The Dig - Boston's Only Newspaper
“I thought maybe I could just talk to people for two years and report back about what happened, but then I started seeing all this research and it started to explain why I enjoyed having these interactions.”
They thought we were just a bunch of fuckin’ scumbags putting out a paper, having a good time, smoking a bunch of pot. But they couldn’t give up that ultimate control and let us go nuts.
"I have one regret from my Dig time, and it’s the story I never wrote."
“Sure! I’ll run into an abandoned subway tunnel for a freelancer I just met! No problem!”
"It was kind of a perfect storm moment. Gay marriage was on the ballot. When you get a cover like that, it sticks with you for a while."
I asked Billy Joel fans questions that a fundamentalist Christian would ask after a Marilyn Manson concert in 1997, swapping the names “Billy Joel” for “Marilyn Manson.”
The intern wrote something like, “The ’80s! It’s fun! Dance party!” I looked at that and said, “No, this is too earnest. I will destroy it.”
We’re like, “Sure! That should go in a newspaper! Put that in there!”
The Dig at that point was more of a Dadaist prank or a piece of performance art—almost a metacommentary joke about having a newspaper—as much as it was a newspaper.
"The effect that Jeff’s nipples had on me is similar to if you look at an eclipse for 30 seconds, and then you just see it in your eyes for the rest of your life."
