Last fall Victoria Pope landed her latest dream job. This is good news. Who knew dream jobs in print journalism still existed?
As an aside, let me comment here that there’s little room for false dignity in print journalism. (The TV anchor desk is different.) The job is undignified: it means asking questions that can sound very stupid, snooping around and getting dirt under your fingernails, sticking it to people who probably deserve it but were nice to you. Any dignity that still sticks to you is baked in, which might be why journalists can hang on to it when they’re laid off.
In a forward, Pope tells her “discerning readers” that the Smithsonian is committed to global cultures “through its scientific research, museums, and travel and cultural programs,” and the magazine is a new way to serve the mission. Its sober inquisitiveness reminds me of Pope’s old haunt, National Geographic, its visual elegance of DoubleTake, a quarterly originally affiliated with Duke University that was launched in 1995, won prizes galore, and ten years later went under.
Quincy being a town she covered, a long time ago, for Illinois Times.
