Matt Welch: 1) Your four favorite writers at the LAT
2) Your four favorite bloggers whose first name begins with the letter “Z”
3) Your four best names for a new awesome (and sadly non-existent) magazine based in L.A.
4) Your four thoughts on sportswriters no longer quoting people in (mostly Latino & black) dialect, as in “Fo’ fo’ fo’.”
1. completely difficult question for a myriad of political and professional reasons, as many of the writers here (over 200 of them) blog and i am supposed to view them as an Octomom looks at her offspring “i love every one the same”. But here are four that I found myself reading a lot lately: Geoff Boucher, Dan Neil, Steve Lopez, Todd Martens, Scott Sterling, Mark Milian, Margaret Wappler, Jessica Gelt, Alie Ward, August Brown, Patrick Day, Andrew Malcolm, Johanna Neuman, Carolyn Kellogg, and Lindsay Barnett. Next month would probably be a different list, so make sure to ask me again then cuz now no one is gonna wanna say hi to me in the halls. But the music bloggers kicked major bootay this month cranking out 69 posts over just 3-4 days for Coachella. A better question would be, who am i more jealous of this week (it changes very quickly), this week it would be Chris Lee, a guy who got to interview Angelina Jolie last year and last week topped it by getting to interview Sasha Grey.
2. zaymi the minz, zlenda bautista, ztx, and zatt welch
3. Better Than Frisco, 90069, Hell A., Boink
4. Sports should continue to break the rules and feel free to quote people the way they express the most flava. Sportswriters however should be respectful of people’s dialects, for example they dont quote every “uh” from white players, so they shouldnt quote every knowwhatimsayin from my brothas. Sportswriters should always be having fun. Sportswriters should avoid anything that causes them to get punched in a locker room.
Basart: 1. What blog that you read religiously five years ago but is now dead would you like to see revived?
2. Without giving away any secrets, what blog should the LAT start up that it currently does not have?
3. What blog would you most like to guest-post on (or would you even want to do such)?
4. Why are all of my questions about blogs if I hate blogs?
1. flagrant disregard. big time.
2. there are about 5 in the back burner that id love love love to bring to the front burner. but one that’s not even on the stove i know we wont make any time soon is The Bad Blog – where every day we just collect and present stories of Americans acting badly, like that lady who killed her grade school aged son and buried him in the playground under the sand. it would get hits and comments and links. for surely.
3. Jezebel
4. because you secretly love blogs and secretly want to write for Pitchfork.
vinny: 1)why are the cubs on a losing streak?
2)Where is the best burger place in Las Vegas?
3)Are you actually going to buy a Kia Soul?
4)If a pretty girl from Vermont adds you as a friend on facebook and you have no idea who she is so you don’t add her, but than she messages you and says sorry wrong person. But you keep messaging back and forth for awhile, do you add her as a friend and hope for the best, or just leave it alone?
1. i blame the bullpen, milton bradley, and mike fontenot.
2. In N Out over by the Palms.
3. Probably not because Karisa would unfollow me on Twitter
4. pretty girl in Vermont you say? if you dont friend her, i’ll take up the slack for ya
g/d: -1-why no Beats in this generation?
-2-who’s writing do we have to watch?
-3-should every wall be blank for banksy?
-4-to link or to be linked?
1. because Kerouac ruined everything and made people believe that it was about him and his crappy writing than Burroughs and Ginsburg and their crappy writing.
2. xTx (nsfw) on many many levels.
3. stencils are over, so no. but street art shouldnt be a crime.
4. people who dont link are missing the point of blogging. it is to help expand yr readers’ minds, and although your writing might be unbelievable, someone elses work is probably better, so share that with the people you allegedly love.
timmay!!!!!: 1. did you know that kim is good friends with someone who knows someone in gang of four?
2. what’s your favorite song on foreigner 4?
3. hearts, diamonds, clubs or spades?
4. whatever became of the fourth estate?
1. death is the friend to most cool peeps. so this does not surprise me.
2. im not sure if this was my record or my sisters, but i did play it a lot, in part because it was produced by Robert “Mutt” Lange who we all know as the African master who was behind the dials for the Boomtown Rats and then Highway to Hell and Back in Black. “Jukebox Hero” was a fun song to air guitar to so i’ll pick that one.
3. motorhead would not approve if i didnt say spades.
4. its still around. for example the original abu ghraib torture pics probably wouldnt have come out so quickly if it wasnt for 60 Minutes II (and Dan Rather) followed by the New Yorker. Without the Washington Post it’s unlikely that the neglect at Walter Reed would have come out so quickly. And without our very own LA Times we wouldnt have known as quickly about the horrors at King / Drew hospital.
Could the “4th Estate” be more aggressive, biting, and intense? Sure, but you could look at any profession and say doctors should be cheaper, buses should be more on time, and restaurants should be more delicious. but thats the beauty of competition – there will always be someone who is working a little harder to be better. and even though newspapers, magazines, and tv news dont make as much money as they used to make, they all want that extra scoop, so even though it might not seem like the press is exposing one watergate a month, its not like we’re not trying.
