Charlie Meyerson interviews

Scott McCloud (self-portrait from  Understanding Comics) Click to hear full interview.Hard to believe, now that comic books seem to have earned a place atop the media totem pole, but back in the early 1990s, comics were so off the beaten cultural path that one creator thought the medium demanded a textbook to explain it. On the other hand, even then, he said, “People are aware that something is going on in comics, that comics are beginning to reinvent themselves.” In the years since, his textbook has become a classic on its own. Here’s my comprehensive interview on the subject of comics with Scott McCloud, who joined me in 1994 to discuss his book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Enjoy this? You may also get a kick out of my interviews with Marvel Comics’ fearless leader, Stan Lee, longtime DC Comics editor Mike Gold, and artists Neal Adams and John Byrne. And much more on comics here.  Also: Get this blog by email.

Jeff Moss (Click to hear full interview)Jeff Moss died in 1998 at the relatively young age of 56. But his legacy will last far longer. As co-creator and first head writer of “Sesame Street,” he hatched songs generations have come to know and love — including “Rubber Duckie,” “The People in Your Neighborhood” and “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon.” His work won him 15 Emmy Awards and an Oscar nomination (for the movie “The Muppets Take Manhattan”). Jeff Moss joined me in 1997 — less than a year before his death, though I had no clue — to talk about and read excerpts from his then-new book of poems about dinosaur remains, Bone Poems. But we also of course looked back to the origins of “Sesame Street,” and he revealed that he was hired for the show in 1969 to write scripts, not songs — and that songwriting wasn’t originally in plans for the show at all. Hear that story and more in 17 minutes with Jeff Moss, a creative force gone from the world too soon. Note: Before “Sesame Street,” Moss worked on another beloved show, “Captain Kangaroo.” Kids of a certain age may also enjoy my 1994 interview with the man behind the kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, who was none too fond at the time of Barney the dinosaur and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. And don’t forget to sign up for free email alerts of new content on this blog.

Click to hear the full interview.Of all the Pulitzer Prize winners I interviewed in my almost nine years at WNUA-FM, boogerphiliac columnist Dave Barry holds the record for most visits: Three. So you know I like talking to him. Our third session, in 1996, as he was promoting his book Dave Barry in Cyberspace, was memorable for lots of reasons, including: * His funny tour of our station’s then-diverse array of computers. (“DOS basically just is there to say, ‘Go ahead and try to figure out how to work me.’” “Apple computers … are for your wussy, artistic, heroin-addict type of individual Communist.”) * His computer-buying advice for cyberstuds: “Go to the salesperson … and say, ‘How much RAM does this have?’ And, whatever he tells you … say, ‘I’m going to need more RAM than that.’” * His suggestion my boss fire me — something that came to pass less than two years later. (I have no evidence Dave was responsible. But, if he was, I owe him thanks for the push to make my professional leap into, yes … cyberspace.) So let’s return to a time when AOL chat rooms were the rage. (“Chat with people from all over America, and find out what they have to say. Not much, as it turns out.”) Here’s my cyberspace interview with Dave Barry. (Note: Stick around after the closing theme for Dave’s custom promos I don’t think — I can’t believe — the station ever used.) And, while we’re diving into the archives, here are the previous two Barry-Meyerson sessions, including… Our first encounter, in 1992, when he was promoting Dave Barry Does Japan and talked about the burdens of winning a Pulitzer; his presidential campaign; and his distinctive approach to grammar, typography and punctuation. (“I want it to look like a raving lunatic is writing.”) And a 1993 interview touting the paperback edition of the same book (“This weighs less, but it has fewer typographical errors … and … has a cover in which I look … even stupider”) and describing the weirdness of having his work turned into a then-new TV show, “Dave’s World.” Thanks for the memories, Dave. Related listening: My interview with the author who first published the word “cyberspace,” William Gibson — before he had an email address. And don’t forget to sign up to get the latest from this blog by email.

Twenty years ago, journalist David Simon, author of the book that inspired the TV show Homicide—and later the creator of HBO’s acclaimed The Wire, among many others—joined me for a discussion of the then-new book he’d co-authored, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood. 

Simon’s time spent on an urban corner in Baltimore had persuaded him then that the war on drugs was a failure—that the concept of “lockin’ ’em up” was a losing battle that served only to further isolate neighborhoods where the vast majority of residents are victims of drugs.

What’s old is new again. Here’s the interview with David Simon as broadcast Nov. 30, 1997, on the late WNUA-FM in Chicago.

