Good profile in Sunday’s paper of Evan Smith, the New York-bred editor of Texas Monthly. Scary anecdote:
In 1994, when he briefly thought he would like to return to the East to work for another magazine, Mr. Smith and his future wife packed up to leave Austin. But first there were the magazines in the closet.
Over the years they had piled up – hundreds of Esquires and Vanity Fairs and New Republics, perused, read, cherished, hoarded.
“I think we kept every magazine we had ever had,” says Julia Smith. “Evan loaded them in the back of the car – they were so heavy, the car was scraping the ground – and he drove them to Half Price Books.”
The clerks at the bookstore solemnly watched as he unloaded them. Then they assessed the whole lot and offered him … $1.
Years of talent, of thought, of words shaped and fought over and poured out upon the page. Worth a buck.
It was more than an insult, says his wife. “It was a blow to what he does.”
That doesn’t speak well about my plan for eventually liquidating all the five-year magazine stacks in my apartment. (Then again, there wasn’t eBay back in 1994.)
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07 January | 9:22 | trudy d'shiznit
hey josh - as an education reporter, i thought you'd be interested in this article from the NYT about the closing of fathom.com, where i used to work (my situation is a lot better than others, but still).
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Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)
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