Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Oh, Baby!


We've Been Had!
We were astonished to read that the Phoenix New Times' story on Anna Nicole's Native love child -- you know, the one that everyone was talking about, teased oh-so delicately around the chain under the headline "One night, Anna Nicole Smith saw red" -- was a hoax. Can you believe it? Completely fabricated! Oh man, the razor sharp funnymen behind that ruse really had us with our pants 'round our ankles for a minute. Thank goodness for Inside Edition, who proved that the only thing more pathetic than the humorless story was the humorless reporting on the humorless story. But seriously folks...

Go Hoff! Bust that Graf!
We were kind of surprised that MNSpeak gave lesbian marriage pioneer Kevin Hoffman's first month on the job such tepid marks. C'mon guys, if you can't handle weed and massage parlors, get out of the alternative newsroom! Our sources at City Pages tell us that the graf buster's attempts to bro down with his staff have yet to lead to anything sweet, and that he swears like a sailor in staff meetings. Pax, dude. Pax.

Polish Up Those Resumes, Ladies!
Space enthusiast Tony Ortega, the new captain of the S.S. Village Voice, posted a call for the vacancy left by Joy Press and is probably typing up another one right now for departing sports writer Emma Span. We tired pretty quickly of Emma's locker-room naif shtick, but she was far from the Voice's worst offender. It really is amazing: New Times Village Voice Media has a singular talent for making us feel bad for writers we don't particularly like.

You, Too, Can Hasten Death's Slow March
We on the Watch have been thrilled to see our li'l hit counter spin, and want to thank you, our faithful readers. Please, join us on myspace, and keep those tips coming: altweeklydeathwatch@gmail.com.

94 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's another stunning story from a VVM paper, the Seattle Weekly:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-03-14/news/the-f-word.php

It's about frat boys. The author, one Mike Seely, apparently got tired of being called a frat boy and felt he needed to defend his tribe. Seely is the Kevin Hoffman of VVM's Northwest bureau.

Anonymous said...

the saddest, stupidest thing (among many sad, stupid things) about that SW cover is that the idea (indie rock and frat boys) has some potential. the frat-boy archetype is big in the gay community and within indie rock, there's a real history of the archetype. (when Pavement started out people wrote about them as archetypal frat guys, in the preppy East Coast sense.) didn't the term "frat boy" gain traction as a dis only fairly recently? that might've been interesting to read about. instead it's the usual Seely sludge of "I have a sorta idea. now I'll get some quotes, do almost no writing at all, string it together without editing or tying anything together, and boom! cover story."

actually, I take it back: the saddest thing in the cover is this graf:

"Trouble is, certain professions and subcultures take a collective view of fraternities that's skewed to the point where one's Greek letters might as well be scarlet. In my case, whenever anyone decides to denigrate me publicly (comes with the territory in this biz), the F-word inevitably gets trotted out—or at least some codified version of it, as was the case when a former colleague referred to me in a newspaper article as 'sort of a backwards-hat type of guy.' Insinuation noted, although anyone who knows me realizes that I never turn my bill around."

pathetic.

Anonymous said...

Seely may not turn his bill around, but with his Pumas, black-framed glasses, and designer jeans, he's a frat boy posing as a wannabee hipster in Seattle. This story is Seely's defense ... of himself and his misguided youth.

Anonymous said...

I have a question: Has anybody ever spoke to Christine Brennan? What's her background? What does she look like? Where does she live? Was she ever a journalist? Just curious because we know Lacey and Van de Voorde exist, but I've never heard anything about Brennan, even though she is listed as second in charge of VVM Editorial.

Anonymous said...

Brennan's one New Times byline:

http://www.westword.com/1998-06-18/news/justice-delayed/

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Anonymous said...

Emma Span was brilliant, a big loss. And hey, has anyone noticed that the first thing Ortega did at the Village Voice was revive the old "Runnin' Scared" column? What an innovative, free-thinking dude!

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