[contextly_auto_sidebar id="nKnrC7PUeqDJC4RDR5siDCwLQPIJamEg"] OVER the last few years, as the traditional print media has fallen into a tailspin, a number of observers -- including very smart, canny ones -- have predicted that blogs would replace print as well as the more established websites. Andrew Sullivan, whose site The Dish was updated often and drew an enormous readership, was often … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2015
“Sleeping Through a Revolution”: Technology and Culture
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ywu4fbbeaZ4xnIPum8dfcpIbDyG5zWSP"] ONE of the clearest and most powerful descriptions I've seen about the place where technology, culture and economic forces meet is in a lecture USC's Jonathan Taplin gave not long ago. He's transposed the speech into a piece for Medium called "Sleeping Through a Revolution." Taplin is especially good on the big picture, and on … [Read more...]
Louis C.K. and the War Against Smugness
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Af28w71jYaGhUSvBJL3VamJOvXqLnshM"] HOW do you respond when someone handsome and callow cuts you off? Our guest columnist Lawrence Christon goes on a tear here about how we've gone wrong. With no further ado. A FEW THINGS I WISH HE’D SAID By Lawrence Christon Though spoken in a TV show, it’s one of those crystalline moments, like “Rosebud,” or “I’ll have what … [Read more...]
The Craftsman: Musician Matt Keating
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="EdVjbY1oGn33X3u5XD2sNfMAvy9nGcGd"] HERE at CultureCrash, we've been admirers of Matt Keating's music since we saw him play at a barbecue at South by Southwest in the '90s. I'm especially fond of his music from that period -- the Candy Valentine EP is an essential document that I don't think could be improved -- but he's been remarkably consistent in his pursuit of … [Read more...]
Ranting and Rolling in Los Angeles
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="mWdRzlBTyNGzGnaVXOaed48P7lTbyuwV"] I'll be at Chevalier's Books in LA's Larchmont Village neighborhood tonight, with the writers Lynell George, David Ulin and Joe Donnelly of the literary magazine Slake. Be there or be square. I'll also be at the LA Times Festival of Books on Sunday April 19. … [Read more...]
Poetry and Plutocracy
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="fhqVn6TOLjpnLFsHnV7qvLOILjagWywW"] A NEW book of poems, Monetized, looks at our new Gilded Age, with its staggering extremes of wealth and poverty. The book is written by the New York journalist Alissa Quart, who has written three books, the most recent of which is Republic of Outsiders. The New Yorker's Joshua Rothman has a smart profile of Quart on the … [Read more...]
Happy Birthday, Billie Holiday
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="bE6xtH54tzETQjjE7nXEoXhm2A8BNjAw"] TODAY would be the 100th birthday of one of the greatest musicians in history. I've been watching this 1957 video of "Fine and Mellow" for more than 20 years now and continue to love it. There are so many great musicians on this track, but let me point out that Holiday's greatest-even musical partner Lester Young, plays tenor … [Read more...]
The Collapsing Fortunes of the Club Deejay
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Am8vEARmW7HozjXX5GcmuHgcQEc0fAD8"] WHEN people try to destroy my argument about a crisis in culture, one of their most common tacks is to suggest that I'm describing just the fading of an old world -- classical music, literary writing, print journalism and so on -- that is being eclipsed as a new, more democratic pop-culture-driven world rises, bestowing its … [Read more...]
“How the 1 Percent Always Wins”: Interview
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="TzbKntNFyZcSQHgIrdjr9IhXNfnnrZ7q"] A timely and engaging new book by the labor historian Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence, contrasts the way Americans responded to the first Gilded Age -- with protests, class rhetoric, even violence -- to the situation today, where movements like Occupy come and go and populist energy is directed not against capital but … [Read more...]
What Happens When a Newsroom Dies?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="xufOwYj5n0XdtGNHU7t2P2ob7klfXyeT"] THERE's a poignant piece up on The Guardian about a photojournalist who has tracked the collapse of American newspapers, especially the once-great Philadelphia Inquirer. Here's the story's opening graph: In the past decade, as a percentage, more print journalists have lost their jobs than workers in any other significant … [Read more...]