LinkedIn is the 'people dashboard' for the media industry. And it was that way long before the big IPO of 2011. Recruiters and the general digital media public have known this for years. Most of my media colleagues were among the first half million users. (I was number 250,000 and change, seven+ years ago). And now there are more than 120 million!
So here are a few true observations (and cautionary tales) from the LinkedIn trenches:
1 - Everyone's looking at everyone's profile. Recruiters do it. Our clients do it. Friends do it. Clients and recruiters and friends look at the profiles together when they're on the phone. It's like a virtual meet-up (well, not really). Anyone with a paid account can see who's looking at their profiles and when. Sometimes when interviewing with this recruiter, candidates have been known to mention that they've seen that the hiring exec in question has been browsing their profile (even before they're on the official list of candidates for consideration). It's a frenzy. It's the age of transparency in overdrive.
IMPLICATION FOR JOB SEEKERS: Keep your profile up to date. Make sure it's a good reflection of your professional self.
IMPLICATION FOR RECRUITERS AND HIRING EXECS: Manage your settings. If you are constantly data mining for candidates or checking out your competitors' executives, hurry up and change your privacy control settings so you can preserve your anonymity!
2 - If you're not on LinkedIn, you don't exist. This is a corollary that flows from the above observation. In my media recruiting world, there are really only four excuses for not being on LinkedIn: a) you're so well known and famous that you feel a listing is superfluous to your brand identity and you think you're way above the fray; b) you're very private and relatively content with your station in life and don't want to wade into the fray; (c) you have an overblown fear of unwanted emails and intrusions; or d) you just don't get it. Among these, (a) is just plain ego; (b)may raise some concerns; (c) is a lazy and uninformed excuse. But you want to avoid (d) at all costs!
CAUTIONARY TALE: I once had a very digitally-savvy client running a very digitally-driven business who wasn't on LinkedIn. Candidates for his management job were puzzled by this and asked me about it. So I asked him to please go add his profile, if only to help me with marketing the role, and happily he did it that day.
IMPLICATION FOR ALL: Get on LinkedIn if you want to 'exist' in a professional networking sense and showcase your career experience.
3 - Having a poor profile or a multiplicity of profiles may be worse than having none. True case in point: A client in an entrepreneurial digital media company was immediately dubious about an experienced candidate's viability when he couldn't find him on LinkedIn ('why isn't he there if he's really in this industry?') When it was pointed out that in fact he was there (under a variant name spelling), with 500+ contacts, said client noticed that the candidate actually had two separate profiles, one that was active and one had been left to wither with few connections. He was then dismissive that the candidate lacked social networking savvy because he hadn't known how to delete the original one. Either way, the candidate struck out.
IMPLICATION: is obvious
4- Bosses know when their employees are on a job search simply by the activity on their LinkedIn feeds. Joining more groups, frequently updating your profile, connecting to lots of new people all of a sudden (INCLUDING executive recruiters) - all very overt signs. I've had clients tell me that they know their direct reports are looking because of what they see on LinkedIn.
IMPLICATION FOR EMPLOYED JOB SEEKERS: Don't connect to your boss or your boss' boss (or quietly disconnect behind the scenes - they won't be alerted and they'll probably never know). OR just stop being so overt, and for goodness sake, don't make all those new group memberships and OpenLink badge icons visible on your profile.
IMPLICATION FOR BOSSES: Get over it. Even in an era of networking in an industry that's thirsty for talent, most people won't find their new jobs online.
-- Cara@NewCoordinates.com
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Who's in Charge on E-Readers?
Everybody’s buzzing about the iPad and e-readers. Specifically, the anticipated impact of the new devices on publishers’ pricing models and consumer behavior. Who will pay for what? What device will win? Who will control the pricing model? Is the reader experience going to be 'lean forward' interactive or 'lean-back' print-like?
Interesting questions all, but I find myself even more intrigued in seeing who the publishers are entrusting to run their new e-reader initiatives and, by association, how they perceive these businesses. Judging by the decisions to date, there’s no consensus but a lot of activity. Some publishers envision e-readers as an extension of the print experience, and are putting them under the gaze of their most seasoned publishing general managers. Others see this primarily as a subscription-based business opportunity and are letting the model rule, creating separate e-reader divisions under the leadership of their most senior circulation and consumer marketing executives. Still others are looking at this as fundamentally new, recruiting leadership from the interactive agency community supported by functional teams with experience developing and building consumer electronics products and engaging user experience. Or, in the case of the booksellers, recruiting online media company execs who can bring in publishing partners. Full disclosure, I’ve recruited one exec to lead a venture that includes management of e-reader initiatives. The role came with a broader mandate around the business' online content ecosystem (my favorite over-used buzzword), and since the project is nascent and can morph in multiple directions, the person was chosen for versatility with digital media models and products.
