Radical conservatives failed to destroy and disband the NAACP this week like they did ACORN with Andrew Breitbart’s posting of a edited video featuring Shirley Sherrod. At the end of the week, it really didn’t matter that their primary objective was not met as the mainstream media handed them an even bigger victory; virtually no successful news from the White House. The only thing most Americans know about Barack Obama this week is how quick he was to fire Sherrod* and how thin-skinned his administration is about race. The Sherrod video turned out to be a huge distraction that sucked the oxygen out of the entire news cycle for the week.

On Wednesday, Obama signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law. This bill was first introduced in December of 2009 in response to “too big to fail” and the criminal abuses of the banking and Wall Street systems. On Thursday, 2.5 million unemployed Americans breathed a sigh of relief as unemployment benefits were restored.

Did you know that? Most didn’t as the pollsters made their rounds, asking how effective Obama is as president. Again, media concluded that Obama is in trouble as his popularity slides even in the wake of successful legislation. Wonder why.

Conservatives have found their dead parakeet. All they need do when it looks like the President is about to have a success is float some outrageous video that baits race, which gets the left all worked up and the right mad as hell which only riles the legit media into a non-stop twenty-four hours of back-to-back coverage. It’s like a fixation on a shiny metal balloon.

Devious, underhanded, juvenile but a pretty smart strategy. It would have been brilliant if they didn’t just stumble into it.

NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, Reuters, AP. Just look away. It’s just a shiny balloon.

*I know that Barack Obama didn’t fire Sherrod, but how many of our 300million + Einsteins out there know it? Exactly.

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My editor wrote this over at GerardMcLean.com and I had to share. It is something that I privately champion at every opportunity, and this being one of those time, here you go.

UPDATE: @Neenz just published the Paralympics page at Alltop.com last night, Mar 5. If you know of or write a blog on the Paralympics, submit it here to be included.

I first got schooled in the Paralympic Games from Kim* during a telephone conversation my first week on the job back in 1996. For those who don’t know, I used to sell exercise bikes to paralyzed people. True.

“I am a tennis player,” she said.

“You mean you used to play tennis?” I asked.

“No, stupid. I play tennis. Wheelchair tennis. And I’m training for the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney.”

“The Special Olympics?” I said.

“No, I’m in a chair, not a f***ing r*tard!” she shot back angrily.

She was not one to mince words. She had also served four years in the US Navy and she swore like a sailor.

By the time I left the company several years later, we had gotten to be pretty good friends. I wish I had kept in touch, but that wasn’t what Kim was all about. She was one who lived in the moment, curious and anxious for the future with no regrets for the past. She never made it to Sydney, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

That was my introduction to the Paralympic Games. They are held two weeks after the Olympic Games everyone knows about and gets broadcast on TV. Here is the Web site for the Games in Vancouver.

Eventually, I hope the Paralympic Games are played alongside the Olympic Games as paralympic athletes are every bit as tough as their able-boded counterparts. It seems to me that even when NBC doesn’t see the value in broadcasting the Paralympic Games, Social Media should be all over it. The Paralympics are like a really cool blog that you accidentally stumble into that you didn’t know existed, but changes your world view forever. If you want to see some real athletic ability, I encourage you to watch this year. And London. And Russia. And Rio.

Get involved on twitter. Encourage Guy and Neenz to establish a blog directory for the Paralympics on Alltop.com that doesn’t lead to disability. Write a blog article about how you feel about the Paralympics.

Do something inclusive. We’re all in this together.

*Withholding last name, but in case she ever reads this and I have permission to fill in the last name, I’d be happy to.
**Please don’t contact me about ELA being out of business. That happened way after I left.

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You are reading DogWalkBlog.com, produced and written in Dayton, Ohio. We are talking with Rufus, one of the key writers of the blog where he reminds us why you, time and place are important for blog credibility and reader orienteering.

I was reading a blog from a linked tweet this morning and halfway through it, my mind jumped to a question we’ve probably all asked ourselves halfway through. “Wait a minute, is this a blog post written by the person who tweeted or is this a guest blog post or a link that was passed along by the person I’m following.”

I’m on an iPhone, so I scroll up to the top hoping to get some quick info, like the author’s name, date it was posted, maybe the location. Nope, nothing. Since I was reading it on my iPhone, everything was in a zoomed-in column and the author’s info was probably in the side bar. What a pain, I’m not zooming out for that. But my sense of irritation was so high at this point (mostly because I was trying to establish credibility for some of the statements that were being asserted) that I just quit reading and went back to my Twitterstream.

