"The Truth About Fleshlight" →

Steve Shubin, the owner/founder of Fleshlight, wrote a letter to the editor at the Austin Chronicle in response to the cover story I wrote about him and his company for the paper last week. He wasn’t, as it turns out, especially thrilled with it.

I kind of expected that might be the case as I was working on it. I don’t think I wrote anything unfair or unkind, but Shubin struck me very much as a man who has a definite idea of himself, and I suspected strongly that the story I was telling would not correspond with the vision of who Steve Shubin is that he himself holds.

After reading the story, I thought, “This sounds like a pissed-off ex-cop that missed choking people out, had a lot of money, a lot of fancy cars, was misunderstood, mistreated by bankers, rejected by organizations that needed donations, whose neighbors would not wave to him. What an idiot!”

That is probably not the way that Steve Shubin sees himself, no. I spent a little over two hours with Shubin, though, and these were the things that were hammered home to me. In his letter, he laments the fact that the charity work that he does didn’t make it into the article — and he did talk about that a bit, but here’s the thing: telling a reporter about the charity work your company does rarely registers, because that very often plays like spin. Saying “we built a martial arts school in Kenya” is nice, but the way it’s rattled off at the end of an interview, in a list of charitable contributions a person made, doesn’t lead me to believe that this is a great passion, and I’m not interested in documenting someone’s tax deductions.

The fact that he was willing to tell me about the “hundreds of people” he’s “choked to unconsciousness,” unsolicited (I never asked him for those details), knowing that I was recording it? That revealed something unexpected about his character.

It’s a tricky business, profiling someone for print. Because I have no interest in being cruel, or painting someone in a negative light (though to be clear, I don’t think the story actually portrays Shubin in a negative light at all, except that it doesn’t correspond to his own vision of himself). But I’m also interested in exploring the truth of a person, and not writing a hagiography. I left out details that would both raise your opinion of Shubin (like the charity work) and probably lower it (nothing serious, mostly just stuff he describes as “locker room talk”), because none of that seemed to get at the truth of this guy’s struggle surrounding this company he’d built, the wealth he’d accumulated, and the resentment he clearly felt toward the people who didn’t treat him the way he felt he should be treated. 

I didn’t pull his quotes about his bank, or his neighbors, or the people in his office park out of nowhere, you know? He kept coming back to those themes, over and over, in a two hour interview. That let me know that this stuff was important to him, even if it was mostly just in brief asides. You can learn a lot more about a person by the things that eat at them than you can by the things they profess to be proud of.

All that said, this is something I’m going to think about a lot going forward, as I develop as a journalist and a person who tells other people’s stories. Because let’s not dance around this: mine is a business that rewards shocking details, that offers plenty of opportunities to be cruel, and which gives people like me the power to frame how people are perceived. That’s a serious responsibility.

For the most part, this hasn’t been something that the people I’ve written about in other stories have been upset by. And while I wouldn’t do anything differently knowing that the story I wrote was going to bother Shubin, things like this are still a good way to remind yourself of your responsibilities.

Sarah Tressler Finally Speaks Out, Says We're "Mean" →

houstonpress:

Sarah Tressler, the Houston Chronicle society reporter who gained national, if not worldwide, fame for also being a stripper, made her first public statements.

Well, it was mean, guys. I’m not saying that it was a 100% illegitimate thing to report, but let’s not have it both ways: the post that outed Tressler was gleeful in its pursuit to link Tressler’s professional life as a writer and her pseudonymous work as a stripper (check the screenshots from her LinkedIn page and the phone calls to anyone who may have at one point been in a position to make decisions about her employment). The update about how she’s no longer with the Chronicle reads, in the full context of the piece, very much like a victory lap. Connelly’s defense against the accusation of “slut-shaming” is  disingenuous (“If you want to be a stripper, fine,” he says, after posting the LinkedIn page and calling the bosses of the part-time stripper he’s “fine” with), and the tone of the entire thing is obviously, gleefully mean-spirited.

