The question reflects a percolating cynicism toward, if not outright backlash against, the prizes and journalism awards in general over the past few years.

Journalism-sacred-cow-tipper Jeff Jarvis has written several posts criticizing various aspects of the Pulitzer Prizes and culture (distilled: they turn “the profession into a circle-jerk of mutual self-love”). Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton wrote an anti-Pulitzer post on the occasion of the 2008 Pulitzer announcement, arguing that “these self-congratulating awards, and the attention devoted to them, are symptomatic of the decline of the newspaper industry.” The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus joined the parade last year with an essay in Columbia Journalism Review titled “Newspaper Narcissism” (subscription required to read more than a preview; I don’t have a CJR subscription, but read a slightly longer bootlegged preview).

I’m a world-class cynic, and I’m all for tipping sacred cows when warranted. But I just can’t hop on this bandwagon (or bandtricycle — I don’t want to fall into the false-trend trap, either). While the list of the news industry’s problems and self-inflicted wounds is long, I don’t think the Pulitzer Prizes belong on it.

There’s certainly been some valid criticism of the prizes. In 2006, Jarvis urged the Pulitzer committee to consider journalism in any medium. With last year’s award to PolitiFact and this year’s to ProPublica (also a finalist), along with various citations of online coverage in awards over the past couple years, the Pulitzer committee seems to have taken this advice to heart.

That same year, Will Bunch lamented that no “old-school local enterprise reporting” won a 2006 Pulitzer. (Bunch’s Philadelphia Daily News blog doesn’t have his pre-2008 posts, so I’ve only read part of his Pulitzer post via Jarvis’s post.) Subsequent years’ Pulitzers have been awarded for such reporting, including an Investigative Reporting award to the Daily News this year.

Aside from those two specific points, most of the criticism I’ve come across is overly vague, relates more to journalism as a whole than to the Pulitzers, or assumes an attitude among journalists and newsrooms that I find hard to believe at the scale the accusations describe:

“It’s sad [the lack of 2006 awards for local enterprise reporting], because while urban news organizations had slashed true enterprise reporting in the face of the job cuts, we are pathologically unable to stop covering the exact same stories that everyone else is.” — Will Bunch (again via Jarvis)

Hear, hear to the latter. News organizations absolutely must stop wasting resources on redundant or unnecessary reporting, what Jarvis calls “commodity news.” But just because A) the Pulitzers did not reward old-school local enterprise reporting in 2006, and B) many news orgs produce some redundant commodity reporting; it does not follow that C) ALL news orgs, or the entire reporting staff of any newsroom, produced ONLY redundant commodity reporting in 2006, or more importantly that D) the Pulitzer’s 2006 local-enterprise-reporting snub has anything to do with news orgs’ tendency to redundantly report commodity news.

“Until now, I saw too many papers edited for the Pulitzers, not their publics. They did investigations, all right, but they were grandiose, multipart, eye-numbing probes aimed at pleasing a prize jury, not at news that affects the lives of the people living in their communities. — Jeff Jarvis

But what’s the difference between a grandiose, eye-numbing probe that doesn’t affect people’s lives and a grandiose, edge-of-your-seat probe that does? Some examples would have been very helpful here.

“The danger is that coverage of communities, neighborhoods and events is slighted while reporters do 12-part series on politicos.” — Jeff Sonderman

I guess that’s a danger if you assume a 12-part series on politicos is fluff or totally boring and not newsworthy. But what if those politicos were corrupt or horribly ineffective, or contributed to a bad business deal that leaves taxpayers on the hook for millions? Couldn’t a 12-part expose on these subjects count as a kind of Bunch’s “old-school local enterprise reporting”?

“Rather than impress colleagues with the seriousness of their reporting, US newspapers need to engage a readership that is drifting off to television and the internet. Pulitzer-winning journalism will win Pulitzers; it won’t save an industry which is experiencing double-digit annual declines in advertising revenue.” — Nick Denton

Wish he had provided some examples of Pulitzer-winning local enterprise reporting that has not engaged readers. Also, those ad revenue declines would have occurred with or without “Pulitzer-winning journalism” thanks to Craigslist, the real estate crash, the recession, and a general (not Pulitzer-specific) lack of plan to deal with that whole Internet thing.

Denton argued that the Pulitzers are the apotheosis of American newspapers’ true focus, which has been to “impress colleagues with the seriousness of their reporting.” This focus was “a luxury” enabled by newspapers’ local monopolies; “the same monopolies which have allowed a public-service mentality to flourish have also left newspapers unprepared for new competition.” British papers, on the other hand, are in better shape because of “vicious competition”; they’re “way livelier” (though “standards … are as sloppy as ever”) and can “pander to readers” because “editors fear the loss of their jobs, not their honor.”

But most American journalists don’t want to be like their British counterparts. The great challenge for American journalism is to maintain some semblance of the public-service mentality while learning to live (or at least survive) with the new competition.

“Over the past ten years, The Washington Post has won nineteen Pulitzer Prizes. But over that same period, we lost more than 120,000 readers. Why? My answer, unpopular among my colleagues, is that while many of these longer efforts were worthwhile, they took up space and resources that could have been used to give readers a wider selection of stories about what was going on, and that may have directly affected their lives.” — Walter Pincus

Still no specific examples of a single Pulitzer winner, finalist, or entrant that wasn’t worth it. And to the extent that those 120,000 readers left because the paper wasn’t relevant to them anymore, I doubt the handful of Pulitzer-style stories was the culprit. There was plenty of remaining space and resources for the Post to widen its selection of stories. Like most papers, the Post may not have done enough rethinking of the kinds of stories it covers and how to better reach today’s audience. But that’s a holistic, institutional-definition-of-journalism issue, not a matter of devoting too many resources to enterprise reporting.

