Eric Smillie | Writer

I'm Eric Smillie, a freelance culture journalist covering art, travel, food, lifestyle, and music for GOOD, Wired, Wired News, Make, Craft, VIA, XLR8R, Signal to Noise, and other publications.

Contact

eric at ericsmillie.com

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Posts Categorized GOOD

Posted
21 September 2008 @ 10pm

Category
GOOD

Why do teachers quit public schools?

One of the secrets of journalism is that other people do your work for you. All the raw material that gets crunched up into an article comes from somewhere else—it’s the good characters, dynamite quotes, and unreal stories that make the final piece good. Oh sure, putting sentences together with style is an art, and [...]


Find romance in a polluted pit + Toxic tourism resources

Photo of the Berkeley Pit by Don Ankney
Some people have been asking me how I could call a lake so polluted it kills swans a romantic getaway. And am I serious about visiting these ecodisaster sites, or was the article a joke?
Yes and no. The story was a satire on the style of ecotourism destination [...]


This is no disaster

Welcome to the Internet, a convenient place to find my new blog and news about the articles I’ve written. I was on NPR talking about my latest story today — a guide to the hottest ecodisaster travel destinations in the United States, published by GOOD magazine. It’s a roundup of five super fascinating spots like [...]