I like listening to the radio while I’m driving, and the Capital Region has a couple good stations. But they’re not perfect, and sometimes they play songs that I never want to hear when I’m driving a car. Some of these songs are just bad, but usually the problem is one of quietness: When I’m in the car, I don’t want to listen to music that makes me feel like sleeping. So here’s a list of artists that I never want to hear when I’m driving a car:

1. Norah Jones — Just writing her name makes me yawn
2. Jewel — Yawn, yawn, yawn
3. Joan Baez — More yawns
4. The Fray — Just bad
5. John Mayer — Some yawns, but mostly just bad
6. Phish — Bad, bad, bad
7. James Blunt — Blech
8. The Bravery — Also blech
9. Iron and Wine — Yawn
10. Nickelback — Again, just plain bad

Now, here are some songs I almost always enjoy hearing in the car. They’re not necessarily the best songs ever written, but they don’t make me fall asleep while I’m driving, and sometimes they even give me a lift.

1. “Where The Streets Have No Name” by U2
2. “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey
3. “Sweet Child of Mine” by Guns N’ Roses
4. “Come on Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners
5. “Little Red Corvette” by Prince
6. “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC
7. “Runaround Sue” by Dion
8. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard
9. “Under Pressure” by David Bowie and Queen
10. “Mexican Radio” by Wall of Voodoo
Bonus: “Jump” and “Why Can’t This Be Love” by Van Halen

Also, there’s room for the occasional power ballad. Here are two I never tire of hearing:

1. “The Rose” performed by Bette Midler
2. “Don’t Cry Out Loud” performed by Melissa Manchester

MORE THOUGHTS ON ONLINE CONTENT

Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira made a bit of a splash this week with an essay (click here) wondering whether sites like Gawker are killing journalism.

Shapira, who covers millennials (I’m going to refrain from making any jokes), wrote an article about a generational business consultant that was picked up by Gawker, repackaged, and widely read. Initially, he was proud, but then his editor suggested that Gawker had stolen his story. Which apparently got Shapira thinking about copyright law, and whether it should be amended to protect online content.

Shapira mused: “The more I toggled between my editor’s e-mail and the eight-paragraph Gawker item, the angrier I got, and the more disenchanted I became with the journalism business. I enjoy reading Gawker and the growing number of news sites like it — the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast and others — but lately they’re making me even more nervous about my precarious career as a newspaper reporter who enjoys, at least for the time being, a salary, a 401(k) and health insurance. ... More readers are better than fewer, of course. But those referring links — while essential to our current business model — aren’t doing much, ultimately, to stop our potential slide into layoffs and further contraction. Worse, some media experts believe that Gawker and its ilk, with their relatively low overhead, might be depressing online ad revenue across the board. That makes it harder for news-gathering operations to recoup their expenses.”

Like me, Shapira likes the Internet, and the free flow of information that exists there. He writes, “I still want a fluid blogosphere, but one where aggregators — newspapers included — are more transparent about whom they’re heavily excerpting. They should mention the original source immediately. And if bloggers want to excerpt at length, a fee would be the nice, ethical gesture.”

(The Columbia Journalism Review has an interesting piece on Shapira’s essay; click here to read it.)

What goes unsaid in Shapira’s piece, I think, is that what’s good for an individual isn’t necessarily good for a newspaper. It’s great for reporters to have pieces picked up by Gawker and discussed. It expands their audience, and generates the sort of buzz that could one day lead to a book contract or bigger writing gig. Most of all, reporters want their work to be widely read.

Management wants their work to be widely read, too, but not at the expense of remaining solvent.

Got a comment? E-mail me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.