And I got to thinking about a post I read yesterday by Julien Smith. In the post, he was reminded during a recent radio interview of the value of constant station identification breaks and the recaps and reminders that a good radio interviewer will always do.

You are reading DogWalkBlog.com, produced and written in Dayton, Ohio. We are talking with Rufus, one of the key writers of the blog where he reminds us why you, time and place are important for blog credibility and reader orienteering.

And if the blog post this morning was an anomaly, I would not be writing this post now. But, it is not. Whether by lack of training, ignorance or good old fashion hubris, hundreds of thousands of web sites that should tell the reader where they are, don’t. “Everyone knows who we are,” is a familiar retort.

No, we don’t know who you are. Is the Springfield College in Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts, Tennessee or in fictitious Simpsonville? You would never know unless you crawled all over their Web site. (MA, down in tiny type at the bottom) How is this good for recruiting?

And folks who should know better — newspapers — are the worst offenders. Sure, we all know where New York, Chicago and Los Angles are, but where is The Richmond Times-Dispatch published? What community does it serve? Richmond, Indiana? Virginia? I dunno. And it is too much work crawling around trying to find out.

You are reading DogWalkBlog.com, produced and written in Dayton, Ohio. We are talking with Rufus, one of the key writers of the blog where he reminds us why you, time and place are important for blog credibility and reader orienteering.

Purists of the Internets would argue (did you catch my strawman argument? Pretty clever, right?) that the world is flat and that one’s experience, field of vision, place of residence, etc really don’t matter. It is the ideas, the engagement, etc, etc that really matter. Actually, it is not. When you have a homogenous view of the world that is created by your physical environment and fueled by willful ignorance, you end up writing crap like this book (review will not be forthcoming as I think “crap” sums it up nicely. Yes, I read it all the way through.)

And lastly, perhaps the worst offenders of all are local youth sports clubs. Unless you are THE Arsenal Football Club, please put your location front and center on your Web site. Above all, place very much matters to local youth sports teams.

Perhaps we can have little hide/click Blog Identification tags located in the content every three paragraphs so the reader can click on them and know immediately where he is and who you are. That would be a cool thing that newspapers should adopt. (I may even write a plug in for that.) But mostly, if we think about attracting new readers to our content, we would be less apt to assume everyone knows who and where we are.

Am I right?

You have been reading DogWalkBlog.com, produced and written in Dayton, Ohio. We were talking with Rufus, one of the key writers of the blog where he reminded us why you, time and place are important for blog credibility and reader orienteering. Tune in next week where we will bring you more exciting stuff, seen from the dog’s point of view. I’m your editor and host. Have a good day!

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I bolted straight up in bed last night and asked myself the most obvious question most folks in the media should be asking themselves about the health care reform debate. “Where is the bell-shaped curve in the GOP dissent?”

Think about this. When was the last time you had forty supposedly independent-minded people agree on anything?

The average family Thanksgiving dinner has 8-12 people. On a rather banal issue, say the ideal turkey, the majority of people will agree in the middle and go with roasted. A few will say deep-fried and a few will say tofurky. But to get 12 people all in the same family and all having a shared desire to have a successful Thanksgiving dinner to agree to all say the same thing is just not ever going to happen. Ever.

So, why are forty US Senators all holding fast to the same opinion on health care reform? Is the bill so bad that not one of them would ever consider supporting even a small part of it? (before you answer, I give you tofurky. On Thanksgiving.) Given our smaller sampling of a family which has more inherent homogeneity, I’m leaning towards the actual content of the bill not being the reason all forty are holding fast to the same opinion. There must be another reason.

A reasonable, smart person would examine an argument and concede certain points to the opposition, agree with some arguments being offered by the defense and then offer some arguments of his own. While membership in a particular group says we will have similar experiences, we each have our own experience which entitles — nay, obligates — us to have an individual point of view. So, why are a group of forty holding fast to the same opinion without guilt or any feeling that they are abdicating their obligation to country?

Some would say it is easier to say “no,” to do nothing and hang onto the status quo. But these are pretty smart folks who got themselves elected to the US Congress. They know that the fastest route to irrelevance is to deny change. They know new life is born, old life dies and to fight change is to deny death and taxes, which they all believe in. So, why are all GOP senators right in the middle?

The question here might be more accurately phrased, “Why are US Senators not empowered to think independently on both sides of the aisle?” Why do we have an aisle? Are we so afraid that nothing will ever get done due to one-hundred people all thinking for themselves without a party dictating the path? Would we still have a bell-shaped curve if we had one-hundred different opinions on one issue. Human experience says we would.

