13 posts tagged “npr”

Last week I heard this report on NPR about a French "checkout girl" named Anna Sam who happened to have a degree in literature and happened to start writing a blog with her daily observations on life in a supermarket that happened to get a lot of press in France which she happened to parlay into a book deal which you can buy in French and English.

As I listened to this segment it struck me that it had a cute and funny balance of human interest, slice of life narrative and navel gazing that is all the rage right now (present company included).

My bet is that it's only a matter of time before this book gets American-ized and turned into a film. And why Zooey Deschanel? Perhaps she is just on my brain what with that little movie that everyone wants to be the next big little movie, but I do think that she has the right mix of aloofness, cynicism and humor to pull this off.

Of course, it would be much more fun to see this film made in France first and then have it imported and adapted for the U.S. That way I can be one of the handful of people who'll say "meh, it was better with subtitles".

I hate to me a cynic (really I do), but I have to say that when I heard of Billy Mays passing today, one of my first thoughts was how many meetings this was causing in the media and advertising world.

You see, as the more "main stream" brands have seen revenues drop in this recession, they have pulled their ads. This in turn has caused ad rates to go down. Who as swooped in to pick up these discount rates? Direct response marketers who sell things like OxiClean. And who pitches a ton of these products? Billy Mays.

All over America today Media Directors were on the phone with networks and buyers talking about what the hell they are going to do with all this purchased time. And on my side of things, Marketing Managers were calling Account Directors and editors to talk about how quickly they could re-cut new creative with as little of Mr. Mays as possible (at least until they can shoot new spots). I am betting this caused a lot of meetings.

As for Mr. Mays, my thoughts go out to his family. This week we have seen the deaths of three huge celebrities who's work and success is easy to recognize. Billy Mays on the other hand had a less recognizable contribution.

Now I am not saying the Billy Mays is anywhere near as important to American culture as Michael Jackson. But I recently heard this segment on the NPR show On the Media that draws a direct line from Billy Mays all the way back to the old school "pitch man" selling hair tonic on the Jersey Shore. Mays claimed to be the last in this line and after hearing this I realized that he and his ilk are very much a part of our culture, for better or worse. I recommend you read or listen to it. 

I heard a report on NPR today, mildly lamenting the end of Kodachrome. Then I recalled this article from the Daily Gazette hailing the return of vinyl. Finally I remembered two segment from All Things Considered pointing how the advent of digital television means we'll no longer have "snow" or TV repairmen. What ever will we do?

Let's set aside the fact that I happen to think film offers photographers more control over their craft than digital cameras and that the digital television change over is a solution in search of a problem. For a moment I just want to think about why we have nostalgia for "old" technology.

I feel like every week I hear someone lamenting the end of some tech (or aspect of tech) that lost its usefulness long ago: Polaroid, NES, the VCR (or even Beta Max), slides, the eight track, the cassette tape, CDs, floppy disks, the answering machine, the rotary phone and the almost endless death march for the bound book.

These seem to share a common meme: thing X is in decline and some people are trying to hold onto it; thing X is almost gone and there are a few avid fans left; last of the thing X closes/is produced and we all now need to reflect on the "hole" in our national culture and what thing X represented to "a generation" of people.

Enough already! As you may have picked up from my Twitter rants, I have come to abhor absolutes, especially when they relate to "progress". No one thing is so great that it's essential to our national character. Nor is any one thing so great that it will be the last thing we every need. I am sure no one EVER thought we would have phones that were not tethered to Ma Bell. I now have one that is smaller than a pack of cigarettes (remember those) that is "pay as you go".

Anyone who knows me will agree that I do love nostalgia, so this post may strike some as odd. But I get nostalgic for people, places, experiences, food, drink, cigarettes (remember those), music and cultural. I don't get a warm fuzzy for the type of film that I used as a kid or my floppy disks.

Can we all just get over ourselves and enjoy the fact that a lot of things are better and easier now? And you know what? Some things are worse and harder, but that is what technology does: it giveth and it taketh away. And this being America, it is often the will of consumers that drives the birth and death of tech. So let's all just calm down and enjoy the brave new world.

Rant over.

UPDATE: Boing Boing joins in on the Kodachrome funeral. Please people, get over it.

I am often fascinated by how much more aggressive and direct the British press is compared to the American press. The Daily Show picked up on this a few times during the Bush administration. They generally seem more willing to interrupt heads of sate, ask very direct questions with aggressive follow-ups and continue to press a point if they get the standard political non-answer answer.

