So, I have been having computer problems, but they seem to be fixed now, although some of my email is apparently lost and gone forever. If you emailed me in May and I didn't respond, please try again -- it's history, babe.
My interview with HGTV's David Bromstad is out on AfterElton.com today:
Whether they're demonstrating their willingness to
eat worms, whip up a soufflé, get a makeover, or have their living room
redecorated with items currently languishing in their own garages,
reality TV has always been a pretty good place for the gays. Striking a
note more of gentle subversion than in-your-face sensationalism, most
of the home decorating, cooking and fashion makeover shows treat queer
guests and contestants pretty much just like everyone else.
The
Home and Garden Network is no exception, regularly fixing the severe
organizational problems and real-estate woes of same-sex couples
without batting an eye. And when they decided to do a home decorating
reality competition show called Design Star, they didn't bat
an eye that one of the contestants — and its ultimate winner — was
David Bromstad, an out gay designer from Miami.
David was a great interview, and I had a lot of fun talking to him.
And I was in USA Today this morning... me me me! And of course, Gina, Ben Huh from itchmo.com, Therese from PetSitUsa.com, and Kim from petfoodtracker.blogspot.com. Elizabeth Weise did a couple of pieces on the pet food recall and the pet power bloggers -- that's us, apparently -- and she singled me out not for my brilliant political commentary and powers of analysis, but my ability to type really really fast while liveblogging. Woe. Still, fame is fame:
Early on, there was extreme confusion about the
number of pets that had been sickened or killed. The Food and Drug
Administration had been reporting fewer than 20, while anecdotal
reports indicated numbers well into the hundreds, if not thousands. In
human cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would track
such numbers. But there is no such reporting system in place for
animals.
To fill the gap, the Pet Connection team created
an online database where owners could list their pets, symptoms,
outcome and veterinary information. The numbers stand at 2,527 cats and
2,365 dogs dead.
Because no "official" number has ever been
released, their figures became the only ones available, and are likely
to remain so until academic veterinarians begin publishing their
research, which could take another year.
The site also started an innovation that became
surprisingly popular — live transcripts of FDA phone news conferences.
It was something of a shock to people listening in when they began
getting e-mails about something a federal official had just said
seconds before.
Pet Connection, it turned out, had elected its
fastest typist, contributing editor Christie Keith, to "live blog" the
teleconferences. She was typing a verbatim transcript onto the site as
the officials spoke.
Thousands now log in for every press conference, Spadafori says.
Full article here, sidebar here.
I was also in the LA Times, which I didn't mention before because... ummm... well, I could lie and say modesty but I think it was more like exhaustion and overwork:
The pet food campaign has the hallmarks of other big blog-driven
news stories, with dedicated crews of site owners highlighting,
commenting on and linking to media reports and official statements. The
bloggers dig out and post documents, such as the FDA's missive advising
that pregnant investigators not examine human foods that the FDA has
said repeatedly are safe, and they e-mail reporters, government
officials, company executives and anyone else who might have a part in
the story.
They listen in on FDA conference calls, patiently
awaiting the rare chance that the agency's public relations staffers
will call on them, and some "liveblog" their own running transcripts.
"I
don't know of a comparable case," said Jay Rosen, a New York University
journalism professor who writes the media criticism blog PressThink.
"It shows what's possible when people get outraged and they ask
themselves, what's happening here? They actually have the tools to
start finding out."
[...]
Pet
Connection, one of the larger sites that has devoted itself to recall
issues, has the advantage of being organized by trained journalists who
also write a syndicated pet column for newspapers around the country.
Their
work now is a long way from what Gina Spadafori, the site's executive
editor, and Christie Keith, a contributing editor and blogger on the
site, were doing before the recall hit.
"In February, we were
covering the latest in litter boxes at Global Pet Expo," Spadafori
said. "And in March, I'm suddenly embroiled in an international trade
story."
And my head is still spinning from that one. Full article by Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Abigail Goldman here.
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