Bwog Print Devotee Chloe Eichler was in the audience when Joanna Coles, editor-in-chief of Marie Claire and straight-faced Tilda Swinton doppelganger, visited the Journalism School on Thursday to offer thoughts on her chosen medium.

Despite calling print media “an absolutely terrible market to get into,” Coles was confident that newspapers and magazines would stay alive. She began by describing her years as a reporter in London and New York, starting at her local newspaper at age ten. Coles recommended every paper have a children’s section to galvanize the next generation of reporters, noting that “in England, we grow up on a very rigorous diet of newspapers” that inspires a “tremendous interest in the news.” She praised blogs for giving young writers exposure (and doubling readership of Marie Claire through artful networking).

Coles labeled journalism “an isolating job” that requires access to people inaccessible to everyone, including other reporters. An enormous amount of travel, language, and diplomacy can be necessary. Coles stressed the unpredictability of a journalist’s career path; her own big break came when she filled in on The Late Show for a writer who had died of a heart attack that day. That’s profiting from someone else’s misfortune. Read more…

The Bwog Book Club invites you to join our discussion of the first segment of Denis



Johnson’s serial noir, Nobody Move. If you missed July’s issue of Playboy, feel free to read the plot summary provided here and join us next time for a discussion of second segment published in this month’s magazine. 

Here are the main events from section one:

Jimmy Luntz, who starts off in a barbershop chorus, receives a ride from a man named Gambol. After they talk in the car and pull over at a rest stop, he realizes Gambol has been hired to hurt him because of a debt Luntz owes to a man named Juarez.  Luntz shoots Gambol, calls an ambulance, and goes after Juarez.  Meanwhile, Anita Desilvera, a woman about to divorce her husband, drinks heavily, and is good with guns, sees Luntz disposing of his weapon. Predictably, they end up sleeping together (after having sex in case you aren’t familiar with that euphemism.) Meanwhile Gambol rehabilitates with an unnamed woman, and plans to come back at Luntz.

1. For starters, Nobody Move is, of course, published as a serial in a magazine.  How much of Johnson’s writing and narrative structure do you think is determined by this?

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A while back we introduced readers to the next Bwog Book Club book, Denis Johnson’s Nobody Move, a serial noir novel published in Playboy magazine. There’s been a slight change of plans: we’re reviewing the first two sections at once, starting early next week. That means you should find the nearest newsstand to pick up the August issue of Playboy if you want to join in.



This particular series is being run by first-time book-clubbers. We’re thinking up some questions, but if you have any good suggestions, e-mail bwog with your words.

Bwog Book Club is a “club” in which readers are encouraged to read modern works of literature, and then to read what we think about them. You can say what you think with the handy “post a comment” button. This time we’re reading the articles in soft-core porno mags.

   For the next Bwog book club, you’ll have to acquire a Playboy magazine – just like the old days. (If they don’t have it in your local corner store or gas station, you can pick it up at Border’s).  You may be buying it for the breasts, but for the purpose of the book club we’ll be discussing the Johnson that’s inserted between them – all 263 inches of it.  That’s the length of the first sec tion of Nobody Move, the new Denis Johnson novel, which will run in the July, August, September, and October issues of the magazine.  This book club is a pretty good deal – for about $20, you get a wide array of articles as well as a full novel, and an intellectually stimulating conversation as well as some visually stimulating imagery. 

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Columbia’s undergraduate monthly (and Bwog’s benevolent guardian and namesake) The Blue and White is currently accepting applications for senior editorships. The application and information about the position are after the jump.

And remember, both the magazine and Bwog are always looking for new writers, graphic designers, artists, editors, those with financial and technological know-how and generous folks with access to free food. Get in touch by sending an email to bweditors@columbia.edu (for the magazine) and bwog@columbia.edu (for Bwog).

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Look who else is getting a re-design!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or rather, excuse me, a website. Not a re-design. Just an initial website. Because they never had one before (this didn’t really count). Because it’s 1999. Oh, no, no. That’s not right either, is it? Hm.

Vanity Fair has released its 68th Annual International Best-Dressed List; the top ten best-dressed women include the very Vogue Bee Shaffer CC’09 (Anna Wintour’s daughter, but you knew that). Her company at the top includes Renée Zellweger, Michelle Obama, and, for some reason, Fran Lebowitz.

