20 Questions with WoW Insider’s Mike Schramm

Welcome to this week’s 20 Questions.  This week I am honored to bring you the Senior Editor of WoW Insider, Mike Schramm.

There’s not much else to say other than Mike is truly a great guy!  Who else would suprise everyone and offer a whole Special Guest Host spot on their podcast for the Children’s Week Child’s Play Charity Auction!   Don’t know? Well keep reading and get to know Mike.

So before we get to the main question, let’s see if we can get to know you a bit better.

You are the Lead Blogger for WoW Insider. You’re also the host for their weekly Podcast, WoWInsider Show. I’ve also heard you’re the secret identity behind @WoWInsider on Twitter.

What our readers might not know, you’re more diverse and write about other thing than just about WoW. You’ve written for some prestigious mainstream publications also, correct?

I’m actually not the “lead blogger” any more — we had a little shakeup in titles and roles a little while back and I am now the “Senior Editor” on WoW Insider. That means I’m mainly in charge of making sure we’ve got new content up on the site throughout the week. It removes me a little bit from some of the “oversight” functions on the site — I no longer help out very much with hiring or do too much of the behind-the-scenes work. But I still do quite a bit of the content, and help to oversee what’s going out and make sure big news gets out quickly. I do host the WoW Insider Show, though that was more of a de facto thing than a choice — I like doing it, and I’m free on Saturdays most of the time. And I am one of the many identities behind the Twitter feed — the whole team has access to it. Sometimes we’ll include our names in the tweets, and Elizabeth Harper, Adam Holisky, Alex Ziebart and I do most of the tweeting as far as I know, but anyone can show up on the feed (I know that Turpster has even jumped in there to send out some tweets before).

As for other “prestigious mainstream publications,” I don’t know about that, but I’ve done some freelance writing around the Internet and locally here in Chicago where I live.

And your exploits don’t just end with writing, for example you were in Batman The Dark Night, you lead your church’s choir? Along with many other ventures, am I correct in this?

Ha. I wasn’t really in the Dark Knight — I was an extra, and I might be hidden somewhere in the background, but you’d only be able to see me if you freeze-framed it, and even then it’s tough. And I don’t lead any church’s choir — I sing a mean karaoke, and I’m more or less a lapsed Lutheran, but nope, not a choir guy.

Well, I guess I should’ve done some more research.  Anyways, I’m sure the readers are eagerly awaiting your 20 Questions, Ready?

As I will ever be!

1. As we covered above, you are extremely prolific writer. How did you get started writing professionally?

I actually went to school at Ithaca College in upstate NY for broadcasting, specifically in radio, with a minor in English. Since high school I’ve wanted to be on the radio, but given that the radio industry is currently flooded with out-of-work veterans with tons of experience (and I, just out of school, had nearly no professional experience — though I was known as Mike Woods for a short time on WINK 106 in Elmira, New York), I haven’t really been able to do anything with that. Plus, when I first moved to Chicago after getting out of college, I found that to be on the radio, you need a ton of people to say yes to you — you need to have the blessing of the program manager, the station owner, the station manager, any advertisers, and anybody else with their hand on the switch.

To write, all you have to depend on is you — sure, there’s an editor that can keep your stuff from being printed, but really, with the Internet, you don’t even need him. You can say what you want and talk about whatever you want, and you’re the only one who makes or breaks your success.

So that’s what attracted me to writing — I originally started a site with the unfortunate name of “Retarded Jimmy’s” and wrote “reviews” of movies, food, and whatever on there for a little while (along with a few of my friends), and then I figured out that the name of that site might be making some people think the wrong thing about me, so I created my own mikeschramm.com site and blogged there for a little while daily.

Eventually I got some freelance work and internships from that, and then I took those clips to WoW Insider and got hired as a blogger, and then eventually was asked to help lead the site, did some work for Joystiq as well, and then eventually started working on TUAW, and WI and TUAW are basically what I do for most of my work right now.

2. Out of all your exploits, what is the one piece you look back on and say, I nailed that, that one should be my Pulitzer! And on that note, which one do you look back and say, “Man! I wish I could just rewrite that one.”

