These are my (social) media habits

In our modern age of 24/7 social media and never-ending news cycles – plus our desire to stay ahead of the latest cutting-edge trends in music and pop culture – what does our media habits reveal about us?

With a shout out to The Monocle Minute newsletter for its list of questions it often asks movers and shakers, here’s a few things you might like to know about my media habits ...

What news source do you wake up to?

NPR, home delivery of The New York Times, and the Washington Post online. On Sundays, I also receive home delivery of the Washington Post. 

Coffee, tea or something pressed to go with headlines?

As I am not a tea drinker, I have three different-sized French presses at home at the ready and plenty of Community Coffee brand French Roast. Also, I maintain a supply of Community Coffee instant coffee & chickory, and once a week I treat myself to a Starbucks grande mocha.

Something from the FM dial or Spotify for your tunes?

When I’m driving up and down U.S. Highway 1, between College Park and Washington, D.C., and occasionally elsewhere within the confines of the Beltway, I enjoy – borderline love – listening to classical music via WETA. The more Dvorak the better. Otherwise, when at home, I enjoy listening to the “Morning Becomes Eclectic” show via KCRW, the Santa Monica, Calif.-NPR affiliate. While I’m late to the Spotify phenomenon, I enjoy putting together some simply playlists centered around some of my favorite musicians, such as Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Wynton Marsalis and Jazz @ Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Pink Martini.

Papers delivered or a trip down to the kiosk?

At home, it’s seven-day delivery of The New York Times and the Sunday Washington Post for me. When I’m traveling, I usually look for the nearest destination that carries The New York Times. There’s something about holding it in my hands every day and reading it wherever I am in the world. However, if that’s not possible, I’ll fall back on looking at the Times, either online or via its app. 

Magazines for your weekend sofa-side stack?

I look forward to perusing my two faves, Monocle and Racquet. The former I stop by one of the Hudson News kiosks at Union Station to purchase my monthly copy, while I subscribe the the latter, which is published quarterly. For years, I used to subscribe to The New Yorker just to make sure I never missed reading Roger Angell’s wonderfully penned baseball tomes. Eventually, I fell behind reading the magazine, week to week, and let my subscription lapse. If I’m going on a vacation trip, I might be tempted to buy a good travel magazine to put me in the right mood.

Are you a subscriber or more of a newsstand browser?

A subscriber although if I’m in a good bookstore, like Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle or Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., I’ll be tempted to browse a bit just to see what I might be missing out on. As someone who is interested in content and design, occasionally I buy Dwell, which is all about design and technology.

Bookshop for a drizzly Saturday afternoon?

In Seattle, Elliott Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill. In Washington, Politics and Prose on Connecticut Avenue NW. In San Francisco, Book Passage in the Ferry Plaza Building. All of them are independent booksellers. Sorry, no Barnes & Noble for me.

Sofa or cinema for the evening?

A little of both, although much of my cinema going takes place on Sunday mornings, as my wife and I belong to a cinema club in Washington, D.C. Otherwise, I spend a lot of time looking for hidden gems to view via Netflix or watch tennis on Tennis Channel because my job as a contributing editor for an English language tennis website based near Munich, Germany, requires me.

What’s the best thing you’ve watched recently on TV and why?

Two shows, actually. First, Good Karma Hospital, a British dramedy about a disillusioned doctor who heads to South India for a fresh start. It’s available via Acorn. Second, Kim’s Convenience, which is available on Netflix, is a Canadian sitcom about a Korean Canadian family who run a convenience store in the Moss Park neighborhood of Toronto. Each includes people of color in starring roles and the stories are believable.

Sunday brunch routine?

It starts with bringing in the Sunday newspapers from the front porch, turning on the radio to “Weekend Edition Sunday” and fixing coffee for myself. Brunch at home usually consists of a parfait of vanilla yogurt accented with maple pecan granola, a small glass of orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese or, possibly, coffee cake made by my wife. 

Last media of the day?

Usually before lights out, I make one final, brief pass through my Facebook and Twitter feeds. Sometimes, it’s valuable if there’s a late-break story worth reading or a sports score I’m searching for. Also, I’ll check to see if any of my family or friends has tried to text me or shoot me an e-mail. Then, it’s lights out by 11.

