it starts off with Robinson Crusoe’s dad telling him to always take the middle path

meaning dont do the craziest most dangerous thing

and dont be so boring and conservative that you miss everything

and i always thought, well thats all fine and good

but aint nobody begging to hear the story of Robinson Crusoe Sr.

tell us about this kid.

tell us about his adventures and how he escaped sure death and shipwrecks,

show us how he outsmarted pirates, wolves

and cannibals.

tell us about the time he saved people.

i grew up loving outsiders because as the only black kid in town, i was the biggest outsider ever.

i had a huge afro and the energy of three suns.

where was i gonna hide?

so i loved mike royko, harry caray and this morning kid show host ray rayner who made bad crafts and needed little pockets to hold the notes about the announcements he was to read.

it’s really too bad that nothing in the busblog is true because

can you imagine if in here i told the real tales of what ive seen

and done

living in hollywood

these last 19 years

east of western?

if anything it was that struggle between

trying to take the middle road

but fighting back the robinson crusoe.

i didn’t move to watch everybody else live lives worth writing down.

in fact, please direct me to the cannibals and wolves,

i have questions.

so many questions.

a few times a year i speak to college journalists.

who knows why.

recently i Zoomed into a high school journalism class.

i said, look, im just a guy who lives in a van by the river, but i know this — so much of the world, so much of your competition are horrible at what they do.

they’re not into it. they only do it for the money. they dont study. they dont practice. they dont live and breathe it.

you will find yourself in jobs you dont care about. do me this favor. if you find yourself doing journalism half assedly, you either quit or write me

my email address is tony at tony pierce dot com.

and i will help you find another gig because there are so few journalism jobs out there these days that it’s so not cool for people to be taking up a slot that could be given to someone who really loves it. who reads newspapers, who reads books, who figures out how to get stories read, who figures out how to write and produce in interesting ways.

so if you are hating waking up in the morning to go to work i will help you get the job you really want.

this class sent me the best care package today. they gave me a shirt, a keychain and a postcard from their idyllic town. it made me think, wow, what did i say to them? cuz who knows when youre getting through to teens. theyre harder to read than girlfriends.

but now that i see this tshirt on theo epstein (pictured), one that i have but dont wear much because it never fit me well, i can just boil it down for them next time – try not to suck.

time goes so quickly.

i moved to california 36 years ago. it seems like yesterday. literally.

yes ive done shitloads and all of that, but i seriously remember clearly that first summer in santa monica. i was obsessed with learning everything i could about LA. everything seemed to ring a bell. every major street or town was something i had heard on TV or movies or read somewhere.

id go to a gas station and think, oh this is near UCLA, i wonder if Kareem ever pumped gas here?

little would i have guessed that one day i would launch a blog with him.

a blog that did not suck.

and the best part about that and other memories that i have about giving 100% — any time someone asks me about them, a smile comes to my face.

and a million funny stories.

do what you love and you’ll never stop smiling.

Why do magazines – especially Billboard – hate Lil Nas X so much?

Is the story of a gay, 20 year-old rapper with a country song that has set the record for being on Billboard’s Hot 100 the longest in history (18 weeks) not compelling enough to put on its own cover?

Is it because he’s probably a one-hit wonder? Isn’t that the case for most hits? That didn’t stop them from giving PSY the Elvis treatment when he was just #2 on the same chart.

Billboard dragged its feet and only put Daddy Yankee in its cover after his run of 16 weeks… but they finally conceded on their year end mop-up issue. Will Nas X have to wait until December?

But seriously, why no love for the kid who bought the beat for the year’s monster jam for $30 and roped in Miley Cyrus’s dad and later a K-Pop boybander to keep the party going? Are they hating the player or the game?

He literally hit the high score on their bullshit scoreboard and they stubbornly refuse to give him his well earned props. Why?

It makes me wonder if the cover is for sale. Has his label, Columbia, refused to pay – rightfully? Is that how Billboard works? Is that the obvious conclusion? Are they forever embarrassed for manually removing the song from the Country chart in March? Did he not handle that with enough class?

Which raises the question: exactly how many weeks must a brother have his song atop the Billboard Hot 100 until Billboard places him on the cover? How many millions of views must his video get? Is 254 million not enough?

Billboard isn’t alone. Last week Rolling Stone had the chance to do the right thing by putting the Southern rapper on its cover as part of its New Artist issue but instead chose the teen spirit, Billie Eilish, who is def worthy of praise — but as Babe Ruth said when a reporter asked him in 1930 how he felt about having a larger salary than President Hoover, the Bambino quipped, “I had a better year.”

Nas X is having the Best Year Ever and yet Rolling Stone didn’t even put his name on the cover of this month’s issue.

Shout out to the magazines who have given him his rightful props. Leading the pack is Teen Vogue who for the last few years have consistently done the right thing. In June they were the first to give Nas X the cover story treatment. Since then Dazed, Hits, and British GQ have followed suit, but the pithy play has been pathetic to say the least.

november 7, 2016

Shout out to the journalists, particularly those on the trail who covered this insane race and who found themselves surrounded by ignorance, hate, confederate flags, and bombarded with so many lies every day it must have been tough some days to figure out which flaming bag of poop to step on.

Shout out to the journalists who didn’t make it this far. 56 journalists around the globe were killed this year while doing their jobs.

Most people don’t like public speaking, writing essays, doing research, or calling someone they know won’t talk to them. Journalists do all of that every day, on deadline, for far less money than you would guess. They work long hours, holidays, nights, and weekends. They are often split apart from their families and miss recitals and baseball games: all so you can be smarter than your friends.

Oh and also, so they can make the world a better place.

The Wells Fargo Scandal, where it was discovered that the giant bank committed enormous fraud didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Journalism exposed it.

So when Donald Trump supporters suggest stringing up journalists for doing the unthinkable – writing down the things their candidate says into a microphone – think about the other nations who ban, kill, and imprison reporters.

Those are the least-American places in the world… probably because there are fewer journalists around there to shine a light on it.

If you know a journalist or run into one, hug them.

They probably could use it.