Alan Mutter is an old-school newspaper guy who turned into a new-media guy. Thus he always has interesting observations on the evolution of the 21st-century news business.
If you haven’t discovered Mutter’s mutterings yet, you can find him on his blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur. Its subtitle: Musings (and occasional urgent warnings) of a veteran media executive, who fears our news-gathering companies [...]
Archive for the ‘Jesharris’ Category
‘Journicide: A looming, lost generation of scribes’
Posted in Commerce, Jesharris, Language, Media, tagged Alan Mutter, Reflections of a Newsosaur, journicide on December 1, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Books: Sandra Brown on ‘Rainwater’
Posted in Arts, Jesharris, tagged autism, books, federal Surplus Relief Corporation, great depression, racial tension, Rainwater, Sandra Brown, Simon & Schuster on November 3, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Sandra Brown, who lives in Arlington, Texas, is a writer who has produced a long string of New York Times bestsellers.
Sandra started her career as a romance novelist, but over the past two decades, her specialty has become the fast-paced, contemporary thriller — crime fiction dealing in murder, corruption, betrayal, and steamy sexual intrigue.
However, her new book, Rainwater (Simon & Schuster, $23.99), is something [...]
Books: ‘Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women’
Posted in Arts, Culture, Jesharris, Media, Woman, tagged books, Harriet Reisen, Louisa May Alcott, PBS American Masters, The Woman Behind Little Women on November 2, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Here is my latest book review, from the Sunday (Nov. 1, 2009) Dallas Morning News:
Louisa May Alcott biography
details author’s lifelong struggles
By JOYCE SÁENZ HARRIS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Joyce Sáenz Harris is a Dallas freelance writer.
Two women, both closely identified with the American abolitionist movement, wrote enormously influential best-sellers in the [...]
Books: Q&A with Laura Wiess on ‘How It Ends’
Posted in Arts, Culture, Jesharris, tagged books, How It Ends, Laura Wiess on October 8, 2009 | 3 Comments »
How It Ends (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster; $14) is the latest novel from Laura Wiess, author of Such a Pretty Girl and Leftovers. Although it is marketed as a YA [young adult] novel, How It Ends is a dark-edged, compelling portrait of love’s power over evil, and adult readers are likely to relate to it on a wholly different level [...]
How Jimmie Dale Gilmore nailed ‘Dallas’ in a song
Posted in Arts, Jesharris, tagged Butch Hancock, Dallas, David McCullough, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, More a Legend Than a Band, Texas music, the Flatlanders on September 16, 2009 | 3 Comments »
A conversation today on Facebook reminded of a column I wrote back in 2002, about the classic Jimmie Dale Gilmore tune “Dallas.” It’s probably the most famous song ever recorded by The Flatlanders, a Texas trio of lifelong friends from Lubbock: Jimmie Dale, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock.
I’ve always thought the song nailed the character [...]
24 hours in LOST land
Posted in Arts, Culture, Jesharris, Media on September 7, 2009 | 5 Comments »
We got back last Monday from a trip to Maui. On the way back, we had a 24-hour stopover on Oahu… meaning we were in LOST territory.
LOST is, for me, the TV equivalent of the Harry Potter series: a mystery I revisit obsessively while it’s going on, a phenomenon whose impending end I both crave [...]
Quinn Cummings chats about her book, ‘Notes from the Underwire’
Posted in Arts, Humor, Jesharris, tagged Family (TV series), James Broderick, Marsha Mason, Notes from the Underwire, Quinn Cummings, Richard Dreyfuss, Sada Thompson, The Goodbye Girl, The QC Report on August 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »
If the name “Quinn Cummings” sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s probably because in the back of your mind, you have a memory of a precocious child who played Marsha Mason’s daughter, Lucy McFadden, in 1977’s The Goodbye Girl. She got an Academy Award nomination for that role, in which her comic timing rivaled that [...]