Illustration: Courtesy of Google images.

Is Amazon's company culture innovative or punishing?

Amazon / More than just a dot.com that sells books and music.

The play story on the cover of Sunday's print edition of The New York Times, "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace" by Jodi Kantor with help from David Streitfeld, has grabbed the nation's attention and lit up social media, but not necessarily for all the right reasons. According to Kantor, Amazon is conducting an experiment in how far it can push its force of white-collar workers in order to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.

Amazon is the U.S.'s biggest retailer with a market capitalization of $250 billion -- bigger than Wal-Mart and Target -- and most of us know this dot-com powerhouse from being consumers. Indeed, they've come a long way since being just an online retailer for books and music. Now, it's possible to buy over 20 million items -- from Amazon's Kindle to digital cameras to even toilet paper -- and if you're willing to pay the price for Amazon Prime, you can have it delivered the next day.

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos

Part of the success that Seattle-based Amazon has enjoyed starts with its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who is the fifth-richest man in the world -- yes, the world. According to Kantor, part of Bezos's success can be attributed to his inventing a way to get the most out of every employee. Yet, while some may look at his management style as draconian, others consider some of the data-driven tactics and practices coupled with the passive-aggressive work environment he's promoted at Amazon as innovative and fascinating.

One thing's for sure, Amazon has a reputation for having hard-working employees. "They do pride themselves on being a tough culture," said Kantor on Monday in an interview with American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, which aired nationwide via NPR. "You know Bezos tells people 'This is a culture of working incredibly hard.' They use the phrase 'unreasonably high' to describe their standards and expectations."

According to Kantor, who interviewed current and former employees over the past six months which included several executives, employees value a lot of aspects about Amazon, including the fact that "it's a culture of innovation, there isn't a lot of red tape, relatively junior people can have a lot of responsibility." However, in reading her damning Sunday story in The New York Times about Amazon's company culture, it came across to me -- and I'm sure was noticeable to everyone -- that Amazon's employees are being hurt by the harsh company culture. "I found that in most of our interviews, we were talking to people who really loved aspects of working for the company, but they were struggling with this kind of punishing culture," she said during her "Marketplace" interview.

Among the practices which Kantor cited that upset Amazon employees included how team members had to compete with one another. "Team members are ranked against each other," said Kantor. "It's a very competitive atmosphere." Yet, because of this, it has morphed into an uncomfortable working environment. Imagine, because of this particular directness, it's possible to send secret negative feedback about your peers to your peers' bosses. While the bosses see who it's from, other workers are not privy to this information.

On Monday, Mr. Bezos responded to The New York Times article about Amazon's uncompromising attitude and hard-hitting management style, saying "I don't think any company adopting the approach portrayed could survive, much less thrive, in today's highly competitive tech hiring market."

In a letter to Amazon's 180,000 employees, Mr. Bezos added: "I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.

"But hopefully, you don't recognize the company described. Hopefully, you're having fun working with a bunch of brilliant teammates, helping invent the future, and laughing along the way."

It became very apparent from reading Kantor's article that work-life balance -- the "Amazon way" that promotes climbing the wall after you've hit the wall -- skews towards employees who rank their work life more important than their personal life. Amazon, by all accounts, has perfected a balance between pushing its employees to the brink -- driven to tears amid a climate of fear -- while making sure they haven't hit their breaking point.

I can imagine Amazon employees asking themselves the following questions: "Is this right for me? Do I really want to work this way?"

Where do you draw the line?

If anything, after reading The New York Times article, I hope it brings the debate about workplace culture into the open and starts a public discussion about Amazon.

Listen to Jodi Kantor's "Marketplace" interview:
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/amazons-company-culture-innovative-or-punishing

Read the New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html?_r=0

Photos and images: Courtesy of Google Images.

There's something special about building communities through good food and good conversation, too

Eat Real Festival / Good food complimented by good conversation. 

The British novelist Virginia Woolf wrote in her 1929 novel, A Room of One's Own: "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well." She mused that the human frame being what it is ~ consisting of a heart, body and brain ~ a good dinner is of great importance to us all. And, it is best complimented by good conversation, too.

