Morning in America

How do they do it? The Morning News is the kind of web publication I’ve always wanted to produce. They publish new stories every day, their design is succinct and tasty, they drive it all with Movable Type, I don’t see any typos, and I don’t imagine anyone’s getting paid. I could hate them but I don’t. I love them.
But I also forget to go there and read the newer stuff for long stretches at a time. I may be blinded by envy. Months ago I asked the founders if I could interview them about the probably-sort-of-boring details of how they use MT to produce their publication, but I keep forgetting or other stuff keeps getting pushed up higher on my to-do list. And it’s not like email interviews are time-consuming or hard to do. I’ll get around to it eventually. They deserve all the attention and respect they can get, even though I don’t have that much to offer them myself, probably only a tiny blip in whatever their readership traffic is today.
Today, I read Starfucker, by Sarah Hepola, an Austin writer. As usual, it’s good. I’m noticing that a lot of their contributors are professional writers, but they get a chance to write outside of the constraints of the paying media. Hepola’s article is indirectly about how magazines work, how celebrity works, how interviews are brokered, the currency of fame, the role of journalists as gatekeepers and brokers, the process of selling out, and wanting to be liked. I recommend it.