Diving deep in music journalism

Wanted to share two interesting takes on the music journalism business, one from the present and one delivering a case study from the past:

PopMatters is one of my favorite music sites1) Jason Gross' "The Best Music Scribing Awards 2009" from PopMatters, which takes a deep dive into widespread changes in the music journalism business for print and online publications big and small. It's a good read for music fans and journalists alike. Key graf:

"The same way that a Net/tech savvy writer will keep plugging away in all kinds of online forums, magazines and publications themselves need to keep doing the same. I’m still convinced that there’s no such thing as easy, long-term solutions to how magazines and publications will survive and thrive, but once they get into the mindset that this is a slippery realm that they’ll have to keep adapting to in different ways, they stand a much better chance of swimming rather than sinking."

Option magazine was published 1985-19982) Johnny Mnemonic's "Music Journalism 101" blog on Blurt, the magazine reborn in the ashes of Harp. After two print issues, I'm still not sure what Blurt is trying to be. But the website has an interesting mix of bloggers like Mnemonic, whose last two posts focus on the late Option magazine. Part 1 takes us back to a lame 1991 editorial decision that lays the groundwork for Part 2, an escalation of the snobbery and refusal to listen to its customers that led to Option's downfall:

"For all Option's so-called championing of the music underground, Amerindie and otherwise, it "overlooked" (or conveniently ignored) anything that didn't quite measure up to the editors' rarified notions of what was hip."

Sad, but all too common. If only Jason Gross had been around to whisper in their ear.

Review: "That First Season"

Just got through reading the Kindle version of "That First Season: How Vince Lombardi Took the Worst Team in the NFL and Set It on the Path to Glory" by John Eisenberg. It's a look at Vince Lombardi's first season as head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers, way back in 1959.

I'm a longtime diehard Packer fan, jumping on board in 1971, just as the Lombardi era was drawing to a close (and leading to two decades of futility). So, I was really looking forward to this read, which isolates an amazing accomplishment: the Packers went from a one-win season in 1958 to a winning season in 1959, setting the stage for an appearance in the NFL championship game in 1960, and five NFL championships or Super Bowl titles between 1961-67.  

Just what did Lombardi do to reinvent a struggling, undersized, thoroughly demoralized organization, laying the foundation for a decade of success to follow? What did he do to turn raw, misjudged or just average players into a mix of Hall of Famers and bit players who dominated their opponents? What were the secrets behind Lombardi's offensive strategy, which was to dramatically condense the playbook to roughly a dozen plays -- but run those dozen plays to perfection, making the Packers unstoppable even when you knew what play was coming?

For business people, those are intriguing questions, because they can translate to all kinds of workplace issues and challenges. So, for me, I not only embraced the book as a Packer fan but a manager looking for new ideas.

Unfortunately, the book goes so deep in the weeds on game-by-game action that the story behind Lombardi's strategic thinking gets only superficial treatment, repeating oft-told stories about Lombardi's brutal conditioning programs, verbal abuse of grown men and the focus on execution over gameplan creativity.

I picked up a lot of nuggets from a Packer-fan perspective and would recommend "That First Season" to hardcore Cheeseheads, but for casual fans or business people looking for some self-help reading, it's a pass.

I'm not O'Neil

I love Android's very smart predictive text feature, which makes the virtual keyboards on the Droid smartphone a joy to use. With one exception: "I'm" not "O'Neil."

When I type "I'm", the predictive text thinks I mean "O'Neil," which I don't. Either it's a bug or Google's data mining has determined there are many people out there who are typing "O'Neil" when they mean "I'm".

Whatever the reason, I've had to backtrack and erase "O'Neil" dozens of times after inadvertently selecting that option. What I need is Droid to really be a "smart" phone and learn from my behavior or for Google to issue a patch.

I didn't have much experience with predictive text before the Droid. Is this a common problem with other smartphones with the predictive-text feature?