Wright Thompson says "Zip it!"

If you want to rip Wright I don't give a shit. But your description of what he wrote doesn't even resemble the story that was written...

 

You mean the "descriptions" inside the quote boxes?

 

When you work at a paper with higher than a 17,000 circulation maybe your opinion will matter a little more...

 

Come on, dude. You're one of the top contributors on here, but you can't say with a straight face that you don't "give a shit" if someone wants to "rip" Wright. Any time one Wright Thompson, Darlington, Maese, etc., etc., are scrutinized on here, you're the first man on board to begin defending them.

All these "young studs" - those guys, Chico Harlan, Thamel, Parrish - they're big boys who can fend for themselves.

 

Never read him before. Read it. Not impressed.

 

If you think the story is overwritten, that's fine... But how anybody can read that story and come to the same conclusion that the person who started this thread did is truly frightening.

 

I think we can agree that there is a big difference between ripping just to rip, and critiquing someone's work, and as far as I'm concerned, Wingman wasn't ripping just to rip. We're having a discussion. And I think it's also worth pointing out that Wright is no longer the young prodigy churning out gold in the relative obscurity of Kansas City. He's a national feature writer now. I think a different standard can be applied to his stuff. We know that he's good, and so we expect really good stories from him. We need to move on from the whole "you suck and you're a tool if you don't like his style" nonsense, the same way we need rise above the various forms of starfucking that sometimes surfaces when his name comes up. He's a big player on a national stage now; we can discuss his work accordingly without calling people a "tool," Mizzou. And your shot at Wingman working at at 17,000 circulation paper is weak. Not to mention, untrue. (Wingman can write circles around you, me, and half this board, by the way.) I work at a big paper with half a million readers. Is it cool if I share my thoughts about stories, for better or worse?

 

I've never seen Wingman mis-represent who he is.

Can't say the same about everyone else around here.

 

How did that take so long? Usually that's your first line of defense...

 

Extremely kind. Not true.

 

The sitting-in-the-driveway motif, though, that could certainly be retired. I think we all can fall into favorite symbolism and should watch ourselves.

Oh, and the shot at someone's newspaper circulation was unwarranted and bush league.

We're all on the same team here - from the cub stringer at the rural weekly to the lead investigative reporter at the New York Times. We ought to act like it more often.

 

I'm not a huge fan of that myself. As I said much earlier on this thread, there's nothing special about the way this story is written, but the news and info that's there is good...

That's kind of the point... As someone else mentioned, this wasn't a feature he had three months to work on...