But perhaps the Bulletin is merely on-trend-or even ahead of its time. The Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics have made names and money by sifting through RSS feeds; Tina Brown and Barry Diller are preparing the launch of their own news aggregator. Mike Ladyman and company may simply be bringing guerilla-style 21st-century content aggregation to 20th-century print media: publishing the Napster of newspapers.

Yeah and Margaret B. Jones is the new kind of gangster…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

John Minervini digs a little deeper into the pre-publication life of Peggy Seltzer, aka Margaret B. Jones, for Willamette Week. He moved in on the eco-activist tip that Kevin Allman had uncovered.

Seltzer was supposed to be the spokesperson for the movement to free Jeff “Free” Luers, but she wasn’t exactly a wow. A nameless source said:

Her involvement basically consisted of manipulating people, lying, pitting people against each other, taking on more responsibility than she should have and then dropping the ball on everything completely.

There’s so much more to this story than her tawdry little memoir. Wouldn’t it be great if some investigative reporter took a look?

Earlier:
Peggy Seltzer/Maragaret B. Jones

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Lies and Consequences: Scott Timberg and Josh Getlin jump on the Margaret B. Jones story, pointing out that, really, the lily-white New York publishing world is kinda asking to be taken for a ride.

Why Is This Blog Different From All Other Blogs? Someone check Richard Rushfield’s wrists for a red bracelet. The Idol Tracker scrutinizes American Idol with a Talmudic intensity — and we don’t mean that metaphorically. Invoking the Book of Life, bar mitzvahs and Chosen People, the scribe might be taking his gig a bit too seriously. Dude, you write about a game show.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

She’s really Campbell Hall grad Peggy Seltzer. Campbell Hall is the Olson Twins’ alma mater. And her sister ratted her out:

Ms. Seltzer’s story started unraveling last Thursday after she was profiled in the House & Home section of The New York Times. The article appeared alongside a photograph of Ms. Seltzer and her 8-year-old daughter, Rya. Ms. Seltzer’s older sister, Cyndi Hoffman, saw the article and called Riverhead to tell editors that Ms. Seltzer’s story was untrue.

Peggy Seltzer is thanked in the forward of Inga Muscio’s Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil: My Life and Times in a Racist, Imperialist Society:

Peggy Seltzer, my platonic soulmate. I thank you for inviting me into your heart, for giving me books and music and laughter when I didn’t feel like there were any words or songs or happiness.

Her website lists the book as forthcoming No Child Left Behind: A South Sentral Story by Peggy Seltzer.

Muscio was introduced to Seltzer through a professor, and then set her up with her literary agent, Faye Bender, who got the book accepted by Sarah McGrath, then at Scribner, a unit of Simon & Schuster. When McGrath (whose father was editor of the New York Times Book Review) moved to Riverhead, the book and author went with her. (Yes, Riverhead was James Frey’s publisher. So, they’re stupid trusting.)

All this begs the question–who knew that the book was fiction and when did they know it? Did it not look salable as fiction and was repackaged as a memoir?

Riverhead/Penguin’s recalling the book.

And Peggy Seltzer–could be a different one–is also thanked in another book by an Oregon prof, Gordon Sayre in The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero: Native Resistance and the Literatures of Literatures of America, from Moctezuma to Tecumseh:

and Peggy Seltzer of the Quinault nation alerted me to the annual ride of the Sioux and inspired my teaching of Native American literature at Oregon.

What a busy girl.

Earlier:
Margaret B. Jones: South Central Memoirist

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Margaret B. Jones rates two NY Times pieces

about her memoir of life as a foster child in South Central, Love and Consequences.

Mimi Read’s piece, in the Home and Garden section, and is called A Refugee from Gangland, which is odd, because Jones doesn’t portray herself as a refugee. And “gangland” seems to be sort of where you find it:

The first time my o. g. visited me here–meaning original gangster, the gang’s leader–he slept 20 hours straight. In L.A. your anxiety is so high you sleep three hours a night.

That visitor, whom Rya calls Uncle Madd Ronald, is now in prison in California. The ways Ms. Jones and her daughter responded to the news reflected their vastly different childhoods. “Rya was just shattered,” Ms. Jones said. “I told her, don’t worry about it, he didn’t do anything bad. He just got caught up selling drugs.”

Read could have asked Jones if she knew Billy Ray Hines, but asks about her slipcovers, instead.

Michiko Kakutani’s book review is less worshipfully patronizing of the author, while still praising the book.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

]]> Kate http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/margaret-b-jones-south-central-memoirist_b5841#disqus_thread http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/margaret-b-jones-south-central-memoirist_b5841 http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlla/margaret-b-jones-south-central-memoirist_b5841 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:24:36 +0000