links for 2009-06-29

• Persian Station in Britain Rattles Officials in Iran - NYTimes.com
  Experts on Iran who have monitored the channel’s programming on the Internet say it has succeeded in a difficult task, giving a tempered account of developments that have been deeply divisive among Iranians
  (tags: bbc ptv iran persian NYT TV publicdiplomacy middleeast)
• John Harris asks whether the best writing about pop music hails from a different era | Music | The Guardian
  The history of rock writing begins around 1966 when, with what was once mere "pop" being taken seriously, the American writer Paul Williams published a journal-cum-fanzine titled Crawdaddy, which aimed to bring to rock music the kind of cerebral writing long devoted to folk and jazz. Other currents were swirling around the more educated bits of the US counterculture, among them the expressive precedents set by the Beats and the possibilities suggested by New Journalism.
  (tags: music journalism guardian johnharris pop history)