Intrepid, Kansas City-based journalist J. Malcolm Garcia got a name check in an Onion A.V. Club interview with writer and publisher Dave Eggers.
Garica, the author of a recent feature story in The Pitch, contributed to Panorama, the print-journalism extravaganza that hit the streets of San Francisco last month. The 320-page broadsheet represents Eggers' belief in and hope for newspapers.
Panorama published a piece Garcia reported while in Afghanistan during the 2009 presidential election. Garcia has made several visits to Afghanistan since 9/11. His experiences are collected in the book The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul.
A review of Panorama said Garcia's diary from Kabul "seemed particularly timely and full of short, crisp sentences that moved the piece right along."
Eggers pointed to Garcia's dispatch as an example of what's
available to editors if they're willing to look beyond the cache of
wire-service stories. "[W]e knew a guy going to Afghanistan, J. Malcolm
Garcia, and we said, 'Okay, send us something when you're done.' And he
sent us something, and it doesn't even cost that much, because he was
going anyway," Eggers told The Onion.
Eggers' comments about Garcia's toil coming cheap elicited a grumpy reaction from Brooklyn-based writer Edward Champion. In a blog entry posted Tuesday, Champion criticized Eggers for showing an apparent lack of interest in paying writers.
Garcia's work -- the substance of his investigations, the time he took in reporting -- can be undervalued because he just happened to be in the region. This is a bit like asking a doctor to cut his rates because "he happens to be in the hospital" or asking your next door neighbor to perform professional services because "he happens to live next door."
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