Michael McCarthy

5 Things Your College English Prof Never Told You About Media

If anyone ever tells you stringing beautiful sentences together is easy, he’s a big, fat liar—and probably a lout and a poser. So don’t listen to him. I do, however, have friends in the writing community who bemoan the ease with which new-media “pros” have taken over the airwaves. They make writing look and sound […]

4 Myths About Video Content

Moving pictures can be dangerous. Witness video of me, circa 1988, clad in acid-washed jeans with a shock of hair resembling a dump truck in full tilt. Same thing applies to a new generation of video and the media machine it feeds every second of the day. When it comes to branded video content—or even […]

A Magazine is Not a Broken iPad (No Matter What Your Baby Says)

Homer Simpson understands children. Well, his children. All right, maybe just Maggie because she rarely speaks. But he knows enough about the relative predictability of kids to have once uttered, “You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.” Bravo, Homer. This is why you […]

SEO Killed the Analog Star

Someone spouted this thought in the billion-voice echo chamber that is Twitter the other day: “Too many people are writing content for Google and not their readers.” The dude nailed it. Of course, five minutes later he Tweeted: “5 affordable ways to see Paris like a local”…which, of course, is something that’s been covered more […]

Me Data, You Jane

James Gleick has a big, beautiful brain. It’s like a triple-decker cruise ship of mind-blowing philosophies that finds ports of call in areas such as the rise of technology and its tanned, bikini-clad sister, communication. In his new book “The Information,” Gleick saves the most colossal party for the island known as data. In fact, […]

What Being on the Radio Taught Me About Writing

Everything I learned about writing I learned on the radio. All right, that’s not entirely true. But I’ve learned a lot.

5 Editorial Resolutions for 2011

I’m not learning to tango in 2011. Nor am I going to take a painting or sculpting class. And I probably won’t get around to climbing Kilimanjaro. But I did jot down five things that I’m going to keep in mind as my staff and I map out the year ahead. (Yeah, I know—it’s hard […]