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?

The Heavy Stuff Ain't Quite at Its Heaviest By the Time It Gets Out to Suburban Minneapolis

Part XII (My Response)

I've enjoyed an episode of "Lopez Tonight*." That's the first time in my whole life I've ever typed that. Thanks for sharing that moment with me.

It's pretty tough to argue with the idea that we each have our own community to isolation ratio. It's also pretty tough to argue with the idea that J.D. Salinger's was pretty heavy on the isolation and light on the community. The thing that fascinates me about Salinger is that "Catcher in the Rye" was published in 1951 when Salinger was 32. He goes on to release a few more items throughout the next twelve years, and his last published work appeared in the New Yorker in June 1965. That means that he lived almost 45 more years (almost half his life) without publishing anything else. That is what is amazing to me.

How many writers/musicians/actors/chemists/lawyers/architects/professors/doctors/etc. would receive critical acclaim in their profession 1/3rd of the way of their life, work until the 1/2 way point in their life in that same career, and then just remove themselves from that career and make no further contributions in that field?

Perhaps this ties in with our discussion about how each of us has our own isolation/community ratio, but I think that with the way that technology has changed our interactions with each other, that isolation/community shift in the world as a whole has gone towards the community side of the ledger. That's not to say, though, that the community shift I'm talking about is what people would have called "community" 30 or even 15 years ago. It's this kind of quasi-community where I'm interacting with people on a much greater frequency through avenues like Facebook, Twitter, email, text messages, or even phone calls, but all of those avenues may crowd out more conventional face to face community experiences.

*This is not even remotely true.

The Riot Squad They're Restless, They Need Somewhere to Go

Congratulations to Mr. Joseph R. Halbert for correctly naming "Josephine" by The Wallflowers as the Thursday Song of the Day.

I strongly urge all Running Down a Dream readers to visit Joey's new blog, The Young Oak, which is probably the only blog that will feature erudite discussions of the WWE, theology, and Texas state politics.

Is Rick Perry truly the Texas gubernatorial equivalent of Triple H or Rowdy Roddy Piper? Is the McMahon family a prime example of the Trinitarian Nature of God? Read The Young Oak for the answers, my friends.

Closing on a different note, after finishing Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine just a few days ago, I found his May 25, 2009 New Yorker piece on Chief Justice John G. Roberts an interesting (quasi)-epilogue* to the book. It's not a quick read, but if you're interested in the current direction of the Supreme Court, I think it's worth your time.

*Sorry for channeling Peter King for a moment there. I realize only about 3 people who read this will catch that reference, but it's worth making.

With Every Mistake We Must Surely Be Learning

Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece in the New Yorker combines references to (King) David, Rick Pitino, the value of a well-worked basketball press, Roger Craig, and Lawrence of Arabia, and yet somehow still remains compelling and thought-provoking throughout.

Insurgents, though, operate in real time. Lawrence hit the Turks, in that stretch in the spring of 1917, nearly every day, because he knew that the more he accelerated the pace of combat the more the war became a battle of endurance—and endurance battles favor the insurgent. "And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine," the Bible says. "And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead." The second sentence—the slingshot part—is what made David famous.

But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. "The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target," the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in "The Life of David." Pinsky calls David a "point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there." David pressed. That's what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.

"How David Beats Goliath: When Underdogs Break the Rules" by Malcolm Gladwell.

The main argument of the piece is that Davids can often defeat Goliaths if the Davids realize that they must substitute sheer effort for a dearth of ability in order to close the gap that exists between themselves and Goliath. This argument is obviously not new to anyone who has seen Rudy, studied the American Revolution, or followed the rise of Microsoft.

What is particularly insightful about Gladwell's argument is that the substitution of effort for ability must be accompanied by a wise application of that effort. The underdog who chooses to put forth all of the effort in the world by continually attacking his opponent's area of strength will often be disappointed at best and destroyed at worst.

This is in stark contrast to the underdog who chooses to put forth all of the effort in the world, but rather than focusing on his opponent's strongholds, instead chooses to center that effort on the weaknesses of Goliath. Gladwell's best example of this point is that Lawrence of Arabia wisely choose not to fight the Turks in fortified cities and instead constantly harassed and harried the Turks at their weakest point, the long exposed rail-lines that connected Medina and Damascus.

I'm not sure where journalism is headed in the next 5, 10, or 20 years, but I have a feeling that there will always be room for this type of challenging, entertaining, and thought-provoking piece.

It Doesn't Matter What I Say So Long as I Sing With Inflection

Congratulations to Ms. Nina Patterson for correctly naming "The Way" by Fastball as the Monday Song of the Day.

Welcome back to 1998, kids. Welcome back.

Good stuff here (as always) from Malcolm Gladwell...

This is the quarterback problem. There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired. So how do we know whom to choose in cases like that? In recent years, a number of fields have begun to wrestle with this problem, but none with such profound social consequences as the profession of teaching.

"Most Likely to Succeed: Who Do We Hire When We Can't Tell Who's Right for the Job?" by Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker.

The best part of that article might be Gladwell's subtle prediction that Chase Daniel will one day reach the same level of putridity as Joey Harrington, Tim Couch, and Ryan Leaf, but perhaps that's just me.

Plus, David Brooks offers his thoughts on Gladwell's latest book, Outliers: The Story of Success.