And I already lived in Halifax.
Le Nouveau-Yorkais covers the attention paid by an agent at ICM to the Weblog writing talent pool.
- I gather we’re the next Seattle – but who plays Nirvana and who plays the Stone Temple Pilots? (Or Queensrÿche?)
- With such high-profile coverage, rival agencies will now allocate part of one person’s billable hours to scouring Weblogs. (Got to stay competitive.) Since we do a lot of swearing and everybody’s net access at work is monitored anyway, I wonder exactly whose machine will get unblocked from the firewall at Endeavour, for example. (Word to the wise, agents: Mozilla tabs are the only way to go.)
- Now, published writers can spot publishable writers as they pass by on the street, let alone from their online work. But my experience with agencies is an ongoing reiteration of the blandishment “We’re always looking for new writers,” when in fact half the payroll does nothing but devise new and different ways to say no. (Well, or they give you a contract with insane terms like the explicit loss of your droit moral. My lawyer and I said no.)
- How closely are agencies looking? I guess one agency is now looking at one medium, with its thousands of writers, for an hour a day.
- I don’t think talent agencies take seriously the tasks of finding and developing talent. I think talent is plainly evident. It does not particularly need to be “found”; nothing’s been misplaced.
- As Godard put it, actresses have but one task, and that is to be beautiful. Apparently, now that Weblog writers, at work since the late ’90s, have suddenly been noticed, we too have a single task: To write a blog. Some of us do that and write for the rags and write books.
- Is this gonna end up like bimbo J-school grads pushing out seasoned journos? I have pretty good legs already, you know. I already look pretty damned good in make-up, and sure as cold shit in a dead donkey I can read from a prompter.
Sign writers, not bloggers.