No answer yet, just opportunities. Or challenges, depending on which half of the glass you’re holding.
- Comments? Cara@NewCoordinates.com
Interesting questions all, but I find myself even more intrigued in seeing who the publishers are entrusting to run their new e-reader initiatives and, by association, how they perceive these businesses. Judging by the decisions to date, there’s no consensus but a lot of activity. Some publishers envision e-readers as an extension of the print experience, and are putting them under the gaze of their most seasoned publishing general managers. Others see this primarily as a subscription-based business opportunity and are letting the model rule, creating separate e-reader divisions under the leadership of their most senior circulation and consumer marketing executives. Still others are looking at this as fundamentally new, recruiting leadership from the interactive agency community supported by functional teams with experience developing and building consumer electronics products and engaging user experience. Or, in the case of the booksellers, recruiting online media company execs who can bring in publishing partners. Full disclosure, I’ve recruited one exec to lead a venture that includes management of e-reader initiatives. The role came with a broader mandate around the business' online content ecosystem (my favorite over-used buzzword), and since the project is nascent and can morph in multiple directions, the person was chosen for versatility with digital media models and products.
No answer yet, just opportunities. Or challenges, depending on which half of the glass you’re holding.
- Comments? Cara@NewCoordinates.com
Thursday, January 7, 2010
2010, Decade of the Digital Native as Executive
At the start of this new decade, I noticed something interesting: a job seeker whose resume describes him as ‘a digital native with 16 years experience’. How could that be? A digital native with that much experience? Isn’t that an oxymoron? This made me stop to think, and took me to the realization – as both recruiter and a proud participant in early new media businesses -- that we’ve entered a new chapter.
As a media executive recruiter, I’ve often trumpeted the value and impact of ‘straddlers’, versatile executives with hands-on experience in both traditional and online media businesses. This is still a group to be cultivated and whose role in reshaping integrated media businesses will continue to play out. (After all, I am in this cohort, and had I stayed on the operating side of the media industry, I feel sure I’d still be marketable!) But the dawn of the new decade is forcing me to re-think and recalibrate.
We’ve now hit the year when a 1992 college graduate with a 2-year graduate degree has crossed the 15-year career experience threshold – enough, by most standards, to be ascending into significant strategic and general management roles. Unless he or she has been living under a tree, he is by all rights classifiable as a digital native: one whose entire adult life has been lived in the digital world. He or she socializes and makes contacts through online networks, knows the rules of Twitter, believes music was always downloadable, sells and trades merchandise online, watches TV on the computer, knows the definition of a non-edible cookie, user-generates content, knew the term 'avatar' before the blockbuster movie release, and can be productive while exhibiting the split-screen, multi-tasking, attention deficit behavior common to the next generation consumer. Suddenly now it’s this group, which is reaching primetime in career terms, that qualifies to be the ‘adult supervision’.
Our protoypte Digital Native executive candidate left college and foraged into adulthood as the Internet industry exploded and experienced its growing pains. Consider these Internet businesses launched to glory or early demise between 1994 and 1996: Amazon, GeoCities, TheGlobe.com, The Mining Company (now About.com), Altavista.com, Hotmail, LookSmart, Pathfinder.com, Yahoo, NYTimes.com, People Magazine on AOL, ESPNet.Sportzone.com, Infoseek, and MTV.com, to name a few. It all really began, for the consumer Internet at least, in the mid-90s. Fifteen years ago.
The industry has learned a lot in the last 15 years. So, too, have those digital natives now looking to succeed the straddlers, and already clearly way ahead of the hapless slow-to-arrive Digital Immigrant population.
As we scroll the calendar to 2010, I look forward to working with media clients who need smart ‘Digital Natives’ to help drive further innovation in their business models -- and who will opt for a multi-tasking ‘straddler’ such as myself to help identify them!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
To Charge? To Pay? It's a Muddle
So much is being written about the question of what consumers will pay for content online. The latest study by BCG says that US consumers on average will pay only $3/month, the lowest of any country surveyed. Newspaper companies and journalism organizations all over the country are stymied by the question, doing studies, crunching numbers, issuing pronouncements.