Let me pause here to do what these critiques haven’t done, and mention some specific Pulitzer winners and finalists.

• 2010 Public Service winner: “The Bristol (VA) Herald Courier for the work of Daniel Gilbert in illuminating the murky mismanagement of natural-gas royalties owed to thousands of land owners in southwest Virginia, spurring remedial action by state lawmakers.”
• 2010 Investigative Reporting winner: “Sheri Fink of ProPublica, in collaboration with The New York Times Magazine, for a story that chronicles the urgent life-and-death decisions made by one hospital’s exhausted doctors when they were cut off by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.”
• 2010 Investigative Reporting winner: “Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman of the Philadelphia Daily News for their resourceful reporting that exposed a rogue police narcotics squad, resulting in an FBI probe and the review of hundreds of criminal cases tainted by the scandal.”
• 2010 Investigative Reporting finalist: “Michael Braga, Chris Davis and Matthew Doig of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for their in-depth reporting and computer analysis that unraveled $10 billion in suspicious Florida real estate transactions, triggering local and state efforts to curb abuses”
• 2009 Public Service winner: “Las Vegas Sun, and notably the courageous reporting by Alexandra Berzon, for the exposure of the high death rate among construction workers on the Las Vegas Strip amid lax enforcement of regulations, leading to changes in policy and improved safety conditions.”
• 2009 Investigative Reporting finalist: “Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for their powerful revelations that the government was failing to protect the public from dangerous chemicals in everyday products, such as some “microwave-safe” containers, stirring action by Congress and federal agencies.”
• 2008 Public Service winner: “The Washington Post for the work of Dana Priest, Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille in exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, evoking a national outcry and producing reforms by federal officials.”
• 2008 Investigative Reporting winner: “The Chicago Tribune Staff for its exposure of faulty governmental regulation of toys, car seats and cribs, resulting in the extensive recall of hazardous products and congressional action to tighten supervision”
• 2008 Local Reporting finalist: “Chris Davis, Matthew Doig and Tiffany Lankes of the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald Tribune for their dogged exposure, in print and online, of predatory teachers and the system that protects them, stirring state and national action.”
• 2007 Investigative Reporting winner: “Brett Blackledge of The Birmingham (Ala.) News for his exposure of cronyism and corruption in the state’s two-year college system, resulting in the dismissal of the chancellor and other corrective action.”
• 2007 Local Reporting winner: “Debbie Cenziper of The Miami Herald for reports on waste, favoritism and lack of oversight at the Miami housing agency that resulted in dismissals, investigations and prosecutions.”

I wonder which of those (or the many other winners and finalists I didn’t list) are eye-glazing wastes of space that readers didn’t care about and that were done only to win the admiration of fellow journalists.

“Of course, I’m not saying that all Pulitzer-winning journalism is bad; of course, not,” Jarvis wrote in one of his 2006 posts. Of course not!

“Pulitzer winners are probably exceptions. Its the thousands of overwritten projects *aiming* for awards that are problems,” Jeff Sonderman wrote in our brief Twitter conversation.

This is ultimately the primary argument against the Pulitzers: They’re so revered and so central to today’s journalism culture that much of journalists’ everyday behavior and work is shaped by a desire to chase the big prize.

I just don’t buy it. One of my biggest problems with journo-geek commentary (including my own) is its tendency to treat news organizations as monolithic entities that can change attitudes, practices, and technologies as easy as any journo-geek can. But a news organization is a complex entity that functions not only on institutional traditions and processes, but also on the beliefs, attitudes, frustrations, and general messy humanness of each individual journalist in the organization.

To truly believe in the Pulitzer’s perverse power, you have to believe that each of these individuals goes to work every day — makes every phone call; assigns, creates, edits every story — thinking, “How the heck can I work this to maximize my chances of getting a Pulitzer nomination?” And that most news organizations’ institutional culture is built around this attitude.

I’m certainly not privvy to any survey data that says journalists and news orgs don’t behave this way. But it hasn’t been my experience. And it doesn’t make much sense on a human level. Most people think about things like how they can finish their tasks to get home in time to eat dinner/put the kids to bed/watch telly. Or how much their colleagues are annoying them that day. Or how to please their boss. Or maybe how to craft the perfect lead, or whether they shot the perfect photo. But sustained, mutual daily obsession with the Pulitzer Prizes seems like a stretch.

Jack Shafer wrote the best Pulitzer critique I’ve seen, in a 2004 Slate column. The prizes themselves don’t seem to bother him too much, since he’s under no illusions about the formula for picking winners (“one part log-rolling, two parts merit, three parts ‘we owe him one,’ and four parts random distribution”). But he argues sensibly for toning down coverage of the Pulitzer winners because 1) Pretty much nobody cares, and 2) “If another trade association gave itself awards … would its winners get Page One play? Never.”

Journalists’ outsized and blinded sense of self-importance? That’s a monolithic attitude I can believe in.

But I’ve never read a rethink-objectivity argument quite like Steve Buttry’s recent post on the subject. The language he uses is unexpected — and gets at the heart of why objectivity-at-all-costs is ultimately misguided.

Buttry’s post is a response to a Society of Professional Journalists memo urging journalists in Haiti “to avoid blurring the lines between being a participant and being an objective observer.” On balance I agree with his view on the SPJ memo, but leave the Haiti specifics aside for a moment. Read what Buttry says about objectivity in general (bolded emphases mine; italics are my blog template’s blockquote style):

[T]he notion of objectivity is a fig leaf for journalists who don’t want to deal honestly with our own humanity and don’t want to take personal responsibility for the human impact of our journalism. We’re just doing our jobs. We’re just being objective. Objects can’t be responsible.

