A Thousand Words

I am living in a post card. It is called San Francisco. This was the view on my Saturday morning run.

Journalistic Treats

Best email I've received from a reader/source in a while:

"My daughter loved running around on Halloween with frikkin' laser beams on her head, but more importantly I think my wife seeing the kids get your runner up prize might have made up some of the deficit in marriage points I've accrued over the last month with the house covered in glue, paint, foam, pins, sharp things etc."

From the dad behind these kids' costumes:

Featured in my "best tech costumes of 2012" round-up.

A vital Disconnection is made

Much as I love being a creature of the Internet and the constant flood of information at my fingertips, I sometimes feel like I'm drowning in data. Last year, I made a pledge to myself that I would spend at least one week per year out of the www-dot waters. No email, no blogging, no Google searches, no tweets. Smartphone is turned off and stays off.

Last year, I took my Internet-free vacation in August in St. John in the Virgin Islands. This year, it was taken in January in Jamaica. The Caribbean turns out to be a nice distraction from the call of the digital wilds.

Though, on both trips, I cheated one time and snuck a peek at my email. Perhaps punishment for that should be to take another Internet-free vacation this year. At the moment, I could accomplish that by hopping on a flight to Cairo. Though I prefer making the choice to abstain from the Internet rather than having it forcibly taken away.

Apparently, people still read this blog...

...As evidenced by a recent comment from a real live reader. I thought that only my mom kept up with this blog. (Hi, Mom!)

A career update for any other readers that might be out there. I'm over at Forbes these days writing about life on the Internet. You can find me here.

What Saul Bellow Thought About the Fourth Estate

‎"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the journalists; we can only hope that they will die off as the deerflies do towards the end of August."

-Saul Bellow, in a 1984 letter to Philip Roth, after a "crooked little slut" at People interviewed him and "turned my opinions inside out, cut out the praises and made it all sound like a disavowal, denunciation, and excommunication" of Roth. The journalist is now a director at NYU. (Via The New Yorker)

Note to self: Strive never to choose quotes from an interview that will make any of my sources feel how the author of Mr. Sammler's Planet felt while writing this letter.

Music obsession of the month

Via my New Zealand-wandering sister:

Journalistic June Round-up

Midway through June, it's been an eventful month. I...

• Was the victim of a Craigslist Casual Encounters prank;
• Wrote a piece on the ubiquity of surveillance cameras for Next American City (Sorry, non-subscribers);
• Proposed that Justice Clarence Thomas consider a presidential run in the Washington Post;
• And admitted to some not-so-casual digital lurking in the Assembly Journal.
  

And now I'm off to LA tomorrow for journalism law school.

A Master of Journalism

May marked the end of my graduate studies at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. I am now officially a "master" of the craft.

I'm glad I decided to go to journalism school -- it helped me move definitively into journalism, and my Portfolio project led to the creation of the Not-So Private Parts. The only downside is that I now have student loan debt for the first time in my life.

Though finished with NYU, I'm already heading back to school: Loyola Law School, to be exact.

(Dramatic pause)

Not for my JD. I'm just attending for four days. Loyola has a Journalist Law School program, for reporters who cover the legal world but lack law degrees. I'm looking forward to a very abbreviated version of law school, a week in Los Angeles, and to not having to take any actual law school exams.

Other big happenings in June: I'm emceeing the Electronic Privacy Information Center's "Champion of Freedoms Award Dinner." EPIC is a non-profit devoted to bringing public attention to emerging privacy and civil liberties issues (image at right courtesy of their site). Given my contrarian views on privacy, this will be an interesting night. Anybody know any good privacy jokes?

Following the dinner, I'll be attending a Privacy Law Scholars Conference at GWU Law School.

So lots of law and lots of privacy next month. A big lesson I learned in journalism school: The mastery of subject areas never ends. Get as far into your niche as you can.

