The next miracle (v11.1): Owen Youngman

Knight Professor of Digital Media Strategy, Medill / Northwestern

Owen YoungmanOwen YoungmanOwen Youngman

Monthly Archives: March 2009

whitehousechatroom.gov, then and now

How Times Have Changed [Or Not] In Response to New Media, installment 14,441:

  • Obama explaining why he decided to have a live Internet video chat:

 “This is an experiment,” the president said in a video promoting the event, “but it’s also an exciting opportunity for me to look at a computer and get a snapshot of what Americans across the country care about.”

(via Obama Makes History in Live Internet Video Chat – NYTimes.com.)

  • FDR explaining why he decided to have a live radio “fireside chat,” on the subject of the banking system (from the New York Times of March 12, 1933, in advance of the 10 p.m. address that evening):

The President said that the Constitution laid upon him the duty of reporting to Congress assembled in Washington the condition of the country, and he believed he had a like duty to convey to the people themselves a clear picture of the situation at the national capital “whenever there is danger of any confusion as to what the government is undertaking.”


I got a pal in Kalamazoo. Several more than before, in fact

Murray Perahia [Ismael Roldan, WSJ]Murray Perahia (Ismael Roldan, WSJ)

We were in Kalamazoo tonight to hear the pianist Murray Perahia play a monster recital that included Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata and concluded with Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme by Handel.”  As it happens, the Journal ran an interview with him in this morning’s paper; quotes like the following should have set me up for how good the Brahms would be, but I still was unprepared…..

“I love how with the fewest notes, Brahms has the greatest effect,” Mr. Perahia said. “Every note speaks to him like a world.”

via Pianist’s Passions: Constant, Recent and Renewed – WSJ.com.

Equally rewarding were our conversations with the people of Kalamazoo … not just those associated with the Gilmore Keyboard Festival (executive director Daniel Gustin, Facebook friend and development director Alice Kemerling), which staged the event, but – as they overheard we were from Chicago – people in the crowd we’d never met. We even were greeted by Bill Richardson, former president and CEO of the Kellogg Foundation, whose major gift to the Gilmore endowed this concert. 

They struck up  conversations about a wide variety of topics, including the fates of newspapers like the Ann Arbor News and their own Grand Rapids Press; the theoretical boundaries of “Chicagoland”; and, of course, music.

The next full Gilmore International Keyboard Festival is scheduled for April 23 to May 9, 2010, with the lineup to be announced on Sept. 13.  I imagine we’ll be there, one way or another.  Oh, and don’t just sit there; become a fan of the Gilmore on Facebook yourself!

Ask a Flowchart: Which Blowhard Am I? [Wired]

As I was shelving 16-plus years of Wired magazines on the shelves in my office at Medill today, I saw plenty of memorable cover stories … and, in some remarkably thick back numbers from the late 1990s, plenty of evidence of memorable ads for forgotten Internet startups. Rather than be nostalgic, however, here’s a cheerful graphic from issue 17.04.

Ask a Flowchart: Which Blowhard Am I? .

(Oh, why do I still have the dead-trees editions, you ask? Well, when I remember a long story to which I want to refer, it’s actually easier to search for it on wired.com, then pull the actual issue off the shelf. With the bonus that I generally get to see some of those remarkable pre-bust ads.)

(Bonus No. 2: it’s a very colorful way to brighten up a wall of bookcases.)