A few years ago, a writer named Brent Cox revisited Wigwag for The Awl, and I came in for exactly the knock I was afraid of: my Letter from Astoria in the début issue was an "anachronism" — dated, old-fashioned, as soft as its retro subject, which was Weight Watchers.
As Jane Hu and Carrie Frye noted in their excellent recap on The Awl — and I thought we were the only people nerdy enough to do this — Mr. Russo is forced to sit like some kind of potted plant while other people in the room talk about him in the third person.
My favorite blogs of the year are The Awl (admittedly, I'm biased), and James Poniewozik's excellent Tuned In.
Killingsworth echoed this, talking about her work at the Awl and the Hairpin: "I want to encourage people to talk about mostly anything other than themselves".
You can read my response here, on The Awl. Spoiler alert: I don't agree.
I'm aware of Jessanne's piece in The Awl and to be frank, I owe her and the women who worked at Playgirl a huge apology.
It reads, in part: Not being familiar with many of the media outlets for which The Awl says these reporters work, I had the list of "26 arrested reporters" checked against the roster of reporters who hold valid NYPD press passes.
While we're at it, I should say how much I've been enjoying The Awl, whose editors also have an interest in Knifecrime Island (and its tabloids), and sort of like the wet stuff.
As an editor, I sympathise with The Awl editor Choire Sicha, who went from working for others to being his own boss and suffered the slings and arrows of having a liberal site that doesn't quite achieve gender parity.
But I'm more interested in the comments section — I always am with The Awl, whose regular readers are often smart and funny without being particularly snarky or mean — and the fact that the article's been floating around their "Most Viewed" list for the past fortnight.
