Thursday, September 2, 2010

Reality Has Always Had Too Many Heads

Congratulations to Mr. Cole Griffith (who for unknown reasons decided to pose as my wife) for correctly naming "Atlantic City" by Bruce Springsteen as the Wednesday Song of the Day.


I thought about writing an introductory sentence that provided some sort of rational justification for what's about to follow, but I'm just going to give it to you straight, my friends and readers.

Here, in no particular order, are my 5 Favorite (Living) Canadians:
  1. Morley Safer: I've really started to love 60 Minutes, and I don't think there's anyone on the show whose segments I enjoy more than ol' Morley's. Andy Rooney, if you read this I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel.
  2. Malcolm Gladwell: The highest compliment that you can pay a writer is that they make you see the world in a new way, and there's probably not anyone who does that better right now than Gladwell.
  3. Alex Trebek-I got chastised by the wife for this one, but I've always loved Jeopardy!, and no one epitomizes Jeopardy! like Trebek. Plus, he used to have an excellent mustache. Always a strong selling point in my book.
  4. Neil Young-I almost chose the Crash Test Dummies to take Young's spot on the Canadian rocker list but thought better of it. My favorite Neil Young moment is probably his performance of "Helpless" with The Band during the Last Waltz concert.
  5. Steve Nash-With all apologies to The Great One, I have to choose Nash as my favorite Canadian. Does this have more to do with the fact that Nash is a massive soccer fan than his NBA bona fides? Probably yes, but don't hold that against me.

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Wednesday, September 1, 2010

They Blew Up the Chicken Man in Philly Last Night

Congratulations once again to my beautiful wife for correctly naming "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise" by the Avett Brothers as the Tuesday Song of the Day.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend an Astros game with an old friend. We talked about baseball, we talked about memories, and we talked about work. My friend works in the journalism industry, and I felt compelled to ask where he thinks the print media field is going to be in 10-15 years. He said that he thought things were going to continue to move towards digital format but that if newspapers, especially local newspapers, were going to survive, they would have to offer top-notch local content that readers couldn't get from national sources such as USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

I offered my (admittedly) amateur point of view that if newspapers and magazines want to survive, they don't need to try to be the internet. They need to do what they do best, which is do top-notch, in-depth long form writing. Before you stop me and say that internet journalists can do top-notch, in-depth long form writing, I'll agree with you, but when I want to sit down and devote 15-30 minutes to reading a longer article, I want to have that article in my hands. I want to feel the paper in my hands and be able to turn the pages. Call me old-fashioned, but flicking the scroll button on a mouse is just not the same as turning a page.

Even if you know just a little bit about me, you know that I love books, but if I had to choose my favorite form of journalism, I think it would be the magazine/newspaper feature article that generally runs in the neighborhood of 7-15 pages. There's something about reading an article that feels like a short story that truly has the ability to take me inside of a subject and give me insight into a topic that I might have previously known nothing about.

Within the past year, my favorite feature article was Michael Hastings' piece on General McChrystal that appeared in Rolling Stone, but my favorite feature article ever is John Updike's "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu", which appeared in the October 22, 1960 edition of The New Yorker.

Oh, and before you say anything, I do realize the irony of linking to electronic copies of those articles when I've spent a few hundred words extolling the virtues of print media. I would have mailed all of you copies, but have you seen the price of stamps these days?

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