AAN News
OC Weekly Debunks Claim That it Practices Payolanew
"We don't praise restaurants simply because they buy ads, even though our very nice ad reps constantly leave menus on my desk insinuating I should review their clients and even though I've had many run-ins with corporate over the years because of the type of restaurants I review," Weekly staff writer Gustavo Arellano writes in response to one restauranteur's charge that the paper "gives great reviews for people who advertise." Arellano pulls out the statistics to prove his point. "According to records given to me by the Weekly's advertising department of every restaurant that advertised in our rag in 2008, only three restaurants of the 51 that I reviewed last year ever bothered to place an ad."
OC Weekly |
01-22-2009 9:10 am |
Industry News
How I Got That Story: Gustavo Arellano
In the sixth installment of this year's "How I Got That Story" series, OC Weekly staffer and ¡Ask a Mexican! columnist Gustavo Arellano discusses his column, which for the second time in three years won a first-place AltWeekly Award. He also talks to Elena Brown about getting hate mail, the immigration debate, and what he likes about writing for alt-weeklies. "At a daily newspaper, they ask you to do one thing and one thing only. I'd get so bored so fast I'd quit my job," Arellano says. "Here, I could write about anything, so long as it's good. That freedom is so intoxicating I can't see why anybody would not want a job like mine."
(FULL STORY)
AAN News |
10-07-2008 12:53 pm |
Association News
Four New Alt-Weekly-Related Books Hit the Shelves
OC Weekly staff writer and ¡Ask a Mexican! columnist Gustavo Arellano's second book is due to be released on Sept. 16. Orange County: A Personal History is a memoir that examines the history of Orange County as seen through four generations of his family moving back and forth between Mexico and Anaheim. Ed Zotti, longtime editor of the syndicated Straight Dope column, also has a new memoir, which was released this week. His The Barn House: Confessions of an Urban Rehabber is a "memoir about fixing up an old house in the city and pursuing the urban version of the American Dream." Check out an excerpt on the Chicago Reader's site. Another memoir on the horizon is Prince Joe Henry's Princoirs. Henry is the longtime author of the "Ask a Negro Leaguer" column in the Riverfront Times, and the book is an extension of the column. If you're not into memoirs, some of Seattle Weekly cartoonist Scott Meyer's "Basic Instructions" comic strips have been collected in the new Help Is on the Way: A Collection of Basic Instructions, which was released this week.
AAN News |
09-05-2008 8:08 am |
Industry News
Writers Workshop Program Announcednew
Gustavo Arellano will headline an exciting weekend of education and inspiration when AAN's annual writers workshop descends on the leafy campus of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern Univ. in Evanston, Ill. on Aug. 15-16. Writers who register by Aug. 1 will be able to participate in a personal writing critique, during which their work will be analyzed by a small group led by an experienced AAN editor.
AAN |
07-14-2008 5:36 pm |
Association News
Tags: Editorial, Gustavo Arellano
Gustavo Arellano Honored by California's Latino Legislative Caucusnew
On Monday, the OC Weekly staffer and ¡Ask a Mexican! author received a Latino Spirit Award from the caucus. The award honors Latinos who have made a positive contribution to the state. "Why did I receive the award? Blame Hector de la Torre," Arellano says of the assemblyman who nominated him for the honor. At the ceremony, de la Torre "read some questions to and answers from The Mexican," according to Sacramento News & Review editor Matt Coker's report. "In an attempt to show the column is not frivilous [sic], de la Torre gave an example of the historial research that goes into Arellano's answers," using a column on "gringos vs. gabachos" as an example.
OC Weekly | Sacramento News & Review |
05-08-2008 1:10 pm |
Honors & Achievements
¡Ask a Mexican! As Extinct as Kudzunew
"To paraphrase a paraphrase of Mark Twain, reports of my deportation have been greatly exaggerated," writes Gustavo Arellano in a blog entry. "I know I announced last Thursday that I was ending my ¡Ask a Mexican! column, but few people seemingly bothered to read the line where I stated my self-deportation was 'effective the feast day of St. Melito,' which happens to fall today. April Fools'!"
OC Weekly |
04-01-2008 12:05 pm |
Industry News
¡Ask a Mexican! Bids Adiosnew
"It's been a great run, cabrones, but all the hateful email, the attacks by PC pendejos and the fact that few of you have bothered to submit video questions to my YouTube channel wear on a guy," writes OC Weekly scribe Gustavo Arellano in this week's farewell column. The four-year-old award-winning column had also spawned a book, and caused many a stir in communities around the country when alt-weeklies began running it. Arellano, who is hosting the AltWeekly Awards luncheon at this year's AAN convention, says his work busting stereotypes and tweaking racial prejudices is largely done. "It's no longer necessary to explain Mexicans to Americans because Mexicans are Americans," he writes.
OC Weekly |
03-28-2008 8:33 am |
Industry News
¡Ask a Mexican! Causes a Stir in Eugenenew
Much like when it started running Savage Love, Eugene Weekly's decision to run Gustavo Arellano's syndicated column has been greeted with some opposition: letters to the editor have called the OC Weekly staffer "racist," while leaders of the local Latino community have pressed the paper to drop the column. KEZI-TV hits the streets, finds folks "outraged" over ¡Ask a Mexican! and wonders "What's next: 'Ask an Asian'"? "It's even better than that," Arellano writes on the OC Weekly blog, "it's 'Ask a Korean!', and it's pinche brilliant."