So I was struck by two different radio interviews conducted yesterday:

• The BBC's Today Programme interviewed Prime Minister Gordon Brown and (IMHO) aggressively pressed him on why he is not calling an election in the wake of the recent personal expenses scandal. They also asked if he was "embarrassed" that he could not get reforms passed last summer. Oh, and they also ask if this Parliament has any authority to govern in the wake of the scandal. It's long, but totally worth it.
• NPR also interviewed President Obama. This was a joint interview with Steve Inskeep and Michele Norris. Take a listen to this one as well. While they do push him on a few points they are much less aggressive than the BBC and much more polite. (Full disclosure, I have not had time to listen to both parts of the interview.)
  

Now I had a whole post thought out on the nature of interviews and media in different countries and how the BBC has more freedom to ask tough questions because it is the main source for news in the UK and how the media in the U.S. is always trying to avoid the "liberal" label. But then I saw this on the BBC home page:

I now realize that this is likely more about the subjects than the media outlets. NPR and the BBC want to be polite to Obama so they can get a follow-up later. Brown on the other hand is on the ropes, not likely to be Prime Minister for much longer and he is embroiled in a controversy.

No mater which way you slice it, these are all interesting to observe side by side.

Can someone tell me why, in the middle of a great interview with Booker T. Jones, Liane Hansen had to take a question from Twitter?

I mean, I get the idea of asking for audience questions in advance of an interview. That's cool. And I am even cool that NPR uses Twitter to do this. But why do you have to MENTION Twitter? What if the question came over email, or phone?

This is one more reason to hate Twitter (in addition to the ones I have mentioned before). It is elevated to this g-d like level but really its just another channel. Its just like any other channel that we have available to us. We can use it to gather great information, but let's stop name dropping this site every two seconds.

In related Twit-hate news, A Mistake sent me a link via Urban Daddy to a site called Tweeting Too Hard where we can all vote on the most useless and self-important Tweets. If you have a few minutes this will make you laugh.

In Civil War, Woman Fought Like A Man For Freedom

Jennie Hodgers, masquerading as [Albert] Cashier, marched thousands of miles during the [Civil] war. She was at the Siege of Vicksburg and the surrender of Mobile. Her regiment took part in more than 40 skirmishes and battles.

I heard this segment on NPR yesterday and from the moment it started I found myself thinking two things: 1) how can I have a B.A. in American History and not know about this and 2) how has this not been made into a movie?

Let’s review what we have in the source material:

• Compelling human narrative
• Little known historical fact
• Underdog story
• Potential epic backdrop
• Struggles of nineteen century women

Best of all, after the war Hodgers remained living as Cashier, ended up in a soldier’s home where after a few years was her real gender finally discovered, at which time the newly formed Veterans Administration suspended her pension payments. This action prompted several of her comrades to rise in her defense.

This means that there is the potential for both epic battle scenes and a “trial” in the SAME MOIVE. This is Oscar gold. It’s Shakespeare in Love * (Glory + Cold Mountain) + Scent of a Woman. How can this go wrong?

Em thinks Hillary Swank should play Hodgers. I say she has two statues already (one for a sub-par film). Give it to Sarah Michelle Gellar -- Buffy as a cross-dressing Civil War soldier…brilliant.

Apparently there is an unused maximum security detention center that was built in Hardin Montana, a small city just east of Billings. Since there are no prisoners, and thus no jobs, city officials are putting forward the idea that the Two Rivers Detention Facility could accept prisoners from Gitmo when "Camp Victory" closes next year.

This afternoon NPR interviewed an official from the authority that built the prison. He basically invited members of DOJ and the Obama administration to go up to Montana, check out the facility and at least consider the option.

So on its surface this looks lie a win, win, win right? People in a VERY RED state that just so happens to have two Democratic Senators and a popular Democratic Governor are asking the President to send the "unlawful combatants" to their city. Hardin, an economically depressed town, gets federal jobs, Obama gets to close Gitmo and he doesn't have to force the detainees on a community.

Right.

Or this could turn into a big mess. Digging deeper, it seems that the privately owned facility was built based on a gentleman's agreement that it would become part of the Montana state prison system. That never happened. What's more, it is illegal for Montana to accept out-of-state prisoners, so legislation would need to be passed to make this happen. (Thanks to the commenter on NPR.org for pointing all this out.)

When you look at it like that its a lose, lose, lose. Obama and DOJ get entangled in a local issue that seems a bit sketchy, the Montana legislature is forced to debate accepting the prisoners and the clock continues to tick down on the one year deadline.

The point of all this? Two things: One, this is a really incomplete piece of reporting by NPR (come on guys, stop with the reporting by anecdotes s**t). And two, Bush really put us in a legal and political mess with this offshore prison of his.