The two-party system is broken. The US Congress is playing games in which they appear silly, stupid and petty to everyone outside Washington and the press. But, unlike a game, the choices these guys make affect our lives out here.

I say we should lower the age of eligibility from thirty-five to six and then we could elect the average Kindergartner to be a US Senator. We’d get the same result, only CSPAN would be a heck of a lot more fun to watch!

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I understand regional differences in editorial selection for newspapers and different editions based on a kind of soft “stop the presses,” but really WSJ, are you pandering to us in the “Pro-America” parts of the country?

At least we should be grateful the cadet wasn’t reading “Goin’ Rogue”

The national edition on WSJ.com. Notice the four stars (three on the OH edition below) which usually indicates a later edition.

The edition I got this morning. Wondering how wide the circulation of that photo is.

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My BFF Rupert Murdoch* has been taking some hits lately about him wanting to block Google from indexing his sites and putting up pay walls. I understand his reasoning and don’t think he is too far off the mark. In order to explain my thinking, I have an analogy.

Say you own a small grocery store. It is in an urban setting and there are lots of other stores in the neighborhood that is similar to yours. You seek more foot traffic because some fancy college grad with a marketing degree convinces you that the more traffic you can pump through your stores, the more likely these people will stop and buy some impulse item you strategically place near the exit.

In order to produce more traffic, you encourage people to stop by and use the restroom. (the other guys down the street make you buy something first!) As word gets around, the locals and tourists stop into your store and use your restroom, flush the toilet, wipe their hands and stop and buy something cause they kinda feel guilty using your restroom for free. You’re not making enough in additional sales to cover the cost of the water bill, the additional cleaning staff, the paper towel, the soap and various other things that go with making a restroom public. In addition, the city health department caught on that you were making your restroom available to the public and cited you for not being handicap accessible. You pay the fine and some contractors to put up grab rails, new toilets and a ramp. But, the marketing dude you hired kept swearing that with patience and persistence, the free restroom policy will pay off.

“Give it time. That is investment. It’s all about giving back,” he says.

As time wears on, more people are using your restrooms because they heard from a friend who heard from another who tweeted that your restroom was free. And, these folks didn’t even bother to buy anything anymore. They just wanted to use the restroom. Moreover, lots of them stopped by the magazine rack and leafed through the latest issues without buying, especially on rainy days. If you didn’t want them in your store, why did you let them use the restroom? Meanwhile, the cost of water, soap and cleaning kept going up.

Then a recession hit and you had to fire some people, including the smart marketing degree guy who seemed to want to text and tweet more than he wanted to stock shelves and help paying customers. You took down your “Restroom open to the public” sign and immediately, the freeloaders started blogging and tweeting that you do not understand customer service in the Internet age. Your customers who came in and bought something could still use the restroom and they started to remark that is was much cleaner than it had been when the public at large was there. In fact, the experience for paying customers became so nice, they didn’t even notice you raised your prices $.10 here and $.20 there.

And your bottom line got better, even when your foot traffic dropped significantly. Your water, cleaning and supplies bills went way down. Almost none of the folks who used your restrooms for free ever came around anymore and when they did, it was to insult you and your stupid, miserly ways.

That is what I think Rupert was going for. Maybe.

Feel free to snark below. Comments are free, but if you would like to buy something on the way out, you are welcome to.

*I don’t really know Rupert Murdoch and we’re not really BFF. He’s probably a pretty dangerous person with his nutty politics and such. But, he is not stupid and he really does understand people. He understands they fear more than they think and worry and dream more than they act. Video here. Gawker.com didn’t want me embedding the video for free. Ironic.

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This is a response to Police Chief Mark Beckner trying to ban the annual Naked Pumpkin Run in Boulder, Colorado.

Here is the logic of “being naked is a sex crime.” Genitals and breasts are used during sex. A display of genitals and breasts in public is a crime. Therefore displaying your genitals and breasts in public is a sex crime. Furthermore, anyone who commits a sex crime is a sex offender.

The lack of nuance and the gross level of denial that all humans have bodies and those bodies have parts, by a society that purports to be intelligent is staggering in itself. But the willful and ignorant misapplication of logic is not only stupid, but embarrassingly so.

Yet, the few who misappropriate legal definitions for their own purposes are allowed to do so because being labeled a “sex offender” is about the scariest thing any person in a position of authority can do to another human being in this country. Being a sex offender means additional time in prison, a prison existence that is made less than pleasant by the other inmates, a lifetime of registering with the local sheriff, being denied employment and in more and more cases, being denied a place to live.

