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

[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.