Advanced Storytelling

I stumbled across the Columbia Journalism Review yesterday, and there's a lot of good stuff in the latest issue. An article titled The Op-Out Myth discusses the real trend of articles covering the faux trend of professional women turning their backs on the working world to become stay-at-home moms. The author makes a point that always seemed obvious to me when I read these "mommy war" articles: the women profiled are always upper-middle-class women with money in the bank and a well-paid spouse. How many moms does that actual describe? The moms-go-home story keeps coming back, in part, because it’s based on some kernels of truth. Women do feel forced to choose between work and family. Women do face a sharp conflict between cultural expectations and economic realities. The workplace is still demonstrably more hostile to mothers than to fathers. Faced with the “choice” of feeling that they’ve failed to be either good mothers or good workers, many women wish they co...

I meant to post on this about two weeks ago, but I got really sick, and am only now getting my appetite back. The Columbia Journalism Review featured an essay a few weeks ago on the new food writing: In the past few years a raft of reporters and writers have stepped forward with him to answer those twinned queries in all their anthropologically thick complexity. Their work draws together issues of taste, ethics, and politics, bridging the gap between James Beard and Rachel Carson. Much of their writing has an activist tone: last September, The Nation brought together several environmentally conscious writers under the umbrella of a “Food Issue.” But mainstream newspapers, too, now know that their readers expect them to report on the political and ethical implications of food–and to track trends generated, in part, by the new food writers. I had a lot more notes on this, but that pretty much sums it up. If I have anything to say about it, this kind of writing will take over, but it...

Round One wasn't really a fight, but whatever. Caught your attention, right? Elyzabethe posted about Montgomery County's trans fat ban, which inspired my post last week on the Guerrilla Nutrition Labels, which inspired her response . Well, over on my new favorite website, Culinate, there is a review of a --I guess you could call it a debate--between food and agriculture writer Michael Pollen, and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Apparently, Mackey impressed the Berkeley crowd with his commitment to reforming the food system. I have no doubt he's genuine, either, but this article points out some of the facts he left out of his (seriously) PowerPoint presentation. What got me especially (no surprise to anyone who heard me ramble on about Spinach and e.coli last semester) was his classification of Earthbound Farm as a group of small organic farms banding together under one brand name, allowing him to say that 78% of Whole Foods produce comes from small farms. I call bull...

It's 1:30 am, it's Friday night, and for some reason I come home from a party and I get online looking for social marketing sites. Am I in withdrawal from class? Whatever. I've discovered Deborah Schultz , a friend of Hugh's , and she's coined the term I've been looking for in all my digging on transparency , the long tail : "relationship marketing". She also started a del.icio.us account of related links, which I'll have to spend a good many hours exploring. Although her social networking map had one glaring error in that it is missing Facecrack . So on the issue of Web 2.0, I really don't know why I bother writing about it, since the five people reading this blog know more about it than I do. Besides, I need to get back to talking about framing, which is what this blog was supposed to be about. Why yes, I was trying to get as many links as possible into this entry. I think I'm just giddy from having been able to finally hand out some bu...

flashvars="'config="http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/xml/data_synd.jhtml?vid="87101%26myspace="false'" src="'http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/syndicated_player/index.jhtml'" quality="'high'" bgcolor="'#006699'" width="'340'" height="'325'" name="'comedy_player'" align="'middle'" allowscriptaccess="'always'" allownetworking="'external'" type="'application/x-shockwave-flash'" pluginspage="'http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer'"> Because that person deserves a pat on the back. Dean nailed his appearance on The Colbert Report last night. Okay, it wasn't Face the Nation, but I would argue that makes it even more impressive--it would have been so easy for Dean to just take the lines Colbert was feeding him, but he actually turned them a...

Considering Montgomery County’s recent passing of a trans fat ban I thought this post would be timely. I would have liked to see more education and debate before the ban, since we all have to take responsibility for our own choices about what to buy at the grocery store. Guerrilla Nutrition Labels are part of a guerrilla art campaign by a Hunter College media arts student designed to raise awareness about what goes into processed foods. For those who want to join in, you’re invited to download and print off the labels yourself and do some culture jamming at your local supermarket. Cross-posted from Provisions .

My new favorite commercials are the Ad Council's PSA for adoption. They're hilarious. I'm a huge proponent of adoption, partly because I have a couple of adopted cousins who have basically settled the 'nature or nuture' debate for me. They lack my dysfunctional DNA, but they've got the family sense of humor perfected. Basically, the ads show parents being inept parents, with the tag line "You don't have to be a perfect parent...There are lots of kids who would love to put up with you." The one that's getting a lot of airplay right now is 'Phone' , and I think the kid in that one is pitch-perfect. The first one in this series they launched was 'Gift' , which I think was good-you get right away that the kids are adopted, but the situation is so "That's my family!" which is the point. The latest one is 'Hamster':