In Ohio, it is against the law for you to take a photo of your kids bathing in a bathtub. It is probably even more risky to actually take a bath with them or change them in public. If you get caught with a photo of them bathing, you will be arrested and charged as a sex offender. Your kids will also be taken from you. Ask AJ and Lisa Demaree of Arizona how they feel about bathtime photos.

In Boulder, Colorado, the local Police Chief Mark Beckner will be using sex offender laws to try and stop the annual Naked Pumpkin Run. A lot of people will be spooked into not participating, not because they are afraid to be arrested (public nudity is not illegal in Boulder) but because the chief will be applying the State’s indecency statute, which “makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor for anyone to knowingly expose his or her genitals in circumstances ‘likely to cause affront or alarm.’”

This is not about sex offender laws or public indecency laws. Those have their place and when applied correctly to real sex crimes, they save lives and protect minors. This is about the abuse of power by elected officials.

As expected, the American Civil Liberties Union fired off a letter ranting about freedom of expression, blah, blah, blah. As usual, they ignored the larger and more egregious issue; the abuse of power by an elected official.

A blind application of laws without regard for appropriateness has led to zero tolerance in schools where Cub Scouts are being thrown into reform school for bringing a pocket knife to school and where teens are being charged as sex offenders for sexting. Both equally dumb, but not intentionally criminal to the extent the laws applied were intended.

The separation of the “intent to commit a crime” and “committing a crime inadvertently” is producing more criminals daily. While ignorance of the law is never an excuse, so too is a misapplication of the law by authorities. One assumes they were elected as caretakers of the law to be able to reason through the nuance and apply common sense rather than black or white interpretations. Moreover, they should not be overreaching their authority by “warping” laws around behaviors that laws were not intended to cover. Clearly the citizens of Boulder do not have a problem with public nudity and can tell the difference between being naked in public and being a sex offender as evidenced by existing public nudity laws.

Even more disturbing is the lack of citizen journalists, bloggers and news journalists who are either oblivious or apathetic to the issue. (Do a Google search…) It is a small one now — one town, one police chief — but if allowed to grow, one can only predict Boulder will eventually have more sex offenders per capita than any other town in America. (If you say it can’t happen, I give you the town of Jordon, Minnesota in the early 1980s where every parent, it seemed, was a child molester due to the unrestrained exuberance of the town’s prosecutor and the silence of good citizens.)

I leave you with a fitting poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

The Internet has given the citizenry tools to monitor elected official even closer and in real time. Instead of blogging and twittering the latest on “Balloon Boy” or the latest happenings of Jon Gosselin, we should be turning an even more vigilant eye on local officials who believe laws are theirs to bend at will.

This is my take of why citizen journalism will not be successful. If it were, Chief Mark Beckner would not be allowed to legally terrorize the citizens of Boulder.

*Can I link bait more than putting naked, sex and crime in the same headline? Maybe, but then I’d really have to think harder than I want to. Also, the photo is a blurred version of something I lifted from http://nakedpumpkinrun.org/

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Yesterday, Keith Olbermann had a one-hour special comment about health insurance and health care in America. He has recently had a first-hand experience with his father.

I don’t know how much it cost to produce one hour of Countdown nor do I know what the lost opportunity costs are from insurance ad revenue MSNBC will probably never get because of this and having Wendall Potter as a frequent guest, but I do know how much influence this hour will have on moving the health care debate.

Zip. Nadda. Nothing.

If Keith Olbermann’s celebrity and MSNBC’s money and reach can’t even blow a little breeze into the health care debate in this country, what chance do any of us have of being heard? Exactly.

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Photo by Jim Noelker. Shamelessly stolen from the DDN.com gallery to illustrate a point. I think this is fair use, but if the legal people at DDN disagree, tell me and we'll figure it out. In the meantime, enjoy the traffic I'm pushing your way.

My daughter graduated from high school this year. The school sent home a “contract” we both had to sign whereby we promised to “behave” ourselves by treating the ceremony with respect and dignity. Then, over the course of the week, they called our house three times, reminding us of our pledge to behave. My daughter tells me that the school wasted no opportunity to remind the students that they also gave their word.

At the ceremony, we were reminded of the dignity of the event and were at times repremanded when some parents forgot.

Then, the Dayton Daily News publishes this photo in the Sunday paper. Very large, very proud.

