Ken Layne

Ken Layne

Ken Layne at 92YTribeca in New York, November 2012
Born United States
Occupation Writer, journalist, blogger

Ken Layne is an American writer and novelist best known for his political coverage, essays and blogging for Gawker, Wonkette, The Awl, and many early Internet blogs and webzines.[1] Layne is editor of the Desert Oracle, a quarterly periodical focused on the folklore and natural history of the American deserts.[2]

Career

Layne has described his career as consisting of "Local newspapers, domestic and foreign radio stations, consumer computer guides, television newsrooms, glossy progressive magazines, the cartoon page of college newspapers, Washington wire service desks, expatriate post-Iron Curtain tabloids, sporadic appearances in respectable media, occasional musical endeavors, a few forays into traditional book publishing and a long chain of oddball news and satire websites—that's how I've barely earned a living over the decades."[3] Layne began his career in local television news and daily newspapers in Southern California.[4][5] He relocated to Prague in the early 1990s and was a staff writer and Slovakia bureau chief for Prognosis, the English-language newspaper, where he covered the Velvet Divorce that broke up Czechoslovakia.[6] Layne was editor of ComputorEdge magazine in the middle 1990s, technology columnist for the Budapest Business Journal, and new-media columnist for the USC Annenberg School for Communication publication, Online Journalism Review.[7] In 1997, he co-founded Tabloid.net, a popular early Internet daily newspaper.[8][9] Despite "safe for work" articles and columns about topical events, the site was extremely controversial.[10] It closed for business in approximately 2000, and included future-Reason Magazine editor Matt Welch and future The Daily Show With Jon Stewart writer Jason Ross (writer) among its staff writers.[11] He was a staff columnist for GettingIt.com under editor R.U. Sirius.[12] In the early 2000s and especially following the 9/11 incidents, Layne was a prominent blogger.[13][14] An off-hand remark he made about bloggers "fact checking" newspapers became a rallying cry.[15] In 2005, Layne and then-Gawker editor Choire Sicha launched the tabloid-style headlines site Sploid for Gawker Media.[16]

Wonkette

Layne joined Alex Pareene as co-editor of the satirical politics blog Wonkette in August 2006. Layne became sole editor after Pareene left the site a year later.[17] Pareene has described Layne as "the world's best political blogger who hates politics and doesn't want to be a political blogger."[18] Gawker Media sold Wonkette in 2008; Layne was among the buyers. He remained with the site for six years, until it was acquired by Rebecca Schoenkopf.[19][20]

LA Examiner

Between 2001 and 2003, Layne and Matt Welch were the founding editors of LA Examiner, an early metropolitan media blog focusing on the media in Los Angeles.[21] In 2003, former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan published his prototype of a weekly print version of the online newspaper, with Layne as editor.[22][23]

The Awl and Gawker

As a staff writer for The Awl and national correspondent[24] for Gawker, Layne writes primarily satirical pieces about politics and American culture, including his "American Almanac" series on U.S. holidays.[25]

Controversies

Worst Person in the World

For his remarks on then-MSNBC host Keith Olbermann skipping his MSNBC broadcast for several weeks, Olbermann declared Layne to be the "Worst Person in the World" on[26][27]

Sarah Palin controversy

Wonkette was the first national publication to regularly feature Sarah Palin after her election as Alaska's governor in 2006, and gave her the nickname "America's Hottest Governor" in December 2006, a nickname then adopted by Alaska Magazine for its 2008 cover story on Palin.[28][29] But the liberal site caused a backlash and threat of boycott by Palin's supporters in 2011, when writer Jack Steuf posted a collection of Louis C.K. standup comedy videos from YouTube criticizing Palin for using her Down Syndrome child as a "political prop" and calling her child "retarded.".[30] The Louis C.K. videos were quickly removed from YouTube, and wrath was directed at Jack Steuf and Wonkette. Layne claimed he was off work when the post was published, but he was slow to remove the offensive post claiming there was "no point" in deleting articles from the Internet when foes would immediately repost the articles on other websites.[31]

Books

Layne wrote the short novel Dignity during his last year at Wonkette.[32] The book deals with "the worst of the late-2000s bursting housing bubble and takes place in a future eerily close to the present."[33] Layne is also the author of a satiric thriller published by Duffy & Snellgrove in 2001, called Dot.con.[34] It was reported by the New York Observer in 2008 that Harper Collins had signed Layne to write a non-fiction book about the California coast, but no book by Layne on that subject has appeared.[35]

