Today’s reading is the New Yorker profile of the New York Mets’ chairman and chief executive, Fred Wilpon.

I am currently mulling over:

a) is it a good thing for a team’s owner to run down his best players and call the team “shitty” in the name of honesty and transparency?

or

b) will these comments just make the Mets appear even more of a joke than they already are?

Anyway, in place of any actual analysis¹, I figured I’d just throw up this Family Guy clip.

1. I remember a time when blogs were far more of a dumping ground for stuff. There would often be several short posts a day, or random images, or videos. It seems now that many blogs (at least the ones I read) are far more focused on proper posts, generally of a half-decent length. I guess the random mess of media stuff is now more Tumblr’s realm, plus Twitter has kind of run away with that whole short update, micro-blog thing, eh? Still, sometimes I think I should just throw up odd things here, in the name of keeping the ol’ blog updated, rather than worrying about word counts, or making sure my blog posts have substance or whatever other nonsense. This is a pretty shambolic blog anyway, so I shouldn’t really worry about maintaining its purity or purpose or whatever. However, if me throwing up slapdash stuff like this offends, do let me know, dear reader, through the usual channels. I can’t really decide what sort of format or style I prefer. I love blogs that have real guts and substance and content. I marvel at their ongoing efforts, at their ability to find the time to write something meaningful, their willingness to plan and rewrite, and to not ramble in the manner of this rather indulgent footnote. Yet, I guess I’m happy with any sort of post from my favourite bloggers, and any sort of post, no matter how small or inconsequential, is better than silence. I get mopey when my favourite bloggers are silent. Hmm. I’m not sure where this footnote is going, so bravo if you’re still reading. That’s probably enough, right? 

Or maybe it is just a phase. I do always read. A lot. But the medium isn’t always the same. Sometimes I just have to read a newspaper every day. Other times I realise I get most of my news online (although it’s not the same), or find my brain rotting from reading the free newspapers handed out in London and decide enough is enough.

Other times I’m all over magazines and, for want of a better word, journals. There is some fantastic magazine design out there – Wire magazine, in particular, and the late, lamented Plan B. There’s also some genuinely great writing hiding away in your old periodicals. The New Yorker is always a wonderful, informative and luxurious read. The New York Review of Books is similarly brain-nourishing. But it’s not all about mags from the Big Apple – how about When Saturday Comes and World Soccer, for pretty much peerless football coverage? Or Private Eye, still great after all these years?

But then, after a while, I realise that as immediate and bite-sized and shiny as magazines are, it is a good book that I really crave. A book that demands to be read, to be devoured. The sort of book that leaves you with a sense of loss when it’s over, because you just can’t read it anymore, that the story of those characters (real or imagined) has now finished.

And in an age of iPhones, iPads and all that jazz, and working in a role that falls directly under the banner of, ahem, ‘new media’, it’s interesting to me that all of this ‘old media’ still brings so much joy. These print formats are still vital to me. There is nothing quite like the feel, touch, smell, experience of books, magazines and newspapers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love computers and would be lost without the internet. But nothing will replace flicking through a newspaper in a pub, or a magazine in the garden on a sunny day, or an old book, curled up indoors on a winter’s night. Long may these simple pleasures last.

Image from Jasoon via Flickr