etymology
At some point last week I opened a Tinyletter draft, typed the word "etymology" into the subject line, pasted a link I didn't want to forget to send you into the body, and hit "save." I know I meant something by the word-- it was intended as a signpost to self for the content of this week's letter-- but I have almost no idea what it was.
So instead, here is that link, to a piece about how Sanrio has used licensing agreements with food companies to make Hello Kitty relevant forever, to everyone. Apparently their CEO read and loved it??? Nine year old Zan is tremendously star-struck right now, and trying to figure out if she can parlay this into a request for a complete set of head locks for her pencil box.
(If you aren't familiar with Sanrio's line of products, or if "head lock" is a term that we made up at my elementary school, as an unsuccessful google of it seems to suggest: this is what they look like.)
I've been thinking a lot a lot a lot lately about the ethics of the kind of journalism I do, which is not, you know, deeply investigative, or about uncovering The Truth in a Spotlight-type way. Not at say that it's unimportant, just that cultural journalism has, I think, different rules around it than traditional journalism, and they're fuzzy and ill-defined.
For instance, I loved Racked's The Swag Project, in which they talk about how their office is deluged with free shit-- particularly beauty editor Cheryl Wischhover writing about how going to press events and taking home free samples to try out actually enables her to do her job. There's also a fascinating Jalopnik piece about the economics of press cars-- the Porsches and Cadillacs and Jaguars that reporters get sent to try out for a week so that they can cover their beat without having to invest millions of dollars into cars they don't need.
In both of these cases, it's simply not possible for a publication (much less one of their writers) to buy all of the things they'd need to report fully, and in Wischhover's case, often the things she's writing about are previews of forthcoming collections, not yet available in stores. I get sent galleys all the time and I've never felt a twinge of guilt-- how else can I pitch, write and edit a piece that will come out around the same time the book does?
But when restaurant publicists take me out to lunch I half-feel like I shouldn't be there, and when they email to say their clients loved the story I ended up writing, I wonder if I'm as objective as I'm trying to be. (For the record, I didn't think they'd like that Hello Kitty story particularly-- it's pretty explicit about the way they're playing a game with consumers-- but then I forget that some people are like hell yeah we're awesome at capitalism, why wouldn't we publicize that?) (also I don't write pieces about lunches that were paid for by someone else, I'm not a restaurant reviewer but it would be wrong anyway. Instead I'll go out with publicists and they'll talk about their clients and sometimes I'm like, hey, that's an idea) (also I need to know when restaurants are opening, I need access to chefs, and these are the people who know those things) (what's the difference between a lunch and a press event, because one sounds sort of low-key sketchy and the other one is industry standard) (do you begin to see how this goes).
I don't know! I don't know. I'm a freelancer, so there is no publication to support me, to comp my lunches if I want to try out a restaurant that's out of my price range before I've sold a story about it. It's so hard for me to say no when someone offers to buy me something, because like, I can't really afford to buy anything, you know? And I'm always curious. But then The New York Times won't let you write for their travel section if you've gone on a press trip in the past two years. I'm sure their restaurant policy is similar. Not that anyone's begging me to write for the Times, but. I want to hold myself to good, high standards. And I want it to be crystal clear that I only ever write what I believe to be true. (Unless it's explicitly sponsored content, which is another story for another day.)
I do have a story coming out in the next few weeks that's virtually guaranteed to be displeasing to the publicist who alerted me to it. I'll let you know when it drops.
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SPEAKING of ethics in journalism, I often feel a little anxious when I'm interviewing people, because they will just say some shit where I'm like, you really probably shouldn't have said that to a reporter, and yet at the same time I'm thinking, wowwww thanks for saying that, that's gonna be a great pull quote. Most people are so not media trained it's terrifying!!!
But I did not feel that way AT ALL while interviewing Karla Welch, who is incredibly smart and canny and unafraid to be like, "no comment, next question." She's the most powerful stylist in Hollywood, so there's your Oscar Sunday read, #relevant, you're welcome.