KEZI-TV |
12-04-2007 8:49 am |
Industry News
Gustavo Arellano Honored by National Hispanic Media Coalitionnew
The group, which works to "improve the image of American Latinos as portrayed by the media," presented the OC Weekly writer and "Ask a Mexican!" columnist with an Impact Award for Excellence in Print Journalism. Awards were presented at a luncheon last Thursday.
OC Weekly |
09-17-2007 7:46 am |
Honors & Achievements
Proposed 'Ask an Eskimo' Column Causes a Stir in Alaskanew
As a newcomer to the state, new Anchorage Press publisher Bingo Barnes thought that a column modeled after Gustavo Arellano's syndicated "Ask a Mexican!," written by an Alaska Native writer, could work at the paper. Apparently, the former Boise Weekly owner and publisher was wrong. He posted the ad on Craigslist and then went on a week's vacation. "I anticipated some resistance to the idea, but I mainly expected to hear from candidates interested in writing such a column," Barnes writes. "Upon my return to the digital world, I was shocked to see what chaos I had unleashed." The Press no longer has any plans to run an "Ask an Eskimo" column.
MORE: Check out the local TV news reaction:
MORE: Check out the local TV news reaction:
Anchorage Press |
09-10-2007 10:09 am |
Industry News
Matt Coker: Gustavo Arellano's Fame 'Doesn't Surprise Me a Lick'new
The former executive editor of OC Weekly recalls the days when, helped along by a 2002 AAN Diversity Grant, the man who'd become "The Mexican" got his start at the Weekly. "'That kid is going to be more famous than any of us some day,'" Coker, who now edits Sacramento News & Review, remembers thinking. "What did surprise me was how quickly some day came." He says Arellano's transition to "national media spokesman on all-things-Latino" was partly a function of timing ("¡Ask a Mexican!" started getting more attention as the immigration debate heated up), but also
of "a lot of shameless self promotion. Not only is Arellano the most shameless of the shameless self promoters I have ever known in this business, he also is the most self-aware of his own shamelessness, which I find kind of cute." Apparently, not everyone at OC Weekly agreed with Coker: he reports that there was plenty of jealousy of Arellano's fame -- and his six-figure book deal -- in the newsroom as well.
Sacramento News & Review |
07-20-2007 3:42 pm |
Industry News
Swaim: Minor Clarification on The Nation's LA Weekly Piece
In a letter to AAN News, ex-OC Weekly editor Will Swaim maintains that The Nation's "[Jon] Wiener did a fine job" conveying the paper's "loss ... of independence" under Village Voice Media, but claims that Wiener got at least one thing wrong. "[The article reports that] I told Jon Wiener that OC Weekly's film coverage was run out of Denver. I didn't say that," writes Swaim, now the publisher of Long Beach alt-weekly The District. MORE: In a letter to The Nation published on the OC Weekly blog, Gustavo Arellano says that "many of the overarching conclusions" reached by Wiener in the piece "are ludicrous."
(FULL STORY)
AAN News |
07-10-2007 8:36 am |
Letters to the Editor
¡Ask a Mexican! Author Talks Books, Mexicansnew
Gustavo Arellano tells the New York Times that his dream is to host an hour-long radio program about The Simpsons. The Times also reports that OC Weekly writer's second book, which will be part memoir and part Orange County history, is forthcoming. (His first was a collection of ¡Ask a Mexican! columns.) For the two-book deal, he received an advance in "the mid-six figures," which he used to buy a decidedly un-Mexican automobile, a 1974 Cadillac convertible. "The Mexican thing would be to buy a humongous truck," he says.
The New York Times |
06-26-2007 12:25 pm |
Industry News
Phone Card Company Swipes ¡Ask a Mexican! Logonew
Total Call International's La Mejor Mexico long-distance phone card features a character whose face is clearly taken from the syndicated column's logo, created by artist Mark Dancey. "No one had asked me or Village Voice Media (the cabrones who own the copyright to the ¡Ask a Mexican! column and logo, as well as my second-born son) for permission to use the image," writes ¡Ask a Mexican! author Gustavo Arellano. A Total Call representative tells Arellano that a designer found the logo while looking for stock art through a Google search, and that the company will recall the 10,000 phone cards that haven't yet been sold.
OC Weekly |
06-01-2007 8:08 am |
Industry News
Why Aren't More Latinos Working at Alt-Weeklies?new
"Latino journalists unfortunately fall quickly to the lure of the supposed glory of a daily byline," reasons OC Weekly reporter and ¡Ask a Mexican! columnist Gustavo Arellano. He tells the Rocky Mountain Chronicle that many Latinos stay away from alt-weeklies' low pay and often controversial positions and opt for "the security of a daily." Even so, he says there are "very, very few Latino journalists in mainstream media." In the sprawling Q&A with Vanessa Martinez, Arellano also touches on his forthcoming ¡Ask a Mexican! book, right-wing talk radio, and getting kicked off MySpace.
Rocky Mountain Chronicle |
04-30-2007 1:02 pm |
Industry News