It is a good photo, but is a metaphor for how the school systems undermine parental authority, how society undermines school authority and how the newspaper just undermines everyone because the photo is “really cool” and captured the spirit of the event.

Bravo, Dayton Daily News. You have succeeded in undermining everyone and showing our kids what is really important in getting ahead. We wonder why our kids don’t listen to our advice about being honest, playing fair, etc. The “real rules” are:

- Make it all about you
- Make it more about you
- Make it entirely, irrevocably about you.

PS. I like the photo, just disappointed in how it was used.

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Scanned from the front page of the May 22, 2009 WSJ to preserve history. The web site did not have the layout format, which in itself, tells a story the print edition obviously wanted us to get.

Are serious journalists reporting this story like they are covering an MTV Celebrity Deathmatch? Really? Wow! The line between bloggers and journalists is being blurred rapidly and it is being done by the group that screams loudest when the comparison is made. How are we to trust media organizations that pit a sitting US President against a private citizen’s opinions as if they were having a debate among equals?

Regardless of what you or I believe about the strength of the preparation, why the Senate withheld funds, the role of extreme interrogation, etc. Obama is the sitting US president and Cheney is now a private citizen. If Cheney felt this strongly about preserving existing policy, he should have run for office in 2008.

To have legitimate news organizations pit the two against each other as if this were a game or entertainment like MTV Celebrity Deathmatch, is shameful and irresponsible and perhaps more damaging to national security than anything either could say or do independently.

It is also embarrassingly lazy journalism.

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Peggy Noonan had an article yesterday in the WSJ yesterday where she opines on why government talks in indecipherable language. The explanation is fairly simple.

You can’t “sound bite” a complicated paragraph of “indecipherable language” which frustrates “journalists” into printing the whole statement. If you say “go to the doctor” like normal people, all of a sudden you have pundits and reps from the Chiropractic Association, the LPR association, the nursing folks, the OD people, etc… they are not DOCTORS per se, but “health professionals” practicing at “health care facilities” which may or may not be a doctor’s office or a hospital.

The politicians are not doing this to us; we are doing this to ourselves. We have become a nation of sectors and factions. Doctors are now health care professionals lest we offend ODs, LPNs, RNs, Midwives, Chiropractors, holistic healers, blah, blah, blah… When did teachers become “educators?” just on and on…

If Kathleen Sebelius would have said “go to the doctor” you then hand the reporter the ammunition to blast you with, “so, what do you have against chiropractors?” and the argument then become damage control with the Chiropractors Association rather than movement forward on any meaningful health care program.

Because today’s journalists are lazy, ill-informed and stupid. Because they are always scanning the on-going conversation for the sound bite that will make them another Woodward and Bernstein. Because they are looking for the “gotcha” moment that will put them on the front page or the top five minutes.

Government (and business) talks in indecipherable language because reporting has become about advancing the career of a journalist rather than protecting the citizens from the ambitions of government. Because government people have figured out that keep keep you from talking and writing, they need to keep you thinking.

And they know you won’t.

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I’m pretty sure I was not the only puppy watching Kutcher’s video where he broke 1 million followers on Twitter, scratching my head at the $100,000 check he was holding up as a donation to the Malaria No More organization. Why was this important? Where was the tie-in? Is malaria really that important to stamp out? Isn’t AIDS, cancer and heart disease more pressing?

Today, Peter Chernin wrote an article in the WSJ on why Malaria is an important disease to stamp out. Now, I get it.

Malaria kills 1 child every 30 seconds. It is easy to wipe out with enough money and it eats up limited resources that could be applied to solving the larger problems. It is the “day job” that keeps you from “changing the world” by sapping your energy. I get it because Chernin was able to write clearly.

I found out through the WSJ that April 25 is World Malaria Day. Surely, @aplusk was all over this with his 1 million+ followers on Twitter. Nope. His latest tweet as of this article was a musing over wanting a trap door to have people fall through. Maybe he was promoting it a few days ago. Nope. Nothing. Zip. Nada.

Malaria No More has a Twitter account @malarianomore. If you do a search on malarianomore, you will find a ton of pleas by average twitterers urging @aplusk to promote World Malaria Day.

Does @aplusk have a moral obligation to promote World Malaria Day using his 1 million followers? I think he does. I think the Twitter community would probably agree, especially after his claim that “One man can have a voice that’s as loud as an entire media company.” I think the folks at MalariaNoMore.org would agree that he does as well. Especially since it would take almost no effort.