Journalism is practiced by flesh-and-blood people with families and pulses. We can and should uphold professional standards such as fairness and accuracy and verification. But when we deny our humanity, we lie to our readers. And sometimes we miss the story.

You don’t often see objectivity described in these terms, but he’s right.

Denying one’s humanity. Lying. Avoiding personal responsibility for the sake of said lies: This is the language of pathology.

From this perspective, objectivity’s insidiousness becomes clearer. The pathology manifests itself not just in stories that might engage a journalist emotionally, but also and far more commonly in stories that engage (or should engage) a journalist intellectually.

Here’s Chait in that touchstone 2002 piece about Bias (same emphasis explanation as above):

[F]or the mainstream media, being even-handed usually means treating respectfully the reigning view in each party. … One consequence of this bias, as I’ve written in these pages before, is that the press feels obliged to take seriously even those policy claims that are empirically false.

That is, political journalists often know a statement is false or misleading but print it without qualification — knowingly participating in a lie to readers — for the sake of notions of objectivity.

When the good-intentioned pursuit of truth leads the truth-seekers to lie (to themselves, to readers; by inclusion or omission) rather than break their code, there’s probably something wrong with the code.

This pathological objectivity has become so harmful to civic life that President Obama made it a key part of Wednesday’s State of the Union address. (Though to be fair, his comments about the media apply equally or moreso to Fox News’ and various pundits’ plain old, not-even-ostensibly-objective pathological lies). Indeed, Obama’s Q&A session with Republicans on Friday was so riveting because we’re not used to seeing politicians’ empirically false claims get refuted publicly in real time.

The alternative, as many have pointed out, isn’t for journalists to say exactly what they think about everything they write or edit. Part of being a socialized adult, after all, is knowing when it’s appropriate to offer your opinion or keep it to yourself (there’s that common sense again).

Rather, a healthy journalism and healthy public discourse — not to mention healthy journalists — are better served by a professional-intellectual framework of honesty, transparency, and expertise (or, in Dan Gillmor’s formulation, thoroughness/accuracy/fairness/transparency) than by one ultimately built on lies and extreme cognitive dissonance.

——–

* It was before blogs so there’s no online record, but I have a college newspaper column proving I was on the rethink-objectivity bandwagon back in 2002!

Having the world’s music library available to anyone with an Internet connection made competitive notions like airplay, shelf space, and cover shoots a bit less important; attention became somewhat less of a zero-sum game. This allowed a sort of post-critical music culture to take hold, where notions of taste and guilty pleasures gave way to … well, at least to questions of whether taste and guilty pleasures had any meaning anymore.

The popularity of Pitchfork suggests that the more widely shared answer is “No, as long as your non-guilty-pleasure guilty pleasures are the right ones.” Inside my own head, the answer has been a more definitive no — so much so that I seem to have lost interest in one of my former life goals/dreams: being a music critic.

In that spirit, I wanted to share my favorite music of the decade. Not “the best” or “the most important” music of the decade; you can read any number of lists that will tell you why Kid A, Stankonia, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Merriweather Post Pavilion, et al were decade-representative and influential and great.

I don’t necessarily disagree; I respect or quite like Kid A, Stankonia, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Animal Collective does nothing for me, though). But respecting Radiohead’s artistic experimentation and growth doesn’t mean I ever think, “Hey, I know what would be fun to listen to now! Thom Yorke’s processed voice going ‘Nnninnn innnn onnnn ninnnnninnn mmnnnnn … Yesterday I woke up sucking on le-mone’ while a brooding synthesizer cascades behind him and the rest of the band chats about Chekhov in the other room.”

I’m increasingly convinced that the way we hear, appreciate, and respond to music is highly idiosyncratic, even biological. Here, then, is my highly idiosyncratic list of favorite albums and songs of the decade. Some of them I like because a note or chord change triggers an endorphin rush for me; some have interesting lyrics or structures; some I probably like because other people liked them; most of them I can’t properly explain why I like them.

And yes, a silly Darkness Christmas song really is my favorite song of the decade.

Albums

1. (multiple tie)

Ben Folds – Rockin’ the Suburbs (2001)/Songs for Silverman (2005)

Fountains of Wayne – Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)

With Rivers Cuomo turning Weezer into a derivative, novelty-act version of its former self (not that there’s anything wrong with that), Ben Folds and Fountains of Wayne became the standard-bearers of power-pop in the Aughts.

Folds’s songs tend to focus on relationships, both romantic and familial, often of the failing or misanthropic kind. (“The old bastard left his ties and his suits,/Brown box, mothballs and bowler shoes./And his opinions so you’d never have to choose./Pretty soon you’ll be an old bastard too.”) Fountains of Wayne filled Welcome Interstate Managers with character studies ranging from wink-wink (the Cars-inspired surprise hit “Stacy’s Mom”) to fully earnest (the pretty, shuffling “Valley Winter Song”).

All three albums are full of the power chords (yes, pianos can make power chords), speaker-filling harmonies, and brain-salving chord changes that have increasingly become my kind of transcendent music. And unlike Cuomo’s tossed-off latter-day songs (“Where I come from isn’t all that great/My automobile is a piece of crap/My fashion sense is a little whack”), these albums are crafted and smart enough to warrant a decade’s worth of repeat listens.

2. Lucky Soul – The Great Unwanted (2007)

The second half of the decade saw a Motown/girl-group revival, led by Mark Ronson’s retro-soul production for Amy Winehouse and throwback bands like the Noisettes and Pipettes. While Ronson was more successful than the others, all ultimately sound gimmicky to me — appropriation without re-invention.

