Joanne McNeil

Los Angeles

Freelance Writer at Freelance

books: Wrong Way (2023) and Lurking (2020)

Articles

Hollywood Underground: Joanne McNeil on EZTV’s Inventive Body of Work

1 week ago | filmmakermagazine.com | Joanne McNeil

Back to selection by Holly Willis by Joanne McNeil in Columns on Jun 18, 2025 EZTV, ia Kamandalu, Michael Masucci, Summer 2025 In 1986, ia Kamandalu showed up at the EZTV space in West Hollywood for a screening of video art by Doris Chase. People recognized her even though it had been a few years since she danced in music videos like “Super Freak” by Rick James and on variety shows like Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, performing at the time under the name KimMcKillip.
Followers stop following

Dec 18, 2024 | niemanlab.org | Joanne McNeil

Over the past decade (often in this annual roundup!), we’ve heard a lot about journalist-influencers and journalists who go independent through services like Patreon and Substack. But we seldom hear about the people reading these independent newsletters or listening to these podcasts or viewing journalistic social media content. My prediction is that many of these followers are going to switch up their media habits in 2025.
All Protocols are Not the Same: Joanne McNeil on Bluesky

Dec 15, 2024 | filmmakermagazine.com | Joanne McNeil

by Joanne McNeil in Columns, Issues on Dec 16, 2024 Bluesky, Twitter, Winter 2025, X If you are a filmmaker, journalist, artist or someone else who creates work for an audience, most likely you’ve used social media to share it. Self-promotion is never fun, but it’s felt especially inconsistent (if not totally hopeless) ever since Elon Musk acquired Twitter, renamed it X and began throttling views to posts that include links.
The Future Looking Back At Us: Joanne McNeil on Cyberpunk

Sep 18, 2024 | filmmakermagazine.com | Joanne McNeil

Back to selectionby Joanne McNeil in Columns, Columns, Issueson Sep 18, 2024 Academy Museum, Summer 2024 This year is the 40th anniversary of William Gibson’s classic novel Neuromancer. It’s a work of singular brilliance that arrived as part of a new vanguard.
Mutual Assists: Joanne McNeil on How a Massachusetts Video Store is Aiding Local Journalism

Jun 27, 2024 | filmmakermagazine.com | Joanne McNeil

Bill Shaner at Rewind Videos and More (photo by Christine Peterson) by Joanne McNeil in Columns, Issues on Jun 27, 2024 Bill Shaner, Rewind Videos and More, Summer 2024 Imagine you are in the basement of a home somewhere in the suburbs amid towers of cardboard boxes and items bought in bulk. There are bikes with training wheels and cobwebs between the spokes. Behind a broken recliner is a fake Christmas tree with garland and fairy lights still on it.
Joanne McNeil: "Harold Cohen’s AARON"

May 20, 2024 | yalereview.org | Joanne McNeil

The British artist Harold Cohen was a successful painter in the 1950s and 1960s, exhibiting widely across Europe at major exhibitions including the Venice Biennale and Documenta. Then, in 1968 he moved to California and started tinkering with computers. He had gone west to join the visual arts department at UC San Diego and while he was there he found inspiration in the campus computer lab.
Notes from Inside the Ecosystem: Joanne McNeil on Apple Vision Pro

Mar 18, 2024 | filmmakermagazine.com | Joanne McNeil

The Apple Vision Pro headset with battery by Joanne McNeil in Columns, Issues on Mar 18, 2024 Apple Vision Pro, Spring 2024 From the late aughts until pre-pandemic times, Apple’s presence in my life seemed concise and easy to recognize. It manufactured the phone in my pocket and the laptop I worked on. I picked an iPhone and a MacBook over the alternatives for the usual reasons: because Apple products were reliable and well-designed with intuitive user interfaces.
Dedicated moonlighters

Dec 18, 2023 | niemanlab.org | Joanne McNeil

It’s not like any year is free of gruesome media layoffs. But this time feels different. The conversations I’ve been having with friends across media this year keep going back to the same idea: resilience. And not in the wishy-washy self-helpy connotation of the word: resilience, as in continued drive and purpose through the chaos. The jobs and resources aren’t coming back — is there a way that the writing and publishing can continue without the jobs and resources?
Authoring Your Life Story: Joanne McNeil on Self-Archiving and George Westren

Dec 15, 2023 | filmmakermagazine.com | Joanne McNeil |George Westren

A detail of George Westren's "Diamonds in Stone" by Joanne McNeil in Columns, Issues on Dec 15, 2023 George Westren, Winter 2024 For any artist who works with digital files in the twenty-first century (that’s most of us), the work—in addition to making the art—is making sure it sticks around. To both archive and maintain your own work is a reminder of the gap between current practice and public markers of success.
A billionaire and a novelist offer two versions of tech’s future. Who’s right?

Dec 11, 2023 | newspub.live | Joanne McNeil |Marc Andreessen

On the ShelfTwo versions of the tech futureWrong WayBy Joanne McNeilMCD, 288 pages, $18The Techno-Optimist ManifestoBy Marc AndreessenIf you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. You could be forgiven for thinking the robots have taken over already. Your boss’ boss can’t stop talking about ChatGPT.