Report from Lost Wages: Updates in Media Law

I am attending the SPJ national conference this week in Las Vegas, and one of the highlights today was a briefing on media law that was scarier than any horror novel I’ve written. While I generally do travelogues for my Patreon, I decided this was more relevant to my nonfiction blog here, so you get my summary of the annual media law roundup offered by several media lawyers at the conference.

Have you ever wondered why so many news organizations repeat phrases like “repeating the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen” or “falsely stated that COVID was caused by flying monkeys”? It’s a relatively new device, one that we usually wouldn’t do because it’s supposed to be neutral language – you get to decide who’s full of it, not us!

Well, it’s been black-letter law for decades that repeating a claim you know to be false can leave you legally liable even if your source is the one saying it, not you. Usually this doesn’t involve presidents, but here we are.

Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News was a major topic in the roundup. In short, President Trump said Dominion rigged the voting machines, Fox played it like a cheap drum for months, and Dominion sued Fox for $1.6 billion. With a B.

Fox argued that they had a responsibility to report on what Trump and other GOP leaders were saying, which – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – they had a point. People scream and yell about “why do you give these people a platform” and frankly, we’d all love it if the good people of the U.S. of A. would stop electing lying assholes so we could stop talking to them. I have a list.

However, New York Times v. Sullivan established that a news organization has to have displayed “actual malice” toward a public official in order to be liable, i.e. they had to know they were printing false information and did it anyway with the intent of hurting the subject. The key for Fox News was the release of internal memos and communications revealing that they knew it was all false information, but kept running it because it kept moron eyeballs on the screen. 

The judge in the case issued a summary judgment that no reasonable person could conclude that the statements were true, which is a rare step judges don’t often take. Fox settled for $787 million, the largest defamation settlement in history. I would have added a copy of the SPJ Code of Ethics stapled to every editor’s forehead, but I wasn’t on the jury.

So in short, Dominion didn’t sue CNN et al, because they said “Trump falsely stated” and didn’t repeat his words as if they were true, but sued Fox because they portrayed information they knew to be false as fact. So expect to see that phrase a whole lot in the coming Presidential Silly Season.

The debate within the profession is now centering on slippery slopes and the line between journalistic responsibility and fact-checking vs. arrogantly taking the voters’ place in determining who should be elected. There is concern that this will have a chilling effect on coverage. We are all stretched tight, we have all interviewed liars, and there will be a strong pull by cash-strapped publications to reduce coverage in controversial topics for fear of defamation suits.

That’s the overt level. The subtle level is that Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch indicated interest in overturning Sullivan after a vehemently anti-journalist judge insisted Sullivan makes it too hard for public figures to win defamation suits. Of course, he insisted it was because news organizations are totally controlled by cackling evil liberal cabals (paraphrase) and praised Fox for being owned by “one man and his son.” 

The upshot is that if Sullivan was overturned, we could all be sued to oblivion by any public official who didn’t like the reporting on their race. That is… not good for journalism.

Also coming up in media law: 

The Marion County Record in Kansas was raided by police – including the home of the publisher, whose elderly mother was so distraught she died the next day. This raid was allegedly because the paper was researching DUI reports for a local restaurant owner (whose DUI would mean her liquor license was illegal), and they had been accused of illegal hacking even though they never published the damn story. It always amuses me that they are quick to accuse us of hacking, since most journos I know have trouble attaching a document to an email. Even if they had done it, the raid was a violation of a boatload of laws requiring law enforcement to subpoena records from journalists, not raid them and confiscate their equipment.

Question asked: What do we do as journalists if police show up with a warrant? First of all, in Illinois we have shield laws, but I’m honestly not sure what I could do. The lawyers say we can tell them they cannot enter, and request speaking to a lawyer before warrant is executed because federal and state laws forbid it. They also acknowledge there’s a bit of privilege there, as a white man in a suit might be listened to and a Black man runs a serious chance of getting shot. (One of the questioners later made this point: “As a Black man in America, my number one rule in any interaction with the police is don’t get shot.”