Lucky Soul is different. The band doesn’t just use retro sounds as inspiration/homage/reference. They sound like what a top-shelf ’60s band might sound like with modern recording equipment and sensibilities. There’s none of the –ettes’ tic of using a tinny, echoey guitar to denote “retro.” (If I wanted crappy recording quality, I’d just listen to the old music!) On The Great Unwanted, the retro sound becomes an accomplished band’s chosen palette, rather than their only reason for being.

But forget all that. The Great Unwanted is simply joyous, sentimental, and bouncy in all the right ways. If this had come out a little earlier, it probably would be my number one of the decade.

3. Jon Brion – Meaningless (2000)/I Heart Huckabees (2005)

Jon Brion spent most of the decade scoring movies, producing albums, and performing regularly at the Largo club in Los Angeles. Lucky for us, he also released Meaningless and a handful of non-instrumentals on the I Heart Huckabees soundtrack (otherwise filled with his instrumental score). Together, they contain some the most interesting, complex-but-accessible pop songs of the decade. Hopefully we’ll get lucky and see another Brion album before the new decade is over.

4. Mika – Life in Cartoon Motion (2007)/The Boy Who Knew Too Much (2009)

Equally comfortable on the dance floor or in an arena, Mika made some of the most exuberant (“Grace Kelly”), fun (“Lollipop”), and funny (“Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)”) music of the decade. And though he doesn’t get the credit, his Euro-American-Lebanese roots and gender-aware songs represent a musical-cultural eclecticism no less important than M.I.A.’s. (And Mika, frankly, is a far better musician than Ms. Arulpragasam.)

Both of his first albums have repetitive and boring spots, but combine the best of both and you have pop perfection.

Others:

Emmylou Harris – Red Dirt Girl

Red Hot Chili Peppers – By the Way

The Darkness – Permission to Land

Regina Spektor – Begin to Hope

The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

Elliott Smith – Figure 8

Archive Release/Re-issue:

Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue

Songs

Top 6:

1. The Darkness – “Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End)”

2. Mika – “Grace Kelly”

3. Regina Spektor – “On the Radio”

4. Fiona Apple – “Not About Love”

The version on the unreleased, Jon Brion-produced Extraordinary Machine album is one of the best songs of the decade. The final release included a neutered version that traded driving, intertwined and dueling strings for an uncertain, mid-tempo drum pattern. An extremely weird musical decision. Listen to the unreleased version.

5. Emmylou Harris – “The Pearl”

6. Fountains of Wayne – “New Routine”

Top 6 comedy songs:

1 and 2. The Lonely Island – “Boombox” (feat. Julian Casablancas) and “Jizz in My Pants”

3 and 4. Tenacious D – “Fuck Her Gently” and “Tribute”

5. Trey Parker and Matt Stone (I assume) – “America, Fuck Yeah”

6. A Mighty Wind – “A Mighty Wind”

Top 5 cover songs:

1. Kiss – “Do you Remember Rock n’ Roll Radio” (Ramones cover)

2. Ben Harper – “My Father’s House” (Bruce Springsteen cover)

3. Eddie Vedder and Beck -  “Sleepless Nights” (Everly Brothers cover)

4. Jon Brion – “The Game” (Queen cover)

5. Fiona Apple – “Sally’s Song” (Nightmare Before Christmas cover)

The rest, in alphabetical order by artist:

Ryan Adams

“New York, New York”

“Oh My Sweet Carolina”

Christina Aguilera

“Ain’t No Other Man”

Lily Allen

“LDN”

Fiona Apple

“Extraordinary Machine”

“Parting Gift” – Featuring one of my top 4 sung middle-notes of the aughts: In the chorus when she dips down in her register and sings “It said stop” with the last of her breath.

Arcade Fire

“Intervention”

“Keep the Car Running”

“Wake Up”

Audioslave

“Be Yourself”

The Avett Brothers

“I And Love And You”

“Kick Drum Heart”

Be Your Own Pet

“Adventure”

Beck

“Lost Cause”

Beyonce

“Crazy in Love”

“Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”

Bon Iver

“Flume”

“Skinny Love”

Jon Brion

“Gotta Start Somewhere”

“I Believe She’s Lying”

“Knock Yourself Out”

“Walking Through Walls”

Kelly Clarkson

“Since U Been Gone”

Coldplay

“In My Place”

“Viva La Vida”

Counting Crows

“American Girls”

“Big Yellow Taxi” (Joni Mitchell cover)

“Hard Candy”

The Darkness

“Growing on Me”

“I Believe in a Thing Called Love”

Dixie Chicks

“Goodbye Earl” – This almost makes my top 6. Features the second of my top 4 sung middle-notes: The “low” in the second verse – “They searched the house high and lo-ow”

“Long Time Gone”

Missy Elliott

“Get Ur Freak On”

“Work It”

Eminem

“Stan”

Evanescence

“Bring Me to Life”

Fall Out Boy

“Bang the Doldrums”

“Hum Hallelujah”

“Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued”

“Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down”

Feist

“1 2 3 4″

Flight of the Conchords

“Prince of Parties”

“Sugalumps”

Ben Folds

“Annie Waits”

“Bastard”

“Effington”

“Gone”

“Jesusland”

“Not the Same”

“Trusted”

“You to Thank”

“You Don’t Know Me” (feat. Regina Spektor)

“Zak and Sara”

Fountains of Wayne

“Bright Future in Sales”

“The Girl I Can’t Forget”

“Maureen”

“Mexican Wine”

“Stacy’s Mom”

“Valley Winter Song”

Franz Ferdinand

“The Fallen”

“Take Me Out”

Gnarls Barkley

“Crazy”

Golden Smog

“Hurricane”

Green Day

“American Idiot”

