It looks like I'm going to be covering the Audio Publishers Association Conference next Thursday and Book Expo from Friday through Sunday. So now I'm reading Publishers Weekly's Book Expo preview.It should be a lot more interesting than Comdex which I went to a few weeks ago. More like the American Library Association conference I went to in San Francisco a few years ago (it is actually taking place in July in Chicago this year).
At the ALA conference, I went to a panel on feminist publishers and bookstores. One panelist mentioned that a feminist bookstore in Indianapolis I used to go to had closed. Nancy Bereano of Firebrand Books, a feminist press which first published Dorothy Allison, said they might not be around for the next millenium (this was before that became an overused phrase). That they were only surviving because of fundraising efforts. The growth of chain superstoresm and returns and closing of feminist bookstores and other independents were really hurting them. Jewell Gomez wrote this letter which appeared in the 5-26 Holt Uncensored:
Dear Holt Uncensored:Before the BEA subsumes you and everyone I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the major contributions of one who won't be there this year---Nancy Bereano of Firebrand Books. She has sent out letters to all of her writers announcing that she's sold Firebrand to LPC, which has distributed Firebrand for years.
Firebrand has been my publisher for the past ten years (15 years/100 titles!) and I am honored to have had an independent feminist publisher's faith in my work. I feel many things right now: sorrow at the passing of this era; relief for Nancy who's fought the corporate tide so wonderfully; and alarm at how narrow the field of publishing is becoming for non-blockbuster women authors.
posted by steve rhodes 5/27/2000 1:09:25 AM
For people in NYC, this Saturday, May 27th, Stay Free magazine is distributing maps in Times Square from noon to 5 pm on the growth and nature of outdoor advertising in Manhattan.If you want to help hand out New York's Great Outdoors maps, they will be meeting at the army recruiting center around noon. Wear red. People will also be shooting the event to make a doc about it. Here's a related article and a piece from 1960 on How to look at bilboards.
For people outside NYC or who can't make it, they have some versions of the map online. The easiest to read is the flash version. There is info on what you can do and related links. There is also info on getting copies of the map which will be included in the next issue of the magazine (which is worth subscribing to - there are back issues online).
Carrie Mclean, who edits Stay Free (and used to edit Escandolo, wrote about wanting to do public actions. She also has a sort of weblog.
posted by steve rhodes 5/23/2000 4:47:23 PM
I don't read Suck daily like I used to when it first launched. But I try to read Hit & Run every Thursday and check then to see if they have had anything else interesting in the previous week.Josh Quitner did a good article, Web Dreams on Joey and Carl and Suck back in 1996, but I also wanted to know more about Owen and Ana Marie Cox (who have both since left) and Heather Havrilesky's (aka Polly Esther). Luckily, Online Journalism Review has a profile (5-22-00) of Heather.
posted by steve rhodes 5/22/2000 10:29:58 PM
Newsweek points out in A Life or Death Gamble (5-29-00) that only two states, Illinois and New York, give death row inmates the rigth to use DNA tests to prove their innocence. In How Sure Is Sure Enough? (3-22-99), they looked at the case of a man who was executed who may have been innocent.Salon's May 11th article,The hanging governor asks, "Did execution-happy George W. Bush sign off on the lethal injection of an innocent man?"
Sara Rimer and Raymond Bonner looked at the cases of five people for their May 14th New York Times article Bush Candidacy Puts Focus on Executions and wrote:
...a close look by The New York Times at a half dozen executions carried out during Governor Bush's tenure -- including interviews with jurors, prosecutors, judges, witnesses and co-defendants still on death row -- makes clear that a legal and judicial system rife with these conditions creates, at the very least, the risk of an innocent person being sent to death row.Nightline looked at the death penalty on Monday, May 22nd. There is a transcript with a link to a video clip (the transcript will only be available for about a week). There is online piece Rethinking the Death Penalty. Gov. Ryan of Illinois says he does not think anyone will be executed while he is in office. The 1999 Chicago Tribune series on The Failure of the Death Penalty in Illinois was one factor in his decision to stop executions.
Ralph Nader, one of the only presidential candidates to oppose the death penalty was interviewed (in real video) today on Political Points, daily webcast from the New York Times and ABC News.
posted by steve rhodes 5/22/2000 9:40:49 PM
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