Oy.

I awoke this morning just before 6 AM. Right on time to hear Steve Inskeep tell me about a new economic theme park being opened by The Economist magazine. I quickly realized that the rapscallion had tried to trick me -- this was NPR's annual "fake news story". Those jokers.

But then it got better. My local radio sports reporter informed me that Derek Jeter had been traded to the Red Sox for Kevin Youkilis. Oh the hilarity.

And right before I left for work, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich gave me the "inside scoop" on Obama's new stimulus plan -- give bonus to Wall Street executives who fess up and admit their role in the economic meltdown. I laughed all the way to the office.

Even more excellent tomfoolery awaited me online: A-Rod has requested a trade, Google is now run on artificial intellegence (this one comes with a YouTube Channel and blog) and The Guardian is going all Twitter (which some how they failed to mention on Twitter).

All this and it's only lunch time. I have some many more ruses to look foward to. Oh, I do so love April Fools Day. Who ever came up the idea for actual news outlet reporting fake stories was brilliant. There should be more of these. I wish April Fools Day was every day.

Now, when will those geniuses at The Onion get their acts together and use April 1st to report a real news story? Looks like the MSM and the blogs have fake news covered for the day.

This American Life #375: Bad Bank

I am a week behind on this one (still catching up on media after our trip to South Africa). I don't generally link to radio stories on my blog (OK, sometimes I do), but I felt compelled to recommend this episode.

This is the third TAL to feature Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg. The pair have done two (1, 2) earlier shows on TAL and host the Planet Money podcast and blog. Their goal is to frame the discussion around the banking and credit crisis in terms that the average person can understand. Because, let's face it, the meltdown of the global banking system can be hard to wrap your head around. Host Ira Glass puts it best:

Maybe your on the verge of just giving up. Figuring this is one of those news stories that your just going to kind of sit out. You know, I sat out Kosovo. I'm not proud of that fact, but I did.

I admit that I too sat out Kosovo (I still don't understand that one). This is a really good hour of radio and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the major challenges that the banks in the U.S. are facing right now. Unfortunaly it does not make you feel "better" (we are, afterall, doomed). But at least you'll know why we are doomed.

Oh, and Ira Glass just tunred 50?? He's a Boomer? I always firgure he was an Xer, but no, he is old than Obama. Does that make him "the original aging hipster jack-ass"?

(Lest anyone misunderstand, that last point was a joke. I (heart) Ira Glass and TAL).

UPDATE: Credit where credit is due, A Mistake coined the phrase "aging hipster jackass".

Today is Independence Day, happy birthday America.

This morning on The Writer's Almanac I heard an interesting story about the writing of the Declaration of Independence. According to Garrison Keillor, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration in just a few days and sent it to Benjamin Franklin to get his thoughts. Franklin made only a few edits, most notably changing "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." to, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." (a good edit). 

Then Jefferson sent the revised version to The Continental Congress. They made several edits, including cutting lines that attacked the British people and a passage that attacked the King for the British slave trade. They cut the last five paragraphs in half, calling them too long and rambling. In all they made 86 changes and cutting 480 words.

What I found most fascinating was what Garrison said about Jefferson's feeling toward this editing process:

Jefferson found the process of revision extremely painful. He later said, "I was sitting by Dr. Franklin, who perceived that I was not insensible to these mutilations."

In other words, he hated having his work torn apart by a committee.

This reminded me of how the creative process works in advertising. You see in my business a writer (Jefferson) is given one to two weeks to initially complete an assignment (most wait until the end and get it done in two days). Then they show their work to a Creative Director (Franklin) who generally makes minor edits to the work and usually makes it better. After that it goes to the client (The Continental Congress) and they pull together a big group of people who rip the work apart and nit pick a bunch of changes. The writer hates this part.

Of course the analogy would work better if Jefferson had been required to first show his draft to a small group representing the Congress. This group would have made some edits of their own before the Client even got to read it. That would have been the 18th century version of the Account Services team (guys like me).

Now, by no means am I suggesting that we in "The Biz" write anything close to the Declaration of Independence. My point is that this is how the creative process works. You create something that you are proud of, show it to a respected elder to get confirmation that you are in the right place, and then watch less talented hacks tear your work apart, mostly for arbitrary reasons (i.e. it is too long and rambling).

Yes, the creative process has not changed much in 231 years. In a way that is comforting and in a way it is frightening. Either way, it did end up producing a great document that is the basis for our nation and our political philosophy, so something must work in this crazy process.  Happy birthday America.