“Holiday”

“Wake Me Up When September Ends”

Emmylou Harris

“All the Roadrunning” (with Mark Knopfler)

“My Baby Needs a Shepherd”

The Hold Steady

“Stuck Between Stations”

Jimmy Eat World

“The Middle”

The Killers

“Mr. Brightside”

“Somebody Told Me”

Avril Lavigne

“Sk8er Boi”

Jenny Lewis

“Acid Tongue”

“Carpetbaggers” (feat. Elvis Costello)

Lucky Soul

“Add Your Light to Mine Baby”

“Ain’t Never Been Cool”

“Last Song”

“Lips Are Unhappy”

“One Kiss Don’t Make a Summer”

“The Towering Inferno”

Nellie McKay

“David”

Meat Loaf

“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”

Mika

“Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)”

“Blame It on the Girls”

“Good Gone Girl”

“Grace Kelly”

“Lollipop”

Modest Mouse

“Float On”

My Chemical Romance

“Dead!”

“Welcome to the Black Parade”

The New Pornographers

“Mass Romantic”

No Doubt

“Hey Baby”

Outkast

“Hey Ya!”

“Ms. Jackson”

Brad Paisley

“Alcohol”

Featuring the third of my top 4 sung middle-notes: In the chorus, when he sings “me” in the line, “you’ll never remember with me.” A perfect note.

Pearl Jam

“The Fixer”

Liz Phair

“Love/Hate”

Looking back, the Liz Phair saga is both one of the strangest music episodes of the decade and emblematic of the music culture’s rapid shifts.

After wowing (and wooing) the indie-rock crowd with 1993′s Exile in Guyville, Phair made two increasingly indifferently received albums during the ’90s (1994′s Whip-Smart and 1998′s Whitechocolatespaceegg, which is my favorite Phair album). Then she made the bizarre decision to go after the teen-pop crowd for her 2003 self-titled album, enlisting pop songwriting machine The Matrix for four songs and “glamming herself up like a Maxim MILF of the Month,” as Allmusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine put it.

This did not go over well, to put it mildly. Meghan O’Rourke’s inspired pan in the New York Times was only the most prominent of many critical drubbings (the O’Rourke review prompted Phair to write an impenetrable letter to the editor ostensibly in her defense).

From a distance, the whole thing seems rather silly. It’s not that O’Rourke or any of the critics were wrong, exactly. Phair’s makeover was unnecessary and embarrassing. But the horror at what Phair did is as much of its time as Phair’s decision to do it in the first place.

Phair didn’t see what was coming — she didn’t realize that the manufactured pop tart persona she was forcing herself into was a 1998-2003 anomoly. The very audience that always loved her, but that apparently never gave her the feeling of success she was seeking, was about to become a greater force in music than it had ever been, thanks to the Internet’s magical ability to simultaneously fragment the monoculture and connect subcultures. O’Rourke’s disappointment, meanwhile, seems quaint or itself unnecessary.

Why, for example, is it ok for Radiohead to go in a completely different direction and make obtuse, experimental music that often makes no sense (see “yesterday I woke up sucking on a lemon” above), but it’s not ok for Liz Phair to go in a completely different direction and make fluffy, silly pop? Hasn’t she earned the right? And wait a minute, why does she need to “earn” anything? Can’t she do what she wants?

Well, yes — and so can Meghan O’Rourke. But so much of the old critical culture was based on policing perceived transgressions like Phair’s. Now it seems (to me, anyway) that such policing is beside the point. There’s more than enough storage space and bandwidth for every artist to experiment in whatever obtuse or poppy way they please. Music blogs will or won’t write about them. The musician’s fans will or won’t listen. And then the musician can try something else.

Anyway, Liz Phair isn’t really such a bad album. The four Matrix-written songs are ridiculous, but they’re also catchy as The Matrix’s songs tend to be. The Phair-written songs sound pretty much like Liz Phair songs. I could pick out some sharp lyrics and some trite lyrics, but that would also be beside the point. If you know and like Liz Phair, they’re actually worth a listen. If you don’t, you’ll probably want to start somewhere else in her catalog.

Either way, if you revisit Liz Phair or check it out for the first time, start with “Love/Hate.” If the haters had given the album a chance, they would have found perhaps the most rocking, anthemic song Phair has recorded. With songs like that, there was no need for Phair to ruin her career — or for the critics to hasten that process along.

Phoenix

“1901″

“Lisztomania”

Queens of the Stone Age

“Know One Knows”

Radiohead

“Idioteque”

Rancid

“Memphis”

Red Hot Chili Peppers

“By the Way”

“Dosed”

Rilo Kiley

“Portions for Foxes”

“Silver Lining”

Elliott Smith

“Happiness”

“King’s Crossing”

“Son of Sam”

Regina Spektor

“Fidelity”

“On the Radio”

Spoon

“The Underdog”

The Strokes

“Heart in a Cage”

“Last Nite”

“Someday” – The last of my top 4 sung middle notes: In the chorus, the “I” in “I think I’ll be all right”

“You Only Live Once”

Tenacious D

“Wonderboy”

KT Tunstall

“Other Side of the World”

U2

“Beautiful Day”

Vampire Weekend

“M79″

Tom Waits

“The Return of Jackie and Judy” (Ramones cover)

Weezer

“Crab”

“Island in the Sun” (hep, hep)

Kanye West

“Diamonds From Sierra Leone” (remix feat. Jay-Z)

“Gold Digger”

Wheatus

“Teenage Dirtbag”

The White Stripes

“Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”

“The Denial Twist”

“My Doorbell”

“Seven Nation Army”

Wilco

“Airline to Heaven” (with Billy Bragg, lyrics by Woody Guthrie)

“Hummingbird”

“The Late Greats”

The XYZ Affair

“Academics”

“All My Friends”

“Evening Life”

Disclosure: The lead singer/guitarist is a good friend.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

“Maps”

Conan’s a brilliant late-night host, of course. But his oeuvre consists of a classic Simpsons run and 17 years of late-night ephemera. Ricky Gervais has The Office; Chris Rock has his stand-up specials; Woody Allen has Annie Hall and Manhattan. Will Conan end up with “Marge vs. the Monorail” … and a box set of Masturbating Bear and Triumph bits?

