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Varsity Letters
November 6, 2007
Gelf's Varsity Letters: 11/8 Interviews
Authors of three sports books will be speaking at a free Gelf event in New York on Thursday, November 8, at 8 p.m. Come by the Happy Ending Lounge to hear writers Bruce Feldman, Steve Friedman, John Wolff, and Rick Wolff read from and discuss their writing. Click through to see interviews with the authors.
Media
November 6, 2007
Hurting for Material
By mid-football season, most of the great editorial fodder about a team has already been used up. Instead, sports journalists on deadline must scrape together whatever scraps they've got left over into something resembling a column for their readers. Sometimes, they can pull it off; other times, their efforts turn into monstrosities containing the stilted prose of high-school valedictories, out-of-context references to current events, and cloying references to long-past family tragedies. Here are three of our favorite column openings from this week:
Media
October 31, 2007
'Vampire Electronics' Articles Suck
If you work for a company looking to generate some good PR, take notes from Direct Energy. In order to get their energy consultancy's name out in front of millions of eyeballs, all the folks there had to do was dubiously link an old trend story to an upcoming holiday in the form of a cheesy press release headlined, "This Halloween, Protect Your Home From Vampire Electronics."
Media
October 30, 2007
The Guardian Comes to America (Sort Of)
Earlier this week, the Guardian entered the US market by introducing the Guardian America website, the latest in a string of online efforts from the liberal UK paper. Because of the paper's previous successes with internet content like Comment Is Free (which contains a number of blogs from its columnists and editors), its arts blog (which is well-regarded by critics), and its comprehensive media site (which makes deft use of video and podcasts), American readers could understandably be thrilled that the Guardian has a site dedicated to them. But some English journalists don't think the new Guardian America is all it claims to be.
Varsity Letters
October 26, 2007
November 8: Gelf's Varsity Letters Moves to Thursdays
Gelf's Varsity Letters sports reading series is moving to Thursdays. At this free monthly event at a bar in New York's Lower East Side, on Thursday, November 8, at 8 p.m., Bruce Feldman, Steve Friedman, John Wolff, and Rick Wolff will read from and talk about their work, and take questions. In their new books, Feldman goes inside the shadowy big business that is college-football recruiting; Friedman examines the inner turmoil of great athletes; and the Wolffs, father and son, share their tales of adventures in minor-league baseball.
Sports
October 25, 2007
I Wanna Jam It With You
Stu Scott's recent experiment in SportsCenter poetry jamming ("Superstars without a ring/that is the thing that binds them") was called "what absolute bottom for SportsCenter looks and sounds like" by the blog Mister Irrelevant. Gelf thinks Who's Now gave it some pretty strong competition. Nonetheless, we agree that it was ridiculous, and badly written. Prof. Grant Farred—Gelf's resident expert on ESPN and language—has, shall we say, a different take:
Sports
October 22, 2007
Taking Baseball's Eccentrics Off The Field
After watching Indians pitcher Rafael Betancourt take an incredibly long time between pitches in Game 7 of the Indians-Red Sox series, Gelf couldn't help but wonder if that kind of hesitation carried over into his everyday activities. Does he signal three minutes before changing lanes? Can he finish a bowl of soup before it gets cold? Betancourt isn’t the only oddball player out there; Gelf pictures how some of the other quirks of notable players and teams from this year's playoffs might affect them off the field:
Media
October 18, 2007
Dealing with Colbert '08
Like President Bush at last year's White House Correspondents Dinner, the press seems unsure of what to make of Stephen Colbert (or whether he's speaking truth to power). Last night on his show, Colbert announced he would seek the office of the Presidency (of South Carolina). Though Colbert's persona is a fictional construct, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports that Colbert will actually file the papers to run in each party's South Carolina primary. Still, there is some understandable confusion in determining just how to cover the announcement of a candidate whose fictional alter ego is running for president under his real name. Here's how some media outlets tried:
Media
October 16, 2007
Getting Ready for Prime Time
Now that the New York Times has gotten rid of its pay-per-view service TimesSelect, readers are free to check out the musings of the Gray Lady's opinion writers. It should be great for them; after two years of being blocked from the majority of their potential readership, columnists like Maureen Dowd are once again at the top of the Times's most emailed list. There's one unintended effect, though: Writers who were able to skate by when they had limited readership now have their drivel exposed to the masses.
Arts
October 11, 2007
The Day the Music Industry Died
As by now even your mother knows, Radiohead just offered their latest album In Rainbows to download on their website for whatever price feels right. Last week Gelf traced the news of the release from a short message on the band's website to global awareness. Even before Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, Jamiroquai and Madonna announced that they would follow suit and go label-free, the British news media were tripping over themselves to overstate the significance of this event.
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