Which, you know, is your business — I could credibly be accused of meanness from time to time myself, and the fact that we seem to differ when it comes to who’s a suitable target for it is no reason for pearl-clutching over the fact that Connelly’s posts are pretty clearly malicious. He doesn’t like the Houston Chronicle or strippers! He thinks Tressler’s a shitty writer! All of that is cool, I guess, or at least it’s within your right. But if that’s what you’re going to do, then smirking about how the person at the center of this thinks you’re “mean,” and pretending to be flabbergasted when people call out the slut-shaming you’re doing (note: the word “slut” need not appear for the tactic to be employed; in fact, it’s usually much more effective when the person employing it takes the tone of, “This woman is doing something sexual and that’s interesting!” because you look a little bit less like a bully) — it’s just disingenuous. High-five each other here, guys, you nailed it — or at least own up to what you were doing.

Interview tricks in action! →

How do you feel this situation is different than what Eli was facing when he came up?
Well, every situation is different. I’ve read a little bit, with people speculating, “Would they do that?” That was the situation a long, long time that involved the Colts and involved the Elways. When Eli came along, there were a lot of circumstances there. I’m not very comfortable talking about. I wasn’t then. I got beat up about it. It’s gone.

I think the great thing is that San Diego has a great quarterback there. They’ve had outstanding teams, and Eli is very happy where he wound up. He loves being the quarterback of the New York Giants.

You’re involved with the College Football Coach of the Year Award. Who have you been most impressed with, from a college coaching standpoint?
I think so many people do a great job. I’ve been involved with Liberty Mutual and the Coach of the Year, and we’re down to 25 finalists. Liberty Mutual rewards coaches in four different divisions for Coach of the Year. We’re down to 10 finalists in the Football Bowl Subdivision, and this is like a who’s who: Mike Gundy, Brady Hoke, what a job he did at Michigan, Mark Hudspeth, Mike London, who did one of the best coaching jobs of the country at the University of Virginia. We know about Les Miles and Nick Saban, who are both playing for a national championship. Bobby Petrino at Arkansas. I’m not sure Arkansas isn’t the third-best team in the country. Mark Richt lost two games, won 10 in a row at Georgia. Bill Snyder, I saw him last night. What a great story that is — what he did at Kansas State, getting them on the map and then coming back to coach them again to a great year. Dabo Swinney’s got his Clemson team going to the Orange Bowl. Pretty impressive group with five finalists in three other divisions.

This interview with Archie Manning from Grantland isn’t particularly interesting, but I love this bit for an absolutely textbook example of an interviewer realizing that the person that he’s talking to is done with the topic and is shutting down, and so asks a softball about something boring to 99% of his readers, but about which his subject is passionate. I know that bit well — anytime I’m doing a celebrity/musician/athlete interview and I want to push on something, I try to keep a “let’s talk about your charity work/side project/dream to direct!”-type question in my pocket for when I start to sense that they’re not going to talk to me anymore if I keep pushing.

The Shady Marketing Scheme That’s Buying Off Your Favorite Bloggers →

Man, this is creepy. And obviously, if you’re a journalist, working expressly in your capacity as a journalist (I know a few who do ad copywriting on the side to pay the bills, which is a different thing), then you’ve got no place being paid under the table to plug products on the sites that you’re working for. It’s just a shady deal all together.

I get why this works, though. So, this marketing company pays $130 a shot if you mention Dell, with a link, in a post about Lindsay Lohan or something, right? I’ve written for the Internet a lot, and $130 for a quick post is often more than the site itself is paying you. (Some big-name outlets with obvious money behind them pay 20% of that for starting writers.) So if you’re a person who is new to blogging for pay, or trying to transition to full-time freelancing, and you’ve got this marketing company breathing down your neck, I can understand the temptation to blow up your income by 500% by being all, “Lindsay Lohan, the most annoying celebrity since the ‘Dude, You’re Getting A Dell’ guy, is gonna be in Playboy!” in the post you’re being paid crappily for. Especially at sites that pay poorly, but have strong traffic and recognizable brands (I won’t mention names), I get the temptation to try to make your rent money on the sneaky side. Well, hell, you might have linked to Dell anyway for free, so what’s the harm…?

