Interview with "fact freak" Ben Schott

Matt Haber says: "I did a Q&A with Ben Schott, the
frighteningly informed author/designer behind "Schott's Almanac" and "Schott's Original Miscellany" for Radar:

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Haber: Everything is written so concisely. How do you decide what to throw out?

Schott: I tend to write it quite selfishly. I don't think you can write for a particular audience. I tend to look at any news story and say, Well, what do I need to know? Who are these people? Has this happened before? What's increasingly interesting about modern media is its filters: if you actually look at websites, technology from TiVo to iPods to blogs, it's all about filter. What we mean when we say we like a blog or we like a website is that we like somebody's filter. And we have several filters for different things. Of course our friends are filters. Word of mouth is the ultimate filter. So what I try to do is act as a personal filter. When I say personal, I don't mean political or partisan, I mean, What's the Schott's Almanac take on this? It's almost a sort of character.

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