I’m pretty sure the folks at MalariaNoMore.org are scratching their heads in confusion over Kutcher’s apathy and resultant silence on twitter about World Malaria Day. They have probably gone through the usual cycle of emotions of sponsorship: excitement, exuberance, confusion, anger and resignation. They probably realize by now that they have been and will be all alone in the effort, despite Kutcher’s “support.”

By contrast, If Guy Kawasaki with only a few over 100K followers were to make an impassioned plea to his audience, how many of us would fail to listen? I can’t think of one person.

Should Kutcher suffer the pains of a Twitterstorm for his apathy? We skewered Amazon, Dominos, Motrin, and Target. And these are just brands. Nobody is dying because the brand ignored Social Media. With malaria, people are dying because the awareness is not known, because Kutcher could make a difference but chooses not to.

However, with good journalists and PR folks, Kutcher would not have the option of letting this opportunity go wasted. As it is, he has less than 24 hours to pull something together for World Malaria Day.

Whatever it is, it will come across as half-baked and rushed. I eagerly await the first World Malaria Day tweet from @aplusk.

Ok, now give. DogWalkBlog is giving $100 tomorrow to help with World Malaria Day. If each of @aplusk’s followers gave $1.00, that would be $1.3million. But, I’m not sure why they would as it doesn’t seem all that important a cause to support when nobody is looking.

PS: Proof of the Existence of God. As I was writing this post, I received an email linking to this AdAge article.

Afterthought: On April 18, 2009 I tweeted out:

Should we listen to @guykawasaki about twitter any more? After all, he only has 100K and @aplusk has 1M, @mileycyrus has 300K+ Thoughts?

Guy came back with an “are you kidding?” response. I was thinking through a thought and it took a week and an article from the WSJ to get to some clarity.

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I read this AdWeek this morning and the “legit news” people seemed a bit confused as to why Americans would rely on the The Daily Show with Job Stewart or The Colbert Report.

It really just comes down to this: We know were are being lied to, but we don’t know where. Stewart is just showing us.

Here is what Stewart and Colbert do that the “legit” news does not; they dig back to previous clips to expose inconsistencies.

The recent tiff between Stewart and Cramer about CNBC reporting is one example. CNBC just blasts crap out there without any sense of history. They operate on the “tomorrow is another day” assumption, forgetting any prediction or punditry they used the day before.

Stewart, on the other hand, digs into the past and calls the news on this stuff. If people watched The Daily Show for that alone, they are better informed.

Anyone who has ever worked with any media, (print, television) KNOWS they will get something wrong, edited for time, space, etc. When they get it wrong, try calling a producer/reporter who — up until the show aired or the article ran — was your “best friend.” Forget it. TV will never acknowledge a mistake; print will bury the correction on page 17, Section Z.

Entertainment has quietly become the news and the news has publicly become entertainment.

Oh, yeah: here is the report all this stuff supposedly came from. I’m relying on AdWeek.com to have analyzed it well, which is probably not a good idea.

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It has happened again, more news story clippings are piling up on my desk faster than I can comment on them. So, here is the quick dump of stuff so my brain can breathe again.

Everyone deserves a second chance
No, no they don’t. You should take the time to do it right the first time. Not everything is a dress rehearsal for the real thing. Life is not a dress rehearsal. An article from the WSJ about how kids are taking the ACT/SATs over and over and how colleges are accepting the best scores from each section, rather than the scores on single exams. Get a clue, colleges! You may be helping your enrollment numbers, but you are not doing these kids any favors.

The fine art of copyright
An article in the WSJ about Garcia vs Fairey about him using Mr. Garcia’s photograph of Obama for the artwork on the posters, campaign, etc. L. Gordon Crovitz gets to the heart of copyright. The photog Mr. Garcia spent money to fly to the event, waited patiently for the correct pose and lighting ad then took the photo. Mr. Fairey simply lifted the photo from the internet, added a couple Photoshop filters to it and called it his work. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is bad enough when clueless corporate weenie steal art, but when artists do it to each other, that is more than wrong. Shameful.

How to Twitter
An article by Julia Angwin on how to twitter for business, etc. Just a thing that stuck out as clueless in her article. She called CSS a Web program. CSS is not a “Web program” but a way to apply styles to content on Web pages. I was believing she did her research and knew what she was talking about until I read that, then she just lost me.

Now, seriously, after one article in the WSJ, Julia gets 1,683 followers? Seriously? How can a dog possible compete with that. Old marketing rules still apply, people.

School levy fall of the ballot
In the Dayton Daily News, Neighbors. Apparently, school levies ARE marketing-driven. After realizing that asking for more money during a recession is probably stupid, they tabled the Trotwood levy. Apparently school boards can be taught. I don’t expect the lesson to stick, but for now….