Besides the “if you’re working for Dell while you’re getting paid by Gawker (or whoever), then you’re selling the integrity of an outlet that you didn’t build” ethics of it, there’s another problem, which is this: you’re using your access to Gawker, or Huffington Post, or Business Insider, or whatever, to sell under-the-table ads on those sites. The brand who buys ‘em is paying less than they’d pay if they bought advertising proper from the site, and it throws everybody’s integrity into question. A paid ad looks like a paid ad, but these links are designed specifically not to, so editors don’t flip. But if you’re getting paid for ads sold on Gawker, and let’s say I write for Gawker (I don’t), then you’re taking money that could conceivably go to me, in the form of a higher freelance rate as the companies buy legit ads and the site becomes more profitable. You’re getting paid extra money, and keeping my wage lower, while I may be the one whose posts are getting the most traffic (rarely actually the case, but you get the idea).

And that is shitty. But I think it’s also highlights a responsibility that the outlets themselves have, which is to keep their wages as high as possible for their writers. (Convenient that a writer for websites would come to that conclusion, right?) If I’m working for a Major Multinational Media Conglomerate Whose Name I Won’t Mention Because Some Of Their Properties Pay Well And Are Nice To Work For, Even If Others Aren’t, and I’m getting $25 a post, then the ethics of selling access on that site can feel a bit hazier. And if I get caught, and get fired, then what the hell? I’m out my $25 a post job, but maybe I sold ten links before anyone noticed, so it was probably worth the risk.

But if I’m paid professionally, then I feel like a professional, and thus am probably less inclined to look for ways to capitalize on my access to well-trafficked websites to make an extra buck. I’m also probably eager to do a good job, because I don’t want to end up losing work that pays my bills, or pissing off editors who offer me well-paying assignments.

I’ve no idea what Gawker pays, or what Business Insider offers. I know Huffington Post is not a particularly ethical company. I’d suspect that the fact that the Gawker write who posted the expose here did that, instead of sneaking in the links, suggests that Gawker treats its writers professionally. Maybe that’s one of the lessons to draw here?

Call For Journalists: Gothamist Wants Long-Form Features →

Gothamist is interested in adding long-form non-fiction features to our website. Since we’re new to this game, we’re going to dip our toes in the water slowly, by publishing a single feature next month.

How it will work: We will pay one journalist $5,000 to write a long-form non-fiction piece in the 5,000 to 15,000 word range. Subject: Something relevant to our audience of over one million 20-36 year-old readers in New York, timely but with a shelf-life longer than a week. We’re open to any topic, although we would like something that could be well-illustrated with photos or infographics.

We’ll cover the editing and production and then publish the piece to the various eBook singles platforms (Kindle, Apple, etc.) with a reasonable price: $1 to $3. Then we’ll handle advertising the piece on our NYC site. If this experiment makes a profit, we’ll share them with the writer once we’ve recouped our initial costs. Will this work? We’re not sure—but we want to find out.

(found via Susannah Breslin)

From West Texas to the Billboard 200: An Explosions In The Sky oral history →

I spent an absurd amount of time and energy on this story, because I was just very excited to tell it. Explosions In The Sky’s music has always meant a lot to me, and there are certain Austin bands who were very much local bands around the time I first moved here — Okkervil River, Explosions In The Sky, even Spoon, to some extent — and their journey to world-famous rock stars has always really interested me. I mean, Will Sheff was my video store clerk for a really long time, you know? Now he’s an Important Figure In Contemporary Rock, and I’m delighted — I loved his songs when he would made snide remarks about the Parker Posey movie I was renting, and I love his music now — but it’s still fascinating to me.