Also, this is not one isolated incident of police overreach. In multiple cities we have seen these warrants blindly approved by cranky judges (or sometimes magistrate judges who are barely lawyers) and haven’t read the federal Privacy Protection Act, then police go to town. Worse: small independent news organizations rarely have the money to fight these things, which is where organizations like SPJ and other First Amendment advocates come in to help support the legal battle.

Finally, we need better training and education of law enforcement, and even of judges. I will say that in times I’ve seen flagrantly illegal actions of public officials – I have a list – many of them could have passed a lie detector declaring that everything they did was absolutely legal and appropriate. But ignorance of the law is not an excuse, and I have little patience for “systemic antagonism against the concept of journalism” as justification for wildly illegal attacks on the press. Certainly I’d be favor of requiring some kind of education program, but let’s face it: law enforcement is not going to voluntarily seek this training unless required by court order.

Most disturbing: A Black reporter interviewing people on a public sidewalk was arrested and accused of harassing people. A bystander recorded the arrest: the reporter clearly identified himself as a journalist and they arrested him anyway (and threatened the guy doing the recording). We don’t hear about this because it’s journalists, and when we are the subject of violence, no one cares. But it’s happening a lot more than you know.

I have a list.

Two pieces go national

I was delighted to hear this week that two pieces I wrote for the St. Louis Labor Tribune were picked up for national distribution through the AFL-CIO.

The first is a piece about new legislation that mandates paid leave for all workers for any reason. Illinois is only the third state in the nation to require employers to let their employees have paid time off to deal with life. While most union contracts include at least the minimum paid leave, the law will cover everyone, represented or not.

The other story is part of several stories I’ve written about St. Louis Public Radio employees organizing. It’s the first time a public radio newsroom has formed a union in the state of Missouri.

It was always fun when my newspaper stories were picked up by the Associated Press, and it feels good to see such wide readership of my work.

If these stories interest you, please sign up for my monthly newsletter. I share links to all my work in the newsletter, including the labor work. Don’t worry, I’m far too busy to spam you.

Journalists in fiction… again

I’m delighted to report that the St. Louis Writer’s Guild has asked me to talk to them about how to portray journalists in fiction.

This is pretty much my biggest soapbox, as you know if you’ve been following me for any length of time. The Thesis That Will Not Die is focused on journalists’ representation in film, ranging from Spotlight to Die Hard, under the cultivation theory of media consumption. Like most academic theories, it uses convoluted language to explain that which is patently obvious: watching media that portrays a group negatively leads to negative impressions of that group. Representation matters.

I’ve done this kind of talk before, usually to pop culture convention panels where we discuss how the movies have mangled us. I haven’t done it for a group solely comprised of writers before, and I’m quite happy for the opportunity. I’ve said many times at cons and writing panels: If you’ve got a journalist in your story, for the sake of Edward R. Murrow, talk to a journalist. You wouldn’t write a brain surgeon or a police officer or a deep-sea explorer without doing research; don’t assume that you know how journalism works because you’ve read the news.

At any rate, I’m looking forward to this opportunity, and thank the Writer’s Guild for inviting me. I’m not sure if it’s open to the general public or only Guild members, but I’ll be sure to let y’all know.

Finally: The Edwardsville Author Fair

I’m delighted to finally attend the Edwardsville Author Fair in person!

They’ve been holding this festival of the written word for a few years now, and each year it has conflicted with another major event: Dragoncon, the Society of Professional Journalists, etc. Then last year the event was virtual, of course, because the Voldevirus required all such things to be in Zoomland. Thus I was actually able to participate after a fashion!

I thought I was going to have to bow out this year again, because I am president of the St. Louis chapter of SPJ and will be representing them as delegate at the annual conference next weekend…. which was supposed to be in New Orleans. Sadly, the Voldevirus strikes again and I will not be chowing down on beignets at Cafe Du Monde. The SPJ conference will be entirely virtual. (Of course, it’s likely it would have struck a landmine anyway, since Hurricane Ida is aiming at the Gulf Coast with a fury.)