I don’t know that I’ve ever written anything important enough to even rate a Pulitzer (though this post: http://www.wowinsider.com/2007/07/25/a-spec-guide-for-classes-that-arent-yours/ is probably my biggest flame war, and if a good flame war can’t win you a Pulitzer, what can?). But on WI, I’m probably most proud of my bigger “Blizzard screwed up” analysis pieces (http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/08/13/how-blizzard-mishandled-the-blizzcon-ticket-situation/, http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/01/18/what-blizzard-can-learn-from-the-ghost-wolf-debacle/), as those required some serious thinking about what had happened and why. Outside of WoW Insider, I wrote a little funny thing about Lindsay Lohan a long time ago that got a lot of attention (http://www.mikeschramm.com/general/a-chat-with-lindsay-20041216). I always thought I deserved more credit than I got for writing a backwards version of MacBeth, too (http://www.mikeschramm.com/general/spearshakes-bethmac-20041202).

 

And I wrote a really good piece for an alt weekly here in Chicago called Newcity that was about a doggie fair out on the shore of Lake Michigan. Not only did I get a woman working a dog food booth there to admit that sometimes, when it was late at night at the kitchen where she made the little poochie pizzas she sold, she would take and eat one, but I also wrote a great ending to it that talked about how despite the fact that all of these vendors were selling hundreds of dollars of doggie toys and food there, all of the dogs were actually most interested in just going out and playing on the beach at the lake.

 

Unfortunately, my editor cut off that ending for space. And the piece itself was lost somewhere in a site redesign for them, I think. But I think I may have the original sitting around somewhere. Maybe I’ll post on my own site.

3. Some might not know that you volunteer and help future writers by volunteering at McSweeney’s 826 CHI; can you explain what 826 Chi is for us?

826 is a national writing nonprofit started by Dave Eggers, who is a writer I really admire (and got to meet a little while back). It originally started in San Francisco, but they’ve moved into centers all over the country, and I’ve been involved with the one here in Chicago since they began their work here (back when all they had was a booth at the Printer’s Row fair and a clipboard for interested volunteers to put their names on, my name was on it). They have a writing center over on Milwaukee Avenue, with a retail store disguisedly called The Boring Store in front (which is definitely *not* full of interesting spy equipment that you definitely *can’t* give them money to buy, of which said money definitely won’t go to the students you can see through the glass working in the back). They invite field trips into the writing center, they run some after school tutoring which I help out with, and they also do some in-school field trips around the Chicago area which I try to help out with as well. It’s always fun doing that stuff, not only because it’s really fun to show elementary school kids that they can write, but also because whenever I tell the kids that I spend my days writing about videogames, they are fascinated that such a thing is real.

 

You can learn more about 826 CHI at their website, 826chi.org. They do tons of great work, of which I only help with a small part. And I don’t mean to tell anyone what to do with their time, but I can tell you from experience that volunteering, anywhere, is awesome for your karma.

4. You’re also the owner of one classic stache. What’s the history behind the whole stache phenomenon? I only ask because you’ve mentioned it on your blog as well as recently there was a Stache poll on WoWInsider. Are we on the verge of seeing a whole new era of the “stache”?

I am actually no longer the owner of the moustache on my site — I grew it only temporarily for a charity event (put on by 826 CHI) called the Moustache-o-thon, in which I grew a moustache and asked people to raise money for the center while I did it. It was actually way more of a success than I ever expected — I won the award for “Best Organic ‘Stache” (as opposed to “Best Prostethic ‘Stache,” an award given to people who didn’t want to/couldn’t actually grow a stache but wanted to raise money anyway), and I was able to raise a couple hundred bucks towards their total of over $10,000. I wasn’t planning to do it again next year, but I guess since I won, it would be bad form for me to retire as all-time champion, so I’ll probably be doing it again.

 

As for a new ‘stache era, I think we’re already in the middle of it — there is a very woodsy look going around nowadays, from the guys in indie bands to various characters on TV shows and in movies. I don’t think we’ve reached the pinnacle of the ‘stache that was reached in the ’70s, but it’s a big deal. Personally I am more of a cleanshaven guy — I’ve got a baby face and really light hair, and anything I try to grow on there just doesn’t get bushy enough.

5. You’re also involved with “The Unofficial Apple Weblog” and related talkcast. Does that mean you were disappointed when Woz was voted off of Dancing with the Stars?

I wasn’t really disappointed — I thought Woz did a great job. He did a little whining about the judges, but I thought he came back from that well (he apologized), and by the end I thought he was an audience favorite, even though he didn’t win because, you know, he can’t actually dance. But everyone seemed to like him a lot, and how can you not like Woz?

 

Should say that I didn’t actually watch the show, I only saw the clips we posted on TUAW. Not even Woz can get me to watch a show about dancing.

6. What is your favorite Apple product of all time? Why?

That’s a tough one — I like my mini, I like my iPhone. I’ve never had an iMac but I do like them a lot, especially the idea to put a camera in there and on the laptops. The iPod is a