Last December I complained that 2008 was a crap year for music. I was tempted to say the same thing about 2009, but instead of getting crotchety and complaining about kids and their music today (get off my lawn!), I decided to end the year in a more positive way.

This week, while driving to and from Chicago for the holidays, I put together a playlist of 65 of the best songs from the last decade. By best, of course, I mean my favorites. By the time we returned home, I’d narrowed the list down to 25 songs that lifted my musical decade. Some are even from the last two years. In no particular order, the songs are:

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I left the World Hum editing cave recently to see “Up in the Air” and ask director Jason Reitman and novelist Walter Kirn a couple questions about their work. Even broke out the Flip camera. Great movie, and one of my favorite recent assignments.

Check out the videos of the interviews at World Hum, or after the jump.

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Compelling story by Joel Achenbach about the fate of the narrative in the “Age of Twitter.” The crux of the problem:

Good stories take time to craft. Good writers, editors, copy editors, photographers, etc., all expect a living wage. The real question in the months and years ahead is whether there’s a business model that can support good stories. Norman Sims, journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst: “The great stories will survive. But the question is who’s going to pay for them. . . . This is not fast food. This is slow food. And it’s expensive.”

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