Indeed, last week was a very good one to be a foodie in the San Francisco Bay Area. First, I had the pleasure of attending a fascinating City Arts & Lectures event featuring New York Times food writer Mark Bittman at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Then, during the weekend, I visited the annual Eat Real Festival at Jack London Square in Oakland and delighted in many delectable edibles that were seasonal, local and sustainable. Both events left my body and mind feeling happy and well nourished.

Mark Bittman

As the lead food writer for The New York Times Magazine, Mark Bittman shares his love of food through personal storytelling, teaching fundamental cooking techniques and essential lessons. He also covers food policy, cooking and eating as an Opinion columnist for The New York Times. He is the author of Food Matters, which explored the crucial connections among food, health and the environment. Many of my friends might remember him for writing "The Minimalist," a weekly column that ran for 13 years in The New York Times, which was part recipes and a lot of commonsense advice about food technique and taste.

Among the many interesting comments that Bittman made during his hour-long, cultural studies conversation with Jessica Battilana, a senior editor at Tasting Table, was this: "We have to take responsibility for what we eat. But we also need to demand accountability for what is produced for us to eat."

Mark Bittman / Sharing a conversation about food
at San Francisco's City Arts & Lectures.

Bittman supports the sustainability food movement as well as the principle of giving consumers the right to know what is in our food. Also, he advocates that we should care about the welfare of the animals which farms raise for our consumption of beef, pork and poultry. And, he stressed, we as consumers should make a conscientious effort to buy and eat quality food that is locally grown and sourced.

However, admits Bittman, "We need to grow, plan and distribute this food in a better manner." He believes we should be more aware of the carbon footprint being left by the food we buy and consume in our daily lives, whether we choose to be carnivores or vegetarians ~ even vegans.

Mark Bittman signs a copy of
his current book How to Cook
 Everything: The Basics

While Bittman has built a nation-wide community of like-minded enthusiasts through his writing for The New York Times, his books (Bittman's latest is How to Cook Everything: The Basics, which I bought and had signed) and his television appearances on The Cooking Channel, PBS and NBC's Today, his own personal taste in food leans toward keeping things simple and basic. Whether dining at home or going out, Bittman forgoes labor-intensive dishes like lasagna ~ he hasn't cooked it in 20 years ~ in favor of simplicity, like a delicious bowl of miso soup or Asian noodles. He eschews fine dining and is more at ease eating out at any number of New York City's hidden nook, Japanese-cuisine restaurants he's discovered over the years.

A discovery of another kind is the Eat Real Festival, an annual event that draws thousands of like-minded foodies from around the Bay Area to the Oakland waterfront at Jack London Square. Eat Real has been described by some as "part street food festival, part country fair and part block party." According to its website, what this social adventure has been created for ~ its raison d'être ~ is to inspire festival goers to enjoy "tasty, healthy, good food." Around the grounds, there was live music, cooking lectures and demonstrations, and green spaces to spread out a blanket and turn this culinary experience into a picnic, too.

Eat real, eat well / Standing in line for seasonal, local, sustainable
cuisine from Tru Gourmet Dim Sum at the Eat Real Festival.

The S+S Gastro Grub menu
promoted its local partnerships.

In just a couple of hours on Saturday, I enjoyed a delicious sampling Brown Cow ("Cream on the top") Greek honey yogurt; a freshly steamed BBQ pork bun and hot chicken pot sticker from Tru Gourmet Dim Sum; a freshly grilled and very tender Macau-style Niman Ranch pork bun from S+S Gastro Grub; a Vietnamese Bánh Mi, one of the best street foods in the world, which is a sandwich served on a baguette with pickled organic carrots and organic daikon, tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapenos, cilantro, mayo and soy sauce from Little Green Cyclo; and a slice of wood-fired artisan pepperoni pizza served with enthusiasm from an 800-degree Italian Valoriani oven that's been described as "reminiscent of a large blacksmith's forge" at the soon-to-open Forge pizzeria. Finally, for dessert, I treated myself to a Mexican chocolate popsicle (other eclectic flavors included pluot Thai basil and sweet corn) from Lick Pops that hit the spot on this clear, sunny afternoon.

The Eat Real Festival / A family-friendly
atmosphere with good food, great weather
and wonderful conversation, too.

