The Goldman State
Ed Goldman is a longtime newspaper and magazine columnist, the author of five books and creator of The Goldman State, a three-times-a-week online column with subscribers in 40 states, Canada and Europe. A professional playwright, composer and painter, Ed has also taught journalism at five California Universities and community colleges. His bucket list includes becoming the victim of a corporate takeover. This podcast is an extension of his unique take on the world around us and his interpretation, with all the creativity imaginable, of what that would literally sound like if he were to speak it.
The Goldman State
Episode 108: Start the Presses!
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Got print? "Start" the presses may be a bit of a stretch given I've written for at least two publications that have "stopped" them. Let's not get too critical now. I only contributed relevant, engaging and I might even add humorous content at times. As for my current publisher...well, let's just keep that between us.
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00:00 - Speaker 1
Hi, this is Ed Goldman with the Goldman State Podcast, seven days a week. For as long as I can remember, even during periods when my income had me choosing between going to a dental appointment or buying groceries, I've received at least two daily newspapers on my doorstep, on my camellia bush, under my car or atop my lawn sprinklers the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. For many years I also received the Sacramento Bee, until it became lighter than a gutter guard circular and contained news stories that were frequently two or three days old. It also attempted to charge me a mind-blowing $700 a year for a subscription until I called and said I couldn't afford that and suddenly it was $350 a year, but by that point that was about $349 a year too much. I also used to receive in my mailbox the Economist and Vanity Fair magazines every week and every month respectively.
00:56
Though I loved the writing in the Economist, its obituaries could be inappropriately droll. I started to lose interest in what was happening in countries I didn't even know existed Kiribati or Tuvalu anyone. As for Vanity Fair, once Graydon Carter left the editorship, the magazine seemed to lose its spirited sense of humor. Carter's the guy who called Trump a short-fingered Bulgarian when he was an editor at National Lampoon, long before Trump went into national politics. When Carter left VF, as the magazine likes to nickname itself, did Newsweek ever need to refer to itself as NW or Batman comic books as BM? That's another issue. He took with him a spirit of insouciance. I found most of its subsequent issues either woke or dull.
01:44
But I repeat myself as you may be deducing, I'm neither a fan nor user of online newspapers or e-zines, even though I'll cop to the irritation of reading unwieldy newspapers folding them into places especially galling, or the hard copy magazines from which little postcards fall out urging me to subscribe to the very periodical I'm holding and have subscribed to for decades. Are you listening, new Yorker? I also realize my preference for print over electronic media means I contribute to the unkosher butchering of trees and the rapacious replenishing of landfills. In my defense, I really do separate my trash into two bins, use roll-on deodorant and leave my fossil fuel guzzling car at home most of the time Well, partly because it's been making some scary sounds when I drive it.
02:33
Still, I should also mention that since its inception about 36 years ago, I've written regularly for a monthly magazine here in Northern California called Comstocks, named for its energetic owner-publisher, winnie Comstock Carlson. It has an online presence I also contribute to on occasion, but it's the print edition that would be the subject of an action film called Last Mag Standing were it not for another local publication called Sacktown, which is 19 years old and comes out every other month In the heyday of magazines in California's capital. The others included A Sacramento Magazine, a monthly which had a purely lifestyle focus. I wrote a column called Sacramentions for a decade and numerous feature stories Its 48-year run ended two years ago and B California Journal, a pretty straightforward political pub that came out monthly from 1970 to 2005, and for which I wrote a few stories and Flack Like Me, a guest editorial about having been the second public information officer in the city of Sacramento's history. If you discern a pattern here that the two magazines I wrote for in Sacramento ultimately went belly up, please don't tell my current publishers. And now, if you'll excuse me, I think I need to reset my sprinklers.
03:52
I'm Ed Goldman. My column, the Goldman State, comes out every Monday, wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe for free at GoldmanStatecom. Thanks for listening.