The trial for the alleged murder of Colton Boushie, the 22-year-old Cree man who was shot and killed on a farm in rural Saskatchewan started this week. And so did “Boushie,” a podcast being produced by CBC Saskatchewan and the single most important thing I think is happening at CBC right now.
That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but also, maybe not. I’ve only listened to two episodes (because that’s all there is), but this is the first CBC podcast I’ve heard that I think really capitalizes on CBC’s strengths without simply being a radio show available to download.
Here’s what I mean by that. So far, there are roughly two categories of CBC podcasts (I’m writing this as a listener, by the way – I don’t actually have any information that gives me more insight into the world of CBC podcast than any other interested listener with the ability to look at iTunes).
Category one is what I already mentioned— radio shows available to download. These are things like the Sunday Edition, the Current, As It Happens. Smart, insightful programs but also ones beholden to the formats and conventions of broadcast radio.
Category two is CBC Originals podcasts. These are shows like On Drugs, The Fridge Light, and Somebody Knows Something: things you might hear on CBC, but are designed with the idea that they are a podcast.
By the way, this how they are sorted in Apple’s Podcast store, just in case you were wondering how I came up with this:
The CBC Originals are also smart and insightful. But to a certain extent they operate independently of the overall CBC ecosystem. They aren’t tapping into the newsrooms and daily reporting going on across the country in a way that’s central to the overall structure of how they’re made, as best I can tell.
That’s not the case for Boushie. The two primary players are a host (Rachel Zelniker) and reporter (Charles Hamilton), both based in Saskatchewan and both, it is evident, with some depth of knowledge of the cultural context in which this trial is taking place and just why it is so explosive. In setting the scene before the daily courtroom drama begins, the podcast draws extensively on existing CBC radio content, such as past interviews and local call-in shows. It’s the sort of stuff that virtually nobody but CBC would have on hand.
But it’s not simply a rehash of past content. The day-to-day programming is recontextualized into a larger narrative, complete with (tasteful) music beds and a natural-sounding back-and-forth between the two guides. It’s also too long to fit in as a segment on an existing radio show and too short to be a show of its own. In other words, it’s a podcast. And the fact that it’s coming from Saskatchewan really sets it apart— how many other media organizations with this sort of infrastructure even have people based there?
A while back I somewhat facetiously tweeted “The Daily, but for anything other than American politics every day.” I was referencing the New York Times podcast that, every weekday, spends fifteen to thirty minutes with one of its reporters contextualizing a story of the day. While rightfully lauded, I (obviously) find it somewhat narrow in scope and crave something that speaks more directly to my experiences as a Canadian. I don’t know if it’s in the plans, but if anyone is wondering what a Canadian version of the Daily might sound like, Boushie is providing an excellent example, on an important story. You can subscribe to it here.
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This went out as part of my semi-regular newsletter. You can subscribe here.
Because so much of this week’s newsletter was focused on one topic, I broke it out into a separate blog post. If you like the idea of getting it all together together, you can subscribe here.
Alright, that’s it except to tell you that while you’re into the podcast rabbithole, I’m actually going to be spending some of my time over the next few weeks producing “Daybreak North: The Weekend Edition”, a 20-30 minute highlight reel of the best bits of radio we put out every weekday morning. You can subscribe in the podcast stores for Apple and Google, and let me know what you think.
Link time!
Things I wrote personally:
(Some) things I wrote professionally:
Corrections:
In my last letter, I provided the wrong link to Denise Balkisoon’s essay on discovering Canada. This is the correct one.
Quick reminder that you can subscribe to my Spotify playlist. I’m gonna update it with some fresh February tunes soon.
And finally, it’s not a groundhog, but…
Have a great weekend!
“Forget those worries that the podcast bubble would burst the minute anyone actually got a closer look: It seems like podcast listeners really are the hyper-engaged, super-supportive audiences that everyone hoped.“
This is, obviously, good news for anyone who relies on podcasting as a form of income. As a listener, this is what makes me happy:
“‘What we’re not seeing is any glaring indication that all podcasts should be, say, 15 minutes and 30 secs long, and that’s the optimal length,’ says Cox. Quite the contrary, in fact: podcast enthusiasts may expect to see more experimentation in form over the coming months.’”
I am of the sincere belief that stories should be as long as they should be. Often this is under fifteen minutes, but sometimes it is thirty or sixty or an hour-and-a-half. The key is making sure the content warrants the length, and I’m glad there (appears to be) a medium that will reward people who craft good stories, rather than analytics.
Tyrone Callender and Jesse Kinos-Goodin for q:
“‘Northern Touch’ helped bridge the gap between Canada’s scattered hip-hop scenes, bringing together artists from Ontario and British Columbia, but it also did so much more. For Canadian rap fans, it became an instant anthem, and for young aspiring rappers across the country, it served as both inspiration and an invitation to carve out their own spot. “Northern Touch” went into heavy rotation on radio, the video went to the top of the Much Music countdown, and it was played on BET in the U.S., turning the largely unsigned artists into stars.
