Fans on Parade, with full Props

[womzilla]

You know how it has become a commonplace of smart people that any newspaper article on a subject about which you have actual knowledge will be full of stupid mistakes?

Well, in your face: here's an article on Mid-South Con from the New York Times which pretty much gets it all right. More, it actually presents the entire endeavor as worthwhile, conveying much of the appeal of conventions. It even dips into the splintering of fandom and the death of sf.

(Alas, this article will be online only for another couple of days, I think.)

(courtesy of nancylebov.)

[Updated: I just realized that the article is written by David Iztkoff, who runs the occasional sf column for the New York Times Book Review. This makes it less surprising, but it shows that if reporters actually know their subject, they can treat it well.]

Comments

[avram]

Thus reinforcing my belief that the only worthwhile reporting comes from journalists who already have specialized knowledge of the topic.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Possibly, but the commonplace I quoted is usually followed by "Now imagine how much they're getting wrong about things like politics." If the reporter's regular beat is politics, or fashion, or whatever, it's quite possible that they'll at least understand it well enough that they could get the details right.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It seems quite factually accurate, and it even taught me something: I had not heard the word "cosplay" before, and though I'd certainly encountered the phenomenon, I hadn't known it was practiced in person (as opposed to online) quite so systematically.

But all the photos are of costumers - no surprise, really, the good ones are very photogenic - and together with the emphasis on costuming and gaming in the article (Itzkoff mentions stuff like science programming and literary discussion, but doesn't make clear that costumes are not required), the article is designed to attract fewer of the people that the NASA guy wants to see and more of the ones he regrets have taken over.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I didn't supply the link.

http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink if you want to make a permanent link.

I've noticed that newspaper and NPR reporting on fandom and sf has improved a lot in maybe the past ten years. I was floored when NPR gave Gordon Dickson a very nice eulogy.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Must have been someone who looked like you, then. Huh.

The real knock-me-on-the-floor moment was an NPR weekend show running a seven-minute article on reactions within the sf reader/critical community to the film adaptation of I, Robot. (I posted about this when it happened. (http://womzilla.livejournal.com/93099.html)) Back in 1992, they managed to do a seven-minute interview with P. D. James about her then-new The Children of Men without using the term "science fiction" even once. So, it's quite a change.

[elaine-brennan.livejournal.com]

I found it interesting that Itzkoff did such a good job with this piece -- I've found a huge percentage of his NYTBR reviews to be ... poorly done. He often seems to me to be trying to be obnoxious -- and all too often, it shows.