Foolish April

April may be my least favorite month of the year. Though it usually marks the long-awaited arrival of true spring weather, it starts with April 1. April Fools' Day. Aka Everyone-has-an-excuse-to-be-a-jerk day.

I'm not really a prankster type -- my allegiance to sincerity is too strong -- but I do love holidays. So I usually take the lead in coming up with some kind of joke for Above the Law. This year, I presented a racy date between two lawyers. I prefer pranks that contain the reveal, so that you're only fooled if you neglect to read all the way through or to click on a stray link (e.g., TechCrunch's foolery).

But Above the Law played a small part in a massive prank yesterday: a legal blogger claiming to have been chosen by the White House to man a new national law blog. Though some recognized it as an April Fools' joke, the venerable New York Times fell for it.

Though it made Gawker laugh, I feel badly about the Grey Lady's slip and fall. My heart is just not totally into pulling the wool over people's eyes.

I'm in journalism because I want to provide people with information they can rely on. I realize April Fools' Day is an escapist holiday, but pranks that involve the spread of misinformation happen too often in the blogosphere already (e.g., Anyone remember John Roberts's retirement?)

Humans seem to have some innate tendency to believe one another. A day of the year that makes a mockery of that sad, beautiful human condition makes me feel foolishly despairing.

Happy April 2.

Twenty nine of my favorite songs...

...To mark the occasion.

Here are my favorites of 2009/2010:

1) Phoenix - 1901, performed as a La Blogotheque Take Away show in Paris

Phoenix - 1901 - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque.

2) Dirty Projectors - No Intention, performed live in the XM/Sirius studios


3) Bill Callahan - Too Many Birds


4) Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA

5) Kid Cudi - Day n' Nite

6) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Hysteric


7) TV on the Radio - Stork and Owl


8) The xx - Islands


Here are some from 2008 (and earlier) that I discovered or listened to a lot in 2009/2010:

9) The Raincoats - No One's Little Girl


10) Nick Cave - Into My Arms


11) The Kills - Tape Song


12) Interpol - Rest My Chemistry

13) Why? - Brook and Waxing


14) The Knux - Daddy's Little Girl


15) Band of Horses - No One's Gonna Love You


16) Band of Horses - Cigarettes & Wedding Bands


17) m83 - you, appearing


18) Digitalism - Pogo

19) Matthew Dear - Deserter


20) Girl Talk - Minute by Minute


And some of my all time favorites:

21) Modest Mouse - Dramamine


22) Mazzy Star - Fade into You


23) John Frusciante - Untitled


24) Pixies - Where is my Mind?

25) Ani DiFranco - Not a Pretty Girl


26) Johnny Cash - Hurt


27) Liz Phair - Fuck and Run


28) Ben Harper - Another Lonely Day


29) Led Zeppelin - Tangerine


I also love this song, but it felt hokey to put it on the list...

The new year brings a not-so new job

At the end of the month, I'm going to be switching from associate editor to editor at Above The Law. Which means I'll be writing a bit more there.

I'll continue to write The Not-So Private Parts. And continue to freelance. (Speaking of, the Washingtonian cover story is now online. And the New York Times asked me to weigh in again at the Room for Debate.) And I have one more class to complete this semester to finish my masters degree -- the "long personal essay" with Perri Klass.

So life is not actually changing that much. But I will be spending more time at the Above The Law office.

In other news, New York is really, really cold.

Why lawyers make so much money [Washingtonian Magazine]

Your boss and your BlackBerry [Room for Debate/New York Times]

The whole world is obsessed with Facebook...

