In a media culture overrun by blow-dried anchor monsters, gaseous pundits, and editors and producers whose primary ideology is market research, Michael Rozek and his defiant little magazine stand out in magnificent and idiosyncratic contrast.
Rozek is the founder, editor, publisher, marketing director, and sole writer for a radically different kind of publication called Rozek's. He's a 40-year-old Christian conservative who lives in Seattle and has written many articles for national magazines (including Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone and The New York Times Magazine) while stridently condemning nearly all of them and the culture they typify as valueless, élitist, and incompetent. The antithesis of the high-powered modern journalist, his staff consists of himself, his wife, and his 73-year-old mother.
Rozek's is hard to define. It's not quite a magazine - it has no cover, pictures, table of contents, or contributors. It's more like a pamphlet, usually eight pages long. There are 2,000 subscribers. Each issue contains a single, 7,000-word piece - an exhaustively reported profile of a person who seems to have only one reason to be selected: his or hers is just a life, one hardly any of the mainstream media would write about.
Rozek's is antimedia media, almost disorienting in its simplicity and sometimes a great pleasure in its execution.
Some of its profiles - like "Something That Cuts Through The Night," a portrait of Dave Nemo, who's hosted a live, coast-to-coast truckers' radio program called "The Road Gang" for more than 20 years - are spectacular. These are not only riveting stories of people's travails, they are stinging indictments of mass media that make little or no room for those who aren't enmeshed in violence, controversy, culture, politics, or celebrity.
One of Rozek's most vivid scenes shows Nemo reading a letter sent in by a mischievous listener as a "good example of doublespeak." Nemo reads this to his trucker audience and challenges his listeners to interpret it: "The difficulty with our confrontation lies within the realm of my inability to rescind my mental faculties to a point that would enable me to obtain a plateau whereon you could comprehend my articulations."
Along darkened interstates all across America, one trucker after another pulls over to check in from a truck stop or phone booth, flooding Nemo's switchboard with light. Somewhere in Louisiana, Fred reaches the show via Nemo's 800 number. "Lemme take a shot at it," he says.
"OK, go ahead," says Nemo.
"I think what he's trying to say is that either he or the other person is talking over the other one's head. Like you say, come down to my level and tell me what you think."
"OK, well, that sounds reasonable," says Nemo. Other truckers offer their interpretations: "I think the answer to that is, 'I'm a politician, and I'd like to have your vote,'" offers Hugh from Granite Falls, Minnesota. "It means he don't understand all he knows about what's buggin' him," drawls Bob from Stone Mountain, Georgia. "I think that's what it means."
This excerpt could have come directly from any of a thousand BBSes. It would not have appeared in any mainstream media news or feature report. Yet it poignantly brings parts of a vigorous, but nearly invisible, culture to life.
Rozek has also profiled Manny and Janaloo Hough, who singlehandedly breathe life into the ghost town of Shakespeare, New Mexico. It devoted a three-parter to Rozek's father's cousin, World War II veteran Chester Rozek. Other profiles - one of a glass sculptor, one of a guitar maker - fall flat; they're too precious and NPRish. Not everyone nonfamous and creative is compelling to read about.
Rozek is ferociously, even self-destructively independent. From the moment he was told this review would appear in Wired, he perversely questioned the values of the computer culture, including the sacrosanct, rabidly anticommercial sensibilities of the Net.
"There are a lot of people on the Net who either don't have need of money or don't understand that you have to pay for things of value," he says.
Recent polls show the press to be one of the least trusted or liked institutions in America, far below the military and the police. Rozek's stunningly simple notion of how to reconnect is far more linked to online culture than he yet knows or appreciates. In its stark simplicity, and its elemental notions of what news is, it is a profound reminder of what media is supposed to do.
By the way, Rozek, ever the pilgrim on his own path, doesn't own a computer. He should. When he inevitably gets one and logs online, he will have finally come home. That's where most of the other Rozek's are these days.
Rozek's: US$39 for eight issues. (800) 266 1515, +1 (206) 285 1515. 3424 10th Avenue West, Seattle WA, 98119. Rozek's is available online (though Rozek hates samplers, and wants paying subscribers) through the Tacoma-based Information Systems 2000 BBS +1 (206) 272 0549, and through the Electronic Newsstand: http://www.enews.com.
SCANS
Bringing Weirdness to the Masses
Antimedia Media