There’s probably a behavioral economics argument for why sustained but ephemeral late-night genius is better than a half-dozen classic movies surrounded by a couple dozen The Curse of the Jade Scorpions. But it sure would be exciting to see that genius set loose from its late-night confines, even for a little while. Who knows what crazy shows, movies, Shouts & Murmers columns, comedy songs, and other assorted awesomeness he’d come up with.

Like any practicing comedy elitist, I have a visceral dislike of Jay Leno. I’m obviously on Team Conan. But are his monologue one-liners really that much smarter than Leno’s? Are Conan’s celebrity interviews really less puffy?

I’ve only seen scattered Conan bits since watching Late Night regularly for the first few years of the aughts (the little time I have for late-night shows goes to The Daily Show, obviously). On the other hand, I would have kept up religiously if he had instead made three movies, two seasons of a cult show, and a bunch of web shorts in those seven years.

So I hope, for Conan’s sake, that everything works out and he gets to keep his beloved Tonight Show gig in the right time slot. But if he has to go, this fan selfishly thinks it’ll be for the best.

(Adam Frucci has some thoughts along these lines at The Awl.)

Greetings Josh,
Thank you for writing in and giving us the opportunity to answer your questions.

Ticketfly provides a service, for a fee. Ordering through Ticketfly couldn’t be easier and you can do it from the comfort of your home or office!

Tickets purchased on Ticketfly.com are typically subject to a per ticket convenience charge and a non-refundable per order processing fee. In many cases, delivery prices will also be owed.

As we do not collect any of the ticket face value, we use the fee to pay for hardware, employees, training and so on. Basically, the fee is what keeps us running. If you wish to avoid paying the service fee, please contact the venue or promoter of the event to see if they offer tickets directly. This also explains your comparison to companies like Amazon. They do, in fact almost every “retail” outlet, charge a fee. For them it’s called “Mark Up”. Because they own the product they are selling, that mark up is where they get the money to pay their employees, train their staff, pay their rent and so on.

Ticketfly does not claim to be the cheapest ticketing alternative, but we are striving to be the better ticketing alternative.

Please do let me know if you have any other questions.

Thank You
Damon @ Ticketfly

My reply:

Hi Damon,

Thanks for the prompt reply, and for explaining what the service fees pay for.

However, this doesn’t answer all of my questions.

True, Ticketfly does not claim to be the cheapest ticketing alternative. But as I quoted in my first email, the company clearly recognizes that people are frustrated with ticketing services (citing “downright absurd” practices) and makes claims to being different (“We plan to get rid of all those hidden fees”).

Given this:

1. Why does the site talk about killing hidden fees if you still charge those fees?
2. What are some examples of “downright absurd” ticketing practices that Ticketfly does not engage in?
3. What does being a “better ticketing alternative” mean if you charge similar fees as other ticketing companies — fees that are by far the most frustrating thing about buying tickets?

Further, you say that “Ticketfly provides a service, for a fee” — i.e., letting consumers buy tickets “from the comfort of your home or office.” But there are thousands upon thousands of e-commerce websites that provide the same service — letting consumers buy something online — without charging “service” or “convenience” fees on top of the product price. (Of course, in many cases it’s *cheaper* to buy something online versus by phone or in a store.) The vast majority of these sites also have various hardware and overhead costs, but still don’t tack on extra fees.

Given this,

4. How is Ticketfly’s business (or the ticketing business in general) so different from nearly all other online businesses that the company has to charge consumers this fee?

Thanks,
Josh

As a music fan who has long been frustrated by Ticketmaster’s fees and service charges, I was glad to see this statement on your About page before I purchased a ticket recently:

[W]e’ve spent a lot of time examining what works in ticketing and what is downright absurd. We plan to get rid of all those hidden fees and we won’t charge you to print your ticket at home – after all it is your printer and paper!

So I have a few questions:

• Why did buying a $20 ticket to the Julian Casablancas show at DC’s 9:30 Club require paying a $4.75 Service Fee and a $4 Order Processing fee? (Total cost: $28.75. Service charges’ percentage of total cost: 30 percent.)
• Exactly what services does the $4.75 fee cover?
• Why is there an order processing fee, when I ordered via your automated online system rather than speaking to a live ticketing agent? There is no order processing fee when I buy from other websites, whether the purchase is from the site proprietor (e.g. a ticket from Southwest.com, a book from Amazon.com) or from a third party using the site as a middleman (e.g. an item from an Amazon Marketplace or Etsy seller). Why is Ticketfly different in this regard?
• Why do you include the statement about hidden fees on your About page if you charge the same kind of hidden fees as Ticketmaster does?
• Can you explain why these fees are not “downright absurd”?

Sincerely,
Josh Korr

So it’s great to see Sony has more dynamite ideas up its corporate sleeve. Like building an iTunes-like service. Because everyone knows consumers are looking for yet another site where they can pay to download movies/shows, music, and books!

Surely Sony has some secret sauce that’ll make this service stand out from the zillions of other similar services, both living and dead. Take it away, BusinessWeek:

Sony will try to differentiate its service from iTunes. One example: Users will be able to upload videos shot on camcorders, save photos taken with digital cameras, and post other digital content to their personal online accounts. … At some point down the road, Sony would consider letting independent software developers create applications for the service, much the way Apple does for its iPhone.