... so my story about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's privacy settings fiasco is making the rounds. I'm seeing traffic flowing in from:

-- Germany: "Facebook-Chef Zuckerberg gibt Privatbilder frei" in Golem

-- France: "Le créateur de Facebook s'expose sur son profil" in Figaro Blog's TechNotes and "Le fondateur de Facebook piégé par les nouveaux paramètres "vie privée" du site" in Le Monde

-- England: "Zuckerberg pictures exposed by Facebook privacy roll-back" in the Register

-- Australia: "Privacy overhaul catches Facebook boss" in the Sydney Morning Herald
-- Italia: "Il fondatore di Facebook si mette in piazza, con le sue foto" in Il Corriere

-- Finland: "Facebook-uudistus oli liian sekava jopa Zuckerbergille?" in a publication with a title I can't even read.

The Italian headline is the only one I can confidently translate. It reads, "The founder of Facebook is put in his place, with photos."

And here's a link to the BBC interview I did. Facebook is at 19:00 minute mark.

I'm still waiting for some hits from Asia...

The Newshour [BBC Radio]

Washingtonian Magazine, NYT.com, and BBC's Newshour

The latest (and longest) "real ink" project: the cover story for Washingtonian Magazine's December issue. David Lat and I answered the question: Why do lawyers make so much money?

Though I'm definitely more comfortable in the role of reporter, I'm starting to be asked to play privacy pundit. In November, the New York Times asked me to write a mini op-ed about Tiger Woods and the right to privacy for its Room for Debate blog.

This month, BBC radio asked me to talk about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook privacy settings for its Newshour, based on this True/Slant post. A Facebook friend reports: "Heard you on the Beeb/NPR yesterday, talking about Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook page, all the way down here in Houston."

I'm Accounting Down the Days to the End of the Recession

Well, I never thought I would have a byline in the UK magazine Accountancy Age. But my law expertise takes me to strange places. I did a piece for them on forensic accounting as it relates to billionaire scammer Allen Stanford's trial:

Allen Stanford may still be grabbing headlines as he awaits trial on charges of fraud worth $8.5bn but it is forensic accountants who will play a prominent role in readying the case for both sides and testifying as expert witnesses.

Forensic accountants’ involvement in American criminal and civil litigation has become more visible because of the sensational nature of recent financial scandals, according to 30-year industry veteran Ronald L. Durkin, senior managing director of specialist accounting firm Durkin Forensic.

Read on at Accountancy Age.

Warning: In case its being in a magazine called "Accountancy Age" didn't give it away, it's a bit drier than my usual stuff.

In other news, this e-mail from the NYU journalism school internship coordinator made me want to throw up in my mouth:

Newsday’s features section, ExploreLI, is looking for a full-time two-year intern interested in reporting Long Island entertainment, nightlife, events and other lifestyle features for the daily section, as well as creating multimedia for Newsday.com and ExploreLI.com. Newsday is one of the nation's largest daily newspapers, serving New York's Long Island area.

A two-year long, full-time internship??? In my crazy world, that's called "a job." Where you pay someone a "real salary" and "health benefits."

I can't wait for the recession to end and for journalists to start having self respect again.

The pain of a BlackBerry-induced sprain is soothed by new bylines

When I was in high school, I used to sprain my ankle quite often. Usually in an embarrassing way. For instance, one time I sprained it playing the very politically-incorrectly-named game, 'Smear the Queer.' A favorite game in my neighborhood, one person ran around with a football while everyone else tried to tackle that person. Unlike the game of football, you could not throw the ball to someone else.

For some reason, the Hill family owned a pair of crutches, so I would hobble around on those for a few days, and it would heal. I also invested in a serious ankle brace for the recovery periods -- it has velcro, shoe laces, and lots of straps.

I had to dig it out this week, because I have sprained my ankle again for the first time in 10 years or so. And in a very embarrassing way. I was walking to work on Wednesday reading through my e-mail on my BlackBerry, and I stepped off the curb and turned my ankle. It's now all swollen and painful, though the embarrassment over the way I sprained it is almost worse than the sprain itself: I was engrossed in an article about Sarah Palin's speaker fees.

