North by Northwest is one of British Columbia’s most-listened to radio shows. Every weekend, it showcases the arts and culture of the province.
This morning, I sat in studio and manned the boards (and hung out in the Facebook group) while the regular host of Daybreak in Prince George guest-hosted North by Northwest.
It was a lot of fun. Doing a weekend arts and culture show with long-form interviews has a much different feel than doing a weekday current affairs show where things max out at seven minutes. There’s a rush to doing the current affairs, but it was nice to sort of chill out and listen to people share interesting ideas.
There was a northern medical student and professor who are bridging the gap between health care and storytelling. There was the owner of Prince George’s first Persian restaurant. And there was a Tsimshian musical duo who shared their story of transitioning from playing heavy metal to country- and had some fascinating stories.
It was great to help showcase some of the interesting people in the north on a show that is broadcast province-wide. North by Northwest regularly talks to people from this region, but having a whole three hours dedicated to it I would think would really drive home the fact that there’s a lot more going on up here than many people probably think. It’s what keeps me so busy during the week.
You can listen to highlights at cbc.ca/nxnw.
With the inevitable demise of Google Reader, I found myself with two questions:
1. Where will I read blogs?
2. Where will I direct people to read this blog?
Answer one: I didn’t have to look very hard. Though a number of decent-looking alternatives are being recommended and promised, the one that seemed most ready to go now is Feedly. You can import your items directly from Google Reader, it has an app I like, and it’s nice to use. It’s not as quick as Reader was on the web or the app, but it’s quicker than the other things I tried. Bonus: it’s easier to organize your feeds into different folders, so now things are nice and clean for me.
Answer two: The same place as ever- my RSS feed. I’m hoping that if you currently read this blog in Google Reader, you’ll be willing to take it with you when I migrate. I know a lot of people are saying that Feedburner (the Google-run service that powers my RSS feed) is doomed, but it’s not dead yet. I have a hunch since Google still uses Blogger, and all the official Google Blogger blogs use Feedburner, it will be safe. But I’m keeping an eye on Feedblitz all the same.
And if you aren’t planning on migrating to a new feed reading service, I’ve set up a Twitter feed that will automagically post whenever I write a new blog entry. I might add other things, too, though that would likely be overkill. I’ve also got subscribe by email and Feedly options on my subscribe page.
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All in all, the death of a service like Reader is an important reminder that you can’t really count on free services- even (and maybe especially) if they’re run by a large company like Google- to stick around. And it’s one of the reasons I like maintaining a blog, even if it’s not as convenient as just posting everything on Facebook. You never know when they’ll get shut down or change and you’ll lose everything you’ve put there. I’m glad I have options in this case. Iranians? Not so much.
Yesterday members of the internet were shocked to learn that Google has decided to shut down its RSS Reader service as part of its ongoing “spring cleaning.” As a loyal Reader user for years, I am not happy about this: it is one of my top five most-used websites and probably my second most-used app after my Twitter client (twicca, by the way, which is wonderful). There are alternatives (update: I’m going with Feedly), and smart people like Marco Arment and Dave Winer see this as a positive step, but I’m still surprised. When Google+ came along I expected Google Reader to be sunsetted, but I always thought Google would use Reader to bring people into the Google+ environment. So here, now, is the announcement I thought Google would make. I’m interested if you have a take on my idea, or whether it’s even feasible – @akurjata or the comments section.
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Official Google Blog: Google Reader is Joining Google+
We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. But we aren’t leaving you without a place to follow and share your favourite websites- in fact, we’re making it even easier.
Many people were upset when we removed the social features from Google Reader, such as commenting and sharing items with your friends. However, we believe the best place for social activity is inside our ever-growing Google+ environment. It’ s a great place to discover content and contacts who share similar interests- and now it’s going to be even better.
Over the next few weeks, we will be adding a “Reader” tab to your Google+ profile, alongside the tabs for “photos”, “YouTube” and “local reviews.” Like everything in Google+ you have complete control over this data, including who can see it or whether anyone can see it at all. If you share the tab with your friends, they can see which blogs you are subscribed to, and which items you have starred and commented on. You will also be able to share individual items into your main stream, much the same as you can already do from within Reader.
