Orange Magazine is gone.
The paper hit stands a day late this week, because Media General head honchos objected to the word “c*nt” in an article about handbags sold at a site with the word in the name.
I like Mitzi Gordon, Orange’s former editor, very much on a personal level and I think she’s a good writer, too, but I don’t really understand how she thought that word was gonna fly in a paper that shares leadership with the Tampa Tribune. Freelancer Greg Caracci, who could be considered a colleague because we both freelanced for the rag, although we don’t know each other at all, doesn’t really earn too many points in my book for this one, either.
First off, I don’t really care if the proprietor of these handbags is ‘taking the word back’ or whatever she claims. It’s a stupid, offensive word to use if you actually expect your business to grow. If you make dope handbags from high-quality materials, they will sell without you using some idiotically sensational term that, frankly, the bags aren’t going to mainstream, anyway. Karl Lagerfeld hangs out with Lindsay Lohan, for Christ’s sake, and he doesn’t use words like that in his work. Are we gonna see Diane von Furstenburg naming her sexy dresses after vulgar terms because she’s a feminist?
The argument for the pitch and its acceptance is that Orange wanted a college audience, and the use of the word would get people turning the pages, which I understand, but I also understand it as sophomoric. Fashion is supposed to be aspirational and I just don’t think anyone aspires to be a c*nt. (Yes, yes, hit the comments and tell me I’m a c*nt now. Someone wants to, hmm?)
Professional writing shouldn’t be so pretentious that its point can’t stand alone, and the point that should have been made here - oooh, look, pretty handbags made by a feminist - relies on pretending we can all just toss around a word that isn’t professional at all.
I guess the thing that bothers me about all this is its predictability. Let me preface this by saying that I am the only person I know under the age of thirty who makes a seriously decent living off of doing nothing but writing. I know people who write freelance for the love. I know people who have writing-only jobs, but either rely on partners, too, or are broke. I know people who make hot money writing and doing a bunch of other adminstrative or operational tasks, or have night jobs doing completely unrelated things, but writing and doing nothing else for cash and living large is hard. The market is tight and there’s plenty of competition.
So, if you want to write for money, and especially if you want to write for money that comes from a major corporation, you have to write professionally. There are plenty of opportunties to write where you don’t have to act professionally - like, say, your journal, your blog, Tommy’s blog, progressive open mics, fiction workshops - but a weekly that’s subsidized by a major paper isn’t one of them. Experimentation is absolutely necessary for writers to grow in skill. The value of writing just to test out ideas and shape and format and language is incredibly rewarding, but experiment in the appropriate avenues or lose your professional credibility.
Greg’s error was, sadly and simply, a lack of professionalism. Mitzi’s error was accepting that lack of professionalism under the guise of progressiveness. She got a bit suckered by what was essentially Greg’s intellectual pretension, this idea that his creative impulse could override standards of conduct that are pretty obvious to people with jobs. Who knows? Maybe he got suckered, too, by the handbag lady. It’s all very terrible, honestly, because the handbags even sound stupid - handbags are not about feminism - but they felled a freakin’ newspaper, didn’t they?
Or maybe not. Mitzi says she wasn’t told she was fired because of the article, but that no one else will do her job so there’s no more paper (a claim I believe, knowing what her job entailed and her level of income). Perhaps the article was just a red herring to keep everyone’s mind off the fact that the upper management and general philosophy of the company sucked.
Let’s see - the art director is all over MySpace looking for a roommate and a part-time job. This girl isn’t just some intern; she’s the director. What the h*ll are these people getting paid? In addition, most freelancers were always curious as to why checks were so late and so conveniently short so often. That never happened to me freelancing with the other papers in town. Creative issues? Sometimes, but nobody ever f*cked with my money.
Also, I referred probably twelve people to the first ad salesperson at the paper and she never got back to one of them. Distribution was embarrassing - I would walk all over South Tampa and downtown St. Pete and not find a paper. St. Pete locations were up to a week behind. I mean, why did Media General even start the paper if they didn’t care about doing anything with it?
Here’s the rub: Mitzi might have screwed up really badly with this c*nt thing - I’m not really sure, because I only know what she tells me and there could be a lot more or less to it - but the girl was behind this paper’s success all the way. When I produced a section that went above and beyond the expectations of my contract, I negotiated for more money. Guess where the money came from? Her checking account, which she didn’t mention during negotiations at all. When Aaron Edwards didn’t get a very large check anywhere near on time, right before Christmas, guess who fronted him the money? Yup, Mitzi. Sure, you can say she just floated a friend a loan, but you know she felt like he needed to be paid.
The irony of this isn’t lost on me. There is nothing professional about paying freelancers yourself because you don’t have the corporate support to pay for people that create an interesting paper with fresh, edgy content. It’s almost an error of immaturity, but it’s also an act of love and dedication and flat-out interest in a progressive-minded success based on ideals and nothing else.
Worth letting the girl throw in a misguided, nasty word every now and then, I’d say. Worth getting your lazy-ass ad sales people out on the streets, too.
Please feel free to let me know if you need the services of a professional writer, artist or photographer. I now know several who are very good and have no present source of income.
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