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Most days I face a precarious balance between the immediate satisfaction of Twitter and the longer satisfaction of writing and careful reading. Call it the shower vs. bath approach, but minus the cleansing effect. My mind usually comes away from each activity with varying degrees of clutter and mess, to say nothing of my hard drive.

Being a fan of analytics (perhaps the mark of the 21st century Real Life Writer; could emails be next?), I noticed that, amidst the tango of words and numbers and maps and colors of the past week, a post from 2010 is getting a lot of reader love, one in which I gathered various news tidbits I’d seen a week, and mused on each thing. I enjoy doing this: it’s an effective way to make sense of the tidal wave of information that comes at me throughout any given day.

Between the popularity of that post and others like it (ie Linkalicious), as well as the fact I have a few tabs open (“a few” = fifty-one across two windows), and keen to keep things fresh here, the thought occurs: why not share?

Barely Keeping Up in TV’s New Golden Age (New York Times)
The future of TV is coming into focus, and looks pretty great (Quartz)

It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I am slowly becoming seduced (perhaps re-seduced is better) by the greatness of contemporary television. In younger days, I was a devoted fan of Twin Peaks and Northern Exposure; I was late to Deadwood but in no way did it dampen the powderkeg of enthusiasm I felt when I saw it. Zachary Seward at Quartz has gathered up a number of important elements that will greatly enhance future TV-watching enjoyment; things like accessibility, remotes, subscriptions, cost, and subject matter are nicely touched on and explained — but none of this would matter if TV was a cultural wasteland. It isn’t. As the New York Times’ David Carr rightly observes, there’s been a cultural cost of the ascendance of television as a cultural force; books, magazines, and cinema have all seen significant changes. The internet has, of course, played a huge role as well — but it feels like TV and the web are working together, not at odds, to deliver smart programming people can (and do) commit to. (Question to you, readers: should I start watching Game of Thrones?)

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Journalism startups aren’t a revolution if they’re filled with all these white men (The Guardian)
I’m a fan of Emily Bell’s, having followed her fine work, as well as her great Twitter account, for a long time. (Thank you for the follow-back, Emily; forever flattered.) This succinct, snappy op-ed examines the various media startup ventures by Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, and Glenn Greenwald/Pierre Omidyar over the past year, with Bell rightly concluding that, to paraphrase Roger Daltrey, the new boss looks the same as the old boss. Sadly, such a conclusion doesn’t surprise me; theorizing about fairness and justice is usually just that; it takes decisive action to make those ideas reality. This op-ed did make me wonder why more women aren’t creating startups, but hopefully that’s changing. As Emily tweeted (in an exchange with PandoDaily’s Paul Carr), “I am staggered that there are so few women who have Klein / Silver / Greenwald power.” It was good to see Kara Swisher got a mention here; I’ve noticed that, within some circles of the innovation/entrepreneurial journalism worlds, Kara isn’t considered enough, if at all. It’s vital there be more intelligent critiques like Emily’s down the line. As I tweeted to Paul Carr recently, no organization can or should be above scrutiny. Bravo.

I am embarrassingly out of the loop when it come to new bands for one simple reason: I don’t listen to anything but classical music between the oodles of writing and reading and research I do every day. My journalist-come-artist’s mind can’t function properly with anything but Mozart / LVB / Glass et al while I’m in the thick of things. This is probably the result of a classical-filled youth, but old habits die hard. If and when I listen to new music, I like to give my full attention: laptop closed, concentrating on lyrics/melody/production, of course, but also the spaces between beats, the breaths between words. I listen to new music the way I read a new book. When I invariably fall across I band I like, I get really excited, and act like no one else has heard of them before, when in fact, I’m probably the last to the party; Haim, Savages, and Warpaint are, for example, three bands who’ve made me sit up and pay attention. I’m keen on finding more. These lists should help. (I am also open to reader suggestions!)

