Category: Random

Head stuck in the sand…

I am glad to see the 4th Estate re-invigorated and challenged to go get the story again. Since the end of the Nixon debacle, the media has been slowly sliding into the lazy habits of the well-fed and pampered. Now that the barbarians are pounding at the gates (an analogy I will not use again), the media is being forced to find stories.

Their will be an increase in partisanship and subjectivity. However, if you look at the long history of the media, this is not new. It’s just that there is a generation who has seen the rise of a relatively independent media, followed by it’s slide into debauchery and depravity.

I gained my knowledge of the behaviour of the media from the writings of Hunter S Thompson. Some will say that this is a bad source, but I learned about the pyramid, and other journalistic terms while wading through his vitriol and disdain for the mediocre.

For me, the newspaper is simply a bulletin board. It tells me about happenings, but rarely takes the time to do much else. The question is: what is the newspaper’s market? What is the niche that they are serving?

I can get all of the stories in the newspaper on-line. In fact, not just from one newspaper. And with blogs and feeds, I can get more detail than I have ever imagined, or am able to process.

So, I ask the newspaper “writers” and “editors”, why should I pick up your paper? Beyond the portability of your product, an advantage that is diminishing by the second, is there a sound economic reason for newpapers to continue to exist.
I am sure that there are deeper thinkers than I, who have considered this, and have deep philosophical thoughts on this. But, how do you convince me and my ilk, the iPod-wearing, laptop-toting, instantly-gratifiable leading edge to buy your product?
What makes a newspaper sexy? What about a newspaper makes me want to pick one up on a daily basis?

Answering that “I am not your target market” is no longer viable. Joe Lunchbucket wants his scores now to track his pools. Reviews are plentiful, and targeted; the local critic no longer can control a market. Recipes and home ideas? Please!
Is there a reason, beyond the persistence of memory, for newspapers to exist as physical entities in the digital age?

Marc Canter: Thompson was the original blogger

All bloggers owe their heritage to the original Gonzo.

Marc Canter

Amen.

The subjectivity and raw opinion in HST’s work colours my writing to this day. it is difficult for me to write professional, technical documents without wanting to launch into a preternatural screed (two words I learned from the Good Doctor) on the topic I a writing on.

I was accused by a VP in my company last week of not being able to dumb myself down to deal with where our customers are in relation to where I am. HST had no patience with dumbing down, or pulling punches. He told people what they needed to know in as visceral a manner as he could.

May blogging honour the heritage of HST.

The Reality of Usability, Standards and Design

In an interview with InfoDesign, Jared Spool talks about Web Design.

The TakeAway:

I learned quickly that business executives didn’t care about usability testing or information design. Explaining the importance of these areas didn’t get us any more work. Instead, when we’re in front of executives, we quickly learned to talk about only five things:


1. How do we increase revenue?
2. How do we reduce expenses?
3. How do we bring in more customers?
4. How do we get more business out of each existing customer?
5. How do we increase shareholder value?

Notice that the words ‘design’, ‘usability’, or ‘navigation’ never appear in these questions. We found, early on, that the less we talked about usability or design, the bigger our projects got. Today, I’m writing a proposal for a $470,000 project where the word ‘usability’ isn’t mentioned once in the proposal.

Segregation in the Name of Lower Taxes

The Daily Kos points out this article in the Washington Post explaining some of the … ummm, deeper (??) reasons why racist and segregationist language in the Alabama Constitution was allowed to state in a referendum held on Nov. 2.

The heart of the issue: if we allow the feds control of schools, then they can make us have GOOD schools, and make us pay for them through higher taxes.

Link: Daily Kos :: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation..

It’s amazing what you can get away with when you argue with a Southern accent.

The November 3 Theses

November 3rd Theses


“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
– Benjamin Franklin

I.
The 2004 presidential election was lost not by John Kerry over the last several months but by the Democratic Party over the last several decades. Democrats have lost control of all three branches of government for the foreseeable future. We are now a minority party.

II.
When the Senate Democratic leader is defeated while spending $16 million attempting to get the majority of 500,000 votes, the problem is not a lack of funding or effort.

III.
The failure of the Democratic Party to connect with Americas desire for fulfillment is political death.

IV.
Democrats are now history’s spectators, Republicans its actors.

V.
The obsession with denouncing the radical conservative project as a “lie” has become a useful substitute for vision.

VI.
Renovating Democratic politics is not a question of moving to the right or talking more about religion. It is about creating a framework that once again communicates to the core needs of the American people.

VII.
America is not now, and never was, simply “the economy, stupid.” What the American people want is a deeper sense of personal meaning, a national mission, and passion in times of fear.

VIII.
Returning the Democratic Party to majority status will require a political realignment no less sweeping than that which was accomplished by conservatives over the last 40 years.

IX.
Only the breath of a serious and new moral-intellectual vision will be sufficient to resuscitate the Democratic Party.

X.
Democratic candidates will continue to lose as long as they treat Americans as rational actors who vote their “self-interest” after weighing competing offers for health care, jobs, and security.

XI.
Conservatives have spent the last 40 years getting clear about the values they represent. They have even developed a “family values” brand to represent a framework that coheres traditional prejudices around prayer in school, gun rights, restricting abortion, and restricting gay rights.

XII.
By contrast, liberal or ‘progressive’ groups and Democrats have spent the same period of time defining themselves against conservative values, even ‘morality’ in general.

XIII.
If resources continue to flow to the same leaders who have failed to construct a new vision and have thus left the Democratic Party in ruins then we can expect more of the same. And worse.

XIV.
Those who resist the process to create a new vision will be left behind.

XV.
Candidates who intend to win should no longer hire consultants who repeatedly lose. Those who counsel caution when dealing with the indifferent, the disaffected, and the undecided do not understand American history. Consultants who advise their clients against offering a clear and compelling vision in fear that it will be attacked should find themselves without a home in the Democratic Party. The sooner they retire, the better.

XVI.
Unconnected at a values level, the Democratic Party’s laundry list of policy proposals is a confusing and alienating hodgepodge of special interests bound together by a vague sense that ‘we’re all on the same side.’ Such a conflation demands no critical self-examination of the interest groups whose turf, and very identities, are treated as inviolable by Party chieftains.

XVII.
The progressive vision must be a direct challenge to fundamentalism in all of its forms: political, religious and economic. It must match fundamentalism’s power without replicating its authoritarianism. It must appeal to the values of liberty, equality, community, justice, unconditional love, shared prosperity, and ecological restoration, among many others.

XVIII.
Democrats serious about returning to majority status must:

  • Retire any leader who believes that we are currently on a winning path that simply needs more money and effort.
  • Define and articulate a coherent set of values of our base, and be willing to lose those allies who do not share these values.
  • Fight battles, win or lose, that define and advance our values and expand our political base.

XIX.
In despair and defeat lie the seeds of triumph and victory. In that loss lies the opportunity to define a new progressive politics for the new century.

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