The groundwork has already been laid for Martial Law
This appeared in the Englewood Independent. A year ago, I would have said “interesting.” Two years ago, I would have dismissed this guy as a nut job. Today, he has my attention.

Well, that is all for the clipping desk. I’m sure it will start building up again starting tomorrow, but for now, sure feels good to start with a desktop I can see again!

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Recently, a local small business* abruptly went out of business. They had been a rising star in the Dayton business community for the past ten years. They carved an industry out of revolutionary idea, employed over 30 people a year at their heyday, enabled folks to support the troops and gave rise to a number of ideas and competitors.

The local newspaper, Dayton Daily News wrote glowing reviews about them and their founders, revering them as courageous business leaders who had the ambition, passion and drive to revitalize the local economy, blah, blah, blah.

Ten years and millions of dollars in tax revenues and payroll later, they are the villains of Capitalism. They went out of business, leaving their customers high and dry, holding onto worthless products and services.

How quickly the media turns on you.

On the one hand, small business is the savior for this recession. It is the small business man and woman who is passionate about their communities, about the people in it. The media forgets that building a small business takes real money that comes from personal savings, credit card debt, personal guarantees and second-mortgages in order to fund the dreams of making an idea work. The media forgets that usually the first employee to take a pay cut when things get rocky is the CEO and others who have invested more than their fair share of sweat and worry. The media forgets about a lot of things that small business owners will never share.

On the other hand, when they go out of business due to economic hardship — including this recession — they are irresponsible, greedy, selfish villains who are screwing over their customers.

In truth, they are neither hero nor villain. Creating a small business is a dream that somebody clawed their way to making who couldn’t hear the word “can’t.” In the process, they create jobs and tax revenue for their community.

It amazes this puppy to see how the media will side with ex-employees when large corporations announce 5,000 job cuts, fretting over how they will find new jobs. But, when a small business goes belly-up, they side with the customers, ripping the small business as a villain. A small business still has displaced employees; do they not matter? With a disloyal cheering section like that, why would any small businessperson talk with the local newspaper or television station?

If small business is truly the savior in this recession, treat them more with kindness and understanding. When small business hires people and sells to customers, they are hiring friends and family, not just nameless, faceless employees. And their customers become their friends.

It is with a heavy heart and torn soul that a small business decides to cease. It is not only a business closing; it is a dream being torn apart.

*I’m not going to disclose the business name because there are too many close friends associated with it, but if you live in Dayton and have been paying attention, you’ll get it. If not, it applies universally to any small business in your town.

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The New York Post issued a statement about the infamous chimp cartoon published Wednesday. (Here if you need to see it.) At the end they stated “Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.”

First, let me remind everyone that this is the New York Post we are talking about.

Now, a little bit of history about chimps and Obama. Just last summer.

I’m sure if the editors at the New York Post need access to YouTube, their IT people would probably relax the firewalls a bit. In the interest of credible journalism. Well at least in the interest of making up good apology statements anyway.

Once again, let me remind everyone that this is the New York Post we are talking about.

Sometimes a dog is just a dog.

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The Washington Post published an article on President Obama’s desire to pre-empt the network’s prime time with an address about the stimulus package that is being routed through Congress.

Broadcasters are bracing themselves for the likelihood of three prime-time interruptions in three weeks, totaling at least three hours of prime time — and ad breaks — yanked.

“His economic stimulus package apparently does not extend to the TV networks,” one network exec noted.

What arrogance! I got past the headline that read “Obama’s Preemptive Strike” but that snarky comment about how television is being ignored by the stimulus package by what seemingly passed as an “adult network exec” just ticked this puppy off.

For us who have been responsible, lived within our means, saved some of our earnings and still saw our home prices plummet and are told that bailing out our irresponsible, short-sighted, greedy neighbors is a good thing because “we’re all in this together” are supposed to give a crap about what happens to the television industry by “giving up” one hour of prime-time airtime because our president wants to address us as a nation on a serious topic?

The same television who took ad dollars for infomercials on how to exploit your home equity? The same television who put on show after show on flipping houses and making tons of money? The same television who shows a depravity of morality in exploiting “scripted characters” on reality shows and calls that entertainment? The same television that pushes a right-wing ideological agenda without conscience? We are supposed to care about television losing out on three hours of revenue because they show a blatant disregard for anything but their own self interests?

Idiots. Self-absorbed, short-sighted morons.