But that leaves me home and free-ish to finally participate in my hometown’s book festival! I’ll be stepping in and out of the festival to participate as needed in the SPJ conference events, but my husband will be on our booth selling our books and my art throughout the day. Look for us in the author section of City Park 9am-2pm Saturday, Sept. 4.

 (Crossposted with elizabethdonald.com)

October Linkspam

If you’re a horror writer, October is always your busiest month of the year. If you’re not working in October, you’re not working.

That said, October is super-mega-special busy for me – in a normal year. In October 2015, I visited eleven cities in two time zones, flew on four airplanes through three airports, drove 2,017 miles, hugged and shook hands with approximately four zillion people, stayed in five hotels, rode public transportation without number, attended at least a dozen public events, visited the Magic Kingdom twice and averaged five hours’ sleep. All while working my full-time job at the newspaper (plus or minus a few vacation days).

So this was the strangest October I can remember since my first book was published, because I went nowhere. I mean, I left the house a few times. We successfully moved my stuff out of my university office, and then we moved the Literary Underworld and all its trimmings to a storage facility. Yes! LitUnd now has a warehouse! (Kinda.) It was taking over my house, which has more than enough piles of detritus that it doesn’t need the competition.

I also left the house to go to a pumpkin patch and get this year’s carveable gourds. Look, I will put up with a lot to stay safe from COVID, but some things are sacred.

If it were not for COVID, I would have flown to Washington D.C. for the SPJ conference and to Atlanta for the College Media Association conference. I would have attended Archon in Collinsville, Ill. and I’d be raring up for ContraKC in Kansas City next week and I would have been running the Leclaire Parkfest book sale for the American Cancer Society and somewhere in there I’d probably have had a stark raving mad nervous breakdown but that’s standard for October too.

Instead, I was home, teaching my class and attending what I could via Zoom, and happily celebrating the release of Yanaguana from Crone Girls Press!

Have I mentioned it enough yet?

So even though I stayed home and didn’t “see” anyone, I still feel like it was one of my busiest Octobers ever, and I can’t remember how I did my usual Octobers without losing my mind. I have no doubt, however, that I will sign right back up next year for the usual Fall Deathmarch, because really… I miss y’all.


Publicity/Appearances

Have I mentioned yet that Yanaguana came out last month? Okay, okay, ya heard it. Seriously, though, I had so much fun playing with the Blackfire crew again, and I’m so grateful to my fantastic editor Rachel Brune for including my little novella in Foul Womb of Night, the first in Crone Girls Press’ Midnight Bites series.

Here’s an interview I gave about Yanaguana, my writing life, the trip to San Antonio that inspired it, and other ramblings.

Journalism/Essays

Highland schools face deficit budget (Highland News-Leader)

Highland approves interim police chief (Highland News-Leader)

GoFundMe set up for coach in need of kidney due to COVID (Highland News-Leader)

Highland police adopt 10 shared principles of civil rights and racial justice (Highland News-Leader)

COVID forces shutdown of after-school program (Highland News-Leader)

Highland leaders report more than 100 new cases in two weeks (Highland News-Leader)

How to survive a horror movie: 2020 edition (Medium)

Fiction

Wait wait don’t tell me…. Yanaguana came out. Just so you know, your purchase of Foul Womb of Night gets you more than just me. There are two other novels of military-themed horror by Adam Stemple and Gustav Bondoni included in the collection, and all for $2.99 (or free if you’re on Kindle Unlimited).

Photography

No photo trips again this month (I am going out before the leaves turn, COVID or no COVID) so here’s a flashback shot for you.

This image is “Fields of Pennsylvania,” a picture that nearly killed me. I was on the Furlough Tour in 2013 and trying to make my way across the toll roads of Pennsylvania for an early dinner in York before heading up to New York City. I think. That whole tour is something of a blur.

