I came to Boston to live in the city and work in a major national news hub. Now, just as I graduate from Northeastern University, seismic shifts in medium are challenging our print institutions to be nimbler. The revenue model that long guaranteed that narrative journalism would develop on paper, be it glossy or newsprint, is on life support. And in a funny twist of fate, it's on the internet, where free is the status quo, that vaunted publishing empires must find new life.
In print and broadcast, access to creative tools and the means of publication kept the conversation small. But on the web Arianna Huffington can yell as loud as Rupert Murdoch, and a kid with a camera phone could outsell both. We're witnessing a broad-scale democratization in American media. Meanwhile some of journalism's most sacred houses are standing on stilts.
This is an opportunity to go back to what has really separated good journalism from bad all along: plucky reporting, daring comma usage and good storytelling. It means we have to make coverage more participatory, build communities around content and figure out what gives a masthead character, not clout. Instead of shouting from our soapbox, we get to mill about the crowd. I think the latter sounds like more fun.
Other things I think sound like fun include: band mates switching instruments mid-song, yelling at congressmen on Twitter and thinking up creative ingredients for enchiladas. I've also been know to imitate Barbara Walters and sleep outside Best Buy to buy something else with buttons and blinking lights. I really like it when at a four-way-stop, both signs say walk and you get to cross diagonally.
I pursue all these interests from my apartment in Boston just east of Fenway Park. A lifelong Yankees fan, I was born in New York City but spent most of my youth in a suburb outside Seattle. I'd really like to visit Vietnam, Patagonia and the Balkans.
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Some of my favorites...
//Music.
Sufjan Stevens, Red Hot Chili Peppers, ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Sparklehorse, Mogwai, Bloc Party, Sleater-Kinney, Talib Kweli, Common, Gnarles Barkley, The New Pornographers, The Wrens, Art Brut, Mos Def, Jay-Z, Foo Fighters, Radiohead, TV on the Radio, Longwave, The Long Winters, Creeper Lagoon, Spoon, Blackalicious, Stars, KT Tunstall, M83, Wheat, The National, Nine Inch Nails, Sigur Rós, Manchester Orchestra, Justice, The Roots
//Movies.
Shawshank Redemption, Contact, Hotel Rwanda, 28 Days Later, Lost in Translation, Matchstick Men, Kill Bill, Cloverfield, Adaptation, Collateral, Eternal Sunshine, Snakes on a Plane, An Inconvenient Truth, Traffic, Nightmare Before Christmas, Virgin Suicides, Boyz in the Hood, Almost Famous, All the President's Men, Children of Men, Blade Runner, Life Aquatic, About Schmidt, Hustle and Flow, Michael Clayton, Sunshine, Synecdoche New York
//TV Shows.
Lost, The Shield, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Law and Order, The Office, The Sopranos, Flight of the Conchords, Rescue Me, Cops, Fringe, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Battlestar Galactica, Top Gear, Futurama, Pardon the Interruption, Good Eats, Mad Men, 30 Rock, Damages, The Closer, Californication
//People.
Carl Sagan, Ira Glass, Peter Jennings, Judith Miller, Harvey Milk, Dave Chappelle, Ridley Scott, Lou Gehrig, Kevin Rose, Tim Russert, Hunter S. Thompson, Sofia Coppola, JJ Abrams, Charlie Kaufman
And of course, thanks for coming by.