yes, there is a post on sunday. yes, it is late. i just got off the phone with dona and she says even jim is exhausted for a change. usually jim's the one who most enjoys the marathon all night session that goes into the third estate sunday review. i think everyone was pushed to the limit this time.
a number of you have asked about the process and what goes on. so that will be the entry for tonight.
the third estate sunday review is a group of common ills community members. they are ava, ty, jess, jim and dona. they are college students and, as was revealed in the roundtable this week, jim and dona are an item.
they do a sunday blog only. it is a variety of stories that usually includes an editorial and TV review among other things.
common ills community members who blog frequently assist. this includes folding star of a winding road, betty of thomas friedman is a great man, kat of kat's korner (musical reviews at the common ills), c.i. of the common ills and myself.
the tv review is done by ava and c.i. that is there own little corner. initially, others would add input and work on various drafts but ava and c.i. do an incredible job on it and when others work on it as well, it tends to muck the whole thing up.
if you've never been to the third estate sunday review and are trying to get some fix on it from my description, think of it as a paper that only comes out on sunday.
they may cover a book, poetry, music or art. they may do a feature on an issue effecting college students. they have a great sense of humor and one feature is 'dear third estate sunday review' which is an advice column with smart ass answers.
this week, there was a humor feature on john cloud who wrote the cover story for time on ann coulter. it's based on post-its that might be found on his desk.
working on that were jim, ty, jess, dona and myself. betty had rightly bailed due to the late hour and ava and c.i. were working on their tv review and doing a joint entry over at the common ills covering this morning's new york times.
i think there are some funny jokes in that feature (we all do) but 1 thing we learned is that when we do a humorous piece without ava, c.i. and betty, we're really forcing it. which isn't to say that we aren't funny people. but there was some block, and it may have been the all nighter, that led to it feeling very hard to think of anything funny. ava and c.i. riff off each other and aren't afraid to toss out a joke that might bomb. if that happens, 1 of them picks up a piece of that joke and takes it somewhere else. i think our biggest problem on the post-its piece was that no 1 wanted to be the 1 bombing.
ava and c.i. are fearless there. that's why i said last week that they are creative people. they understand the process a great deal better than we do.
in the roundtable this go round, we addressed a number of issues and i think you'll enjoy reading it. after it was done, it turned out ty had a topic that hadn't been addressed. so in the next roundtable, it will be picked up. i think we all enjoy doing that.
the editorial has been the main reason/excuse for throwing it all together at the last minute. 1 time, a wonderful editorial had been written early in the week, probably no later than thursday, but by the time sunday rolled around, there were more pressing issues so it got tossed aside.
dona said on the phone that she's setting down a schedule for this week. starting tomorrow, a draft will be begun on jane fonda comedy film and it will circultate via e-mail all week (monster in law, starring jane fonda, jennifer lopez and the hottie michael vartan opens may 13th). dona wants tuesday to be devoted to 'dear third estate sunday review' and so on.
every 1 is wiped out from last night and so dona's taking the lead to make sure that at least this coming week, we're all done long before the sun's shining.
each edition, the third estate sunday review does a blog spotlight. this week it's c.i.'s entry on why ann coulter isn't a cover. i read that piece last night when ty said he thought it was the 1 he wanted to highlight. we were all in agreement with it (except c.i. who had 4 other posts, from other blogs to suggest).
i think it's an amazing piece. as some 1 who worked in public relations, i will say 'what c.i. said.'
the cover is the biggest decision for a magazine and it's not made lightly. time is a general interest magazine and when it does a celebrity cover, it is a big deal with a big discussion. c.i. goes over the general rules for celebrity covers, and is correct, so check it out and scratch your head as you try to figure out what time was thinking when it decided to break every rule by running ann coulter on the cover when she's not a cover of a general interest magazine.
do not miss the editorial which evaluates daniel okrent's take on the new york times' coverage of israel and palestine. after 17 months, goofy boy finally weighs in and he can't even get the basics, no surprise.
and don't miss ava and c.i.'s review of the simple life. it will make you laugh and you'll understand why the tv review has become the most consistently popular feature of each edition.
each edition has 'a note to our readers' and the skinny there is jim types it and fits in what people are shouting out or wanting tossed in. jim's the editor of the note to the readers.
how does something get written is the question most of the e-mail asks? well there's no 1 way. jess might write 3 paragraphs on something, ty might be next to work on piece and rearrange what jess just wrote or trash all of it but 1 sentence and add new things. then it's passed around and the process repeats. which is why it can take so long if the first drafts are starting saturday night and that's why dona's trying to get some things started long before this saturday.
hopefully, that gives you a look into the process as well as into the third estate sunday review.
i urge everyone to check it out. and i'll add this, though i can't imagine any of my readers doing this, if you don't like ava and c.i.'s take on a tv show, that's fine. you can rant, you can rage. but there are a lot of threatening e-mails coming in. specific threats of a violent nature. they don't deserve that. so i hope that no one who visits this site would ever feel the need to write such an e-mail. if you have, please stop.
