I started out by working as the A&E editor of The Minnesota Daily. Read about it here.
Here’s a list of the publications that I’ve written for, and a few writing samples.
My best buddy from 10th grade, gay prom date and fellow Tangential editor Jason Zabel recently became the Twin Cities Onion A.V. Club editor. Score for me, now I get to earn some extra $$ by interviewing The Black Lips and the mayor every so often.
• The A.V. Club’s Down-to-Earth Guide to Drinking Your Way Through a Minneapolis Summer – Jason wanted me to write a summer drinking guide and I didn’t want it to be one of those guides that acts like drinking is a fancy rich people thing. I wanted to make a guide for people who get drunk. I think I did it.
• Interview: Black Lip’s Jared Swilley – this gets pretty wacky. I made him compare his album to a candy bar and we went from there.
• R.T. Rybak talks Twin Cities Pride – can I just say the mayor is a total babe? He looks like a president in a movie who’s out to kill Spiderman. He compared gay pride to “nirvana.”
My friend, neighbor and Tangential co-editor Jay Gabler is the arts editor of the Daily Planet, and he’s helped me to keep up journalism post college. I admire his commitment to showcasing community voices and creativity rather than just promoting hard news journalism.
• Chuck Klosterman Holds Steady at Wits
I finagled an internship at METRO magazine when I was almost done with college. I loved news journalism, but magazines had always been more my style. METRO editor Chris Clayton was a kindred spirit – obsessed with Esquire too – and gave me some room to figure out what I wanted to write. I ended up moving into the advertising beat quite a bit, which actually helped me schmooze my way into a job after college.
I decided to interview this artist who makes sculptures that essentially look like people. When we carried it in, people thought we were sneaking a stiff dead body down the elevator, or something equally morbid.
I was an arts intern at the Star Tribune in my last semester of college. I got placed on the theater/classical music beat, which is – admittedly – not my area of expertise. I did get to do some sweet stories on screen printing (which I love) and interview some T.V. personalities. (I also got hassled by Yo Gabba Gabba!’s publicist a lot.)
• Interview with Screen Printer Adam Turman
• An interview with the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Dudes
• What kids really learn from their cartoons
The first time MN Daily co-editor Jay Boller and I went to Pitchfork music festival, it was a bit of a mess. We hadn’t realized key facts like a) you’re supposed to bring a photographer and b) you need to set up your own interviews, not just expect them to happen in the press tent. We ended up writing a more conceptual piece about “the types of people at Pitchfork music fest.” Our boss was displeased. (We made amends the next year.) Luckily, Russ Smith of Baltimore’s Splice Today liked our piece, and invited us to write about, basically, whatever we wanted for his site. We jokingly referred to him as “our new dad” a lot.
• Universal and Invisible – Is anybody speaking Esperanto?
• When Did We Switch from “Indie” to “Hipster?”
• Review of M.I.A.’s /\/\/\Y/\
Somehow in college I convinced a creative travel writing website to let me write for them, despite the fact that I haven’t even been on a real vacation in at least five years.
• Jay Rubin: Translating More than Words – I interviewed the translator of one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami.
This is the first place I ever got published. The alternative alt biweekly paper at the U of M, it was pretty damn cool for having no budget. A lot of the writers and designers went on to do cool shit. I spent a semester as a staff writer.