Well, from the consumer side it's just as schizophrenic. I'd hate to be called into a focus group on the subject. Let's see....
At our house we are avid Internet and TV news junkies, but we also subscribe (and pay) for a newspaper and 9 magazines (apart from business trade pubs). Let's break that out further: Last year at this time, we got one NYT and one WSJ delivered to the house. Then we decided, too much paper, too little time, let's streamline. We waffled about how we wanted to read the NYT, then realized that the key factor for us was behavioral: different formats were appropriate for reading in different venues. We decided to keep getting the 'paper on ink' version on the days we commute, and eliminate Satuday and Sunday, opting instead for the Times Reader on the weekend, an elegant download solution that's perfect for browsing with a cup of coffee on the kitchen counter. Times Reader comes free for paid home delivery subscribers, so that was easy.
Next, we discussed which paper we preferred for the morning commute: turns out that while we were each grabbing one paper for the train ride, we both really wanted the New York Times. On days when Mark was taking the Journal, he was buying a copy of the NYT on the newsstand at $2 per copy!That made no sense economically, if we both wanted the NY Times, we should get two copies at the home delivery price. So we let the WSJ lapse. I heard radio ads for half-price home delivery promotions, so I called the NYT 800 number, convinced them to cancel our account, re-start us as new subscribers, and give us the two-for-one 'introductory' deal. Mission accomplished, we now we get 2 New York Times home delivered weekdays for the price of one. The WSJ keeps sending cheaper and cheaper renewal offers (down to $10/month for home delivery AND the annual online subscription). Seems pathetic, it's worth more than that, but for now I'm not buying.
Now we get to the weeklies. Until a year ago we got both Time and Newsweek along with 4 other weeklies: New York Magazine, TheWeek (which only I read), The New Yorker (delivered to Mark's office to eliminate the paper pile-up at home), and TimeOutNY (delivered to our NYC apartment where it's most useful). New York has become a 'must have', I find no suitable substitute, so it's safe. But 52 copies of 6 magazines makes for 312 weekly magazines, too many dead trees for inside the house, especially if, like me, you have a hard time discarding. So we decided one newsweekly was enough; Newsweek announced a new strategy that seemed a good fit with our election-year media habits (issues-oriented, more thoughtful, less fluff, MSNBC-like) so we decided to stay on board and try it out. We get a good professional discount price, something less than $30/year, and it's worth it. Brownie points, too, for a publication that takes a stand and implements a new product and audience strategy! But six months in, we're wondering: the world's issues are daunting, we could use a LITTLE features fluff mixed in with the commentary, maybe we should resubscribe to Time again? So if we do, will we renew Newsweek? Jury's out, please don't send me a reader survey yet.
Then recently TheWeek came up for renewal and I was on the fence. The renewal offer by mail was buy two for $59. But no one else I knew wanted a copy (our 23-year-old daughter gets The Economist and Vanity Fair, she tried TheWeek but it didn't stick. Our younger daughter is still in college and only wants her People subscription). Instead I went online and the site was selling one year for $49, or $39 if you agree to auto-renew by credit card. I hate auto-renew, why commit now to next year's rate when they're so changeable, so I wasn't compelled. Then I clicked on an innocuous little link labeled 'to renew', and lo-and-behold, same annual subscription offered for $19. So I bought. (I told this story to a friend in the magazine publishing business who said I was taken; do a Google search for 'buy TheWeek', he said, and I'd have found it from a discount magazine agent for $4.99, which is what he paid). Oh well, I rationalized, a publisher deserves to make SOME profit.
Next on the radar: The New Yorker. Really, we'd be happier if it were a monthly.
What's the point of all this? I suppose my message is that the publishers' schizophrenia about pricing is mirrored in the consumer's indecision about the same. (And I haven't even addressed the role of the bloggers and online news aggregators!) It's a chicken and egg scenario, at least for the short term. We're confused about what we want and what it's worth; there's an explosion of news and information, much of it now offered free. Readers/subscribers/users - whatever we're being called - are like the patrons at an 'all you can eat' buffet, gorging on everything because we're not being forced to make trade-offs.
