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Showing posts from April, 2014

Reflections on being at this stage of my journalism career

Soon I will buy a book because of a review written by Siva Vaidhyanathan . The book is called Should I Go to Grad School? and the pages tell the story of 41 people who faced that decision. I'm curious to know more, because after reading the piece I'm somehow wondering why my own answer has always been no. I met Siva once at an event at the University of Virginia a few years ago based on his book,  The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) .  He is an incredibly engaging media studies professor who can explain the complexities of this ever-changing communications landscape. During the University's crisis in 2012, he became a leader who explained precisely why the situation going on was important to the future of universities across the nation, and perhaps the world.  I've read many of his articles, though I'll confess I tend to skim them because my own attention is so focused on work I do covering local government in Charlottesville and Albem

A musical confession and the beginning of a new era

I first began recording things when I was a little kid growing up in Lynchburg. My friend Jeffry Cudlin and I made comedy tapes and radio parodies on a little cassette recorder. This may have been sparked by listening to radio dramas that were on NPR at the time, including Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Wars, and the Lord of the Rings. For Jeffry, he was doing parodies of easy listening stations. As we grew older, this converted into making music together. Jeffry was in charge of the music, and sang whatever I could off the top of my head. His talents are infinite compared to mine, and I showed no aptitude to learn a single instrument. At one point he gave me lyrics to sing, but we ended up going to different colleges and I stopped being able to learn easily from him.  And, that's where I am at today. With others, Jeffry and I ended up making a lot of music together in 1998 when I moved to Arlington for that purpose. Of course, this never took the form of actual