‘This is Walter Cronkite’
Posted in Culture, Humor, Jesharris, Media, tagged CBS News, Chesapeake, Dallas Morning News, James A. Michener, Walter Cronkite on July 18, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Today I’m thinking about how, back in the summer of 1992, I had a phone conversation with Walter Cronkite.
The occasion was a High Profile cover for The Dallas Morning News, a story about author James A. Michener, then 85 years old. I had spent an amazing day with the hospitable Mr. Michener — just the [...]
‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’
Posted in Arts, Jesharris, Media, tagged Daniel Radcliffe, David Yates, Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling, movies, Steve Kloves on July 13, 2009 | 10 Comments »
Thanks to a media preview screening, I’ve already seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which officially opens with midnight showings on Wednesday.
It’s safe to say this film is highly anticipated: Across the lobby, fans already were queueing up for another screening five hours later, at 7 p.m., one of those first-come-first-seated promotional showings. And [...]
How can you resist those pleading eyes?
Posted in Humor, Jesharris, Media, tagged humor, Media, newspapers on July 12, 2009 | 2 Comments »
What’s to be done about all those pathetic, about-to-be-laid-off journalists out there?
This Slate.com video has the answer: Subscribe to a newspaper and save a journo!
What’s that? You don’t read newspapers? Haven’t in years?
No problem. Open your heart and buy one anyway! Even if you don’t read the paper, you’ll be doing a good deed for [...]
Q&A: Novelist Sarah Bird on ‘How Perfect Is That’
Posted in Arts, Culture, Humor, Jesharris, Language, Media, Woman, tagged Alamo House, Austin, How Perfect Is That, Knopf, Sarah Bird, The Flamenco Academy, The Yokota Officers Club, Tito's Vodka on July 7, 2009 | 5 Comments »
As one of those annoying people who would rather read a good book than do just about anything else, including work for a living, I have finally found a way to make my obsession semi-respectable: I am anointing myself as a book blogger (see Power In The Blog: jesharris.wordpress.com/).
To celebrate, here is the first of [...]
Reviewing “American Adulterer,” a novel about JFK
Posted in Arts, Ethics, Jesharris, Man, Media, tagged American Adulterer, assassination, book review, Jed Mercurio, JFK on July 5, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Here’s a review I just wrote for the Books section of the Sunday Dallas Morning News:
By JOYCE SÁENZ HARRIS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
American Adulterer is a strange, morbidly fascinating novel, one sure to generate a fair amount of negative reaction from people who will not read it. Those who do read [...]
Blogfather’s Day Surprise: “From me? Oh, I shouldn’t have.”
Posted in Arts, DADvocate, Ethics, Family, Franklin Evans, Jesharris, Lifestyle, Lynn Gazis-Sax, MI, Man, Media, Moro, Nature, Private, Public, Scott Lahti, Self, Sex, Sigaliris, Sport, Steve S., Technology, Wired Sisters, Woman, Wordadvocate, tagged paternity birthday suits, plausible denial on June 21, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I swear I was only there to supply the towel-and-bottled-water concession…
Off to see the Wizard
Posted in Arts, Jesharris, tagged over the rainbow, Wizard of Oz on June 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I took my five-year-old granddaughter to see a stage production of The Wizard of Oz, Sunday night at the Music Hall in Fair Park. We had good seats (thank you, Craigslist!), and it was fine as far as G-rated family entertainment goes.
Broadway caliber it was not: The Dallas Morning News’ drama critic had complained that the production was [...]
Mr. Wright and the spiral of life
Posted in Arts, Culture, Jesharris, tagged Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gillin House, Guggenheim, Kalita Humphreys, Oak Park on May 15, 2009 | 5 Comments »
There’s a good story in the New York Times about the exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Even people who haven’t been there often recognize this landmark on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, just off Central Park. It is one of the last great works of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who died at [...]
Call me Climenole, wordsmith for hire
Posted in Commerce, Jesharris, Language, Media, tagged Climenole, Gulliver's Travels, Hunter S. Thompson, Jonathan Swift, laid-off journalists, Laputa, Tom Wolfe, Warren Buffett on April 19, 2009 | 3 Comments »
An Alexandrian colleague recently suggested to me that, in this current media crisis, laid-off journalists are suffering a sea change: transforming themselves into experienced (and in some cases fairly expensive) wordsmiths for hire.