Ah well. The week improved with two pieces I've written being published by new outlets for me: The Washington Post and Time Out New York. Here are the leads:

"Educational? You Be the Judge." in the Washington Post, written with David Lat

Meet Supreme Court Justice Irene Waters. With her pursed lips and dark hair pulled back in a bun, she bears a passing resemblance to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In her jurisprudence, however, Waters may be more like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who cast the swing vote in many key cases before retiring in 2006. Waters is more animated than either of those two justices, and even more so than Justice Antonin Scalia.

Read more.

"Virtual Matrimony" in Time Out New York

For those willing to trade the organ for iTunes and the walk down the aisle for a click of the mouse, there are several ceremonial websites (as they’re not legally binding) that allow you to tie the knot online. Your first reaction might be, “I don’t,” but as more and more couples meet through Match, Craigslist and JDate, sealing the deal with a Web-emony may not be such a leap.

Read more.

Summer Updates

Well.... July went by without an entry. This either means summer laziness has set in, or that I have been incredibly busy. Or both.

It's definitely been busy. I moved to the East Village -- I'm much happier in this neighborhood and about living on my own again. I am blogging my head off at Above The Law and True/Slant. Check out my most recent T/S post for the story behind my Scalia scoop and my thoughts on the future of journalism: The Evolution of Journalism (Or: How The New York Times Stole My Blog Story).

For something a little more fun, check out my post on the comment meme on Above The Law that will not die: How my ass lobster got into the Urban Dictionary.

My great friend/managing editor on Above The Law, David Lat, invited me to his family's lake house a few weekends back. His mother, who reads the blog regularly, paid me the greatest compliment: that she can't tell the difference between my and Lat's posts. To our great surprise and amusement, Lat's mother had made a huge lobster. We took a few photos and uploaded them to Facebook.

The Above The Law readers among our Facebook friends suggested we do a post on them. We did: Kash and the Big-Ass Lobster.

It generated 50,000 page clicks! Who knew journalism would lead to a career in lobster porn for me?

Big moves

It has been a busy month. Some of the big happenings:

I moved from Gramercy to Alphabet City. I am now an East Villager!

My employer since March, True/Slant is doing quite well. We 'beta launched' at the beginning of the month and have had over 500,000 visitors to the site since June 1. Pretty fantastic for a brand new online magazine. My site, The Not-So Private Parts, attracted 10,000 readers. Check it out.

My first magazine piece, on the Justice Scalia privacy invasion, appeared in the June issue of Washingtonian Magazine:

Pick up the issue on newsstands in D.C., or you can be 'new school' and read it online.

Day break

Lately, I've been experimenting with a crazy morning schedule. I'll wake up at 5 a.m., drink coffee and work for an hour and a half, then go running. Then shower and start the normal work day. Amazingly, it's just 9:30 a.m. at that point.

I kind of like it, but it's hard to do after a night like this (notice time stamp). My wild night involved working out, a vegan ice cream excursion, and much surfing of the Internets.

While re-reading today's content on Above The Law, I came across a comment that made me smile. But that made me worried -- should I actually be creeped out by this... or creeped out by the fact that it made me smile?

My co-editor, Elie Mystal, wrote a post about a law firm that wants its associates to be at the office promptly and not to wander in at 10 a.m. or later. Elie opined:

My day starts at 8:30. Kash's day starts at dawn. Lat never sleeps. But aren't young professionals more than capable of starting their day based on the work they have to do?

A very Gen Y observation. The information about ATL editors' sleep schedules led one of our readers to make this comment:

i'll start kash's day at dawn. god she's beautiful.

Which is the comment that made me smile, and then made me wonder whether I'm too dependent on ATL readers for affection...

