Dave Eggers' Inflamatory <i>Onion</i> Interview

You know that it's a slow news day (except for those at CES liveblogging, of course) when the biggest scandal to hit the Web since Monday is a Dave Eggers' interview with The Onion's A.V. Club. Oh my, did he twee someone to death? Not quite: Eggers, whose most recent project post-Where The Wild Things Are has been The San Francisco Panorama (a giant $16 glossy version of McSweeney's that will hopefully usher back the era of print, at least in literary discussions), provoked some major criticism for his quotes in the article, where he lambastes his former employer, The San Francisco Weekly, and called the print business model "so simple." Yikes. The Weekly fought back, calling Eggers' poo-pooing of third party advertisers in newspapers "too tidy" and remarking, "Could it be that Eggers is lying about his supposed proclivity for reading newspapers? Did he bump his head and forget that he worked for one that ran on an all-advertising model?" We know that while McSweeney's, Wholphin, The Believer, and other Eggers projects try to retain the image of being too smart for conventional methods, The Weekly may have a point. You can't rely on your readers to shell out more money for a product before you demonstrate that it's superior to everything else out there. And even once you do, as National Public Radio has shown us, there's no guarantee you're going to start seeing profits. Read More: Dave Eggers on his favorite things about newspapers --A.V. Club Purported Newspaper Lover Dave Eggers Coy About Newspapering Past --San Franciso Weekly Eggers in the Onion; Weekly not Laughing --BayNewser Previously: McSweeney's Launches Print Project, Panorama

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Dave Eggers' Inflamatory Onion Interview

Drew Grant

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Drew Grant