“‘Today, it stands as one of the most important rap songs in Canadian music history.’”
I was thirteen when this song came out. It connected with me before anything by the usual list of Great Canadian Artists did, making me think homegrown music could be just as good as anything from the States.
In other words, I am extremely here for this.
I linked to this in my last newsletter but it’s worth sharing again. Anne Friedman on doing something just because you like doing it:
”At a time when Etsy shops and craft fairs and food trucks are decidedly mainstream, every domestic hobby is at risk of becoming a side hustle. I don’t want to boil and slice eggs for money. Messing around with a stand mixer or a sewing machine is fun for me because it’s not work. Personal pleasure is what makes a hobby a hobby.”
I’d add that something stops becoming fun as soon as you make time for it because you have to, rather than because you want to.
Adapted from a Twitter thread
So earlier this month, I found I’d been blocked on Twitter by someone whose insights I found valuable and who I’d had little interaction with – the most recent of which was months ago. I wasn’t sure why.
My best guess was they had run some sort of a program to block all of the followers of some other Twitter user or users (I don’t know who) and I’d been part of that.
My first reaction was to be personally offended: “What’s wrong with me? Aren’t I good enough to not get caught in this?”
My second reaction was to be upset with them. “Aren’t they going to be stuck in an echo chamber? Why should I have to monitor who I follow in order to be allowed to follow someone else?”
But then I realized — they don’t owe me anything.
They could have chosen to leave Twitter. They could have made their account private. The end result was the same, for me– I could no longer see their Tweets.
But they had done what was best for them: rather than abandon the platform altogether, they had taken the step of mass-blocking in order to make their experience on Twitter tolerable.
There is a lot of harassment that happens online, and Twitter is far from an exception. I’m lucky enough to get very little of it.
If blanket blocks are what it takes for other people to find this site unable, then I’m going to get caught in some of those sweeps.
When that happens, or even if I, specifically, am blocked, it means a total stranger doesn’t find me as valuable to their experience as I find them. And that’s fine. It’s their experience they need to be concerned with, not mine.
I’m going to use Twitter (and Facebook and whatever else_ the way I use it. But that’s the way I use it. You’re free to use it however you want to make it tolerable.*
* Unless you’re a jerk. Then you should log off.
I have started publishing my newsletter again. You can sign up here.
So it has apparently been over a year since my previous letter went out, which was not a thing I intended to happen. I can tell you that in the intervening time I have still been writing, but looking back on it I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about the way we, or at least I, communicate online.
My job is creating daily content. I am currently doing that online (see a l’il professional news or wait til the end of this letter, when I promise to include a list of everything I link to here), and I’ve noticed an interesting thing from people who are not in the content-creation industry: when I tell them my output is three to four stories a day average, they are shocked at how high that number is.
And that is actually kind of crazy. At 400-600 words a pop, that’s in the realm of 2,000 daily from me alone. Extrapolate that out to everyone in my field, then add all the other fields and we have thousands and thousands of hours of content to consume being created on a daily basis.
Of course this is nothing new, but it really does start to feel like we’re at some sort of saturation point. Facebook, the place where people spend most of their time online, is explicitly trying to show people less ~content~ from people like me and more “connections” from their family and friends.
Read more →
“The most economically powerful thing you can do is to buy something for your own enjoyment that also improves the world. This has always been the value proposition of journalism and art. It’s a nonexclusive good that’s best enjoyed nonexclusively.”
I never real thought of journalism this way. But it’s as good way to think of it, both as a creator and consumer.
Alexandra Petri hits every note of the anti-#MeToo, oh no, what happens next, columns. It’s tough to pick a highlight but it is either:
“Well, it has been a fun (glances at watch) three months that we have been doing this thing where we stop letting harassment and assault get swept under the rug… but I think we must be reasonable now and stop before any more good men are made to suffer.”
Or, after a list of entirely unreasonable things happening:
“Oh no, have none of these things happened? My mistake. I am worried that they will, which is just as bad.”
Today I went to work, enjoyed my job, biked home, grabbed a quick cross-country ski before going back downtown for dinner with my wife, and talked to family.
The fact that a good birthday wasn’t terribly different from a normal day makes me grateful for my life.
From this overall excellent take on how Facebook’s latest changes will affect news publishers, a quote from New York Tribune founding editor Horace Greeley on where local newspapers should be placing their focus:
“The subject of greatest interest to an average human being is himself; next to that he is most concerned about his neighbors. Asia and the Tongo Islands stand a long way after these in his regard…Do not let a new church be organized, or new members be added to one already existing, a farm be sold, a new house be raised, a mill be set in motion, a store be opened, nor anything of interest to a dozen families occur, without having the fact duly though briefly chronicled in your columns. If a farmer cuts a big tree, or grows a mammoth beet, or harvests a bounteous yield of wheat or corn, set forth the fact as concisely and unexceptionally as possible.”
