Good Reputation Sleeping

Evolution

Ever since the Tower of Babel, effective communication has been a work in progress. Communication on the web is no different. As journalists, one would think we'd have this figured out. Sadly, we don't.

Here are a couple of attempts at evolving the way we communicate with our audience from The Sunday New York Times.

- 'At Home Again in the Unknown'

Great article about my favorite Icelandic treat, bjork. Online, the article is 'spiced-up' with audio from the interview. A small, but very meaningful value-add. I love being able to hear her voice and I love being able to get some additional content I don't have to read.

- 'How YouTube Helped Lisa Nova Start Her Career'

LisaNova has been one of my YouTube subscriptions from the start. She is droll and bust a gut funny at the same time. She is also timely; able to riff off the current culture at the drop of a hat; her latest, 'LisaNova Does 300' may be her best.

Nice, short and sweet piece in the Times about her rise - and for anyone who thinks YouTube is a fad...please pay attention!

AV Club

Too Much Technology!
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

Here is the new unit that will change my staff of photographers into audio-gathering, slideshow fiends!
The mp3 below was recorded with the R-09 and a Sony stereo mic.

Download edirol09.mp3

Incarceration Station

Spinning Hope on Incarceration Station - New York Times.

ANGOLA, La., April 6 - "KLSP, a radio station with one turntable, six employees and a $48 weekly payroll, has limited reach over this patch of swampy farmland and razor wire northwest of Baton Rouge. It is meant to be that way.

The station director and most of the D.J.'s are convicted murderers. Most of its 5,100 listeners are serving life sentences at the Louisiana State Penitentiary here. The 100-foot metal pole that transmits the station's F.C.C.-approved signal - a relatively weak but consistent 100 watts - rises from a grassy knoll behind death row.

Death row, home to 83 men, is where KLSP-FM (91.7), which prison officials say is the nation's only licensed prison radio station, finds its most dedicated audience and inspiration for its core mission: spreading the word of Jesus (and an occasional message from the warden) to men doomed to die behind bars." - Paul Von Zielbauer, NYT

Lou Rawls, At Rest

Silken-Voiced R& B Singer Lou Rawls.

Lou Rawls, who possessed one of the great voices in popular music, with a rich, unmistakable tone that made him a leading soul and pop singer of the 1960s and '70s, died of lung and brain cancer Jan. 6 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Although some published records give his age as 69 or 70, his publicist said he was 72.

Mr. Rawls had a supple, seductive baritone voice that carried him from the gospel choirs of his youth through jazz, rhythm and blues, pop and soul and back again. He recorded more than 75 albums, won three Grammy Awards and had five gold records. Until his illness forced him to stop last month, he appeared in 200 concerts a year.

In addition to his work in music, Mr. Rawls was a leading fundraiser for the United Negro College Fund. As the host of an annual telethon, he raised more than $200 million in contributions in the past 25 years.

A street is named for him in his native Chicago. Mr. Rawls appeared as an actor in many films and television shows, but it was his suave, polished singing style for which he will be most remembered.

No less an authority than Frank Sinatra once said that Mr. Rawls had "the classiest singing and silkiest chops in the singing game." - Matt Schudel, TWP

Friday Guilty Pleasure

A Fashionista Singing About (What Else?).

"The stage was like a catwalk as Ms. Stefani - who has her own designer label - changed costumes for nearly every song. Among them were lacy lingerie, an elegant silvery sequined dress, a red polka-dotted bathing suit and a shorty majorette's outfit, all showing off her long legs. She arrived onstage amid video images of the Harajuku district of designer stores in Japan; Ms. Stefani admires the fearless fashion sense of the young Japanese women who shop there, and she was flanked by four Asian dancers dressed like the Harajuku girls she mentions in more than one song." - Jon Pareles, NYT; Photograph by Rahav Segev

Out of the Mouths of Babes

IPods Become Music To Teachers' Ears.

Using little more than an iPod and a school computer, Gagliolo and her students have been making podcasts -- online radio shows that can be downloaded to an iPod or other portable MP3 player. Avidly discussing their favorite iPod colors and models while they made recordings of their poems and book reports the other day, the fifth-graders bubbled with ideas for future subjects."We could read parts of books, to show why we like them. We could do interviews. If there's a field trip, we could make a recording of it and post it," said Mohamed El-Sayed, 10. "Kids anywhere will like to hear about us." - Fern Shen, The Washington Post; Photograph by Tracy A. Woodward, The Washington Post

From invention to adoption at light speed. Podcasting in the classroom, the latest example of how the web changes EVERYTHING!

Tawk Amongst Yourselves

Yahoo! Podcasts.

Can the adoption and exploitation of this web phenom have happened any faster? First Apple, now Yahoo. Look for AOL and Microsoft to get in the podcasting game. And where is the 'Podcast Nation' Newsweek Magazine cover anyway?

Of all the 'old media' formats, it seems like radio is the first to move fully to a new existance on the web.

Hearing Outside the Box

With Irreverence and an iPod, Recreating the Museum Tour - New York Times.

"If you soak up the Jackson Pollocks at the Museum of Modern Art while listening to the museum's official rented $5 audio guide, you will hear informative but slightly dry quotations from the artist and commentary from a renowned curator. ("The grand scale and apparently reckless approach seem wholly American.")
But the other day, a college student, Malena Negrao, stood in front of Pollock's "Echo Number 25," and her audio guide featured something a little more lively. "Now, let's talk about this painting sexually," a man's deep voice said. "What do you see in this painting?"
A woman, giggling, responded on the audio track: "Oh my God! You're such a pervert. I can't even say what that - am I allowed to say what that looks like?"
The exchange sounded a lot more like MTV than Modern Art 101, but for Ms. Negrao it had a few things to recommend it. It was free. It didn't involve the museum's audio device, which resembles a cellphone crossed with a nightstick. And best of all, it was slightly subversive: an unofficial, homemade and thoroughly irreverent audio guide to MoMA, downloaded onto her own iPod." - Randy Kennedy

White Boy!

The New York Times Magazine > Beck at a Certain Age.

"As a teenager, Beck Hansen would board the bus in a Latin neighborhood just south of downtown Los Angeles, where he lived with his mother and brother. He was a pale, blond, slightly built kid, with narrow shoulders and no hips. Mostly, he was ignored, but occasionally, someone on the street would shout, ''Guero!'' (''White boy!''). In his late teens, he grew his hair long. ''Sometimes they would whistle at me,'' he recalls. ''They would think I was a girl.''

The bus was coming from the South Central ghetto, heading north toward Hollywood. By the end of the ride, it would be filled with people from disparate worlds, side by side, on their way to school or work. When Beck, who is 34, talks about it now, instead of a city bus it might be his own eclectic music he is describing: an assortment of wildly incongruous cultures, jostling and colliding, intent on getting somewhere." - Arthur Lubow

The iLibrary

Wired News: Library Shuffles Its Collection.

"Checking out a new iPod now applies to more than shopping trips or web browsing. This week the South Huntington Public Library on Long Island, New York, became one of the first public libraries in the country to loan out iPod shuffles.

For the past three weeks, the library ran a pilot program using the portable MP3 devices to store audio books downloaded from the Apple iTunes Music Store. They started with six shuffles, and now are up to a total of 10. Each device holds a single audio book." - Cyrus Farivar