For as newspaper and magazine staffs shrink and shrivel, hundreds of ex-journalists are of necessity becoming commercial writers: publicists, corporate spokespeople and freelance “communications” specialists who wield the [...]
When a layoff strategy means ’splitting the baby’
Posted in Ethics, Family, Jesharris, Law, Media, Woman on April 10, 2009 | 4 Comments »
This has been bothering me all week. Tell me what you think about it, please.
My former employer (which laid me off almost six months ago) did some more layoffs this week, some 500 actually, spread across the entire corporation. The local newsroom took its hit on Tuesday.
Quite a few good people I knew were among [...]
Barons of the press who know their readers
Posted in Commerce, Culture, Jesharris, Media, tagged Citizen Kane, Nicholas Lemann, Rupert Murdoch, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, William Randolph Hearst on April 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Nicholas Lemann has an interesting piece in The New Yorker, “Paper Tigers,” in which he discusses recent biographies of prominent press barons. He particularly addresses Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch and his likenesses to earlier media moguls such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst (as well as the WSJ’s earlier powerhouse, Barney Kilgore).
(Those who, like [...]
Michael Kinsley may be right about newspapers
Posted in Community, Jesharris, Media, Nation, Technology, tagged Michael Kinsley, newspapers, technological change on April 6, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Michael Kinsley’s piece in today’s Washington Post is thought-provoking, at least to those of us who grew up on dead-tree journalism. Kinsley is, of course, a provocative guy; he likes to stir the pot, especially when said pot is bubbling to the point of boiling over. I had to give a sigh of appreciation for his [...]
“Saving Newspapers: The Musical”
Posted in Humor, Jesharris, Media, tagged East Bay Express, Media, satire, Saving Newspapers: The Musical on April 2, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Over on the Left Coast, the good folks at East Bay Express have some, uh, innovative ideas for how to save newspapers from the industry’s current death spiral. Well, as yet more layoffs loom, it’s good for a much-needed laugh!
Can you imagine living in a no-newspaper town?
Posted in Jesharris, Media, tagged Belo, Dallas Morning News, Dean Singleton, Denver Post, Hearst, Media, NewsMedia, newspapers, Rocky Mountain News, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle P-I, Texas newspapers on March 2, 2009 | 5 Comments »
If you doubt that American newspapers are an endangered species, take note of this:
Last week, the Hearst Corp. announced that, unless big concessions are made by employees (both union and non), the San Francisco Chronicle would be put up for sale. The Chronicle, which was founded in January 1865, is the dominant daily newspaper in the [...]
The sounds of silence
Posted in Jesharris, tagged Dallas Morning News, furniture, Jesharris, San Diego on February 23, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Good lordy. I just looked at my blog and realized I haven’t written anything new in weeks. And it’s not because nothing has been happening to me, because plenty has. Believe me. I’ve been one busy, busy girl.
For one thing, we bought a new guest bed. I’m sure this sounds like something that would take [...]
What it’s like to win a Newbery Medal
Posted in Arts, Education, Jesharris, Language, tagged Brian Selznick, Caldecott, Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, Elizabeth Enright, Gone-Away, Kate DiCamillo on January 29, 2009 | 9 Comments »
Not that I know this from personal experience. But Neil Gaiman does, because he got woken up on Monday with that very good news. And in typically generous form, he shared it on his blog.
I’ve always thought it would be very cool to win a Newbery. I don’t know that it would necessarily surpass winning a Pulitzer, [...]
Farewell to ‘The Prisoner’
Posted in Jesharris, Media on January 15, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I was sad to pick up the newspaper this morning and read that actor Patrick McGoohan had died yesterday at age 80. (Yes, believe it or not, I still get some of my news first from the morning paper.)
I was, and still am, a big fan of The Prisoner, the late ’60s cult-classic TV series for which McGoohan [...]
