NOSTALGIA SETS IN

Getting Misty-Eyed Over Dave Eggers' Newspaper Experiment

By Elizabeth C.

I'm a little queasy because what of I'm about to do: I'm fanwhoring.

This web isn't called Crabby Golightly for nothing. DNA prevents me from displaying blithe optimism even though I desperately want to believe in something.

Yet every day another celebrity, another public figure is revealed to be scuzzier than the public could conceive.

Everybody's self-serving. Nobody means what they say anymore. Nobody says what they mean. The art of deception is a six-figure job that shrinks the souls but boosts the bottom line.

I'm rambling so let me get to my point:

I found a new hero!

Literary wonderboy Dave Eggers has published a newspaper! Oh where's the fucking xanax my heart be still!

The bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius and What Is The What, founder of the literary magazine McSweeney’s, a “"national conspiracy to teach American kids to write", co- screenwriter of Where The Wild Things Are -- has published a broadsheet! That’s newspaper lingo for the oversized papers decreasingly being delivered to our doors.

Though the paper's life span is exactly one edition, the LA Times reports that “300-plus-page Sunday-style broadsheet newspaper called the San Francisco Panorama …[is meant] to celebrate the glory of the form. Featuring news and sports as well as stand-alone food and arts sections, a magazine and a 96-page pullout Book Review, the Panorama is both homage and conversation starter.”

”When people sit down, they want to have an experience, ‘’ the paper quotes Eggers who studied journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “And if you surprise them on every page, curate it in such a way that it's constantly surprising and constantly delighting, I think you could keep them."

As newspapers crumble around us, Eggers’ got the visionary whimsy to publish an experiment with a limited run of 25,000 copies.

“We admit how little we know, but we're trying to luxuriate in print and maybe remind people of everything it can do," he told the Times.

It’s nice to know that someone still is reaching for something almightier than the dollar.