I am not sure this has been improved upon in the intervening 158 years.
Another year, another mixtape. As I wrote earlier today, I spent less time in 2017 worrying about being a completist and simply spending time with the music I wanted to listen to. This means there are a lot of albums and songs that I’m sure are very good that I simply didn’t here, which is why I’ve dropped any pretence of this being a “best of” list.
Instead what we’ve got are 65 songs that found their way to me in some form or another and made enough of an impression to stick. Some are favourite artists who released new material I liked. Some are new bands I discovered live, or listening to college radio stations, or flipping through Spotify. Some are simply big blockbuster songs that made up the soundtrack to good days I had.
For many years I had lists.
Albums I wanted to listen to. Books to read. Movies to see.
The internet made this easier. TV shows to binge. An unread queue of articles in my Instapaper account.The one hundred best comedies with Swiss actors made since 1992.
It was bad.
There is too much stuff. Not that it shouldn’t exist, just that it is entirely unreasonable to expect you will be able to consume it. One hundred movies equals a week of your life, at least. A single season of a TV show, about the same. Throw in books, albums, podcasts and you inevitably will fall behind.
I used to try to be a completist but I’ve gradually trained myself to let things go. I will probably never watch the Sopranos. I will not listen to every song that comes up on my Discover Weekly playlist on Spotify. There are a lot of books and movies I will not see.
This is not a new discovery for anyone, not even me. It’s something I’ve been thinking about since I came across the 2011 piece “The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re Going To Miss Almost Everything” by Linda Holmes, particularly her notion of Surrender.
“Surrender is the moment when you say, “I bet every single one of those 1,000 books I’m supposed to read before I die is very, very good, but I cannot read them all, and they will have to go on the list of things I didn’t get to.
“It is the recognition that well-read is not a destination; there is nowhere to get to, and if you assume there is somewhere to get to, you’d have to live a thousand years to even think about getting there, and by the time you got there, there would be a thousand years to catch up on.”
Another part of surrender, I think, is allowing yourself to just enjoy whatever you have in front of you. This year I spent more time re-listening to old albums I enjoy than exploring new ones than previously. I read articles that looked interesting when they came up and I had time, but didn’t worry about saving ones that looked interesting that I couldn’t get to. I watched what I felt like watching rather than worrying about whether it was the best use of my screen time.
This is all rather simple and low-stakes, I guess, but it also isn’t when you consider what a problem FOMO (fear of missing out) is. As I’ve trained myself to worry less about the books and TV shows and music I’m not getting to, I’m also becoming better at worrying less about what I could be doing that I’m not. If I have two or more possible things to do on a single night, I try to choose one and not think about the others. Or if I feel like I really need a night off, I am trying to take it. It allows me to be more present in whatever I’m doing– whether it’s resting, working or being with loved ones.
One other thing I’ve noticed about this it has coincided with using social media differently. At first I was going to say less, but I realized that it’s not really true. Instead, I’m trying to be more purposeful about it. I don’t feel the need to post to Instagram everyday or share every thought on Facebook. As I’ve gotten out of the feedback loop of likes and comments I find myself desiring them less, and instead it’s more about augmenting real-world relationships or my own interests rather than the clicks. I’m still using it, but in a different way.
So, that’s where I am as 2017 ends and 2018 begins. Trying to be “here” more and approaching life in a way that is both more casual and more meaningful at the same time.
Earlier this week, Twitter rolled out the ability to post up to 280 characters at a time to every one of its users, myself included.
This has already made me a worse writer.
I know they’ve done all sorts of research into this and don’t owe me anything, so this isn’t a complaint post. It’s an observational one.
Being limited to 140 characters at a time was, for me, a good thing. No longer having that limitation makes Twitter a worse tool, for me.
Few things have done as much to help me combat bad writing habits as Twitter’s old 140-character limit. Even with the advent of Twitter threads, which allowed me to go on and on, the goal of getting as much information as possible into a single Tweet remained. Unnecessary words and poorly formed sentences would be cut in an effort to fit the format. With greater brevity came greater clarity.
You’d think the fact I’ve already gone over the 140 character limit might make me see the value in removing it, but it hasn’t. When I look back at the Tweets I’ve made since the roll-out I see bad articulation and poor distillation of ideas. I’m serious when I say I would like the option of returning to the 140 character limit and only going to 280 when I explicitly ask for more.
Antoine de Saint-Expupery wrote, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” He was right, and it only took him 105 characters to say so.
Though I love radio, I will be spending the next few months as CBC’s digital producer for Prince George/northern B.C.
My key role is to translate great stories you hear on CBC Daybreak North into versions that will find you in your news feeds on facebook and cbc.ca.
Ad nauseam
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