Explosions In The Sky are a special case, because those dudes did things so much on their own terms. I mean, they got lucky, especially with Friday Night Lights (and they’re the first ones to acknowledge that), but there are so few artists who are able to really just shut up, ignore everything about the industry and the wider pop culture, write really powerful and moving music, and somehow still get famous for it.

In that context, Explosions In The Sky are one of the finest artistic success stories I know. So when I pushed this oral history, I was really just partly excited to get to know the guys in the band a little bit (as you might hope, they’re exceedingly down to earth and friendly) and partly interested in learning about that success story firsthand. There were people I wanted to talk to, in order to fill it in, who I couldn’t — Conrad Keely from Trail Of Dead was out of the country most of the time I was working on the story, and I couldn’t get a hold of him even though I’m pretty sure we live in the same neighborhood. Peter Berg, who directed Friday Night Lights, is busy preparing a new TV series, finishing the Battleship movie (with Tim Riggins, y’all), and probably opening a chain of organic sandwich shops in the Pacific Northwest or something.

On the other hand, I got WG Snuffy Walden, who composed the music for the Friday Night Lights TV series, to talk candidly about the experience of being a soundtrack guy brought in to work in the band’s style, which I was really excited about. And Graham Williams of Transmission Entertainment, who gave the guys their first-ever show, provided a lot of crucial background and color from the band’s longest-time fan.

But mostly, I’m just really proud of the fact that this band, whose music really has meant so much to me for so long, let me tell its story. I’ve never had the opportunity to write more than about 1,200 words for The A.V. Club before — this one clocks in over 3,500 words. I’m really pleased with how it came out.

On privilege and being a freelance writer.

I read Tolly Moseley’s post on Austin Eavesdropper on “5 tips to becoming a freelance writer,” and I was struck by something: if I were making a list like that, not only would I not include most of the things she suggests, some of my tips would expressly contradict what worked for Tolly. (Internships, working for free, and choosing a specialty are all things I’ve tried my best to avoid, with few exceptions.) That’s not to say that the Eavesdropper post offers bad advice, or that she’s wrong — mostly, it’s noteworthy to me to realize that there is no right or wrong way to build a freelance writing career. There’s only the one that works for you.

I write about music a lot, because it’s easy for me to get that sort of work right now, and because it’s often a lot of fun. (The story I’m most excited about at the moment is a music story, which isn’t often the case.) But I never sat down to be a Music Writer, and I’ve worked really hard to make sure that I don’t end up defined as one of those, at least not to the exclusion of other work. I thought about writing my own set of tips to follow, but as I started to jot down some ideas, I started thinking about the extent to which the privileges I enjoy as a white dude have impacted my career.

I can’t say “blow off internships and just starting pitching ideas!” and expect that it’ll work for everybody. One of my first regular gigs was at a (now-defunct) hip hop site called Troubl.org. I was kind of the novelty white writer, and I had a column that focused on the intersection of football, politics, and social justice. (P.S., if anyone wants to revisit that this fall, drop me a line!) And maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s probably a lot more opportunities for a token white writer at a mostly-black site than vice-versa. So, score one for white privilege.

Most of the editors I’ve worked with have been dudes — probably a 70/30 skew in that direction, if I had to guess. With very few exceptions, they’ve been men of integrity with a passion for good writing who work hard to get the best possible content for their publication, and I’m very fortunate to be at a point in my career now where I don’t have to work with anyone I don’t trust as an editor or respect as a person. However! When I meet a new editor, I also don’t have to worry that he’s going to be turned off by my ideas because he doesn’t want to sleep with me, or that he’ll lose interest in working with me because I won’t sleep with him. My value as a writer exists independently as my value in any physical capacity. That’s not true for everyone. Additionally, if I’m working with an older editor and he’s deciding to take a chance on me, I suspect that part of what might be at play in that situation is that I remind him a little of himself at some point in the past. And while I’m grateful, it’s also a privilege that I enjoy because it’s easy to remind people of themselves when you’re all white dudes who wear the same kind of glasses.