This change will also make your news feed more relevant to your interests. For current Reader users, we will be automatically converting your subscriptions into a brand new Circle titled “Subscriptions.” Now you can view all your favourite blogs and RSS feeds inside our dynamic Google+ environment. If you have subfolders in Google Reader, those will become personal Circles, as well. By default, these Circles will be private, but you have the option to share them with your friends or the public. You can also move subscription sources into other Circles, mixing feeds with friends, pages and celebrities. So you can subscribe to RSS feeds from your favourite music blogs alongside the Google+ pages of bands, or mix your favourite technology writers with RSS feeds from your favourite technology blogs.
This is also good news for writers. We’ve already made it easier for readers to find you in Google searches with our authorship program, and this update will make that even better. Once you’ve claimed ownership of a blog or RSS feed, you can customize the way that information will show up to your subscribers in Google+. You can set up a Google+ page for your blog, and whenever you write a new post, it will automatically be pushed onto the pages news feed using RSS. You can choose whether readers inside of Google+ see the full post, or just a preview directing them to visit your site for more. The image associated with posts will automatically be drawn for the Open Graph information on your page, as will the description. We will be rolling this feature out slowly- stay tuned to our blog for more information as it happens.
We know these changes will benefit readers and writers alike as we make the internet more social, and make it easier to discover and track the content that matters to you. Of course, if you ever want to switch to a different service you can do so using Google takeout.
These changes are never easy. But by focusing our efforts, we can concentrate on building great products that really help in their lives.
This morning I woke up to a neighbourhood without power. The street lights were off, the buzz of my refrigerator was absent, and there were no lights on over anyone’s front porch.
When I was in high school I entered a contest on beautifying your city, and I wrote a proposal to have streetlights that only cast light downwards so the night sky is preserved.
You don’t notice how much light a city gives off until you get to see the dark. Not just the dark where there’s shadows from driveway lights, but actual dark.
There’s a stretch of unlit road between our house and my in-laws. Sometimes you can stop there if you want to see more stars than you ever do in the city. It’s where we go if the northern lights are out.
For a few minutes this morning, I didn’t have to go out of town to experience darkness. I got to see the world as it was for most of human history. Then the power came back, our central vacuum system buzzed, the microwave clock beeped, and the streets of 3:30 am were illuminated.
So much of human history and storytelling and discovery has been created by people looking into the night sky and wondering about what they see. Now we blanket that dark with artificial light, all night long.
Here’s an odd phenomenon: If I am out walking our two dogs by myself, it elicits very little comment. People thinking nothing of one person walking two dogs.
If my wife and I are walking our two dogs, it’s the same. No comment.
But if my wife and I walk our two dogs and walk a friend’s dog as a favour, it gets some comment. “Lots of doggies!”
Two dogs and one person is a ration of 2:1 and gets no comment. Three dogs for two people is 1.5:1 and yet people see it as being more unusual.
You might think this is because people are commenting on the number of dogs per household- it’s my wife and I, so they think we have three dogs running around our home. Hence the comment.
But if you maintain three dogs and add a third person when a friend comes with us, it still warrants comment. At this point we are an even lower ratio, one dog per person, or 1.5 dogs per household, and people still say “lots of dogs!”, a comment they never make at the two dogs per person/household when I am by myself.
This carries on. If you add a fourth dog and a fourth person people see this as being even MORE unusual than the three dogs with two people. At this point they make comments like, “Enough dogs?” They see the absolute number and think we are crazy dog people, even though we are down to four dogs split up over anywhere between two and four households.
I’m not really sure what to make of this phenomenon other than to remember that when people use terms like “lots of” something, it’s ambiguous.
Since we’ve just gone through a time change and I’m starting a three-month stint of beginning my workday at 4:30 in the morning, I’m trying to figure out how to best adjust my sleep cycle to stay productive, alert, and sociable. I have a few ideas, but one of the most interesting things I came across is by a guy named Tony Schwartz in the pages of the New York Times. He says that while we’re all familiar with the REM cycle of sleep by now- the notion that we go through intervals of light sleep and deep sleep throughout the night- more recent studies have found this pattern may continue throughout the day:
“Our bodies regularly tell us to take a break, but we often override these signals and instead stoke ourselves up with caffeine, sugar and our own emergency reserves — the stress hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.