I was annoyed at the tolls, but the view made it worth every penny. The scenery was simply astounding, and when I saw this field with the farm at the treeline, I swerved my little rental car over to the side of the road and got out on the highway to get this shot. I didn’t have my good camera yet, so I had to be content with the resolution of my small point-and-click. It’s one of my favorite images from the tour, and still doesn’t do half justice to the beauty of Pennsylvania in the fall.

Patreon/Blogs

Dark and stormy night (Patreon)

Blackfire crew rides again! (Donald Media and Patreon)

Book birthday! And thank you. (Donald Media)

How to survive a horror movie: 2020 edition with pictures! (Patreon bonus)

Happy Halloween! (Donald Media)


Please consider subscribing to my Patreon! You get new and exclusive content, extra stuff no one else can get, and you are helping me pay the rent while I wend my way through grad school. Thank you for your support!

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August Linkspam

And we’re off to the races!

(Ouch, cliche.)

(Fine, I technically was still a student since the masters is pending…. shush with your facts.)

As I write this, the semester is one week old and I’m already behind. How does this happen? I’m developing my lesson plans as I go for my English composition and rhetoric class, so please pass the bourbon. So far my students haven’t dropped en masse and no one is driving me from the campus with pitchforks and torches shouting “heretic!” so we’ll call it a win for the first week.

I’ve had round one of the classes in advanced literary editing, where we will be focusing on producing the annual issue of Sou’wester; and my fiction workshop, where I will continue to develop short pieces (and you Patreon folk will get to see them, muahahaha.) My tutoring gig starts next week, and I will be returning to assist the good folks at the Alestle student newspaper.

I’m still mostly housebound, which has been nice and all but I would really like the virus to go away now, okay? The next two conventions for me are/were ContraKC in November and Conflation in February, and it’s still up in the air whether those events are taking place. If they do, then I need to decide if I can attend. I miss seeing you characters!

(Even you. And you. Maybe not you.)

Anyway, here’s this month’s links!

Essays

• Pay for it. That’s how people live. (Patreon and Medium)

Journalism

• Highland parents overwhelmingly choose in-person learning this fall (Highland News-Leader)

• Highland mayor implores community, businesses to take COVID more seriously (Highland News-Leader)

• Highland street art festival will still take place despite COVID (Highland News-Leader)

• Highland schools forge ahead with mixed schedule (Highland News-Leader)

• Two charged with home invasion in Madison County (Highland News-Leader)

Photography

Sadly, no photo trips this month. So instead I give you this one from the archives:

This is the Baltimore memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, located at the Inner Harbor. What appears to be a metal sculpture is actually a twisted remnant of the girders inside the World Trade Center, and there is an inscription of the names of the Baltimore residents who died that day.

Patreon/Blogs

• And heeeeere weeee go. (Patreon)

• Historical artifacts (Patreon)

• Stringbook (Patreon)


As usual, I would remind you of my delightful Patreon. Yes, I know, you hear about it every month. But I’m starting a new feature, as I begin a three-year MFA program in creative writing: I’m going to share what I learn with you, in the hopes that those of you interested in writing or the MFA experience will find it useful. So if you were thinking of joining the Patreon, now’s a great time!

July Linkspam

As I write this, I am beginning my last week of summer “vacation.” That last word has to be in quotation marks, because this summer has hardly felt like a break! Between my freelance work and ducking this bloody virus and managing the circus that is my family, I’ve hardly felt like I was on a break.

However, next week begins an intensive two-week training course in English composition pedagogy, which is academic-speak for “teaching English comp.” This being grad school, the readings actually start this week, and then for most of August I will be training heavily and preparing to start teaching in the last week of the month.

While I’m not (entirely) new to teaching, I am very new to English composition. Little-known Elizabeth fact: I never took English 101 or 102, nor a creative writing class until last year. Back in the ancient days (a.k.a. the 1990s), you could take a test called the CLEP (make your own jokes) and a high enough score let you skip straight to the literature classes. So I CLEPped out of English comp, and thus I have never taken or observed these classes. Whee!