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By: Ron Edmonds/Associated Press

Why did you have to spoil the illusion? Did we really need to know this? Why couldn’t you just let the magic happen instead of stirring a pot nobody needed to watch?

There are facts and then there is truth. The beauty of the music, the feelings of change, the togetherness of the moment is the truth. And you ruined it all with the facts.

Thank you. Thanks a lot. If you want to come over and kick me in the ribs, I’m sure that would make for a full day and you may be able to die happy, knowing you have kicked the crap out of everything beautiful.

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Why do we eat? The simple answer would be that if we did not eat, we would die. But that is not entirely true. Science can provide us with a pill we can take that would provide exactly the nutrition we need — no more, no less — to keep our bodies healthy. Yet, we resist the notion that a pill, taken three time a day, would replace daily meals.

But stop to think about the advantages. We would not have to dedicate fields of grain to provide food and the competition for corn for food vs fuel would go away. Obesity and all obesity-related problems would be solved. There would be no need to produce, ship, stock and dispose of tons of toilet paper, no more diapers in landfills, the amount of carbon being pumped into the air by restaurants, food processing plants, etc. would reduce significantly, no more decisions about what to eat, productivity would go up as we would not have to take time away to eat; tons of benefits.

There is something basic about experiencing food beyond the nutritional needs human being have. If we advocate that we get rid of food and replace it with pure technology that has only minimal stimulus of the body, i.e., the act of swallowing a pill with liquid, people call you a lunatic, crazy, “that will never happen.” And, they may be right; they may be wrong. But, for today, they are wrong.

So, why are we applying the same argument to newspapers, books and all non-digital media? Seth Godin examines this by asking If newspapers were to go away, what would you miss?. And I think he gets it a little bit wrong. He focuses on the NUTRITION of newspapers, rather than the EXPERIENCE of newspapers. Most prognosticators of the demise of newspapers do. It is easy to pick apart the need for printing stuff we already know on paper and deliver it with a high rate of failure to houses all over a geographic area. But newspapers are more than the information they deliver.

A newspaper is something you can touch and experience. You can smell the ink, the paper, the air that gets trapped in the bits of fiber. The paper has a crinkle and rustle that is unique to a broadsheet newspaper. All of these sights, sounds and touches are the experience of reading a newspaper. A newspaper is also that short jaunt out to the driveway in the cold morning air, followed by the welcoming paper and hot coffee. Throw in the fact that a newspaper reader is perceived to be smarter than the guy sitting next to him with iPod earbuds screwed into his ears, head bobbing up and down to the latest indie track he downloaded from BitTorrent. Newspapers envelope a human being with an assault on the senses with each reading experience.

It is unfortunate that many only see the newspapers as delivering yesterday’s news and not a full-on human experience of the senses. Newspapers will be missed when they are gone and we will miss a sensual experience that will, in the future, define an era as distinct as the era of the horse and the era of the auto.

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Few things make me more upset than “journalists” who have no knowledge of the facts of a story, write about it or get on television, answering phantom questions about hypoteticals. Then the anchor or host treats their answers like they relate to the story at hand. Then they guide the reader or listener through the “facts” of a story based on the answers to these hypothetical questions as if they are relevant. Unless you are paying attention and reject the entire story when this occurs, you will get the facts of the story all wrong. Is it any wonder Americans are so ill-informed about so much?

The latest example of this type of “journalism” can be found right here in my local newspaper, the Dayton Daily News. Not only does the writer start by asserting an unsubstantiated “fact” (…dying from [a seizure] is rare) but early in the article she states:

Medical specialists who did not treat the boy told The Associated Press on Tuesday that while Kawasaki syndrome is poorly understood, it’s extremely unlikely the disease had anything to do with the teen’s death.

Let me repeat: “medical specialist who did not treat the boy told…” And, AP, why are you lapping this up? What kind of journalism institution are you anyway?

And now, we have Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the worst offender of them all*, slated for the Surgeon General. Has he not done enough damage with his glib, over-arching generalizations of the American health care scene at CNN? I’m sure Dr. Gupta is a competent doctor, but it is unethical and immoral to lead people down a path that is so generic as to be dangerous to their health. Whatever you believe about Dr. Gupta’s competence, his words have weight.

I attribute this “fact-filling” as a desperate attempt by media to be the first on the scene and to fill 24/7 airtime with breaking news stories. Here is a bit of advice from the the old school: If you have nothing to say on the matter, just shut up before you start sounding like an idiot.

*No, I have no supporting evidence he is the worst, but go to YouTube and sift through the video.

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