[Slaps forehead as crickets chirp.]

There’s nothing wrong with Sony trying to build up the Playstation Network library to compete with Xbox Live. But as a plan to turn the company around, it’s a joke.

The problem isn’t just that there are tons of similar services, or that Sony is notoriously adept at crippling hardware and services with DRM and proprietary formats.

The problem is twofold. First, nobody is catching up to iTunes’, or even Amazon’s, music market share anytime soon. Second, the movie/TV download market is still held back by pricing problems, people’s preference to watch movies and shows on a TV, and, most significantly, “release-window” rules that are incompatible with an online-entertainment future.

The L.A. Times’ Ben Fritz and Dawn C. Chmielewski summed up the latter difficulties in an article about Best Buy’s plans for said future:

Beyond competition from free content that can be illegally downloaded, the primary obstacle has been a complex set of rules imposed by studios, which are attempting to nurture their digital distribution businesses without threatening their existing lucrative deals with movie theaters, retailers and pay cable television networks. The result is that consumers often can’t access movies they want when they want them because a film has entered a period of exclusivity during which it is available only through a single distribution outlet, such as the premium cable channel HBO.

If those outdated release-window deals ever die, it’s likely Apple and/or Netflix (and cable companies) will be the distribution beneficiaries.

There’s only one way Sony could conceivably challenge iTunes for music supremacy. This strategy could also lay the groundwork for winning the inevitable movie/TV download wars. But it requires changing the way the music business works.

Sony should get all the record labels to build a jointly owned online music service. The service should undercut all other music store prices by a lot — say, DRM-free MP3s for 50 cents each/$5 an album for older music and 70 cents each/$7 an album for new releases. Even that might not be enough to compete with the iTunes/iPod/iPhone ecosystem, but it would at least have a chance.

The record labels should have done this from the moment Napster first emerged. But they still can pull it off — and only the record labels can pull it off.

If they do this (collectively) in-house, they don’t have to pay a cut of each sale to a technology middleman. And by collaborating, the costs of developing and hosting the service can be shared.

Even with those cost savings, could such dramatically lower pricing work? I don’t know. But since iTunes launched in 2001, nobody has provided a justification for charging 99 cents per track/$10 an album (still the standard, even with variable pricing increasing). It was just accepted as the standard, even though physical CDs routinely sell for $10 at Best Buy and Wal-Mart. (Yes, those are loss leaders. But online stores don’t have packaging and physical distribution costs or a physical retailer’s overhead.)

Almost nine years later, I have yet to see an in-depth analysis of what online music — or online entertainment in general — “should” cost. (Please post a link in the comments if you know of any such articles.) The only attempt at such an analysis I’ve read is a section of Chris Anderson’s 2004 long tail article in Wired; he estimated online music should cost 79 cents per track to reflect the savings from digital delivery.

But there are far greater potential savings, given the changes in the music industry over the past decade. As I wrote in a 2006 review of The Long Tail (the book, which unfortunately did not include the article’s pricing discussion):

[Anderson] assumed that “the costs of finding, making and marketing music” will stay the same, “to ensure that the people on the creative and label side of the business make as much as they currently do.”

But a lot has changed since October 2004, when the article appeared. Cheap recording software and video equipment and easy distribution methods like YouTube have allowed millions to contribute to the entertainment long tail. MySpace and new tastemakers like Pitchforkmedia.com and myriad blogs have upended traditional marketing and talent searching. Playlists and recommendations have replaced the function of radio for many people.

The Long Tail thus shows that much of the cost of the industry’s “creative and label side” is merely money wasted on casting about for the next blockbuster.

Even if Anderson’s long tail predictions haven’t entirely panned out, Soulja Boy, Bon Iver, Animal Collective, and any number of recent Pitchfork faves all point toward the same reality: The music industry as it has existed for the past several decades is unsustainable and unnecessary.

Of course, admitting that and adopting my plan would force the major labels — from label chiefs down to aspiring millionaire pop stars — to leave the illogical zillion-dollar entertainment bubble and become more like normal businesses. And while the movie and TV industries are still in far better shape than the music industry, that won’t last forever. A total rethink of how they sell music would help the big entertainment companies prepare for similar disruptions in movies and TV (Hulu is also good preparation). That, too, would require contemplating leaving the bubble.

Which is why, instead, Sony honchos pretend that letting people upload photos will magically save the company.

If I were a shareholder, I’d hope they stop pretending soon.

UPDATE: Added obvious references to cable companies and Hulu.

This makes it all the more frustrating when planning to buy one of the handful of products that has eluded internet-induced transparency. I discovered this several years ago when buying a mattress. The internet was largely useless against the industry’s bewildering “specs,” dizzying array of models (many of which are unique to a particular retailer), and creepy throwback salesmen who seemed even creepier because of the information asymmetry inherent to our encounters.

The same frustrations have come up in my recent search for luggage. Smart decisions are tough when facing units of measurement and materials that seem made up (“denier,” “Tricore ballistic nylon”); retailer-exclusive models (making comparison shopping harder); and a dearth of authoritative information (Consumer Reports’s website has a single, subscription-required ratings roundup).

Luggage goes on sale every other week, but as with everything else, holiday sales are usually some of the best of the year. I’ve spent some time scoping out Macy’s (in anticipation of a big sale today, Nov. 18) and other luggage sellers, and I think I’ve come up with a few good options. Of course, now I can’t decide which to get.

