15 minutes, continued

I may live in the wilds of Wales, but internet connectivity came through for me big time today. It started with email from Jane Yolen, alerting me to the fact that the article about the SFFY Hugo win is in today's Springfield Republican. Reporter John Appleton interviewed me over the phone in late November, and I'd been checking the "Metro East Plus" section in the Wednesday paper ever since. In late December, I started to think that maybe the article hadn't made the cut. Then a trip to the Wales Post Office set me straight. Jan told me the feature article about her installation as the new Postmaster didn't appear until a couple of months after the ceremony. Okay.

Jane didn't mention that I was the lead article in the community news supplement. That made for a delightful surprise when I picked up the paper at the IGA grocery store in Monson. Thanks to Jane's email, the 5-mile drive to the store was fun. I knew the article was in the paper, and that it was reasonably good. As Jane said, "Nice job. They didn't talk about beanies or pointed ears!"

During the drive, I wondered whether the article included benveniste's photo. Yes, it did! Alas, they didn't run the photo credit I gave them along with the photo. That's my only significant grump. Well, that, and I wish they'd included fellow co-editor fringfaan's name. At least they made it clear I was a co-winner of the award.

It's easy to forgive them for leaving the hyphens out of the title of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly -- within fandom, no; the hyphens belong there. But outside fandom, no sweat. Overall, I think the reporter did an excellent job distilling our chatty conversation into a clear, coherent article. And I'm thankful for the business plug, too.

Back on the internet front, I send thanks to kevin_standlee for posting the link to the online version of the article. I stopped by LiveJournal on my way to the Republican's website to see if the article was online. I didn't think it would be -- I hadn't found any Metro East Plus links during previous visits to the site. I probably wouldn't have found anything this time, either, if not for Kevin's link.

Randy and I have really lucked out on the media front. Not only did the SFFY win draw more media attention than I'm used to seeing for the fan Hugo categories, the resulting coverage has been uniformly good. In addition to this article and the Upside Down Show cable TV appearance, Randy was featured in two truly excellent articles - the first in the University of Washington faculty and staff newspaper, followed a week later by an article in the student newspaper. Randy gives good interview -- both of his articles include a lot more specifics about fanzines, the Worldcon, and the Hugo itself. And they got the hyphens right, too!

For background, here's Randy's post about the UWeek interview, and then another post when the article appeared. Followed by his post when the student newspaper article appeared.

There! It's good to have all of these links in one place. Now I'm off to Sturbridge in the hope that there are still a few more copies of the newspaper to be found. One to send to my dad, my sister, Gary Hoffman, for benveniste's clipping file, to post on the non-existent brag board at the NESFA Clubhouse, etc....

Hey, fringefaan, I'll send you mine if you'll send me yours. It's nice having the links, but hard copy is better. Just like the fanzine itself, eh?