All the consultants in the world can do market research ad nauseam, but while we adjust, we're all going to use our own peculiar antennae to decide what to consume and what to pay for. Publishers need to get smarter about knowing their customers and serving them with the best content wrapped in the best user experience, and experimenting intelligently to find out where they fit in the new order. Eventually they'll compel us to make some hard decisions.
Well, from the consumer side it's just as schizophrenic. I'd hate to be called into a focus group on the subject. Let's see....
At our house we are avid Internet and TV news junkies, but we also subscribe (and pay) for a newspaper and 9 magazines (apart from business trade pubs). Let's break that out further: Last year at this time, we got one NYT and one WSJ delivered to the house. Then we decided, too much paper, too little time, let's streamline. We waffled about how we wanted to read the NYT, then realized that the key factor for us was behavioral: different formats were appropriate for reading in different venues. We decided to keep getting the 'paper on ink' version on the days we commute, and eliminate Satuday and Sunday, opting instead for the Times Reader on the weekend, an elegant download solution that's perfect for browsing with a cup of coffee on the kitchen counter. Times Reader comes free for paid home delivery subscribers, so that was easy.
Next, we discussed which paper we preferred for the morning commute: turns out that while we were each grabbing one paper for the train ride, we both really wanted the New York Times. On days when Mark was taking the Journal, he was buying a copy of the NYT on the newsstand at $2 per copy!That made no sense economically, if we both wanted the NY Times, we should get two copies at the home delivery price. So we let the WSJ lapse. I heard radio ads for half-price home delivery promotions, so I called the NYT 800 number, convinced them to cancel our account, re-start us as new subscribers, and give us the two-for-one 'introductory' deal. Mission accomplished, we now we get 2 New York Times home delivered weekdays for the price of one. The WSJ keeps sending cheaper and cheaper renewal offers (down to $10/month for home delivery AND the annual online subscription). Seems pathetic, it's worth more than that, but for now I'm not buying.
Now we get to the weeklies. Until a year ago we got both Time and Newsweek along with 4 other weeklies: New York Magazine, TheWeek (which only I read), The New Yorker (delivered to Mark's office to eliminate the paper pile-up at home), and TimeOutNY (delivered to our NYC apartment where it's most useful). New York has become a 'must have', I find no suitable substitute, so it's safe. But 52 copies of 6 magazines makes for 312 weekly magazines, too many dead trees for inside the house, especially if, like me, you have a hard time discarding. So we decided one newsweekly was enough; Newsweek announced a new strategy that seemed a good fit with our election-year media habits (issues-oriented, more thoughtful, less fluff, MSNBC-like) so we decided to stay on board and try it out. We get a good professional discount price, something less than $30/year, and it's worth it. Brownie points, too, for a publication that takes a stand and implements a new product and audience strategy! But six months in, we're wondering: the world's issues are daunting, we could use a LITTLE features fluff mixed in with the commentary, maybe we should resubscribe to Time again? So if we do, will we renew Newsweek? Jury's out, please don't send me a reader survey yet.
Then recently TheWeek came up for renewal and I was on the fence. The renewal offer by mail was buy two for $59. But no one else I knew wanted a copy (our 23-year-old daughter gets The Economist and Vanity Fair, she tried TheWeek but it didn't stick. Our younger daughter is still in college and only wants her People subscription). Instead I went online and the site was selling one year for $49, or $39 if you agree to auto-renew by credit card. I hate auto-renew, why commit now to next year's rate when they're so changeable, so I wasn't compelled. Then I clicked on an innocuous little link labeled 'to renew', and lo-and-behold, same annual subscription offered for $19. So I bought. (I told this story to a friend in the magazine publishing business who said I was taken; do a Google search for 'buy TheWeek', he said, and I'd have found it from a discount magazine agent for $4.99, which is what he paid). Oh well, I rationalized, a publisher deserves to make SOME profit.
Next on the radar: The New Yorker. Really, we'd be happier if it were a monthly.
What's the point of all this? I suppose my message is that the publishers' schizophrenia about pricing is mirrored in the consumer's indecision about the same. (And I haven't even addressed the role of the bloggers and online news aggregators!) It's a chicken and egg scenario, at least for the short term. We're confused about what we want and what it's worth; there's an explosion of news and information, much of it now offered free. Readers/subscribers/users - whatever we're being called - are like the patrons at an 'all you can eat' buffet, gorging on everything because we're not being forced to make trade-offs.