Still, this is an exciting new challenge, compounded by the fact that all my teaching (and learning) this semester will be online, as well as my requiring tutoring for students who are struggling with writing skills. I am very grateful for the privilege to continue working entirely from home, as we all continue to ride out the pandemic and try to keep ourselves and our families safe.

In the meantime, journalism! This month was all about the news, as the folks in Highland kept me hopping. I also had a few essays, although I didn’t put any of them on Medium. I’m still trying to sort out what kind of material is going to be of interest on that site, and what people would like to hear from me.

Of course, the first priority is always to the Patreon, as those good folks fork over perfectly good money every month to read my blatherings. They got a couple of essays this month, as well as a photo travelogue from San Antonio. That’s the second of what will probably be four travelogues on San Antonio, and will eventually be repackaged into a travel piece. You know, in my spare time.

Essays/Blogs

The celebrity in the room (Donald Media)

Pay for it. That’s how people live. (Patreon)

Freedom Day (Patreon and Donald Media)

News

Highland parents face choice of in-person or remote learning (Highland News-Leader)

COVID may force schools to off-campus learning (Highland News-Leader)

Highland considers allowing golf carts on city streets (Highland News-Leader)

Highland teacher dances into retirement, but keeps a toe on the stage (Highland News-Leader)

Highland issues verdict on golf carts, ATVs on streets (Highland News-Leader)

Highland city manager set to retire after 40 years (Highland News-Leader)

Photography

San Antonio: The Riverwalk (Patreon)

You can always catch my latest work at ElizabethDonaldPhotography.com, and the shop is linked to all images that are available for sale. If you would like a piece customized as a poster or other item, just ask! 

Miscellaneous

We have been informed that Archon has been canceled for 2020, which was disappointing but not a surprise given the mass cancellation of just about every convention, book fair and signing this year. There are a few possibilities left for the holiday season, but odds are strong that every convention and signing will be canceled this year. I hope to see your faces again someday… 

Finally, work continues on the novella of doom, which should come out later this fall. I’m delighting in the creep factor of my haunted San Antonio (hey, if I like a city, I’m gonna infest it with monsters) and looking forward to seeing it in “print.” More about that next month, I hope! Many thanks to my awesome editor Rachel Brune, who has displayed uncommon patience with me…

In the meantime, have a cover!

Freedom Day

Monday was an anniversary of sorts. On that day, two years ago, I worked my last shift as a full-time newspaper reporter.

Those of you who’ve followed me for a while know what a big decision that was. I had worked for that particular newspaper for 18 years and in newspapers in general for 22 years, which was pretty much my entire adult life. I spent a long time thinking about the choice to go freelance and try to make a living with my words while I went through what I thought would be two years of grad school. Whee.

Last year I wrote that this decision was like jumping off the high dive with my family handcuffed to me, but without knowing if the pool was full of water. I spent the first few weeks of grad school sure I had made an awful mistake: I was too old, I didn’t fit in, I was a bad fit for academic style and the philosophical approach to the field. I didn’t exactly hit the ground running, but I adapted, and as of this writing I have finished all the coursework for the masters degree in media studies.

Several factors have delayed completion of Ye Olde Thesis, not the least of which has been COVID-brain – no, I haven’t had The Plague, but the situation we’ve all been in since March seems to have made my concentration very difficult. Wurdz r hard.

But I have never regretted my choice. It’s not an easy life, being a freelancer. I spend a lot of time hustling work and filing invoices. But I also choose what I write about, and I am my own boss. That has definitely been worth what I gave up in security and a regular paycheck.

And I’m still reporting. I do magazine articles on a fairly regular basis, and I also do some local reporting for a subsidiary of my former employer. I like to keep a foot in the game, since I hope to be teaching newswriting again in the future and I feel you really need to keep up with the profession in order to teach it, beyond reading in the trades about the general state of the news industry.