Congratulations, Bee; we’re sure your summer is far more glamorous than ours.

A gadfly, according to Billy Goldstein (CC’ 09), is “some big-ass fly,” and also the only non-defunct undergraduate philosophy magazine at Columbia University.

The Gadfly has so far printed one issue with a medley of contributions: a letter of explanation, a few art pieces, a fictional work, a quasi-Socratic dialogue, a lecture review, and–as a centerpiece–interviews with Columbia professors David Albert and Brian Greene. As a magazine rather than a journal, its founders say, it focuses less on academic theses and more on anything that can provoke thought. “It’s not a formal magazine, it’s mostly just thought-provoking,” Goldstein said.

Basically, the magazine stays true to form. It usually provokes thought rather than positing specific opinions, and a couple of the pieces present multiple views without really advocating any in particular. In general, even if you don’t find yourself agreeing with it, it raises interesting discussion points, and the articles are long enough to develop the authors’ ideas but not so long as to get dragging.

Goldstein’s description of the Gadfly’s function as “a forum for ideas that people otherwise only talk about with their friends, or when they’re stoned” fits perfectly with the fiction piece, by Maddie Boucher (CC ’09), which includes the journal of a wandering philosopher/outlaw from which the veracity and meaning of any entry, whether ultimately true or not, is ample fodder for discussion. The interviews with Albert and Greene, while much more formal and scientific, become accessible to the humanities-minded among us through a somewhat meta-philosophical letter. Roberto and Gadfly VP Adam Waksman, who interviewed Greene and Albert, respectively, are as much physics nerds as they are philosophy geeks, and hope to draw in some of both.

Interview with the editors after the jump! Read more…

B&W Fasionista Josie Swindler reports on the latest from the Lecture Hopping front:

At Parsons, the audience of wannabe fashion editors was a whole lot more stylish than the five editors on a recent panel called “Fashion Magazines: Behind the Seams.” Lesson one: it takes more than nice hair to get a corner office at Condé Nast.

The problem of the panel may have been the relative ignorance of its members. Though highly successful, the editors aren’t in the most coveted fashion positions at the most coveted fashion magazines, probably disappointing most of the audience members. What they could teach, involuntarily, is that talented people can be talented anywhere and that the people who make the magazine are rarely like the people the magazine is made for.

A big room was mostly full with more than 100 hopefuls. They heard from the art director at Glamour, the creative director at Marie Claire, the style editor at GQ, and the managing editor of Lucky, all moderated by the executive editor of Redbook. Read more…

If the Columbia Political Review is good for nothing else, the March issue has a rather valuable coupon on the back cover good for a cup of coffee and a bagel from Morton Williams, midterms week (March 6-10) only.

First person to tell us if that includes cream cheese gets… well, a coupon good for coffee and a bagel.

Maya Rudolph – the Barnard first-year, not P.T. Anderson’s baby’s mama – had a very funny list published over at McSweeney’s last month. Further proof that Columbia kids can bring the snark with the best of ‘em.

Bwog is proud to bring the second installment of “Lecture Hopping,” in which correspondents go to speeches, lectures, and public displays of erudition so you don’t have to. Find the first installment here.

Tuesday February 21
New Yorker Nights Series: Malcolm Gladwell
Miller Theatre

This lecture has been left untitled on purpose, says Malcolm Gladwell; it was not until that afternoon that he had decided on a topic at all. “Tonight, I will unlock the secrets of Fleetwood Mac.”

The audience laughs loudly. A banner reading “The New Yorker” is hung over the stage, properly ushering in the best-selling author of”The Tipping Point” and “Blink.”
Read more…

According to an article in New York magazine, the Bwog won’t have to worry about money after graduation, because we’ll be making bank with this newfangled web log, so long as we completely uppend the Blog power structure, that is. We’ll take all y’all on, blogitches!

Marvel Comics and the Travel Channel have put out together a Superhero’s Guide to New York City which includes our fair Columbia. Doesn’t answer the question whether Daredevil and Spiderman ever bumped into each other, though.
(Hat tip: Gothamist)