(Don’t worry. This will be the last time I put my face on this website.)
The thing I miss most about working in journalism on any regular basis is the interviews. Since working for my college newspaper, I always did my best to excel in feature stories, always shooting for choice quotes and unique facts.
When I was writing for trade publications, my go-to stanard was The Comics Journal in the late eighties and all throughout the 90’s. That was the era that saw the first rise of comic book movies, Image Comics and the market glut that eventually caused the industry to collapse. Editors Gary Groth, Kim Thompson Tom Spurgeon and others gave their readers insightful and sometimes confrontational interviews that put creators and industry standards under a microscope that seems unmatched especially in today’s mainstream journalism.
The fact that I’ve never been all that abrasive is probably the best and worst thing about my interview style.
In decades prior, I got to do some TCJ style Q and A pieces for zines like The Comics Interpreter, feature-style pieces on cartoonists and zinester artists for Lollipop, and even more newsy pieces for local Boston periodicals like Shovel, The Weekly Dig and Whats Up. I always wanted to do more.
Unfortunatley, it’s hard for me to even keep up with journals I help publish. Oddball Spotlight was a thing for a hot minute, but with everything else I do, I can’t maintain a regular weekly schedule for my interviews, and it’s not fair to use Oddball Magazine to force myself in when there are other contributors who can do the work faster.
And by the way, would you be interested in doing interviews for the currently defunct Oddball Spotlight? Let me know. We have a Thursday time slot just waiting for you.
So now we have Chad Wants to Know. It will come out when I can put it out. It will feature people I know and hopefully a few people I don’t. I want to enjoy myself and also present something new.
I want to interview more poets. I also want to interiew more cartoonists. And everyone in between.
If you’re someone who would want to participate, let me know by emailing chadpoetforhire@yahoo.com and I will send you a set of questions to answer.
In the future, I’ll try to incorporate live interviews to transcribe just for the fun of it.
And since this is Substack, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I’ll just say nazis f***k off. I don’t want to communicate with you.
The first interview will be coming. Until then, subscribe to this Substack if you haven’t already and enjoy some upcoming reposts of old interviews.