Everything I sampled at this year's Eat Real Festival was simply amazing, not to mention affordable, too. All portions were $5 or less. I arrived with a good appetite and departed feeling both satisfied and smiling.

There's no love more sincerer than the love of food, wrote the Irish poet George Bernard Shaw. And, as Mark Bittman and the Eat Real Festival confirmed for me last week, there's something very special about building communities through food. Bon appetit!

All photographs by Michael Dickens. Copyright 2012, all rights reserved.

Resolution: Read more books

One of my recurring New Year's resolutions is to read more books ~ mind you, not just any books. I enjoy reading food and travel memoirs, such as Calvin Trillin's Travels With Alice and Alice, Let's Eat, and I appreciate reading books about current, topical issues such as food wisdom, like In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma, both expertly written by Michael Pollan. Also, I'm trying really hard to finally read some of Nick Hornby's delightful books, like Fever Pitch.

I'm like many in today's reading climate ~ my reading habits bend toward staying current with newspapers (The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times) as well as periodicals like The New Yorker, Oxford American, Paste and Monocle. Also, I make time for perusing some of my favorite blogs written by my fellow Facebook friends ~ Michelle Hargrave, Amy Christine Stiner, Jessie Thompson Eustice, John Boggs and Steve Scott. Added up, there's just not enough quality time to devote to reading books.

Fortunately, 2010 is still relatively young ~ and I've always regarded reading as an admirable hobby.

On Tuesday night, while nearing the completion of a 20-minute peddle on a stationary bike at my fitness center ~ a place I seem to do some of my best reading ~ I felt a sense of gratification after I finished reading my first book of the year, The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British by Sarah Lyall, a London-based correspondent for The New York Times. Sure, it only took me 33 days into a new year ~ and it's a softcover book that's been on my nightstand since I bought it during a Labor Day weekend visit with friends in Seattle. OK, so I'm not a speed reader.

See, I'm just like many who don't need much motivation to start reading a book that's just been purchased ~ and in the interest of full disclosure, I prefer supporting independent booksellers, like Powell's City of Books in Portland, Ore. and Seattle's The Elliott Bay Book Company, where I bought The Anglo Files, instead of big chain retailers like Barnes & Noble or Borders.

I just have a bad habit of not finishing books that I've started. However, each time I picked up The Anglo Files I really enjoyed it ~ it's part anthropological field study, part memoir about an American reporter from New York (Lyall) who becomes transplanted in the U.K., meets and falls in love with a Brit who becomes her husband. Lyall writes about old, odd and peculiar British customs and attitudes in a very humourous tone.

For instance, she writes about the weather: "Even though Britons pretend otherwise, the weather has a huge influence on the national mood. Because so many days start bright and quickly turn gloomy, early-morning enthusiasm turns to late-morning glumness ... and writers from Shakespeare to Daphne du Maurier have written obsessively about the weather as instigator and mirror of their characters' moods. ...

"I think one of the reasons Britons lack Americans' perky enthusiasm is lack of light. The moodiness makes for lovely landscape paintings, but the sun's failure to rise all the way in the sky brings on a natural melancholy. At its best the sun is large and cold, like the dying sun of an old dying planet in a science fiction story. The sky might be blue, but it is always pale blue. In the winter, darkness follows lunch."

Often, The Anglo Files was my reading companion at my fitness center and I read it occasionally during BART commutes between Oakland and San Francisco. Sometimes, I tried to read a page or two at bedtime while laying in bed ~ although that's never a guarantee for reading a lot of pages before inevitably dozing off to sleep. Finally, the read pages added up to read chapters and, finally, a finished book ~ and it was an enjoyable read. Makes me yearn for getting back to London for another visit ~ but that's another story.

So, with one book down and who knows how many more to be read, what's next up on my 2010 reading list? Well, I think it's time for another foodie memoir that also involves travel, so I'm going to start Far Flung and Well Fed: The Food Writing of R.W. Apple Jr. A longtime reporter and correspondent for The New York Times, Apple made an art form out of writing about the culinary delights of regional cuisine throughout the U.S. I know it'll be a pleasurable read ~ and one I hope to savor from start to finish.

I'll keep you posted.