“Working in 90-minute intervals turns out to be a prescription for maximizing productivity. Professor K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues at Florida State University have studied elite performers, including musicians, athletes, actors and chess players. In each of these fields, Dr. Ericsson found that the best performers typically practice in uninterrupted sessions that last no more than 90 minutes. They begin in the morning, take a break between sessions, and rarely work for more than four and a half hours in any given day.”
I’ve come across this work-as-sleep notion before in a TED Talk by Jason Fried. He says:
“I think that sleep and work are very closely related, and it’s not just that you can work while you’re sleeping and you can sleep while you’re working.That’s not really what I mean. I’m talking specifically about the fact that sleep and work are phased-based, or stage-based, events. So sleep is about sleep phases, or stages — some people call them different things. There’s five of them, and in order to get to the really deep ones, the really meaningful ones, you have to go through the early ones. And if you’re interrupted while you’re going through the early ones — if someone bumps you in bed, or if there’s a sound, or whatever happens — you don’t just pick up where you left off.”
Fried argues we need to reduce interruptions at work. Schwartz says he focuses on three 90-minute sessions of uninterrupted work with various breaks in-between. In both cases the off-on boosts overall productivity. I’m not sure I can reduce my workday to four-and-half hours, but I could definitely block out more breaks, and adapt to the REM cycle by alternating uninterrupted “heavy” work sessions with lighter working in-between. I’m also going to try to use exercise as a stimulant as opposed to caffeine and junk food. We’ll see how it goes- and any other tips from early-risers are welcome.
Beyond the big hits like “The Hockey Song”, I’m really not that familiar with Stompin’ Tom’s music. So I very much enjoyed the tribute paid to him on Q with Jian Ghomeshi. There is conversation with friends and fans and an archival interview with the man himself. It’s a great introduction to his life and legacy.
What strikes me most is the extent to which he cared about being Canadian, even when it caused him to be pegged as a bit of a hick. He cared so much about Canada that he returned his Juno Awards in protest after seeing expats who had left the country being given the awards. As he says in the 2010 interview with Jian:
“I would like to see them become more Canadianized. I don’t like people leaving the country and coming back for a day for a Juno Award and then going away and waiting until they’re in line to get another one before they come back.
“The brain drain, it’s always been going on. Not only in the music business but everywhere as well. I think there’s not enough opportunity in Canada to keep our people here. Some of them you can’t blame for going, but I think it’s honourable to stay here, if you’re Canadian enough, to stay here and fight the battle and demand the opportunities that we deserve.”
“Stay here and fight the battle and demand the opportunities that we deserve.” That is a powerful line. It’s one thing to leave your home behind to pursue the life you want. It’s another altogether to decide you’re going to try and get the life you want in the place you’re from. Neither is the right way, or the only way. But they have different outcomes. If you leave, you can make your life better, and you can make the world better. It happens all the time. But you don’t necessarily change the fact that the next person to come out of your hometown that wants to do what you did has to leave, as well.
If, on the other hand you stay and fight and create the opportunities, you might not get as far as if you had left. But you make it easier for the next person to do the same thing. And they make it easier for the next person, until you’ve transformed what’s possible without having to leave. Stompin’ Tom made it easier for the Rheostatics to be Canadian musicians singing about Canada. The Rheostatics made it easier for Broken Social Scene and the Weakerthans and Said the Whale. Now we have a thriving Canadian music scene that doesn’t need outside validation, and fewer and fewer musicians feel the need to leave the country in order to pursue their dreams.
Whether it’s a country, a province, or a city, a place isn’t defined by who happened to be born there and left. It’s defined by who decides to stay. Stompin’ Tom chose to stay. That was his battle. It’s also his legacy.
About a week ago, I read blog post by Tom Tunguz entitled “Letter to the Editor.” You should read the full thing, but here’s an excerpt to give you a taste:
“Despite all the innovation in blogging, there’s one part of the magazine that hasn’t been reinvented: the Letter to the Editor.
“Whether on-site or off-site, comments aren’t the right communication vector. Instead, a redesigned, curated section for Letters to the Editor or one step further, Letters to the Author might cultivate a reading community much more effectively than the commenting platforms in use today.”
