Not Lame dies, but power-pop dreams survive

The video above captures an endearing albeit sometimes rambling Bruce Brodeen, owner of Not Lame Records, confirming the closure of the leading power-pop label and his move on to other music ventures (more on that below). 

We knew Not Lame's closure was coming for months, but it's still tough to swallow for hardcore fans of the power-pop genre.  Brodeen is among its leading ambassadors, and Not Lame's demise is confirmation that power pop simply was and probably will remain a niche. 

I'll remember Bruce and Not Lame for:

1. His "Lost in the Haze" series of power pop "mix tapes" (only on CD) that he'd toss in with some orders. Every "Haze" disc would contain a few forgotten gems (like The Pop's "Down on the Boulevard"), and few stunning discoveries and a half-dozen solid tracks that collectively made for repeat listens. These handmade discs came from the heart, and were unique rewards for regular customers. 

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My own Twitter "newspaper"

I stumbled across a new site called paper.li that allows anyone to create a "newspaper-style" digital publication from a variety of Twitter feeds. The process takes a few minutes, and offers some interesting prospects.

The tools are in alpha, so things are raw and can change at a moMy customized paper.li "newspaper"ment's notice, so my descriptions are based on what I did today.

There are three options for your publication by:
1) Pulling your feed plus those of the people you follow.
2) Pulling a feed from a designated #hashtag
3) Pulling a feed from a Twitter list

I created two: "The Logan Molen Daily" based on my @lmolen handle and the 253 people I follow and "The journoinnovation Daily," based on Steve Buttry's @journoinnovation list, which pulls in my Tweets.

The paper.li "pagination" process takes a few minutes and creates a publication pulling in posts sorted by topic categories.

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Letting readers influence your cover

Screenshot of an Entertainment Weekly survey page asking for input on possible cover storeisI got an email from Entertainment Weekly (I'm a subscriber) on Tuesday, asking me to share my thoughts on "a couple of possible Entertainment Weekly cover stories." I was asked to "rate your interest in each of these stories," using the simple form shown at the right.

This isn't rocket science and isn't new, but seems to be a trend, as I recently was asked to cast my vote for Sports Illustrated cover prospects.

It'll be interesting to see 1) whether any of these EW covers appears and 2) whether this trend spreads to other magazines. My sense is that it will.

It's interesting that this really hasn't taken off with newspapers. The Wisconsin State Journal appears to have stopped its experiment in letting readers pick one front-page story every day. Many media companies already generate "most popular" story feeds on their websites, and that smart editors take those and other web tools into consideration when gauging reader interest.

I also believe newspaper subscribers really do prefer skilled and experienced editors to make choices on the story mix each day. It's a premium that separates "curated" publications from the 24-7 onslaught of digital news streams.

If you know of other publications giving readers a large say in their cover story selections, lemme know.