I truly love teaching. I didn’t know how I would take to it, but it surprised me by being the best part of the last two years. One of my few disappointments this year was that we could not figure out a way for me to keep teaching newswriting while I’m teaching English comp this fall, as I would happily teach both classes as long as they’d let me. All of us got hit with unexpected challenges – a baby-bird new teacher suddenly switching to all-online instruction in mid-semester required multiple adjustments of the syllabus and assignments, but fortunately my poor students were patient with me, and I’m looking forward to continuing my teaching in the English department this fall.

Oddly, my fiction work has flourished even during the grind of grad school, in ways it hasn’t in years. This year in particular, I’ve seen several stories picked up for speculative fiction anthologies and also a literary magazine, an avenue where I haven’t had much success in years past. I am hoping to see far more of that, as I begin my new MFA program next month.

Meanwhile, nothing dulls my passion and advocacy for news reporting, even as it becomes more and more tiresome to wade through the hate spewed toward us online (and sometimes more than hate, as evidenced by the treatment of journalists on the protest lines in so many places this year.)

So while I tend to think of the anniversary of my departure as Freedom Day, it should not be interpreted as freedom from my old job or the news or journalism. It was more an internal freedom, the freedom to remake my life and my work to better suit all the facets of who I am as a writer. It’s freedom from the expectations of others and the restrictions I placed on myself, not freedom from any particular employer.

Below is the speech I gave at my farewell party at the newspaper. I meant every word of it, and still do. (Yes, I wrote it down. If I don’t write down what I’m gonna say, I’ll talk forever and it’ll be full of “um,” as my students can attest.)

——-

I remember the first time I walked in here as an employee. It was June 2000, and we won’t talk about how old some of you were on that day, Josh

I was 25 years old and less than three years out of school. I filled out my papers and they sent me up to the bureau so I could introduce myself to the crew working up there: Doug Criss, Teri Maddox, Steve Nagy, Marilyn Vise, Jayne Matthews.

I thought I knew what I was doing. I didn’t know shit.

But I learned, because of the people I worked with here. I had editors, and colleagues, and mentors, and friends. We are a strange and often dysfunctional little family, but we are a family nonetheless. 

And that doesn’t change when you walk out the door, as I’ve discovered from the number of people I’ve heard from in the last few weeks and even the last few days. They remember, and we are connected. We are a family, because we all came here for one purpose, one calling that rides above an ordinary profession.

We are here because we believe in journalism, and its importance to the community in ways that they will never understand or appreciate. No matter how awful or exhausting or difficult it gets, no matter how jaded we think we’ve become, we still show up and shovel coal into the furnace and do the work and inform people who will never appreciate it.

To me, that makes every one of you heroes.

I am proud to have worked with every one of you. I am proud of being part of the News-Democrat. I always have, and I always will be. I have been here so long that “News-Democrat” is part of my name – when I introduce myself to people out in the world, I have to stop myself from saying, “Elizabeth Donald News-Democrat.” 

It’s going to be a hard habit to shake. But that’s okay, because it’s part of me, part of who I am.

I know there’s a lot of uncertainty right now – it’s weird, and there are difficult times ahead, more difficult for some than others. But I know that wherever our various paths go from here, each of us can and will stay the course with our true mission – and I don’t mean the checklist or a spreadsheet or a hit count goal. But the true mission of any newspaper: to serve and inform our community.

Each of you has been a shining example of that mission. And I don’t just mean the mentors who taught me so much of what I needed to know all these years. I mean you young ones who will carry the torch forward for us, and have taught me things I didn’t know that I didn’t know. 

Your dedication, your skill, your passion and commitment have restored my faith in our profession’s future. I will always be proud to have worked with each of you.

And you’re required to stay in touch. That’s why God invented the internet.

May Linkspam

I’m not even going to pretend to summarize May. Anyone with half a working brain cell and an internet connection knows what’s going on, and I’ve been up to my eyeballs just keeping up the butcher’s bill of attacks on journalists while covering the historic protest marches taking place worldwide. If you want to know more, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has a compilation much more comprehensive than mine and the ACLU is filing suit. If anything they’re being conservative in their definition of “attacked,” as I’ve seen far more than 54 journalists beaten, maced or otherwise assaulted in the course of doing their jobs.

