Calling All Word Nerds

Yes­ter­day I start­ed my new job as Com­cast’s chief blog­ger. Now I’ve had some fun with social media so far in my career and have had a real­ly great time get­ting peo­ple excit­ed about bring­ing the A’s back to Philadel­phia, but I have very lit­tle in the way of what you may call deep back­ground on social media practices.

My take: I feel like I have the trick­i­est part–writing–down cold. I have a sol­id under­stand­ing of what sto­ries are best told through text and which are bet­ter explained by video, thanks to my tenure at comcast.net. I know that peo­ple want reg­u­lar con­tent and they have expec­ta­tions around how it’s deliv­ered. That’s understood.

What I have ques­tions about are best prac­tices in the social web. If you can rec­om­mend read­ing either on- or offline, I’d appre­ci­ate it. Leave a note in the com­ments or @ me on Twit­ter. If you have favorite blogs that deal specif­i­cal­ly in this, feel free to share those as well. My Google read­er feels a lit­tle emp­ty after I 86’d oh so many music blogs.

Don’t think I’m not doing some heavy lift­ing myself. I’m find­ing Kristi­na Halvor­son­’s work and the Brain Traf­fic blog a very use­ful font of info and links. I’ve also sub­scribed to sev­er­al rec­om­mend­ed com­pa­ny blogs, rang­ing from South­west Air­lines to Google’s Offi­cial blog. Love how they read!

My First Day as Chief Blogger

Check out the view from my new office!

Today was hec­tic, but real­ly cool. Had some neat meet­ings. Was a lot like my first day at Com­cast: a lit­tle con­fu­sion and a ton of excite­ment. Met more peo­ple today than I have in three years at the com­pa­ny and that’s great!

Very excit­ed to see where my new role takes me. This office is just the first step.

A Benediction for Music Criticism

Today’s my last day as music edi­tor at comcast.net. It’s a weird feel­ing to be wrap­ping up what has been a pret­ty amaz­ing 10-year jour­ney at the periph­ery of the music industry.

I’ll be the first to admit that I was nev­er a great music critic.When I first start­ed scrib­bling about songs back in ’99, I strove hard to con­nect the music I heard into some social phe­nom­e­na. Square peg meet round hole. I now real­ize that most of the music I wrote about nev­er attempt­ed to con­nect in any way to the events of the last ten years, save for a track or two about New York post‑9/11 or New Orleans post-Kat­ri­na. When I look back on the ear­li­est writ­ing I did for Pitch­fork and Sty­lus, I’m tor­tured by my prose and lack of style.

It was­n’t until I start­ed work­ing with the now infa­mous Chris Wein­garten that I real­ly blos­somed as a crit­ic. Chris picked me up off the music crit­ic scrap heap, hav­ing been fresh­ly fired from Deci­bel Mag­a­zine, to work on this new site called Paper Thin Walls. There I final­ly con­nect­ed with the crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty in the way I’d always hoped: a snarky out­sider who sim­ply did­n’t under­stand why so many crit­ics and blog­gers all fawned over the same bands at once. Chris helped me dis­cov­er my voice and he did some­thing no edi­tor I’d worked with before him had done: he would edit my pieces with my input, often in real-time. It was amaz­ing to work with him on that project, doomed though it was. Most of my best work was lost when the Paper Thin Walls servers crashed. Shame, really.

While work­ing there I met my friend Tom Mal­lon, a for­mer CMJ col­league of Chris’ and the music edi­tor at comcast.net. He and I often chipped in on the blur­by, Twit­ter-on-steroids news items for Paper Thin Walls. It was a lot of fun. Lit­tle did I know it was also an audi­tion for my cur­rent job, iden­ti­fy­ing news­wor­thy items and then find­ing the right hook to get peo­ple to check them out. I have no idea how many peo­ple fol­lowed our links, but it sure as hell was a lot of fun.

Then the unex­pect­ed hap­pened. While I was apply­ing for a job on craigslist, Tom reached out to ask if I was still look­ing for work. I was. He told me to get him my resume. The rest is his­to­ry. I start­ed here at Com­cast in April 2007, came on full-time in Sep­tem­ber of that year and have been run­ning things ever since.

Here’s a quick run­down of some of the things I was able to do here that I prob­a­bly couldn’t–or wouldn’t–have done any­where else:

The list isn’t as long as I’d like it to be, but some­thing I learned dur­ing my tenure here was that the pas­sion I had for music keeps shrink­ing to ever-more insu­lar com­mu­ni­ties. It may be hard to believe now, but there once was a world out­side of Tum­blr where peo­ple dis­cussed the music they liked and shared it with each oth­er. It’s sad to see that go, but I feel like it slipped through our fin­gers, at least for those of us old enough to remem­ber the music indus­try at it’s peak.

I know far too many crit­ics who watched help­less­ly as our sto­ries about bands were replaced by sto­ries about the devices that played their music and then just the apps on those devices. The point at which every inno­va­tion was hailed as the next great thing was the moment I grew tired of writ­ing about music. I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Which brings me back to Wein­garten. I’ve been promis­ing to inter­view him for far too long and I hope that hap­pens soon­er rather than lat­er. It may be impolitic to say it, but peo­ple get far too caught up in his per­sona to real­ize that his schtick isn’t sim­ply “per­son­al brand­ing.” He’s been an inspi­ra­tion to me as he’s carved out a niche for him­self, say­ing unpop­u­lar things at a time when peo­ple tune crit­i­cism out alto­geth­er. If he’s real­ly the last rock crit­ic stand­ing, we should be grate­ful. It could be a lot worse.

Will I com­plete­ly dis­en­gage from music now that I’m mov­ing on? Prob­a­bly not, but I will say that unsub­scrib­ing from the PR cir­cuit, as well as the music blogs that keep them alive has been very free­ing. In the past week I’ve found myself trawl­ing YouTube for stuff I’ve been curi­ous about. I’m think­ing about wip­ing my iPhone, too, and just load­ing it with Echo and the Bun­ny­men and Mar­ble Sheep bootlegs. It’s real­ly refresh­ing. Take my word for it.

I’m for­ev­er grate­ful to Bryan Mick­le’s dis­cern­ing taste for rein­tro­duc­ing me to The The.

A Word on the Name Change

Ram­say­ings. Corny, right?

I’ll admit that it does­n’t roll as trip­ping­ly off the tongue as I might like it to, but I think it makes more sense as I move away from music crit­i­cism and more into being a gen­er­al inter­est blog­ger. I just like incor­po­rat­ing my name into the stuff I’m inter­est­ed in or I’m work­ing on. I think it makes it more per­son­al. I can live with it being a lit­tle sil­ly, too.

Still love Jack Rose’s music very much. You should prob­a­bly buy as much of it as you can.