A Cool New Future for Literary Journalism?

We’ve discovered our new favorite form of literary journalism—a blend of cartooning and podcasting created by Isaac Littlejohn Eddy, a cartoonist living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It’s a technique he started using earlier this year on the New York Times blog The Local, which caught the attention of the folks at Vintage/Anchor. Now the paperback imprint, a division of Random House, has Eddy interviewing their authors for its Sun and Anchor blog, starting with Iranian political/cultural observer Hooman Majd.

We’d love to see (and hear) more in this vein—and while it’s a fun and innovative way for a publishing company to call attention to the books that it’s putting out, we hope that independent observers will also recognize the potential of this audio/visual format to tell compelling stories about the books and writers they find meaningful. (See also: Ward Sutton‘s cartoons for Barnes & Noble.)

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting this Thursday, February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Michael Brito (Edelman Digital), and Tim Devane (bitly). Register now.