James Norton

Flak editor James Norton graduated from The University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999. He lives in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis where he painstakingly labors as a freelance food writer. Until recently, he worked as a producer for The Al Franken Show. Before that, he wrote a book. And before that, he was the Middle East editor for The Christian Science Monitor.

He used to edit the Liberator, and, later, The Daily Cardinal.

From these simple sentences, we can extract quite a lot. James Norton is clearly a man of letters, of organization, and of initiative. In the dark jungle of Internet content, he is the muscular explorer, machete in hand, chopping his way across the continent at the behest of no-one, answering to nothing except for his own burning curiosity about the world.

He likes cake. He likes cake a lot, particularly if it's chocolate and accompanied by a nice cup of coffee. He likes to eat cake and think about books, and maybe read The New York Review of Books and think about current events, and their possible relationship to historical events. He likes charts and graphs that show the intricate workings of campaign financing, particularly if they're colorful and include little doodles and edgy independent cartoons.

But there is much more to Jim than this — there is much more to be said, and to be explored. Complicated as he is, a much greater understanding of the man can be obtained by thinking about this:

He really, really, really enjoys pie. It's hard to overstate the extent to which this is a key to the man. A slice of really splendidly-done pecan pie, with coffee, and some real whipped cream can pretty much capture the essence of what it is to be alive, particularly if a good friend is around, and there's music playing, and the waitress is prone to participating in playful banter.

Anyway, that pretty much sums it all up. Feel free to mail in the job offers and bars of platinum. Other lesser — yet still precious — metals are also welcomed graciously.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)