I have an ongoing fascination with facilitating conversation on the web. This is a point I’ve not seen before, and I tweeted my appreciation of the post. This led to Tom inviting me to take part in a Branch conversation on the subject, titled “Can Branch solve the “Letter to the Editor” problem for next generation magazines?” I figured since I wrote stuff up there, I might as well share it here, as well.
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I don’t think Branch would be a good replica of letters to the editor. Branch is discussion between a select group. I have to be invited to participate or ask to participate before I even get to say anything, so in some ways I’m being judged on who I am more than what I say. It has its place, but in some ways it’s just an off-site comments section.
Letters to the editor, on the other hand, can be sent by anyone- I write my letter, and the editors decide if it will be published or not. The editors have control over what gets published, but not over what gets submitted. And they choose things that contribute to and elevate the conversation, even if they disagree with the main point.
One of the frequent arguments put forward by the anti-comments crowd is that if you want to respond to someone’s blog, you should do it on your own blog. The problem is that not everyone has or wants their own blog, even if it is easy. I think this is something a “letters” section could solve – giving these people a platform to respond to writing without making them take up blogging to do it.
So what would a “letters to the editor” section look like? It could be as simple as a subsection of a given site: “letters.yourblog.com”. You could make it a Tumblr with the “submit” feature enabled (example), or you could invite people to email you and publish the best responses. You could give it as much or as little prominence on your own site as you desire.
It wouldn’t be as open as the traditional comments section, but neither is the letters to the editor. What we are going for here is a place for the publisher to showcase what they deem to be the best responses to what they have published. And I think it’s a fascinating idea (and something I’d be interested to see implemented in the new “web magazines” like Svbtle and the Magazine).
I feel like realtime conversation already has plenty of places to happen: Branch, Twitter, comments. The part of Tom’s post that intrigues me is bringing a more open discussion to the “slow” web. Medium, Svbtle, and the Magazine all feel like responses to how fast the internet has gotten. They slow the conversation down by encouraging longer, more thoughtful pieces. A necessary element of this is creating barriers, be they invite-only publishing platforms or having to wait longer for a new piece to be published.
I feel like a letters-to-the-editor platform- whatever it would look like- would still encourage a slower, more thoughtful set of responses from readers, as well.
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So that’s where my thoughts stand. There are other good comments from the other participants in the conversation as well, and I have one invite if you want to take part- just tweet me or let me know in the comments section here- I still keep it open.
Now that I feel comfortable with my script-writing, I’ve challenged myself to get stronger and collecting and editing tape pieces. My colleague George Baker is excellent at it (for example) and I’ve been listening to a lot of different styles to develop my own.
We’ve been doing a series on the last weeks of winter on Daybreak and I volunteered to go out and find some kids sledding. After checking a couple of places I found a brother and sister who were excellent interviews. I gathered up the sound and headed back to studio to put it together.
Traditionally, I would have edited things this way: first, I would have some ambient noise of them sliding. Then I would have them introduce themselves. Then I would just take the interview in the order it happened, editing chunks out for length and maybe splicing in some more sliding noises for transition. Pretty straightforward.
Instead, I decided to play with things a little bit. In the host introduction, I don’t reveal who I am talking to or what I am talking to them about. It simply says “Forget skiing and snowboarding: when the snow is replaced by ice, it’s time for the ultimate extreme sport. Daybreak’s Andrew Kurjata brings us this installment of our series ‘Last Run.'” Then the tape begins:
[audio:http://cl.ly/NLm5/last%20run%20sledding.mp3]
If you listen, you’ll notice I don’t have the kids introduce themselves until about one minute in. Instead, we start with me establishing we’re walking up a hill and saying “I notice you don’t have a sled.” At that point we have some sense of where we are. Then we get Isaac’s voice and we have a sense that he is young. But then we launch into my favourite part of the story- when he tells me that the last time he went sledding “I almost broke my butt.” Then we go from there.
It’s still pretty straightforward, but I feel like it makes for better radio by containing a small element of surprise and leading with the most ear-grabbing part of Isaac’s interview. Once you realize what a great talker this kid is, you want to stick around a while longer to see what else he has to say- and there are more highlights.
It’s not perfect or earth-shattering by any means, but it’s a small victory for me. I’m moving a bit beyond basic tape editing and getting closer to the work I admire most.
