Wondering about Jayson Musson‘s column Black Like Me in the Weekly? Well, we were too. Yesterday we got this missive from Jayson explaining that the column’s on hiatus from the Weekly (newspaper woes, they’re all over the place–they cut the art page this week due to lack of space (ie lack of advertising revenue) and last week they cut the theatre page for the same reason. The Metro’s had some staff cutbacks and the Inquirer/Daily News owners are threatening new layoffs….sheesh, a dying industry.
Never fear: Jayson’s gone blogging with his column! He’s on Max Lawrence‘s Free News Projects blog, that’s Free News Projects Blog…and he’ll have a book of his columns out this spring or summer! Here’s Jayson’s missive as only he could have written it. artblog loves Jayson!
Recently, I’ve run into many folks who ask me about my column, Black Like Me, that used to appear in the Philadelphia Weekly. “Where the fuck is Black Like Me?” they say, or “How come you don’t write for the Philly Weekly anymore?” and my personal favorite “Your column was the only reason I picked up that paper.” I’m really flattered by the love from all you readers, I really never thought BLM had that many fans, but you all seem to be out there. I’ve been surprised to find readers of BLM in almost every city i’ve been to while traveling with Plastic Little.
The reason for the disappearance of Black Like Me is that the Philadelphia Weekly, like many US newspapers, has been diminishing in volume over the past year. The reason most likely being that less and less folks are getting their news from periodicals. And sadly, the Weekly shares in this fate. Numerous features have been cut from the paper while the editorial staff has had to adjust under the duress of the newer and much thinner landscape of the paper. Black Like Me was never axed from the Weekly, it was just put on hiatus while my editor worked to figure things out.
But you know, not having the column appear for about 8 weeks really bummed me out, so I’ve recently decided to continue the column on the internet at the Free News Projects Blog. Fuck a bunch of hiatus.
What does having the column on the internet mean? It pretty much means longer rants and more grammar and spelling missteaks son! So, y’know, I hope you continue reading Black Like Me on the Free News Projects Blog. A new column will be published either once a week or once every two weeks, alternating with artist and musician ‘interviews’ that I’ll be doing for the blog as well.
The Free News blog will also have Derek Ihnat as a contributor. Derek has been a regular contributor to Fecal Face and Juxtapose.com as well as curated some pretty awesome exhibitions here in Philadelphia with his Art Syndicate outfit. I’m psyched to have him on board on this fledgling glob, i mean blog. And as time passes we’ll add more contributors.
Also! I’ll be putting out a book of all the Philadelphia Weekly Black Like Me columns from 2007 sometime in the spring or summer of 2008. I’ll keep you all posted. Thanks for the support, dawgs.
So uhm, yeah, www.freenewsprojects.blogspot.com.
Take Care.
-Jayson
