Scott Martelle

I don't know why I find this story so funny when, in truth, it's pretty sad and pathetic. I've mentioned before the shenanigans that preceded the naming last month of the Oxford Professor of Poetry, won by Ruth Padel after persons then-unknown circulated details about a 1982 sexual harassment complaint about rival poet Derek Wolcott.

Wolcott withdrew from consideration and the gig went to Padel, who resigned shortly afterward and eventually confessed that she was involved in the smear campaign.

Now persons-unknown are at it again -- this time with an anonymous poem about it all. Wouldn't a few splashes of graffiti on High Street been easier? Read More 

A former colleague, Bill Lobdell, is involved in a new venture in Newport Beach, California, the next city from us in Irvine, that I suspect points the way toward how the Internet-sparked explosion of newspapering will finally settle out.

The project is The Daily Voice, and it's a paperless news sites devoted to hyper-local news.

Lobdell and his partner, Tom Johnson, are both former news executives at The Daily Pilot, the Los Angeles Times-owned local paper in Newport Beach-Costa Mesa. Lobdell also was a religion writer at the LA Times for a while, was a former deskmate of mine there and we shared bylines on a few stories. And he has this book out about losing his religion.

What's telling in Johnson's opening statement is that they couldn't find investors to launch the project -- a sign, no doubt, of the skittishness of the investing market right now, and the absolute confusion over the profitability of media outlets.

But this strikes me as a sensible model (in fact, I've been having similar conversations with other fellow journalists about the theme). No big bucks, to be sure, but it seems like a logical way to start rebuilding news organizations one locality at a time. Local people want local news, and local business owners and managers want a reliable conduit for local ads.

Seems like a match to me, Read More 

The travel piece that ran the other day in the Los Angeles Times landed me a fun moment with San Diego radio station KBZT-FM 94.9 this morning, with hosts Hansen and Tommy.

Every Friday morning they do a session with folks from the Stone Brewing Co., which brews some great ales, with smart marketing, i.e., Arrogant Bastard Ale, with the label that warns, "You're not worthy."

After seeing the travel piece the other day, Tommy got in touch and they book me for a short chat about the story. So I got to relive -- briefly -- the road trip I took with Steve Dollar. This is the audio here.

Turns out Hansen and Tommy are doing a July 3 remote broadcast from the Stone brewery, and they suggested I stop down. Though 7 a.m. is a little early for an Arrogant Bastard -- read that any way you want -- I might just show up. Could be fun. Read More 

You often hear writers say that they don't write for pleasure but out of a sense of compulsion -- they have to write.

But there's a difference between that and being sentenced to write. Pity the poor Bristol-Myers Squibb exec ordered by New York Judge Ricardo M. Urbina to serve two years' probation, during which he must write a book about his experiences -- including lying to federal officials over the firm's attempt to settle a patent dispute over Plavix, the blood thinner.

Yes, he sentenced sentences.

The New York Times reports Urbina issued a similar sentence in 1998 to a lobbyist who admitted breaking campaign finance laws. Urbina ordered James H. Lake to pay a $150,000 fine and write and distribute at his own cost a monograph about campaign finance laws covering corporate contributions, and distribute it at his own cost to 2,000 fellow lobbyists.

Our particular little writers' prison is already over-crowded, but what the hell, one more can't hurt ... Read More 

Had a couple of nice links to the Los Angeles Times travel piece on brewpubs, one from The New York Times (scroll down to the middle of the NYT item), and the other from a beer historian.  Read More 

I picked up this book out of a sense of curiosity, and found myself devouring it like, well, an addict.

Journalist Nick Reding spent a few years immersing himself in small-town Iowa, researching a book about the devastating effects of meth in rural America. I grew up in a small town (I can never say that without a John Mellencamp song bursting into my head) so read it with the eye of a familiar.

This is from my review in today's Los Angeles Times:

"In 'Methland,' Reding sets something that is known to most of us -- illicit meth labs and tweakers, violent hallucinations and destroyed families -- against a broad context of the decline of local economies, shattered dreams and a sense of fate-driven helplessness.

"This is a strong book, and it tells a complicated story in comprehensible, human dimensions. Like all good journalism, it's the hand holding up the mirror, the friend telling us to take a cold, hard look at ourselves."

The book's strength lies in the professional distance Reding maintains. He lays out people in full, the heroes with flaws, the tweakers as fully rounded people with crippling addictions. It's a complicated story, and it hasn't gone away, Reding argues. It's just faded from the headlines.  Read More 

A couple of months ago my friend Steve Dollar emailed from NYC with a proposition. He had a freelance assignment to do a travel piece driving the California coast, following Rte. 1 from around Santa Barbara to where it ends near the redwoods in Humboldt State Park. As an urbanite, he let his driver's license lapse. Steve's at left in the picture here, chatting with my old friend Tony Lioce at Vesuvio bar in San Francisco. Not a brewpub, but a great bar nonetheless.

The began the journey of Driving Mr. Dollar. And here is my travel piece on the trip, which ran in today's Los Angeles Times. It was a fun trip, and I love doing travel writing.

I also used the trip to start experimenting with map mash-ups, this one using Zee Maps, which gives you a sense of the scope of the trip.

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If there are any good news items coming out of the GM meltdown and bankruptcy filing, it could be that GM-owned Saturn, recently touted as likely to close, will survive. We bought a Saturn the second year, I think, that they were available, and were very pleased with the car (we finally traded it in for a Ford Windstar, with less success, though we still have it).

Roger Penske's Penske Automotive Group Inc. is in line to buy the Saturn brand, which strikes me as a deal with a lot of upside. Both have solid reputations and are known brands, and this could be the kind of deal that ten years from now will look like a stroke of opportunistic genius. Read More 

It's always nice to see friends get good play and reception for their creative works. This time it's Laila Lalami's turn, with this solid review in The New York Times for her novel, Secret Son.

Truth be told (sorry, Laila), I have yet to crack the novel, which Laila signed for me when we both were speaking (separate panels) at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Just too many on the stack, though I hope to get to it soon. I loved her first book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, a wonderful collection of inter-connected short stories about the illegal flow of migrants from Lalami's native Morocco to Spain.

Laila's a wonderful work -- I recommended Hope to many friends, and none were disappointed. And it looks like Secret Son is just as compelling, and insightful. Below is the book trailer.


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