Recipe for Irish soda buns (BostonGlobe.com)

What with St. Patrick’s Day coming up this Monday, Irish-isms are everywhere online: where to drink, what to drink, what to wash the booze down with. It’s hard for me not to roll my eyes at the automatic Ireland/alcohol associations that invariably come up every March, but surely one of the nicest developments of late has been the myriad of food recipes that appear alongside the cocktail ones. I work in my kitchen;  a big reason I love it (aside from the view, which, right now, is of a snow-filled garden) is the proximity I have to cooking, an activity I love. It’s such a treat to move between making stuff in the virtual world and making stuff in the real one. I’m tempted to make these buns between bouts of reading, tweeting, uploading, writing — or rather, I’m tempted to read, tweet, upload and write between bouts of cooking. As it should be.
It’s been with much interest I’ve noted a real uptick in my overseas blog readership; viewers from Ukraine seem especially interested in my work. (I am flattered and honored — Спасибо!) I actually grew up with a Ukrainian best friend, and I worked with a Ukrainian journalist, Kateryna Panova at NYU. (Her first-hand report from Kiev is in the latest edition of Brooklyn Quarterly if you’re interested; good stuff.) I came across this story via Mark MacKinnon’s Twitter feed, and it points up something I feel is somewhat lacking in the coverage of the Ukrainian / Russian crisis: first-hand experience, or more pointedly, the stomach-churning fear of being there. Mark’s report bubbles with anxiety, though it’s mixed with thoughtfulness. He speaks with his fellow train passengers and cabbies about their fears, and his work reveals an uniquely Eastern mix of worry, resilience, and wry humor; “It can’t be worse than this!” remarks one. It’s a tense, terse situation loaded down by decades –if not centuries — of heavy resentment and power-shifting. Pieces like these are stitches in the as-yet-unfinished quilt of modern history.

Russia Aggression Paves Way For Ukrainian Energy Coup: Interview With Yuri Boyko (Oilprice.com)
This is a separate entry from the one above because I feel like, while Mark’s entry is a diary-style, micro-examination of the Ukrainian/Crimean/Russian crises, James Stafford’s piece is a more macro analysis, offering a strong subtext to the current affairs we’ve seen over the last few weeks on our screens, monitors, magazines and papers. This Q&A came to my attention via the Twitter feed of a favorite financial blogger, Felix Salmon. It’s essentially a Q&A with Yuri Boyko, who has a long list of “formers” in his CV: former deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, former Vice Prime Minister for Energy, Space and Industry, former Minister of Energy and Chairman of the Ukrainian State Gas industry. In 2004, he was awarded the “Hero of Ukraine,” a title recognizing long-term service to the development of the Ukrainian energy and fuel industries. Why more news outlets haven’t covered the energy angle of this story is mystifying. As Boyko notes,

Natural gas is the single most important weapon in Russia’s arsenal. It is President Vladimir Putin’s weapon of choice. Europe understands this all too well as most of its natural gas supply transits Ukraine, so supply disruption is used to influence events not only in Ukraine, but also Berlin, Paris and Brussels. This is why Europe will be hesitant to apply strong sanctions against Russia.

This brief, if deeply insightful exchange deeply illuminates what is, for some, a deeply confusing issue. Highly recommended reading and one to bookmark for re-reading, especially after Sunday.

“In A World…” : The voice of your favorite movie trailers has died (The Daily Edge)
I feel guilty and not a little stupid at my ignorance; I didn’t know Hal’s name until he passed. He shaped a million movie experiences for me, and I’d imagine, for so many others besides. Movie-going has lost some of its magic for me, what with the relative ease of modern convenience; going to the movies sometimes feels like more of a chore than a pleasure. Still, the sound of Douglas’ voice immediately transports me to the cinema of my younger days, and makes me want to go back, even if I know I’ll never again hear those dulcet tones before the feature starts.

How to grieve when you’re a journalist (Medium)

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The title grabbed me first here. How to show remorse and sadness when you’re supposed to constantly be objective, when you’re supposed to “rise above,” when you have to report things like death with a straight face, no matter how tragic? I had a deeply personal reaction to the passing of Peter Kaplan last fall; I looked at (and still regard) the former New York Observer editor as both a symbol of a past era and a stubbornly gorgeous, tall, bright poppy in a sea of grey, metallic, screen-glare conformity. He understood writing, and he understood branding, and what perhaps he understood best was how the two could — and should –do a sexy tango across a page and into the mind and heart of the reader, heels, hair, lipstick and low-cut dress intact. I’ve been wanting to write a lot more about Kaplan (and intend to), but I appreciated the sensitivity and deft touch with which Mark Lotto approaches his subject matter here, inspired, tragically, by the passing of another great writer, Matthew Power. Lotto writes with great affection (it isn’t cheesy at all), while infusing his piece with a palpable hurt and compelling humanity. He makes me want to read every single thing Power ever did. And he reminds me I’m on the right path:

…with every story we can do a little better, push a little harder, go a little farther, get a little weirder, be a little truer. And we’ll feel happier, knowing such awesome stories would have made Kaplan and Matt happy.