McSweeney's "newspaper" issue on San Francisco will be 380 pages

McSweeney’s has announced some details of its newspaper-sized edition focusing on San Francisco and northern California.

The 380-page broadsheet will go on sale the first week of December and feature an investigation into the reconstruction of the Bay Bridge, the growth of pot farms in Mendocino County, a 116-page book section, a 112 page magazine and three pull out posters.

Lots of well-known writers are contributing to the paper, including Stephen King, Michael Chabon, Andrew Sean Greer, Nicholson Baker, Allison Bechdel, Junot Diaz, and Michelle Tea, among others.

“We think that the best chance for newspapers’ survival is do what the internet can’t; namely, use and explore the large-paper format as thoroughly as possible,” the McSweeney’s website reads.

Other tidbits:

The Newspaper Guild unit in San Francisco has formed a freelancer’s unit.

UC Press has a series of podcasts with its various authors.

San Francisco columnist Jon Carroll will interview Brad Bird of Pixar on Nov. 9.

Edgar-nominated mystery writer Cornelia Read will lead a two-day mystery writing intensive at the Claremont Hotel and Spa in November. 

David Weir, who has worked at Wired, Rolling Stone, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, calls on UC Berkeley School of Journalism Dean Neil Henry to have his students investigate the death of Betty Van Patter, an accountant who was murdered while looking into the books of the Black Panthers. This would be like the Chauncey Bailey project. Weir got the idea after reading about the killing and the indifference of local politicians in Peter Richardson’s new book on Ramparts Magazine, A Bomb in Every Issue.

Those students at the J-School are awfully busy, though. They are blogging for the New York Times’ new Bay Area blog, plus hyperlocal blogs in Oakland, Richmond and the Mission District of San Francisco.

Lance Knobel,, who started Berkleyside, the hyperlocal blog I write for, will be talking about the blog tonight on KBLX at 90.7 at 9 pm. Learn all about the hyperlocal movement.

Submersion Journalism

Is it ethical to disguise yourself as a businessman and interview Washington D.C. lobbyists about how they can help promote a totalitarian government? Is it okay to tape those conversations?

Can a reporter sign up for a poetry conference, attend without identifying he is a reporter, and write about it for Harper’s Magazine?

Is it okay to spend a year as a prison guard and not tell your colleagues that you want to write about life inside Sing Sing?

These were some of the questions that came up Monday night at a panel discussion put on by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The event was tied to the release of a new book called Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person, a collection of pieces from Harper’s Magazine.

I went because I wanted to hear Ted Conover, the author or numerous first person books, including Newjack, about the year he spent as a corrections officer at Sing Sing prison in New York. Other panelists included Michael Pollan, Roger D. Hodge, the editor of Harpers, and Jake Silverstein, who has a piece in the collection and is currently editor of Texas Monthly. Cynthia Gorney, who is a professor at the grad school with Pollan, moderated the discussion.

I didn’t get to hear enough about Conover’s techniques or what he is working on now. I did learn, however, that when he was an undergraduate at Amherst he went to visit Neil Henry, then a reporter at the Washington Post. (Henry is a professor at the j-school and emceed the event) Henry had done two pieces of immersion reporting for the Post, one where he disguised himself as a homeless man for two months and one where he worked as a migrant worker. Conover wanted to ask Henry about his techniques. Who would have guessed in 1980 that Conover would one day become master of the form?

There were really two different discussions going on. One involved more general reporting where the journalist is a subject of sorts. Michael Pollan’s attempt to grow opium and his subsequent troubles with the law fall into that category. Pollan also bought a steer cow and followed its life cycle for a story.

The other category involves outright deception or acts of omission. Roger Hodge talked about a story Ken Silverstein did for Harpers where he pretended to want to hire a lobbyist to work for the corrupt government of Turkmenisten. Silverstein wanted to find out how lobbyists manipulate reporters and the government, so he pretended to be part of a fictitious group called the Maldon Group. He set up a website for the group, got a cell phone with a London phone number (where the Maldon Group supposedly was located) and then made appointments all over town. The result was a 2007 expose that showed how lobbyists have no compunction about working with governments that terrorize their own citizens.

Some of the best reporting comes from deception but most reporters and papers claim they only use it as a last resort. Cynthia Gorney tried to generate a discussion about the ethical issues around submersion reporting, but the panelists did not disagree. All said they were generally opposed to deception but thought it could be used in certain circumstances.

The panel discussion was only marginally interesting. However, I bought the book and read Silverstein’s article. While I am uncomfortable with the fact that he taped all his conversations with lobbyists (in Washington D.C. it is legal to tape a conversation if just one person knows it is happening) the piece is enlightening. Those lobbyists really are scumbags. (Big surprise) But to hear their words and strategies is downright frightening. It is clear that with the right amount of money, any reprehensible organization can put a positive spin on news and events.

What Race Means in America

I heard Bliss Broyard on Fresh Air on Thursday, talking about her book, One Drop, which discusses her father’s decision to spend his life as a white man, rather than as the black man he was born.

Broyard’s father was no ordinary man, but was Anotole Broyard, the book critic for the New York Times and a writer of strength and wit in his own right. In his two memoirs, Kafka Was the Rage, detailing his days as a bachelor in Greenwich Village after World War II, and Intoxicated By My Illness, focusing on his upcoming death from prostate cancer, he never reveals that he has some black blood.

He never told his children, either. His wife revealed that salient fact to them as Broyard lay dying.

There were always rumors about Broyard’s identity, and he was ultimately “outed” by Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard scholar, in a mesmerizing article in the New Yorker, which you can read here.

Bliss Broyard's book explores the legacy of her father's decision and how she adapted to a new sense of her own identity.

I am fascinated by books which explore how Americans are not what they think they are. Edward Ball’s book, Slaves in the Family, looks at his ancestors and their long legacy of owning slaves. In his upcoming book, The Genetic Strand, he dissects his family’s genetic code to see whether he has any African-American or Native American blood.

Another fabulous book on race in America is Neil Henry’s Pearl’s Secret. Henry is a descendant of a white plantation owner and a black slave, and his book traces two branches of the family, one white, one black. He finds that the black descendants of the original couple have done much better in America than their white counterparts. In the course of his research, which takes him to archives and dusty municipal buildings all over the South, Henry is confronted with race and what it means to be black in America.

I don’t have any indication that my ancestry is anything but Jewish, German, Irish, Scotch, etc. One daughter of mine has very dark skin, however, and people are endlessly asking her ancestry. Perhaps there is a drop of gypsy blood along the line. Who knows?

But the question of origin interests me, since racial identity plays such a critical role in American history.