Earlier in the week, the Chronicle ran a glowing profile of Evan Smith, editor of Texas Monthly.
While the Chronicle isn’t usually known for profiles of Texas literary or media figures, we didn’t think too much about it, since it seemed like a better use of writer Kristin Finan’s talents than, say, masquerading as a Katrina evacuee.
Slampo found the profile a bit odd as well, and offered this explanation:
Still, there was something odd about the story, perhaps because there was no apparent news peg on which to hang its appearance, or perhaps because the daily newspaper generally doesn’t do profiles—even of people who actually live in Houston and might have some impact on the city.
We scanned the piece and moved on, having learned only that the writer appeared to take the Texas Monthly editor almost as seriously as he seems to take himself. Then correspondent Il Pinguino reminded us that Evan Smith was the author of an equally fawning profile of Chronicle editor Jeff “A.M.” Cohen that appeared in Texas Monthly shortly after Cohen’s arrival at the daily (and before the loathing in which he is reportedly held by a large part of his newsroom had fully set in). It was also pointed out to us that the wife of Cohen’s No. 2 man at the paper works for Smith at Texas Monthly.
That’s how it is in the big-media world: Incestuous. And incest breeds