My day does start at dawn. Sometimes earlier. I was amused to read another humorous piece in last week's New Yorker touching on this: My Quiet Time by Andy Borowitz. Here's the intro of the piece making fun of Disney C.E.O. Robert Iger's definition of quiet time:

Q. What are some things you do to manage your time effectively?
A. I get up at 4:30 every morning. I like the quiet time. It’s a time I can recharge my batteries a bit. I exercise and I clear my head and I catch up on the world. I read papers. I look at e-mail. I surf the Web. I watch a little TV, all at the same time. I call it my quiet time but I’m already multitasking. I love listening to music, so I’ll do that in the morning, too, when I’m exercising and watching the news.
—An interview with Robert Iger, the C.E.O. of Disney, in the Times.

Whoever said that the early bird gets the worm could have been talking about me, only I’m a person, not a bird, and I’m not interested in getting worms, more like getting things done. But I do get up early. In fact, the secret to my success could be boiled down to three little words: my quiet time. It begins at 1 A.M., when I get out of bed, check my e-mail, brush my teeth, scan some documents, and floss. Then I’ll surf the Web, maybe order a sectional couch or trade zloty futures. Last week, I bought a Swiss chalet and sold it at a twenty-per-cent profit while I was still in my pajamas. I wanted to high-five someone, but no one else was awake.

It goes on to address multi-tasking. I particularly enjoyed this, since at the time of reading, I was on an elliptical at NYU gym, listening to my music, occasionally glancing up at the news on the wall of TVs, and of course, flipping through the New Yorker.

By 1:03, I’ve had two cups of coffee, I’m down in my basement on the elliptical, and my heart is pounding like a cheetah’s. I know that cheetahs have a fast heart rate because I often watch Animal Planet while I’m on the elliptical, although sometimes I’ll do the picture-in-picture thing so I can watch CNBC Asia while I’m watching the thing about the cheetahs. It isn’t always about cheetahs; it’s about other animals, too, like meerkats. I just said cheetahs as a for instance. I do the elliptical naked. One time when I was on the elliptical, I patched myself into a conference call in Jakarta and accidentally hit the camera thing on my phone, so everyone wound up seeing me in the buff, all flopping around and everything. Another time when I was on the elliptical, I saw an amazing documentary about cheetahs.

While I’m on the elliptical and maybe ordering a hovercraft online, I’ll drain a six-pack of Red Bull.

Read the full piece.

When someone is on the elliptical, reading and laughing out loud, is that kind of cool? Or do you rather think to yourself, "What a weirdo. That girl must be suffering from some serious sleep deprivation"?

Aren't you glad you chose journalism school?

An uplifting graduation speech from Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, for the journalism grads at UC-Berkeley. Apparently, things aren't any better on the West Coast:

You are going to be trying to carve out a career in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. You are furthermore going to be trying to do so within what appears to be a dying industry. You have abundant skills and talents - it's just not clear that anyone wants to pay you for them.

That's what everyone loves to hear while sitting with an unnecessary master's degree in one hand and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans in the other hand. Thanks, Babs!

It ends on a upbeat note. Kind of. We journalists do what we do because we're on a mission. Transcript of the speech provided by the spiritually-fulfilled but monetarily-deprived editors at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Welcome to a dying industry, journalism grads [San Fran Chronicle]

New Yorker gets Buzzed

Noah Baumbach wrote the funniest thing I've seen in print in a long time for The New Yorker. The piece is called Buzzed and is a first-person narrative from a bee on cocaine.

Check it out. It's a MUST READ. I read it aloud to my roommate. I suggest you do the same thing if you can find someone around to listen to you.

Baumbach's name may be familiar to you. He's the screenwriter behind The Squid and The Whale.

Here's the intro, explaining what inspired the piece:

To learn more about the biochemistry of addiction, scientists in Australia dropped liquefied freebase cocaine on bees’ backs, so it entered the circulatory system and brain.

The scientists found that bees react much like humans do: cocaine alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them.
—The Times.

Oh, my God, get over here . . . hurry . . . come on come on come on. Taste this nectar, taste it, taste it. . . . Slurp. . . . Is that not, is that not the best fucking thing you’ve ever had? Like nectar of the fucking Gods!

Read on.