Personal life

Layne apparently lives in or near Mojave National Preserve in the Mojave Desert, and was photographed by the Los Angeles Times at the site of a Christian cross that had been illegally installed on a mountain within the U.S. national park.[36] The Mojave Desert is the setting for much of the novel "Dignity" and was the subject of Layne's column for LA CityBeat from 2008 to 2009, called "Desert Rattler."[37]

References

  1. ↑ Interview: Ken Layne, I Want Media, Jan 5, 2001
  2. ↑
  3. ↑ Interview with Ken Layne, by Joshua Goldfond, The Oculus, March 12, 2012
  4. ↑ Killer Cops And Newspaper Wars On The California Coast, Ken Layne, The Awl, April 17, 2013
  5. ↑ I Was a Teenaged Anchorman, Ken Layne, The Awl, April 17, 2013
  6. ↑ Severed States: Dilemmas of Democracy in a Divided World, Robert K. Schaeffer, ISBN 978-0-8476-9334-4
  7. ↑ MediaTalk: An Accusation of Online Plagiarism by Felicity Barringer, The New York Times, September 3, 2001
  8. ↑ [http://www.archive.today/PXzo#selection-423.1-423.60 This Is No Gutless Interview:A Q&A with TABLOID's Ken Layne] by Jordan Rapheal, Online Journalism Review, March 1, 1998
  9. ↑ The first internet tabloid from Ken Layne Nick Denton, March 18, 2013
  10. ↑ Network to Tabloid: Drop Ads, by Brooke Shelby Biggs, Salon, October 5, 1998
  11. ↑ An Internet Tabloid In The Time Of Comets And Mass Suicide, by Ken Layne, The Awl, March 18, 2013
  12. ↑ GettingIt.com
  13. ↑ A Blogger Manifesto, by Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times of London, February 24, 2002
  14. ↑ A Rift Among Bloggers, by David F. Gallagher, The New York Times, June 10, 2002
  15. ↑ Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg, Crown Books, 2009, ISBN 978-0-307-45138-5
  16. ↑ In Praise of Sploid, David Wallace Wells, Slate, April 8, 2005
  17. ↑ Media Moves: Gawker's New Politics Hire Leaving Previously Gawker-Owned Wonkette; True/Slant Sale Looking Somewhat Stale, by Foster Kamer, The Village Voice, May 25, 2010
  18. ↑ The Alex Pareene Interview, Zulkey.com, August 12, 2011
  19. ↑ "Commie Girl" Rebecca Schoenkopf Promises a "Jollier" Wonkette by Alan Scherstuhl, SF Weekly, March 2, 2012
  20. ↑ Commie Girl is the New Wonkette, Fishbowl NY, March 2, 2012
  21. ↑ Ken Layne Recalls the Enterprise Known as LAExaminer.com, By Richard Horgan, Fishbowl LA Mediabistro.com, April 3, 2013
  22. ↑ Richard Riordan#The Los Angeles Examiner
  23. ↑ In L.A., a new tabloid from its ex-mayor, by Daniel Wood, Christian Science Monitor, January 30, 2003
  24. ↑ The Best Gawker Posts of 2013
  25. ↑ Ken Layne's American Almanac, Gawker.com
  26. ↑ MSNBC Countdown With Keith Olbermann, May 19, 2009.
  27. ↑ Keith Olbermann's Ego Trumps the Truth by Gabriel Sherman, Gawker.com, May 14, 2009
  28. ↑ Alaska pedigree propels Palin to Republican VP pick, Reuters, August 29, 2008
  29. ↑ Wolf whistles for Palin pulling Alaska politics out of the cold, by Beth Bragg, Anchorage Daily News, December 10, 2006
  30. ↑ Leave the Kids Alone, Breitbart.com, September 9, 2010
  31. ↑ Wonkette Deletes Controversial Trig Palin Post, by Dylan Byers, AdWeek, April 21, 2011
  32. ↑ Ken Layne's Modest Utopia, KCET, August 3, 2011
  33. ↑ Ghost Town Apostle, by Jeffrey Eaton], Open Letters Monthly, May 1, 2012
  34. ↑ Dot-Con, National Library of Australia
  35. ↑ Wonkette's Ken Layne Signs With HarperStudio for Book on California, by Leon Neyfakh, New York Observer, 07/02/09
  36. ↑ Lost Symbol, Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2012
  37. ↑ Ken Layne's Desert Rattler, by Daniel Chamberlin, Into the Green, September 27, 2008
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