by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

On a trip to Mexico City, I was, not entirely unpleasantly, surprised to hear the same recording that our local San Miguel scrap metal truck broadcasts as it makes its way through neighborhoods here. You know the one I mean; a woman's singsong voice calling out, "Tambores, estufas, lavadores..." (55 gallon drums, stoves, washing machines...). I have since learned that the same recording is used in towns and cities all across Mexico. When you get it right, the word spreads.

Here in San Miguel there is a competitor scrap metal collector, who uses a different recording. This one announces, with an enthusiasm usually reserved for when the circus comes to town, "Fierro viejo" (old metal), followed by an equally emotional litany of the items they are looking to purchase, towards the end of which list is included a plea for monedas viejas (old coins).

But if you want to sell antique coins for modern currency, just give me a call. I did buy some old coins from someone who had no idea of the value of the silver pesos (a couple of them from 1880) and the silver coin commemorating the 1968 Olympics he was selling As he was walking away, having completed our transaction, feeling guilty, I called him back and gave him another $100 pesos.

"Buy low; sell high," is the simple, brutal truth of the marketplace. Buy wholesale, sell retail. A professional myself, I've never been a good businessman. Selling something that the buyer could buy down the block for a lot less, or get there of much better quality, has always seemed sneaky to me; not robbery, but cheating.

Unfair trades are not restricted to buying and selling. Shoddy goods are shoddy goods wherever they appear. Take publishing, for example.

The man who killed Atención (all he had to do was to scale back from 64 to 28 pages during the pandemic, and our beloved paper would still be with us) is now slowly torturing to death a formerly high-quality online publication that he purchased. ("What can I do with all my money?") He recently announced that this nationally-focused website would start publishing more local content. This struck me as a strange use of the word "local." If you are in San Miguel, then news about Puerto Vallarta is not local.

Today (just as the aforementioned truck was passing, offering to buy my silver pesos as scrap) I came across and read the first example of his promised "local" content, an article titled "Things to Do in San Miguel in September."

Now here in the Cradle of the Revolution, September has some big annual celebrations. The article, after listing four or five of those, included two or three random, less patriotic events. (Lokkal's calendar lists over a hundred.) But one wonders, without those major annual events, what he has in store for us in "Things to Do in San Miguel in October."

When Atención kicked the bucket, I went through recent back issues, looking for authors to enlist. I eagerly engaged Charles Miller and Sheridan Sansegundo and have been proudly publishing their Computer Corner and Crossword Puzzle weekly for 14 months ever since. I do link on occasion to the website of another former contributor to Atención, Natalie Taylor. But other than that, it was slim pickings. At the end there, we were more in love with the idea of a weekly newspaper, than the actual newspaper itself.

To be fair, a magazine, such as I publish, is different from a newspaper, such as was Atención. I tell my potential authors that for me an article has three components:

1) story/action - "The truck drove by my house announcing the items they wanted to buy," "As he was walking away, I called him back and gave him another $100 pesos."
2) character/someone with whom to identify - in the case of this article, so far only me and the wanna-be "local" publisher
3) description - lots of well-chosen adjectives

The article he published, "Things to Do in San Miguel in September" was very well-written, but very light on content. A puff-piece, it was an item that looks good in the store, but wears thin or wears out once you get it home, once you actually read it. It was a snack, not a meal, aimed, not at us locals, but at people who have never been to San Miguel, at least not in September.

Another of Lokkal's online "competitors" publishes eight or nine very short articles each month. That number alone tells you all that you need to know. Who would visit a website over and over again to see if one of their two weekly articles has been published yet? Then, the articles, very pretty visually, lack any depth. How can you write an article about a chef and not mention his mother's or grandmother's kitchen?

Theirs is a very appealing "magazine," unless you read the articles; like a date with whom you might want to pass the night, but not the following day. There is a saying in Silicon Valley right along these lines: "You can give a great tour of your start-up's website as long as you know which links not to click on." Authentic, honest-value is in the minority everywhere; people trying to buy silver pesos as scrap.

Writing about writing is a bit inbred, I know. Publishing about publishing is prone to short circuits, forgive me. But, like becoming a performer or a member of the clergy, publishing is not something that you can just decide to do. It has to be in your blood. Case in point:

Late last Saturday night, getting my Sunday newsletter set to publish (what do you do with your Saturday nights?) I realized that I had completely overlooked this week's edition of Charles' Miller's Computer Corner. (You have to love his sense of humor.) My fault entirely, I grit my teeth and composed the English version myself, a task normally the responsibility of my assistant, Luisa.

Twenty minutes later, having posted the article in English on a page, I messaged Luisa telling her that I would run the English text through a translation program, and post the Spanish version of the article, and asking her to supply her own, more authoritative translation when she could, to be substituted for my entirely machine-made Spanish. Twenty minutes after that message she sent the Spanish text.

Already after midnight, she had been asleep in bed. But having to get up to pee, she saw my message and made her translation. After learning the circumstances, I wrote back, "Even your bladder is committed to publishing!"

Which reminds me of that joke where the IRS agent, auditing an author, asks him, "How can you deduct all your food as a business expense?" To which the writer replies, "Everything I do is for my art." To which the IRS agent responds, "That's good, because when we get done with you, the only thing you'll have left is a pencil and a pad of paper."

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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