{"id":1356,"date":"2009-02-05T22:24:26","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T05:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/02\/thanks-for-the-train-wreck\/"},"modified":"2009-02-05T22:26:14","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T05:26:14","slug":"thanks-for-the-train-wreck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/05\/thanks-for-the-train-wreck\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks For The Train Wreck"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the New York Observer<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

PW<\/em>‘s Sara Nelson Saw Book Crowd As Coolest On Earth<\/h1>\n

Laid-Off Editor Says, \u2018 No Highs Match Falling in Love\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

BY<\/span>\u00a0LEON NEYFAKH<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

New York Times\u00a0<\/span><\/em>media columnist David Carr, who was hired at Inside.com a few months after Ms. Nelson was, remembered an obsessively competitive reporter whose taste for scoops matched the uncommonly speedy metabolism that Inside.com was aiming for.<\/p>\n

\"saranelson.png\"\u201cWe were both smokers, and it would be 10:30 in the morning\u2014we would have already filed\u2014and we\u2019d both be outside scuffing the ground and saying, \u2018I\u2019ve got nothing,\u2019\u201d Mr. Carr said. \u201cYou never saw a more hard-core competitive journalist than Sara Nelson. Freakish. Freakish. She would see something come up on her screen and just explode.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Carr went on: \u201cShe was the rare trade reporter who could write and think and who could do real-time analytics. And so she took full advantage of the platform in terms of breaking a lot of news, and doing it so it was clear not just what happened but why.\u201d<\/p>\n

We used to report auctions in real time at Inside,\u201d Ms. Nelson said. \u201cWe\u2019d put up a story, you know, \u2018Ann Godoff is up to $200,000! This one\u2019s up to 300!\u201d It was like a horse race. You know, \u2018\u2026 Aaaand coming around the corner is \u2026<\/em>\u2019 It was fun, but also it was new\u2014nobody else had ever done it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Predictably, Ms. Nelson said, she saw the publishing industry from a rather different light as editor of\u00a0PW<\/em>than she had as a beat reporter. Among other things, she noticed for the first time a hostility from the outside world directed towards editors, agents and all the rest of her people\u2014a creepy chorus of eager detractors who snarled with glee whenever someone in the industry screwed up. The controversy around James Frey\u2019s\u00a0A Million Little Pieces<\/em>, she said, is what set it off: \u201cIt opened the floodgates for people to say, \u2018It\u2019s all publishing\u2019s fault! They\u2019re all a bunch of insiders who scratch each other\u2019s backs and don\u2019t check their facts and keep the rest of us out and think they\u2019re better than us!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This vinegary sort of scolding initially stunned Ms. Nelson (\u201cI was like, what?\u201d), but in the years since she has developed a clearer theory of where the vitriol comes from.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s because many, many, many, many people think they can write and that they have a book in them,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd they are very, very resentful of someone else who has a book come out. \u2026 I think everybody thinks that there but for the luck of knowing a New York editor goes their memoir.\u201d<\/p>\n

[ click to read complete article at Observer.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the New York Observer PW‘s Sara Nelson Saw Book Crowd As Coolest On Earth Laid-Off Editor Says, \u2018 No Highs Match Falling in Love\u2019 BY\u00a0LEON NEYFAKH\u00a0 New York Times\u00a0media columnist David Carr, who was hired at Inside.com a few months after Ms. Nelson was, remembered an obsessively competitive reporter whose taste for scoops matched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}