All the consultants in the world can do market research ad nauseam, but while we adjust, we're all going to use our own peculiar antennae to decide what to consume and what to pay for. Publishers need to get smarter about knowing their customers and serving them with the best content wrapped in the best user experience, and experimenting intelligently to find out where they fit in the new order. Eventually they'll compel us to make some hard decisions.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Sarah Palin's on LinkedIn
She's been on Facebook posting 'policy' statements for quite some time now, but Sarah Palin, ex Governor of Alaska and VP wish-a-be/wannabe has finally joined the ranks of the social media career-minded set, logging a profile on LinkedIn.
Palin's listing on LinkedIn was first reported yesterday by HuffPo, and since then, a second fuller profile has appeared, making one wonder if the first was a hoax or, more likely, an inept effort to edit the profile inadvertently resulted in the creation of a second. In itself, that's a clue to this crowd that someone at the helm isn't terribly confident with using the site.
As an executive recruiter, I'd counsel Palin to get herself a serious career coach. Her resume broadcasts a number of red flags (no media pun intended). Top three concerns:
1) Lack of staying power. A major hurdle for anyone above middle management; may be impossible to overcome when it's a thread throughout the career. First she switches among 5 colleges for no clear reason (only 3 are acknowledged on the LinkedIn resume) before completing a basic undergrad degree. Later she resigns a Chairperson role at the Oil and Gas Commission in frustration without finishing the job. Then she commits the ultimate faux pas: resigning the largest executive role in her career, the Governorship of Alaska, in mid term without apparent cause.
2) Inadequate preparation coupled with Lack of self-awareness. Palin's role as a small mayor of Wasila was inadequate experience for tackling the broader responsibilities of state and national office. Not acknowledging that for herself and failing to build her management skills in manageable (successful) stages indicates a critical lack of perspective and self-awareness --a key attribute on the emotional intelligence scale. Palin's most sustained executive experience, Mayor of tiny Wasilla, AL, is at best a first-rung small-town management training gig, poor preparation for the roles she subsequently attempted. In business parlance, this is like growing up in a seat-of-the-pants small business culture and thinking this qualifies you for a seat on the Executive Committee at GE. Not 'knowing what you don't know' is an immediate disqualifier for successful leadership. It's a real problem.
3) Personal Branding Issues: At the reference stage, a simple Google search will doom this candidate. What's all that stuff about ethics charges, gossip and dissonance on the home front, guns and animal cruelty, and incoherent TV interviews? And why has Senator John McCain, her #1 reference on LinkedIn, suddenly stopped endorsing her in public?
LinkedIn is a great site for a recruiter. This one will not be sending InMail to Sarah Palin.
Palin's listing on LinkedIn was first reported yesterday by HuffPo, and since then, a second fuller profile has appeared, making one wonder if the first was a hoax or, more likely, an inept effort to edit the profile inadvertently resulted in the creation of a second. In itself, that's a clue to this crowd that someone at the helm isn't terribly confident with using the site.
As an executive recruiter, I'd counsel Palin to get herself a serious career coach. Her resume broadcasts a number of red flags (no media pun intended). Top three concerns:
1) Lack of staying power. A major hurdle for anyone above middle management; may be impossible to overcome when it's a thread throughout the career. First she switches among 5 colleges for no clear reason (only 3 are acknowledged on the LinkedIn resume) before completing a basic undergrad degree. Later she resigns a Chairperson role at the Oil and Gas Commission in frustration without finishing the job. Then she commits the ultimate faux pas: resigning the largest executive role in her career, the Governorship of Alaska, in mid term without apparent cause.
2) Inadequate preparation coupled with Lack of self-awareness. Palin's role as a small mayor of Wasila was inadequate experience for tackling the broader responsibilities of state and national office. Not acknowledging that for herself and failing to build her management skills in manageable (successful) stages indicates a critical lack of perspective and self-awareness --a key attribute on the emotional intelligence scale. Palin's most sustained executive experience, Mayor of tiny Wasilla, AL, is at best a first-rung small-town management training gig, poor preparation for the roles she subsequently attempted. In business parlance, this is like growing up in a seat-of-the-pants small business culture and thinking this qualifies you for a seat on the Executive Committee at GE. Not 'knowing what you don't know' is an immediate disqualifier for successful leadership. It's a real problem.
3) Personal Branding Issues: At the reference stage, a simple Google search will doom this candidate. What's all that stuff about ethics charges, gossip and dissonance on the home front, guns and animal cruelty, and incoherent TV interviews? And why has Senator John McCain, her #1 reference on LinkedIn, suddenly stopped endorsing her in public?
