Dispatch from Amtrak Train 406
It turns out that Saturday was a much better day for trains than Sunday was. The conference let out early, so I walked back to the station to catch the 3:37 p.m. train, which turned out to be almost an hour late, and cost me another $4 to change tickets. But, at that point, I wasn't up to fighting over it.
Eileen McNamara was feisty. The longtime columnist for the Boston Globe has gotten tired of hearing the sound of her own voice, so she's moved on to teaching. No longer, she says, will people "stop me in frozen foods to tell me what an asshole I am. 'I know! I know! But I don't have to hear about it when I'm shopping.'"
She says newspapers are "a public trust." "The New York Times Co. [the Globe's corporate parent] thinks we're making widgets up here, but we're not." She went on to say that journalists shouldn't consider the bottom line.
"If you're invested in the Wall Street aspect of the business, that's a conflict of interest. We should stop that," she says. "Pay us because we did great reporting, not because our stock price went up. It's not happening without our complicity. We should stop. It's about the food line in Lafayette Square Park."
In addition to McNamara, I went to hear Lucy Ferriss talk about her memoir, Unveiling the Prophet, about a debutante ball in St. Louis in 1972 that was disrupted by a Civil Rights protester. I also heard Gina Ulysse talk about Haiti and voodoo and Bill Roorbach on writing life stories.
(note: loaded 4/16 and backdated)
Eileen McNamara was feisty. The longtime columnist for the Boston Globe has gotten tired of hearing the sound of her own voice, so she's moved on to teaching. No longer, she says, will people "stop me in frozen foods to tell me what an asshole I am. 'I know! I know! But I don't have to hear about it when I'm shopping.'"
She says newspapers are "a public trust." "The New York Times Co. [the Globe's corporate parent] thinks we're making widgets up here, but we're not." She went on to say that journalists shouldn't consider the bottom line.
"If you're invested in the Wall Street aspect of the business, that's a conflict of interest. We should stop that," she says. "Pay us because we did great reporting, not because our stock price went up. It's not happening without our complicity. We should stop. It's about the food line in Lafayette Square Park."
In addition to McNamara, I went to hear Lucy Ferriss talk about her memoir, Unveiling the Prophet, about a debutante ball in St. Louis in 1972 that was disrupted by a Civil Rights protester. I also heard Gina Ulysse talk about Haiti and voodoo and Bill Roorbach on writing life stories.
(note: loaded 4/16 and backdated)