Oh, and if you would like to see some photos of Eva and Isaac’s daring moves, head to the Daybreak North webpage.
One of the best things about making a radio show is how many jobs go into it. My title is researcher, but I’m regularly upgraded to associate producer and producer, which have their own unique duties. In any of these roles I can focus on doing backgrounds, writing, creating tape, or doing some investigative work. It’s tough for things to get stale because there’s always something new to learn or brush up on.
Now I’m getting an extended opportunity to explore the hosting world. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be semi-co-hosting Radio West as the show heads north- they’ll be on location in Smithers while I man things from the studio in Prince George. Pretty cool.
Then on Monday I sit down in the co-host’s chair for my regular gig, Daybreak North. I’ve done this a few times before, but this time it is for nearly three months. Leisha Grebinski has been offered a great opportunity elsewhere within the CBC that is sadly taking her from us. So it’s a bittersweet opportunity.
But I’m excited to work on my skills as an on-air personality. In both cases I’ll be joined by experienced cohorts, so I’m not on my own. And the whole time I’ll be thinking of the advice I received from someone I was doing a background interview with recently:
“I don’t believe you’re a CBC announcer because you talk too fast… you should be in private radio. Take something. Slow down.”
Deep breath. Here goes.
When my partner and I were looking for a house, there was one that we really liked. Good space, nice kitchen, big yard. And one of the best parts was it backed onto a greenbelt. But before we thought about making an offer we did some research. Turns out the greenbelt was slated for a new subdivision. If we hadn’t checked it out we would have bought a house we thought backed onto the woods only to wind up buying next to a construction zone.
I think most people, when choosing where to live, consider the property itself, as well as where it is located. You might love the idea of owning a cheap multistory building, but not if it’s in the middle of a highway. The problem is, we only have direct control over our own homes, and not everything around them.
That’s where the Official Community Plan comes in. By its own definition:
“An OCP is a statement of objectives and policies to guide decisions on planning and land use management within the City.“
Essentially, a guideline to give you a sense of what the city plans on doing with various neighbourhoods. You don’t want your residential street to be transformed into strip malls without notice.
That’s a key point missing in some of the criticism being leveled at the Haldi Road residents fighting the city’s ongoing efforts to build a recovery center in their neighbourhood. People are characterizing them as “NIMBY“s willing to “forsake the forsaken.” And I get why the critics would do that – they are sympathetic to the needs of women struggling with addiction. But having questions about where the recovery centre should go doesn’t automatically mean you are unsympathetic to the needs of those who would use the center.
Here’s some things I think are important and even essential to a city, but don’t want built next to me: police stations, hospitals, movie theaters, McDonald’s, and night clubs. I’m sure you have lots of things, too. You’re not against them, but you don’t love the idea of sirens going up and down your street every time there’s an emergency or excited revelers lining up down your street to get into a club every Friday night. It would alter your neighbourhood and negate at least part of the reason you live where you do.
The people who live in the Haldi Road neighbourhood bought somewhere with a school and houses and wilderness. They like it that way and expected it to stay that way. Why wouldn’t they? The zoning bylaws said it would. The Official Community Plan put in place recently backed that up- so much so that when city council tried to alter zoning rules to build the recovery center, a court case said they couldn’t because it violated the OCP.
In this sense, there may be something more than whether or not a recovery center can be built in the Haldi Road neighbourhood at stake in this story. It might also be how much control you’re allowed to have over your own neighbourhood. The residents of Haldi Road have zoning bylaws, the Official Community Plan, a petition signed by members of the neighbourhood, turnout at numerous meetings, and a court ruling saying that they want their residential neighbourhood to remain a residential neighbourhood. If council successfully bypasses all of this, what does it mean for the zoning bylaws and Official Community Plan in any neighbourhood? This time it’s a recovery center, but it could hypothetically be anything: replace a school with a strip mall, a park with a garbage dump. The last one, incidentally, almost happened in my own neighbourhood in the 1980s until community members fought back.
A recovery center may have merit. But as the debate continues, ask yourself: if a recovery center, or a performing arts center, or an all-night roller disco was going to be built on a piece of land in your neighbourhood, how would you feel? Would you want to be consulted? And what if you and your neighbours decided you really didn’t want it to happen? How much control should you have over your neighbourhood?
