Shiny Objects -- No. 2

Here are a few of the more interesting things that have distracted me this past week:

1. Buzz-Fueled Media Startups

Wired has an illuminating article on how digital news startups like Buzzfeed is reshaping how we deliver and consume news, moving from the concept of a traditional destination-centric news site to organic vehicles that use everyday people to deliver the content for them. Here’s a key graf:

"But the thing is, the media isn’t just competing with your little sister—it’s co-opting her, using her as a vector to spread its content. She is the new delivery mechanism. We don’t learn about the world from The New York Times, we learn about it from the Times stories that our family and friends share or that show up as push notifications four minutes before one from The Guardian does. Thirty percent of American adults get news from Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center, and more than half of Americans got news from a smartphone within the past week, according to the American Press Institute. And these metrics are just going up, up, up. The question for news publishers is no longer how to draw an audience to their sites, it’s how to implant themselves into their audience’s lives."

2. Pitch podcast: “The Clearmountain Pause”

This new podcast focusing on the quirky side of music launched with a roar by highlighting a simple but powerful production effect termed The Clearmountain Pause.” This simple act of introducing silence in the middle of a song to build dramatic effect is named after famed producer Bob Clearmountain (think “Closing Time” by Semisonic). Great fun.

3. Brain Pickings: “The Definitive Reading List of the 14 Best Books of 2014 Overall”

Brain Pickings is in my mind the most consistently engaging, thought-provoking website around. Yes, that’s a lot of qualifiers -- but just check out how it so uniquely it delivers on its mission to chronicle “how to live and what it means to lead a good life.”

4. "Little Book of a Big Year: Bono's A to Z of 2014" 

There's a cool story behind this photo -- but you'll have to go to Bono's post to find the details.U2’s bombastic leader wrote a meandering A-Z letter on the band’s website that is both pompous and endearing. In order words, right in line with the Bono who inspires and aggravates. My recommendation is to scan over the course of a week. Here’s one paragraph from the “D is for Davos” chapter that's representative of Bono's humor, high intelligence and egotism:

“Artists chase the zeitgeist like dogs chase cars... often we don't really want to catch up to the speeding wheels, we just want to bark at them. I could spend my entire life in a bubble of songwriting, I'd love that, but I've realised that it's the artist in me that won't let me. I've to accept it's not just culture that informs the zeitgeist. I want to understand commerce, I want to understand politics. I want to understand the digital revolution as others before us grappled with the industrial revolution. And if I want to learn about something I have to do it, it doesn't work just to read about it. This didn't go well for me when I thought I could be a landscape painter... but "KEEP OUT – ELECTRICAL FENCE" my dyslexia reads as "Step Inside!! Free Drink!!" “

5. One of the most enjoyable and deserving newspaper editorials ever

My friend Geordie Wilson is publisher of this paper that took on an antagonistic and completely clueless elected official. He and other journalists deserve your support on media attacks like this, which are silly beyond belief but which are occuring with greater frequency.

6. Year-end music podcasts

 I’ve spent long hours on the road the last four weeks so caught up on several entertaining podcasts reviewing the year in music:

• NPR All Songs Considered staff review: This crew borders on the nerdy, but it’s authentic and there’s some great songs and artists worth closer looks:  

• All Songs Considered’s Listeners Picks for 2014: The listeners had some overlap with the staff critics and not surprisingly were a bit more mainstream. But the mix remains eclectic:

• All Songs' Songs We Love “mixtape”

• Sound Opinions "Best Albums of 2014": Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis share their favorite albums (from Kelis and Against Me!) in perhaps the most consistently entertaining rock-critic podcast. 

7. John Fry dead at 69

Legendary Memphis producer John Fry died in late December at age 69. He’s best known as the producer of Big Star, perhaps the most critically acclaimed but commercially underwhelming rock band of all time. Fry was a prominent figure in the excellent “Nothing Can Hurt Me” documentary from a few years ago, where he came across as humble, visionary and so upbeat that he seemed out of place paired with a band saddled with so much personal pain. The music industry has always been filled with bozos so it’s always painful when one of the good ones passes.