QOTD: 6/26/09

Jon Fine:

But can we please agree to stop using each major breaking news story as an excuse to flog your favored hobby horse, whether it’s “new media can’t do what traditional media can” or “old media is sluggish and nonresponsive”?

Anniversaries big and small

The Augsburg Confession was presented to Emperor Charles V on this date in 1530.

It’s been one year since the formation of Brothers of John the Steadfast, named after one of the men who signed that document.

You’d think the two were tied together in some way. Oh right. They are.

Clapton/Winwood: United Center, Chicago

Pic from Clapton's official site

I’m not going to try and write my own review of the Steve Winwood/Eric Clapton concert last night at the United Center in Chicago. I will say that it’s just incredible to see two consumate professionals like these guys who are, after all these years, still at the top of their game. Their voices might be a little tired but that’s the only outward sign of age they show outside of how they’ve actually gotten better at their trade.

There was a marked lack of pretense about the entire evening, with both the stars and their backing band simply going about their business and having fun in the process.

Here’s the setlist, retrieved from Greg Kot’s review of the show:

1. Had to Cry Today (Blind Faith)
2. Low Down (J.J. Cale)
3. After Midnight (J.J. Cale)
4. Presence of the Lord (Blind Faith)
5. Sleeping in the Ground (Sam Myers/Blind Faith outtake)
6. Glad (Traffic)
7. Well Alright (Buddy Holly/Blind Faith)
8. Tough Luck Blues (Big Maceo)
9. Pearly Queen (Traffic)
10. Crossroads (Robert Johnson)
11. There’s a River (Winwood)
12. Forever Man (Jerry Williams/Clapton)
13. Georgia on My Mind – Winwood solo (Hoagy Carmichael)
14. Driftin’ Blues – acoustic (Charles Brown)
15. How Long Blues – acoustic (Leroy Carr)
16. Layla – acoustic (Derek and the Dominoes)
17. Can’t Find My Way Home — acoustic (Blind Faith)
18. Split Decision (Winwood)
19. Voodoo Chile (Jimi Hendrix)

Encore:
20. Sweet Home Chicago (Robert Johnson)
21. Drowning on Dry Land (Al Jackson)

Rogers’ return

I haven’t been reading the Captain America comics series, but from all accounts the recent run over the last few years has been fantastic, including the death of the original Cap, Steve Rogers.

It’s not surprising, of course, that Marvel has decided, two years post-assasination, to bring Rogers back, even as his once-thought-dead protege Bucky Barnes has assumed the shield and flag for the last year or so.

I was kind of thinking they’d wait at least one more year, though. Two years seems safe, three years seems ballsy.

Super potential

Graeme McMillan has a list of 20 Marvel Comics characters who could get their own big-screen adventure and what kind of film they’d be a good fit for. Great lists.

One URL to rule them all

I recently read about MultiURL, a site that lets you create a single URL that points people to up to five of your sites. When you click on a created URL a toolbar appears at the top of the screen that lets you scroll through each site in that bundle. It’s pretty cool and I could see it having a ton of applications for marketers who are looking to make sure people see their homepage, a Facebook page, Twitter account and some other sites.

Here’s the one I created that brings together CT.WP, MMM and my Twitter feed: http://www.multiurl.com/g/iA

One more time

Apparently this still needs to be said: If you run a “blogger relations” program with the same mindset you’d run any other sort of media relations program you’ll be fine and won’t run afoul of any ethics guidelines, internal or external. The writers of blogs should be approached and handled when it comes to review items, contests or anything else in the same way a writer for a newspaper or magazine would. A very simple rule of thumb when proposing any sort of program like this that should be followed is to ask yourself “Would I even be considering this if we were talking about The New York Times?” If the answer is “Yes” you’re fine. If not, it’s probably a good idea to spike the idea and go back to the drawing board.

Good order around the Lord’s Supper

Pr. Rossow, the senior pastor at my own church, has posted Part 1 of the Sacristan Rubric developed by a former member of Bethany Lutheran, Naperville. As someone who serves as a Sacristan, this has been a great resource of study into the history of and responsibilities around this sacred duty.

The power of print

In preparation for a vacation I just got back from I bought an issue of a print magazine. Specifically the June issue of Wired, the one with “The New New Economy” on the cover.

It had been a while since I browsed through and read a print magazine, having long since shifted most, if not all, of my reading to Google Reader and the collection of RSS feeds I’ve built up there, including Wired’s. And in coming back to this I found myself actually falling in love with reading magazines all over again.

I’m almost through the issue and reading it has been more enjoyable than I really thought it would be. There are a handful of stories in there that I probably would have skipped over in Reader but which I read in full and got a lot out of. And for the longer stories I was able to put the magazine down when I had to and come back to it, picking up right where I left off. It’s something I don’t do online, where if I read a long story (a rarity itself) and don’t finish it it usually remains unfinished.

More than that, the information and opinions in the stories are things I’ll remember. They’re there. They’re not subject to domain renewal or anything else that can make them transitory.

Reading online and in print are very different activities. They have drastically different impacts on the reader and carry very different weights and possibilities for interaction. No, you can’t link to a print story or comment on it as soon as you read it. But that’s alright. Not everything requires you to weigh in immediately. Stop and read every now and again and you’ll be fine.

Bad idea

There are some tools that beer and alcohol manufacturers and brands just shouldn’t even try to use and Twitter is probably one of them. There are many problems here, but the primary ones are that it’s a tool that doesn’t require age verification to view or which is only available at times or in publications that have a certain majority of legal-drinking age audience members.

The assertion that a direct message to new followers asking for their age is the equivalent of requiring a website visitor to enter their birthday is more or less laughable. There are problems with age-verification systems, sure, but at least the brewer is making a good-faith effort to limit access.

I’d expect this to get killed by parents watchdog groups pretty quickly.