In 2004, two writers met at Eye magazine in Toronto, and decided to build their own side project. Instead of killing themselves by working alone at the breakneck pace of the Internet, Jim Munroe and Guy Leshinski combined forces to build a new web magazine, The Cultural Gutter.
Along with a team of crack writers, they write mid-sized essays, "tossing away the shield of journalistic objectivity and refusing the shovel of fannish boosterism, they write in the hopes of starting honest and intelligent discussions" about such varied topics as science-fiction and comics and videogames and, my personal favorite, bad movies.
Admiring this collaborative spirit, I picked Munroe for for my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.
Jason Boog:
Over at The Cultural Gutter, you have multi-genre blog with multiple writers. How did this come about? Do you think this kind of collaboration is a viable option for new writers to use? Looking back at the whole experience, what would you do differently as you built this publication?
Jim Munroe:
I was really interested in the idea of good writing about maligned artforms... and Guy and I had already got a column going with comics and videogames, so I fleshed out the concept by getting two other excellent writers on cinema sewer and science-fiction.
To be honest, I think I overestimated the Internet reader's interest in mid-sized articles -- I think people might be more into newsy bits than 800 word articles. But frankly, I'm not as into being a reporter delivering the latest scoop as I am being a commentator with a little more time to digest.
» Five Easy Questions: Jim Munroe, Conclusion from ThePublishingSpot
"Nine out of ten movies that exist on the face of the planet are plain awful, and there's no reason one shouldn't muscle in on the excitement," Jim Munroe wrote in an essay at No Media Kings."The time to make... [Read More]
Tracked on: June 2, 2006 8:15 AM | Permalink to Trackback