A Report on
Popular Culture: MISCmedia, Web site review by Abbie
Jarman
For nearly 20 years, Clark Humphrey has been soaking up Seattle’s
cultural mix, digesting the city and placing a mirror up to its
face. He began writing a column in the tabloid Artsfocus in 1989,
and later in Seattle’s leading alternative weekly The Stranger.
After The Stranger axed Humphrey’s column in ’98, he decided to
carry himself, turning MISCmedia into a newspaper and
a Web site that is in perpetual update. MISCmedia.com is a text
photo of Seattle life — reporting on the Rolling Thunder Down Home
Democracy Tour’s stop through town, the takeover of corporate radio
and its impact on Seattle’s stations, and Humphrey’s dismal tryouts
for Who Wants to be a Millionaire? all in one scroll. The site also
features fiction, longer essays, tributes and rants, and briefs on
new films, books, and music in a space only the Web can hold. In
short, MiscMedia is definitely miscellaneous. ‘We believe Seattle
needs a journal of sharp commentary, wry humor, arts, and ideas,’
states the Web site’s Policies. ‘We’re trying to be professional,
but not corporate, neither hippie nor Republican; for people with
lives, not just lifestyles. We believe politics is a subset of
culture, not the other way around.’
–Abbie Jarman
Go
there>>