Here is a small list of things I don’t think you should put people in jail for:
So, I might hypothetically say “I have grave doubts about putting people in jail for idling their car when it is not necessary.” It does not therefore follow that I am OK with people idling their cars when it is not necessary. Or that just because I don’t think you should go to jail for watching “Two and Half Men” that I support the continued existence of that program.
I bring this up because of the outrage over Tom Flanagan and his remarks regarding child pornography. There is no question that child pornography is a far, far worse thing than any of my examples above. But this post isn’t really concerned with child pornography at all. It’s about what Tom Flanagan said, and how what he said was disseminated over social media.
Here, as I understand it, is what happened. On Wednesday of this week, Tom Flanagan, a conservative-leaning professor at the University of Calgary was taking part in a question-and-answer session at the University of Lethbridge. One of the people in the audience asked him… well, about a variety of things, including whether or not he was the father of the Ikea monkey. You can see the video on YouTube.
On watching, you’ll hear Flanagan joke he is the father and then come back to the portion of the question that referenced child pornography. Then the words that undid him:
“A lot of people on my side of the spectrum, the conservative side of the spectrum, have been on kind of a jihad against pornography and child pornography in particular. And I certainly have no sympathy for child molesters, but I do have some grave doubts about putting people in jail because of their taste in pictures.”
He then goes on to say he never looks at the pictures but was put on a mailing list once, and adds, “It’s a real issue of personal liberty and to what extent we put people in jail for doing something in which they do not harm another person?”
There is plenty to unpack in those comments, and lots of debate to be had if you choose to go down that road. But that is largely not what happened on social media. The first I heard of the Flanagan remarks was the same way I imagine many others did: via Twitter and Facebook. And basically, it was tweets saying “Tom Flanagan okay with child pornography” (which is also the title of the YouTube video) and various reports of people condemning and distancing themselves from him.
Within hours of this question-and-answer session Flanagan lost speaking gigs and regular commentary spots, was widely condemned by the political parties he had aligned himself with, and it was announced he would not be coming back to his professorship at the University of Calgary (although he already had plans in place for retirement).
And here’s what has prompted me to write this post: however wrong Flanagan may have been about the harm caused by viewing child pornography,1 what I DON’T hear in his remarks is anything that lets me believe with confidence he is “OK” with child pornography. Again: questioning the validity of sending someone to jail for an action does not mean you are OK with the action itself. There are many reasonable people who question putting people in jail for a variety of crimes. It doesn’t mean they support those crimes in and of themselves, or that they are OK with them. Just that they aren’t sure if jail is the most effective means of dealing with the problem.
And I don’t know that this is what Tom Flanagan was getting at when he made his remarks about child pornography. I do think it’s one possible and reasonable interpretation of what he actually said. But the internet, from what I saw, was not reacting to what Flanagan said. It was reacting to what people said he said, which is that he is OK with child pornography. Again: those words were not uttered.
I’m not going to question the decisions of any of Flanagan’s employers or associates to terminate their relationship with him. There is a full story behind their choices that I am not privy to, and it may be that this was just the tipping point after a series of incidents (I have no evidence of this either way). But I worry about the fact that from where I sit, this unprepared, off-the-cuff remark at a question-and-answer session has turned into a career-and-reputation ending move for someone who has spent years as a public intellectual. And yes, there are many people who have valid reasons they think he shouldn’t have been a public intellectual in the first place. But it wasn’t those criticisms that seem to have ended him. It was this YouTube video, amplified by Twitter and Facebook. I’m even going to hazard a guess that a sizable chunk of the people outraged by Flanagan’s so-called support for child porn didn’t take the time to actually watch the video and consider for themselves whether it seems Flanagan is “OK” with it.
Writing in Salon, author Andrew Leonard posited this about Seth MacFarlane’s hosting of the Oscars:
“There are no free passes on Twitter. Every stumble, every perceived outrage, every moment of weakness or arrogance gets instant crowd-mob treatment. There’s always been something exhilarating about this new medium for instant fact-checking and collective calling-to-account, but at the same time, there’s never been a better megaphone invented for broadcasting mass sanctimony. Lashing out is just so easy. The first tweet to crack the whip gets retweeted around the world before you can say the words “echo chamber.”