Meanwhile, for the effect coronavirus is having on the journalism industry, Poynter is keeping a running tally of layoffs, furloughs, salary cuts and news organization closures as a result of the pandemic and shutdown. Please feel free to use this list against any idiot insisting that the media are overamplifying the threat of the virus because it’s so bloody good for us.

Of course, the State of Journalism is not really what Linkspam is supposed to be about, because if I start on the ranting essays I want to write, I’ll do literally nothing else, and I am ass-deep in alligators these days with freelance work. Here’s what I have to share from May:

Journalism

• “Fueling Our Heroes” makes stop in Highland, feeding truck drivers (Highland News-Leader)

• Highland High School creates virtual graduation for class of 2020 (Highland News-Leader)

• Pere Marquette under renovations for spring (Outdoor Guide Magazine – print only)

• Is Highland reopening yet or not? (Highland News-Leader)

• Mayor cautions city must follow state orders (Highland News-Leader)

Fiction

• An untitled short-story experiment for the Patreon group, which originated in my fiction workshop this spring. As always, the Patreon gets the behind-the-scenes stuff and the new stuff first, so you might want to consider subscribing. Hint hint.

Photography

The bloody pandemic has really damaged my plans for regular photo shoots this summer – I had multiple trips planned, and until the damn bug goes away, I won’t be able to do them.

• “Fireworks,” a photo essay for Patreon detailing my efforts to shoot fireworks into abstract sky-art. My town is going to attempt a socially-distanced fireworks display on July 3, and I will attempt to shoot it if I can do so safely.

Miscellaneous

CultureGeek is currently on hiatus due to the complete shutdown of the movie industry. If it resumes, it may be in the form of book reviews – or the reviews may find their way to this space. I haven’t made up my mind on that – I love CultureGeek and I’ve been writing it more than a decade, sometimes with others and sometimes alone. But I’m doing a lot more freelance work these days, I’m writing or managing five blogs, and the decidedly non-lucrative CG may have served its purpose. Or perhaps it has enough fans that it should keep rolling – either in its current space or in a dedicated website. I will decide that by the end of the summer, most likely.

I have recently joined the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), which appears to be the standard organization for writers in MFA programs like moi. Their conference looks to be a really nifty opportunity and it’s going to be in Kansas City next spring, which is an easy drive from sunny St. Louis. Best of all, I’m just a member, so I am not in charge of ANYTHING.

SPJ’s Excellence in Journalism is still scheduled for September, but damn near everything else I had scheduled between now and then is canceled, so it’s flip-a-coin whether I’ll be in D.C. this fall or not. I chose not to apply to Dragoncon this year before the COVID mess began – betting pools continue on whether DC will have its big party or not – but I hope to return sometime in the future when life is once again sane. Ish. The local chapter’s work is also on hold due to coronavirus, but I’m hopeful for our annual fundraiser and the monthly Freelancer Coffee Hour to resume soon. (Wear masks!)

Website work continues to be borked, as both the SPJ website and Jim’s website are completely fubar and I have to un-fubar them before I can attack the task of redesigning the rest of the websites. Did I mention I am not a programmer? I never get more than three steps into the recommended processes before I begin weeping and rending my clothing.

In the meantime, I’m working on magazine pieces and editing projects, still banging away at the Goddamn Thesis, and there’s a nifty new fiction project I’m not yet at liberty to discuss. When the contracts are signed, you’ll find out. It involves creepiness… and teeth. Muahahaha.

Stay safe out there, friends.

New photos: East St. Louis

East St. Louis Theater

I found this theater during a 2019 photo shoot in East St. Louis, Ill. It looked as though businesses had at least attempted to use the lower level in the recent past, and everything at ground level was covered in graffiti. But the upper level had fascinating scrollwork and artistic design. I know little about architecture, but I know that that building has stories to tell. 

There are a number of other images from my East St. Louis shoot, which was a fascinating trip detailed a few months ago on the Patreon.

See the rest of the photography portfolio at elizabethdonaldphotography.com.