The law passed with some border pilot project money, but not the provisions. The idea, however, stuck around.
Congress later gave the federal government the power to waive federal environmental – and labor, let’s not forget – laws when border security is at stake. And when the federal government has really, really wanted to, it has used it.
Apr 1, 03:37 PM | Comment
What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded…
Mar 28, 11:45 PM | Comment
...try to skip over the haranguing b.s. that won’t help a younger journalist and just makes older ones feel smug or angry. Instead I think you should consider checking out this article from the Columbia Spectator.
Especially this part:
Mar 27, 02:22 PM | Comment
I dreamed of Helen Mirren. She was wearing the dress she wore to the Oscars this year – which I figured out only when I recognized in it the same did-you-staple-on-the-shawl/hot-sex-cougar quality the dress had in real life.
Also, it was silver, not red.
Mar 21, 12:35 AM | Comment
When I lived in New Orleans I paid $14 bucks a month for recycling. (Phoenix Recycling gives a discount if you belong to a neighborhood association, and they picked up plenty.) I love Phoenix Recycling. But the City of New Orleans used to recycle, and could again.
Now I live in Los Angeles, where the city lets you recycle every darn thing under the sun. It is almost possible if you think hard about it to skip the black bin entirely. You can recycle styrofoam here.
Mar 19, 10:44 PM | Comment
According to a press release from Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s office, the Times-Picaune is to blame for grossly misrepresenting the mayor and the chief of police, Warren Riley.
Feb 13, 07:15 PM | Comment
He was smoking in bed, apparently.
Tim Fry and Andrew Sell took me to see Weepin’ Willie one glorious night in 1996 when we were using Mike Conathan’s house as our personal manse post-4th of July (Mike having decamped to New York, because editorial assistants at Simon & Schuster never slept). it turned out to be Willie’s 70th birthday. He was wonderful, if especially because of the venue. He could play. And the other patrons at Joe’s Twin Villa were such a scattered lot, not entirely the whiteys I would have expected.
Dec 31, 11:55 AM | Comment
Well, we did it. Eve Troeh and I made a radio documentary about Louisianans’ sense of security in their lives, and we finished it, and it is airing…It aired last weekend on WWNO and WRKF, and will air again on WWNO on Friday.
This project was humbling, to say the least. One of my favorite authors is Julian Barnes. And in an interview with a literary website he had this to say about how he works differently in journalism and in fiction:
Dec 5, 12:13 AM | Comment [1]
..as 43 might say.
My good friend Eve Troeh had a commentary on the Katrinaversary.
Sep 3, 07:37 PM | Comment