LinkedIn is a great site for a recruiter. This one will not be sending InMail to Sarah Palin.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Business Week and the Price of Timidity
Today is the end of an era, the sale of Business Week to Bloomberg, at a value so low that would have been impossible to contemplate when I was on the management team there in the early-mid 90's. What a difference 15 years could have made.
Back then, new media was new and, yes, ancillary; a few of us had the privilege of moving into roles dedicated to early experimentation with online media. For us, that meant being the skunkworks team responsible for launching BusinessWeek Online on AOL before that online service had its first million members; and then, planning the launch on the Web. We got it done on the cheap, subsidized by AOL itself which needed some big brands to grow its own business. Sometime between AOL and the Internet launch, I realized that the oportunity for further innovation in that culture over the next few years would be slow. So in '96 I went to a downtown push technology start-up (which my kids at the time referred to as iConfusion, but it really had another name!) The start-up had its own set of unique and memorable challenges; eight months there was a roller coaster ride that 10 years at McGraw Hill would never have matched. But it was exhilirating. At least the start-up's mistakes were exuberant failures of execution, rather than failures to try to see and catch the future.
The time for media companies to support experimentation, to learn, and set the stage for today's challenges was back then; ad revenues were high, cash flow was good, there was no immediate threat to the status quo. Andthat was precisely why top management kept the blinders on. It's only now -- with the industry in crisis mode and no rational excuses left -- that 'traditional' media businesses are finally serious about the change mantra.
As today's headlines show, timidity has its price.
Back then, new media was new and, yes, ancillary; a few of us had the privilege of moving into roles dedicated to early experimentation with online media. For us, that meant being the skunkworks team responsible for launching BusinessWeek Online on AOL before that online service had its first million members; and then, planning the launch on the Web. We got it done on the cheap, subsidized by AOL itself which needed some big brands to grow its own business. Sometime between AOL and the Internet launch, I realized that the oportunity for further innovation in that culture over the next few years would be slow. So in '96 I went to a downtown push technology start-up (which my kids at the time referred to as iConfusion, but it really had another name!) The start-up had its own set of unique and memorable challenges; eight months there was a roller coaster ride that 10 years at McGraw Hill would never have matched. But it was exhilirating. At least the start-up's mistakes were exuberant failures of execution, rather than failures to try to see and catch the future.
The time for media companies to support experimentation, to learn, and set the stage for today's challenges was back then; ad revenues were high, cash flow was good, there was no immediate threat to the status quo. Andthat was precisely why top management kept the blinders on. It's only now -- with the industry in crisis mode and no rational excuses left -- that 'traditional' media businesses are finally serious about the change mantra.
As today's headlines show, timidity has its price.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Old Media Meets New
Sometimes you're just struck by the ironies. We re-visited Hyde Park this weekend, and meandered through the FDR Library & Museum, which is running an exhibit on FDR's First 100 Days. Lots of interesting things to compare. Back in 1933, FDR revolutionized political communication with the simple introduction of radio 'fireside chats', bringing conversation from a sitting president into the living rooms of American households for the first time. The museum is wall-papered with thousands of letters and telegrams to that president from all corners of the country, expressing support for the simple fact of his efforts to share his thoughts and plans informally in a time of national crisis . Fast forward, we've got a new president whose campaign showed us how to harness the grassroots power of the Internet to engage audiences, and who has recently taken some heat for 'over-exposing' his message through a marathon series of appearances on TV news and talk shows.
At the end of the museum visit we got back in the car for the 90-minute ride home. And did what along the way? Listened to a CD of personal short stories from a live event sponsored by The Moth, an organization that brings busy people together in cities to hear well-crafted stories from well and lesser-known storytellers. The next day, I took an early walk while plugged in to the latest Slate Gabfest podcast on my ipod. Marveling that the old radio magic of 'listening' is still with us today after all.
At the end of the museum visit we got back in the car for the 90-minute ride home. And did what along the way? Listened to a CD of personal short stories from a live event sponsored by The Moth, an organization that brings busy people together in cities to hear well-crafted stories from well and lesser-known storytellers. The next day, I took an early walk while plugged in to the latest Slate Gabfest podcast on my ipod. Marveling that the old radio magic of 'listening' is still with us today after all.
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