But the underlying message was more subversive: If your school kills your student newspaper, you can continue the mission on your own. Cheap.

If you love journalism—learning stuff and sharing it with other people—odds are good that one of these days you’ll find yourself in a position where you’re not getting a regular paycheck for that work and you don’t have much to do. Maybe you’re on break from classes; maybe you’re a graduate looking for your first job; or maybe you’ll find yourself laid off or otherwise underutilized.

And if you’re one of those people who love journalism so much you just can’t quit, those are times you’ll want to know how to do it on a shoestring.

I’ve found myself in one or another of those categories a number of times since I graduated from college about 40 years ago. Including just a few months ago.

Yes, I’m vice president of a news startup, Rivet Radio. But here’s how being a vice president of a startup sometimes can feel: While you’re waiting to find out if a company’s going to become profitable and become an ongoing concern, the pay’s not always so great—and you can wind up with a lot of free time.

In January, as a new U.S. president took office, I was getting, let’s say, restless.

And so were some of my friends. One of them, a working mother I’d known since she—like you—was in high school, sent me a message on Facebook:

“Every time I looked at Facebook or Twitter today, terrible things were happening in our government. Is there any news source that is keeping track of things that are happening day by day? Just in a bullet-point form? … I need to stay informed, but I need to work, too. If there is a resource you have found or you are doing one, please let me know.”

Well, that’s basically a newscast, right?

I’ve always been something of a newscaster. For instance, here’s something I created at the age of 7.

It was delivered from my living room to another part of my living room by Beany Copter.

I went on to work for my high school newspaper, the Carl Sandburg High School Aquila.

For the first 20 years or so of my adult career after graduating from the University of Illinois, I was a radio newscaster—at an AM/FM combination in Aurora, not far from here; at legendary rock station WXRT in Chicago and later at WNUA, a now-defunct “smooth jazz” station in Chicago.

And in 1998, I made the leap from radio to the internet, with the then-new thing called “chicagotribune.com,” where I launched and produced a daily email newsletter called Daywatch—revolutionary in its time because (1) it was conversational (it read like a radio newscast, surprise, surprise) and (2) it dared to link to websites that weren’t part of the Tribune family.

For the last more-than-a-decade, across several jobs, I’ve continued that tradition of learning things and then linking to them on Facebook and Twitter.

So when my friend—one of several friends with the same concern, in fact—asked after a “news source that is keeping track of things,” I had two thoughts:

And the answer to that question for more than a decade almost always takes this form: Don’t wait for someone to pay you to do what you love doing. Start a blog and Just Do It.

So, I just did it. I’m going to take you step-by-step through what I did, and how I did it. And as you’ll see, there’s nothing here you can’t do, too. We’ll keep a running tally of what it cost.

I made sure a MailChimp “subscribe” box pops up when people visit ChicagoPublicSquare.com. Cost: $0.

There’s a reason I’ve given my journalism students extra credit for every 20 Twitter followers they gain. Those connections are golden when you apply for a job or launch a new project. Employers look at your followings and see dollar signs: “10,000 people this person could bring us? Cool.” And in my case, my thousands of Facebook and Twitter friends provided the core audience for my startup. Cost: $0.

OK, so where are we? Total expenditures to launch Square: $50.65. That’s lawnmowing or babysitting money. And, as you’ll remember, even those expenses were optional.

And that’s it. Oh, one more thing: Sending to that many people every weekday has pushed me into MailChimp’s tier for paid customers. So that’s $15 a month. Total costs so far, as of April: $65.65 (plus another $15 a month to come). Still: Allowance money.

But here’s the good news: At least a few of my friends get it. They see the value in advertising in Chicago Public Square, because they know it reaches smart and involved people who care about Chicago and the world. And so I have a few advertisers and potential advertisers. They don’t pay much yet, but they’ve paid enough that I can say Square has turned a profit—if you discount the value of my work to $0.

And that work isn’t easy. I decided to make Square a five-days-a-week newsletter, beamed up and blasted out by MailChimp each morning at 10. I begin around 7:30 or 8 and work until MailChimp sucks up the website and sends it out. It’s an intense couple of hours because there’s so much news to share in this Era of Trump. But one advantage of having MailChimp sweep the site precisely at 10 is that I have to stop.

One of the downsides of working on the web is that it makes real one of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous quotes: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” If I didn’t have that deadline, I’d have a hard time moving on.

What is the work?

