Radio, Amateurishly

Acknowledgement: I submitted what I thought—by the standards of a frustrated writer with no formal training—was a halfway decent first draft to my friend Nicole Bailey. Her pointed observations gave me the insight to take this story in an entirely new direction, one that I didn't even think possible. For Nicole's keen eye for substance an unfailing eye for style, I am deeply grateful. The rally came in the bottom of the sixth, with two out. The Padres tied the game at 3 on a homer by Fernando Tatís Jr, complete with his characteristic stutter step between second and third. Now Machado was on second, hoping to be the go-ahead run. Eric Hosmer, the Padres' somewhat maligned first baseman, made the short walk from the on-deck circle to the batter's box. It wasn't completely fair, Derrick thought from his second-deck seat. Hosmer's tenure in San Diego had been streaky and one could make the case that he had underperformed, but he could come through in the clutch. De...

  Preface It has become cliché to point out that with respect to social media, you are not the customer, but rather the product. In a narrowly focused sense, this is true; social media companies, just like traditional media companies, rely on advertising revenue as their source of cash flow. When a media organization's sales department calls on an ad buyer, the value proposition they're offering is typically a description of the size and demographic makeup of the audience they intend to deliver.  The description of social media users as product might be true but misleadingly so. For starters, it's a description of something we're already used to.  Broadcast radio has relied on advertising revenue since the 1920s; television's revenue model has been ad-based since its inception in the late 1940s. For print media, which traditionally draw revenue in roughly equal parts from readers and advertisers, it's been about half true for even longer. As shocking as it might...