It extends to interview subjects, too. For instance, I was in Northwest Alabama for a story a few weeks ago. And everyone there was very friendly to me, and I felt like the hurdle you had to jump to build a rapport was especially low. That’s how people can be in that part of the country — and that’s especially true when you’re just another white person like them. I never had to worry that people were going to give me weird looks. As a music writer, I am exactly what you would expect. You should see the number of plaid shirts in my closet. Staggering! I never have to prove that I actually know what I’m talking about, because one glance assures anybody in a band that I spent my formative years listening to Wilco and Modest Mouse and Bob Dylan and Joy Division. People are never surprised when I speak authoritatively about music from any genre. They’re used to dudes like me speaking authoritatively.

But there’s another part of all of this, too: And it’s that I have worked very hard to get to a point where I can pay my bills by doing mostly just writing that I find interesting. And that’s a point about privilege that I suspect white dudes need to get over — the fact that you possess it doesn’t negate your achievements. Not every white guy who walks in the door gets what you have. Maybe the first time an editor takes a chance on an untested writer he meets at a party, he’s influenced by some subtle factors that you didn’t have to work for — but when he takes idea number two, it’s because you did a good job on the first one. Maybe an editor can glance at my Facebook profile and tell, “Yeah, this dude probably is an authority on indie rock,” but I also had to send emails and cold pitches and make myself known to get them to care.

Because talking about privilege isn’t the same as talking about how a person got everything handed to him or her, or how they didn’t have to earn anything for themselves. It’s acknowledging that a confluence of factors — some of which you worked hard for, and some of which you didn’t — are what got you where you are. It doesn’t take anything away from the former to acknowledge the latter. If you didn’t also work hard, then the easier pathway wouldn’t have got you anywhere.

And with all of that in mind, I have no idea what tips would be useful to an aspiring freelance writer. I know that I didn’t need internships, or to write for “exposure,” or to seek out and own a particular niche, in order to build a career that I really hope will prove to be sustainable. But I can’t say that what I did will work for anyone else — I’ve had a few advantages along the way.

A challenge for music writer friends!

Every time you file a story about Odd Future and whether we should take them seriously and the conflict you feel about the fact that Tyler is so good but so awful at the same time, and how great art can be destructive and reprehensible but probably still great — let’s also be sure to file a story about a woman or a gay person who makes music, too, cool?

Because if all of the energy we spent blogging about and contemplating Odd Future and the meaning of misogyny and homophobia in art was matched by energy championing the people who are marginalized by those things, then our hand-wringing has the potential to be about changing them, at least to some extent, instead of just growing this kid’s influence by making him the only thing people want to talk about.

I’ll play if you will. What do y’all say?

The Stealthy Discography of Zoe Keating →

This story turned out to be kind of a bummer! I was all excited about it when I pitched it, because Zoe Keating is amazing and any chance to turn people onto her work, I am psyched about. But I fucked up and confused cello metal quartet Rasputina with cello metal quartet Apocalyptica, resulting in an embarrassing call-out in the comments section. Which put a damper on my enthusiasm, because that is the sort of rookie mistake that I really ought not have made. These things happen, though, and I am linking the story here because the main purpose of the piece — to track the awesome, sneaky career of Zoe Keating — is still relevant, and it’s probably healthy to admit it when we make mistakes. So, to be clear to Ms. Keating and her fans: I know she was never in Apocalyptica, and that Rasputina and Apocalyptica are different bands. But man, her work — especially the solo stuff, especially especially the most recent solo album — really is outstanding, isn’t it?

I interviewed Donald Glover for the A.V. Club. →

Also, here is a picture with him and my wife, because it makes her happy when she looks at it and she will probably see this post on her phone while she’s on the bus ride home! Hi, Kat!

Anyway: This time out, we talk about his IAMDONALD tour, the fact that he hits on Rashida Jones in his songs kinda a lot, and the six years he spent working hard to become an overnight success.

(My previous interview with Glover ran on MTV Hive earlier this month, if you’re interested.)