I’ve created some original content—like the first video tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s newly renovated landmark Unity Temple in Oak Park (conducted with just an iPhone, a microphone and a friend to hold the camera), a piece on how to get hired in the media business, and broken news of a Chicago celebrity’s guest shot in the Dick Tracy comic strip.

But Square is primarily a newscast by email—need-to-know items from the nation and the world and the region, important or interesting for Chicago-area readers.

And how I find those items is something you can do for any subject—whether it’s a sports team, a local school, or your favorite element on the periodic table:

I follow smart and knowledgeable people on Twitter and Facebook. In my case, that includes many of the Chicago- and Washington-based journalists I know personally. But it also includes many I don’t know, but whose work I respect—like David Fahrenthold, who, as Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab put it, went from tweeting pictures of his notepad to winning a Pulitzer Prize.

For you, that could be experts in Ultimate Frisbee. Or reporters covering your local school board or your high school sports teams.

Whatever your specialty, follow the experts. Then let the app Nuzzel know who you follow on Twitter and Facebook, and it serves up the articles they’re sharing. And then you get to look smart by sharing them and commenting on them and eventually becoming more of an expert yourself in the process. And then, you have a blog that people who care about your subject matter will want to follow.

Side note: Nuzzel also lets you generate a free email newsletter, but you don’t have as much control over graphics and content as you do if you use Blogger or WordPress.

So, back to Chicago Public Square:

If the number of subscribers keeps growing steadily, the value of the ads I might sell—and the work I do to justify them—will grow.

So: What have I done that you can’t do yourself?

Nothing.

I’m guessing most of you are here because your schools value journalism; they have a student newspaper and teachers who advise you.

But I’m here to share a radical notion, students. The wonderful thing about this era of communication is this: If your schools cut those programs—and, sadly, that’s happening in a lot of places—or if you just find yourself not fitting in with the programs that exist, or just impatient to strike out on your own, you can keep going without them:

Start a blog, tie it to an email list, and keep reporting. (And you don’t have to do it daily; you can do it whenever the news dictates, or whenever you feel like it.)

You can do that … on a shoestring.

• • •

But before I sign off, a few words on how to do all of this well.

Writing counts. People know good writing from bad writing, even if they’re not writers themselves. Be a good writer—the most important skill of all.

Style counts. Even if most people don’t know AP style, they have an innate sense of what looks professional and what doesn’t. To anyone who’s ever read a book, newspaper or magazine, randomly capitalized words and commas and periods outside quotation marks just look weird. Develop your sense of style and stick to it. In doubt? Can’t afford an AP Stylebook? Go to AP’s website, search for a word or phrase and see how AP handles it.

Metrics count. (This is another whole speech.) Your subject line determines whether anyone opens your email; learn about your audience from those headlines that work best. And study what readers click on when they open your email; if the thing at the bottom gets the most clicks, your readers are suggesting maybe it should have been at the top, and in the subject line—or that the things higher up in the issue didn’t have the best hooks.

Remember: The sky’s the limit. Your blog and email services can link anywhere: To the competition, to your own work. To text, to video, to audio, to photo galleries you create. The hard part, as da Vinci might agree, is deciding what not to do.

Thanks for listening. Go out there, have fun and do good.

Here’s Stan Lee, the man who created or co-created the core Marvel Comics universe, sitting down during C2E2 at age 94 for what his staff said was his last Chicago comics convention appearance. As you’ll hear, he had energy and enthusiasm to betray his age.

His interviewers: Adrian F.E. and Paola Alejandra. Recorded at C2E2 Chicago, April 21, 2017. (Photo from that day: @Malcchiato on Twitter.)

More: My interview with Stan Lee in 1998, my first interview with him in 1975, and another in 1976—in his appearance at the first Chicago Comicon.

And check out my other interviews with thought-leaders through the years on this website, in iTunes, on Spotify, via your favorite podcast player, and at Chicago Public Square.

As digital lawlessness holds center stage in the national political drama, doesn’t this seem like a good time to revisit the first generation of internet outlaws?

So let’s set the WABAC machine for Feb. 5, 1995, original airdate for my interview with Michelle Slatalla and Joshua Quittner — authors of the seminal hacking story Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace.

(Quittner, by the way, also holds the historic distinction of being the person who first bought the domain McDonalds.com. What he demanded from McDonald’s Corp. in exchange for giving it up is a tale he shares at the end of this interview.)

Enjoy this? You’ll want to hear my 1993 interview with the man who coined the phrase “cyberspace,” science fiction author William Gibson. And many more tech-oriented interviews here.