“At times during Sunday night’s broadcast, I got the feeling that all over the world, people were sitting at the edge of their couches, smartphones in hand, just waiting for MacFarlane to feed their rage so they could tweet about it. And as the evening went on, that dynamic fed on and magnified itself. I’m not saying MacFarlane didn’t deserve it: quite the opposite, he did everything but get down on his knees and beg for it. But there was also a madness-of-crowds aspect to the whole experience that made me glad I wasn’t in a place where I could get physically trampled.
“There’s a paradox at work here. By democratizing commentary on events that we are all sharing collectively, Twitter gives equal access to every previously marginalized voice. That’s not a bad thing, of course. And it’s a heck of a lot of fun when we see things we like. But the very nature of Twitter rewards shoot-first-ask-questions-later instant reactions that often fail to take account of, or purposefully ignore, any ameliorating context or nuance. Twitter opens up the floodgates to release our collective, unfiltered id. Again, that’s a real tough crowd.”
I wonder if that’s what happened to Flanagan. People wanted to be outraged, a mob formed, and now he’s done.
Again, I don’t know about Flanagan’s real motives, or the motives of anyone else involved in this story. But part of the takeaway for me is this: if you are any form of public figure, don’t talk about controversial topics anywhere. We get mad at politicians for always sticking to the script, but look at how grave the consequences can be if your thoughts are anything less than fully formed and pre-prepared.
Proponents of the social web- Twitter and Youtube and the like- think it will make us a more open and tolerant society. And it might. But it might also turn us into a mob.
Yesterday, after perusing my work email, I tweeted the following:
I will never understand why PR people attach files to emails, rather than just putting the information in the email where I can read it.
— Andrew Kurjata (@akurjata) February 26, 2013
This is something that cuts across all areas: political parties, non-profits, municipalities, arts groups. I will own up to doing it myself, before working on the other side of things and realizing how terrible it is. I don’t know where and when it was decided that attachments (be they .doc, .docx, .pdf or anything else) are the gold standard for getting information out to the media, but it’s time to put a stop to it. Here are some reasons:
1. There’s a good chance I won’t read it now
If I am scanning through dozens of emails that I’ve received since yesterday- and yes, dozens is not an exaggeration when it comes to the number of things in the average media person’s inbox- the one that requires me to take an extra step to get to the information is going to come low on the priority list.
2. There’s a good chance I won’t be ABLE to read it at all
Believe it or not, many corporate computers are still locked down in a number of ways, including the software available. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten a pdf that is too big to load and crashed my email client or the number of times I’ve had to forward a .docx to a different email address just so I could read it. And if I’m having a particularly busy day, maybe I won’t take that extra step after I’ve already had to reboot my computer once.
3. It seems like you don’t really care
This is counter-intuitive because you’ve taken the time to make this beautiful attachment and upload it. But you know what? It just seems impersonal. “Dear sir/ma’am. Attached is a story you will be interested in. I’m not going to say anything more about it now, but here’s the same generic pdf I’ve sent to everyone on my mailing list.” If you’re actually emailing me- me, Andrew, personally about something you think I’ll care about, you’d probably say so in the first paragraph or so. Not in the attachment.
4. You’re burying your lede
I’ve sort of skirted around this issue in my previous points, but you are trying to get my attention. Think about how you do that in real life. Do you have some generic greeting and go on about how you have something to say, and it is something I may be interested in, and if I just wait around and maybe step through this door you’ll tell me about it? No- you say “hey, check this out” and then go into it. You’re taking the most interesting and important part of your email and making it the last and most difficult thing to read.
5. Why?
Really, why? What advantage is there to doing this? It was suggested to me on Twitter it’s because PR people are proud of their formatting and images and don’t want them to be lost, but I want you to ask yourself- is keeping that sweet corporate logo really worth the cost? I’m talking the cost to the people you are emailing who are encountering this extra difficulty, and the cost to yourself based on the number of eyeballs you are potentially losing. I never, ever decide to pick up a story based on awesome formatting. It’s all about content. If you want, include an awesome-looking attachment, but if you actually want to be HEARD, put all the key information in the body of the email.