The biggest luggage-purchasing decision is whether to get cheaper, less-durable polyester bags or spring for ones made of tougher “ballistic” nylon. (This ConsumerSearch feature provides the best overview and review roundup I could find.) Since my current cheapo luggage ripped and/or lost zippers after an average of two flights, I restricted my search to nylon luggage. As with kitchen knives, the best strategy is to buy individual pieces rather than a set that likely contains pieces you’ll never use.

As a 29-inch suitcase has proven to be comically oversized for us, I focused on 24- to 26-inch suitcases, though we may also get a 20- to 22-incher for solo travel. (Luggage height is also confusing: The Delsey Helium Breeze 2.0 25-inch upright suitcase is labeled as a 26-incher on the tag — and it’s the exact same height as the Victorinox Werks 3.0 “24-inch” upright.)

My pick for best value is the Delsey Helium Breeze 2.0 25/26-inch upright. At $128 during Macy’s sale, it’s the cheapest suitcase of this size that has 1682-denier ballistic nylon fabric. (The suitcase is available for $117 from Ace Photo Digital via Amazon, though I’d stick with Macy’s for potential returns.) Melanie and I also thought this suitcase was more comfortable to handle and had a more useful interior than pricier suitcases.

Click to view a chart comparing luggage prices.

Another good value for a 1680 ballistic nylon bag is the 26-inch Travelpro Walkabout Lite 3 (Duraguard coating versus the Breeze’s Stain Guard coating), for $132 at Amazon. Melanie liked the spinners on the Samsonite Silhouette 11 26-incher ($219 at Amazon, $230 at Macy’s), but we didn’t think the spinners — plus “Tricore” ballistic nylon fabric, whatever that is — are worth $100 more than the Helium Breeze 2.0 suitcase.

The other suitcases high on my list carry lifetime warranties or guarantees: the 25-inch Eagle Creek Tarmac, on sale for $245 at Amazon, and two L.L. Bean suitcases: the Large/26-inch Ballistic Rolling Pullman ($260) and the Large/26-inch Sportsman’s Rolling Pullman ($240). Eagle Creek offers a “no matter what” lifetime damage warranty — if the bag is damaged for any reason, ever, they’ll repair or replace it for free — and L.L. Bean has a strong 100% satisfaction guarantee.

L.L. Bean has stores in my area, which is a plus; an Eagle Creek customer service rep told me that in the case of repair/replacement, the bag owner pays to ship the bag to Eagle Creek but the company pays for shipping back. (REI also has a 100% satisfaction guarantee, and while my brother has used the policy to return both unused and used/damaged items, it seems to me more squishy than the Eagle Creek and L.L. Bean policies.)

The big question is whether a lifetime guarantee is worth an extra $115-$130, or whether the Helium Breeze’s ballistic nylon fabric would prove durable enough. When it comes to electronics and appliances, the typical advice is warranties/service plans aren’t worth it. Here’s Consumer Reports’ reasoning regarding appliance warranties (subscription required):

• Appliances usually don’t break during their warranty period, typically three years. …
• When breakdowns occur within the extended-warranty period, the average cost of repairing the appliance is not much more than the average price paid for the warranty.
• Extended warranties often contain loopholes, such as not covering problems caused by normal wear and tear.

The luggage scenario is a little different. The warranty period is forever, and there are explicitly no loopholes in the Eagle Creek warranty. L.L. Bean’s guarantee isn’t phrased as explicitly as I’d like, but I trust it since their reputation is largely based on the guarantee and customer service.

But say the Helium Breeze and a similarly priced replacement together lasted 15-20 years. Would I realistically use the Eagle Creek/L.L. Bean warranties more often than that? Will the companies even be around in 20 years?

At this point, I’m leaning toward the Helium Breeze. But the risk-averse part of me wants to go with one of the lifetime warranties. So now is where I open up the floor and say: “Halp! What should we do?”

UPDATE: I bought the Helium Breeze 2.0 suitcase! We couldn’t convince ourselves that the lifetime warranty suitcases were worth almost 100% more than the Helium Breeze. Plus we’re not flying again until February, so if L.L. Bean or Eagle Creek have crazy black Friday sales we may reconsider and return the one I bought. Good times.

If I had to guess, I’d have said a bonsai tree was some dwarf species or a bush that looks like a tiny tree. A little kitschy, no big whoop. But today Melanie and I went to the National Arboretum’s Bonsai and Penjing Museum, and my ignorance was slightly diminished at the same time my mind was officially blown.

As any non-ignorant person (or Wikipedia reader) must have already known, bonsai (the Japanese term) or penjing (the Chinese term) refers to “the art of aesthetic miniaturization of trees, or of developing woody or semi-woody plants shaped as trees, by growing them in containers” (I would have used a more authoritative source’s definition, but I can’t find one on the American Bonsai Society’s website).

I guess the “semi-woody plants shaped as trees” part could be the “bush shaped like a tiny tree” that I had in mind. But most of the specimens at the Arboretum are literally miniature trees.

Walking through the exhibit is like walking through the forest sets of A Nightmare Before Christmas or Coraline. Except in this case, the trees aren’t painted models with popcorn for blossoms — they’re actually trees!

The other cool thing is that a bunch of the trees are 100 or more years old. One is from the mid 1600s! The age combined with the warped perspective makes the whole exhibit pretty dizzying.

Here are two examples from the Arboretum. But you don’t get the same vertiginous sense of scale unless you’re standing in front of them — or rather, over them.

Update: Here’s a photo that gives a better sense:

If you’re in the D.C. area and, like us, have overlooked the Arboretum because of all the higher-profile things to see in these parts, I highly recommend a visit. (The rest of the grounds are very pretty, too.)

Sidenote: Pat Morita was nominated for an Academy Award for playing Mr. Miyagi??? Wha?