Caleb Hannan's back!

Hamilton Nolan: First-person pieces mostly “offer run of the mill voyeurism tinged with the desperation of attention addiction”

 

I read half of this and I just can't fucking believe Deadspin this piece the way it ran. Can't believe it. This is great material, really, drowning in a style more fitting for, I don't know, a Dave Eggers workshop. Ugh. It's a damn shame. It's like one of those two-star movies that you actually watch until the end and wish didn't have such a showy director behind the camera.

 

He's young, He just needs a good editor.

Sadly, Deadspin failed young Caleb.

 

I thought the piece was interesting. I don't know why it needed at the meta-bullshit about the magazine world. It did leave me wondering if the Dr. V stuff was at all related to Big Magazine's decision to pull the plug on his assignment. I thought that's where we were going with the first person stuff. It seems unlikely that a magazine would hire him to do a freelance assignment, then simply stop returning his emails entirely and stick him with expenses. That's not how freelance assignments work at that level. There's a missing piece here, now that I type it all out.

 

He could have jack hammered diamonds into dust.

 

Wouldn't that be fuct if it *was* a set-up of sorts as punishment for Dr. V? That would be a diabolical punch to the balls.

Granted, he got it published -- you can do much worse than Deadspin. Still.

But I still wonder if he's holding "Big Magazine" up as a shield of bullshit to show everyone he can be victimized too.

I'll get to the story soon enough. Read few hundred words then had to take a piss and forgot about it.

 

Hannan was/is damaged goods.

If he had an actual assignment from Big Magazine, they would have paid his expenses, and wouldn't have stopped returning his emails.

He pitched them. They showed some interest. They probably suggested he travel to Dallas to get some more for the story.

That doesn't mean they bought the pitch. It means there was a chance they would buy it if was worth it.

And, Hannan was desperate to get published in Big Magazine. It would mean he was back. It would validate his decision to never apologize to anyone for the Dr. V story, and to never answer any questions about it.

So, he flew to Dallas on his own dime, convinced that Big Magazine would buy his story.

It's understandable. He's young.

If everyone who had told me they were going to do business with me had, I'd be retired by now. Until you have a purchase order, a contract, or a check in hand, the deal isn't done.

It's a good life lesson for young Caleb.

 

Good points, but we live in a world where people don't forget things like Dr. V's suicide and the guy who wrote about her and may have led to her to suicide -- then didn't apologize.

It's a good life lesson for young Caleb (if that's how it went down*).

* doesn't mean I think it went down like that, or even wish for that kind of Schadenfreude. It's just an interesting sort of comeback.

 

Deadspin ostensibly bought a piece from me a couple years ago, then never ran it, never paid me, and stopped returning my emails.

So did a Big Newspaper, just a few months ago. (A big, big, big newspaper.) That was just a two phone call story, on spec, but they said they wanted it, it broke some news, I pulled it from other places by their request, and then ... silence. Never ran. Never paid.

 

In regards to the actual story, I don't think it was worth all the text it used. What did I ultimately learn? Deion is more media persona than person at this point. He had no idea what he was doing when building a school. Texas high school football is fucked.

I've never had a very high opinion of Deion and all this did was confirm it.

Really, the only reason I read it was because of who wrote it. I wanted to see what his follow-up to the Dr. V story would be. Not impressed.

 

Caleb sure loves a story that starts out as one thing, but turns into something else:



But, at least we got this out of him in regards to the Dr. V story:

 

Young Caleb likes to block people on Twitter. Sweet boy.