OK, not really. I archived them. And I know it’s been done before. But it feels so good. After doing a good job at achieving inbox zero in October, there was a slow creep in November followed by a complete breakdown in December and January. I was determined to get on top of them. But the number of hundreds of unread or undealt with messages just kept growing. So I did it. I hit “select all” and archived. And now I have zero emails in my inbox again. I’ve been in this state for the last week. It’s surprising how much it helps clear my mind.
Ad nauseam
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March 15 2013 | ∞
I came across a cool idea by Frank Chimero, preserved by Liz Danzico: the text playlist. It is:
I love this idea, and am going to adopt it myself. But instead of text, it’s going to be primarily radio based. I already have an unofficial list I keep to play for interns or new employees so they have a sense of just how amazing audio storytelling can be. It’s the stuff that’s blown my mind and pushed me to experiment with new ways of producing. It’s the stuff that I’ll listen or refer to whenever I’m feeling complacent in my own abilities. Most of it will be actual radio pieces, but some of it will be audio workshops or even text and video interviews with radio people- any maybe other fields.
My plan now is keep the “official” list of 15 on my site at andrewkurjata.ca/playlist. I’ll add good stuff I come across on my currently stagnant Pinterest account, revise the official list every few months and publish it on my blog. Hopefully other people will find it interesting and discover great radio producers, but even if they don’t, it will be helpful to me.
The current list (March 2013):
This American Life is hands-down one of the greatest examples of storytelling, period, ever. Producer/host Ira Glass had done lots of great talks, lectures and interviews, all of which are worth watching, but this one is the most distilled and introduces many of the themes he comes to elsewhere. These are videos, but you don’t really need to watch them- works fine as background audio.
Speaking of This American Life, this remains one of the most compelling hours of radio I’ve ever heard. You will be glued to listening this- or you have no interest in human stories.
Whereas the previous choice is about telling one great story over an hour, this is about how to tell lots of great stories in mere minutes. Completely made me re-think what’s possible in a short period of time.
RadioLab is the Beach Boys to This American Life’s Beatles, the show that does sonic experiments that spur everyone on to even greater heights. There are many interesting episodes that use sound to demonstrate cerebral concepts, but the second part of this episode- about a woman stuck in a loop, reliving the same few seconds over and over again- is my personal favourite.
And, hey, here’s a talk one of RadioLab’s producers gave on how they go about constructing such amazing soundscapes. Worth watching.
OK, if This American Life is the Beatles and RadioLab is the Beach Boys, Love + Radio is the Hendrix: blowing everyone’s mind by completely turning noise on itself while still maintaining a masterful grip of the basics. This is the only thing I have ever listened and the immediately listened to again- and then immediately listened to again.
It took me a while to find this one, because I thought it was a Planet Money episode. The reason I thought this is because Planet Money, a show that breaks down complex economic topics into entertaining radio, got its start on these sorts of episodes of This American Life. Whenever I’m trying to figure out how to present a complex story on the radio, I think “What would Planet Money do?”
I don’t know who made this or what show it aired on, except that it was from within the CBC. It was used as an example of how open people will be to telling you things if you only ask. And holy cow- are they ever. Just amazing.
How Sound is a great introduction for anyone making radio, because it’s literally a radio teacher sharing and deconstructing great radio pieces. What stands out for me is the ethical dilemma the radio producer faces when telling personal stories- it rings true for me, and I’ve come back to this episode a number of times when mulling these things over.
This introduced me to a completely different narrative style.
State of the Re:Union is a great example of how to capture the character of a place, fast. And this episode has moments that are as compelling as arresting as anything I’ve heard.
The introduction to this is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard.
This is a fantastic workshop on the strengths and possibilities of both audio and radio, and it’s given me lots to think about.
Spark is the first non-music radio show that I subscribed to on a podcast and listened to religiously (CBC Radio 3 was the first one period). I love the cinema verite style it uses to introduce some of its clips and the way it incorporates guests and listeners into the credits. This episode is kind of randomly chosen- it won an award, it’s good, but really I just listen to Spark for inspiration.
Like Spark, Q is one of those regularly-occurring shows that I can count on to be consistently good. I’ll admit I wasn’t a fan at first, but at this point Jian Ghomeshi is one of the best hosts and perhaps the best interviewer out there. I don’t try to copy him, but I do try to draw from him for my own presentation style.
Filed under: playlist, radio | Discussion