Weasels shred his deadline

In a departure from publishing tradition, the August issue of Adventure carried an editor’s note, not about the stories readers would find inside, but about one they wouldn’t.

Editor John Rasmus used his page for an essay titled “Always Great, But Always Late” to explain why the magazine’s star columnist, Tim Cahill, was missing from the issue. “As I write these words, there is no Cahill column on hand, none in this issue, and no feature article that was due several months ago,” wrote Rasmus, longtime editor of Outside, and the man who launched Men’s Journal for Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner.

The piece was in the tongue-in-cheek spirit of Wenner’s exhortations in Rolling Stone to Hunter S. Thompson, author of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and famed for operating off Greenwich mean time. Did Cahill, a former Rolling Stone contributor, spend too much time with the gonzoid one?

“Tim understands that the difference between a good piece and a bad piece is the unwillingness to let go until it’s just right,” Rasmus explained diplomatically. “Where that line is is the art of it.” Even so, Cahill’s column for September came in on time.

-- Joe Robinson