De-pressing

One of the interesting... not necessarily good, but interesting... things about the time we live in is watching the changes in what us old-timers used to call journalism.
I'm sure you're aware (you being of above average intelligence according to the data I get about you from Quantcast) the newspaper industry as we know it is in it's final death throes. Saint Nick is keeping us abreast as the bells toll for the Kansas City Star's parent company and even that of The Pitch.

As an old newspaper man, I have mixed feelings. Its easy to wax romantic about my previous career in journalism -- late nights in the newsroom, the panic and thrill of pushing a story right up to a deadline, the smell of and feel of wet ink on fresh newsprint as you examine the first pages hot off the press¹. I've got some great stories from my newspaper days. Stories involving poisonous snakes, dismembered fingers, bloody hand prints, bullets lodged in brains -- most of which never made it into print.

So in some ways, it's sad for me to watch what's happening to the newspaper industry.

But it's not surprising. A lot of us saw this coming years ago. I opted out of the newspaper biz about 13 years ago. Decided working late nights and weekends for little pay wasn't conducive to family goals I had. I went into an editorial position at an Internet company because I could see even then that printed paper as a medium was a losing proposition.

That's not to say that the gathering and disseminating of information is a losing proposition, only that the "traditional" print media haven't been able yet to develop the business agility needed to find a new and relevant business model.

Sure, they are trying to convert their old business practices to work in a digital venue -- notably the Press+ system that is currently in beta². Unfortunately, in my view, there are a few problems with this effort.

First, it's nearly a literal translation of the failing offline subscriber model to online. Yes, many organizations have shown that micropayments can be a significant money maker (Amazon and iTunes). But Press+ seems to ignores the fact that money from subscriptions never was the primary revenue source for most publications. It's difficult to see how people will be willing to pay more through online micropayments than they would be through traditional subscriptions.

It also ignores the fact that once information is released "into the wild" it will be pretty much impossible to collect micropayments on it. Just like people who subscribe to dead tree publications like to pass on what they "read in the paper" or even leave the paper at a barbershop or coffee shop for others to read, online micropayment subscribers will want to pass on what they've read. Copy-and-paste makes it all the easier.

Now, lest I be branded a pessimist, I still think there is a way that advertisers can continue to support journalism-- at least for the larger news organizations. In my opinion, the plan being considered by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and Microsoft is heading in the right direction.

Essentially, Microsoft pays a fee to the news organization (Wall Street Journal) for exclusive access to the product of their newsroom. Stories from WSJ (and presumably any other NewsCorp organization) don't show up in the Google search results. So NewsCorp gets paid for the content, Bing gets a competitive advantage and the end user pays nothing for the content.

In theory Google would follow suit, bidding for the content of other news organizations -- or maybe even for NewsCorp content. One could even see the news organizations selling "clicks" to content the same way the search engines sell keyword ads. Content creators could "flip the script" on Google resulting in the search engines bidding for their content.

This is the kind of paradigm³ shift required for "journalism" to move forward as a money-making prospect.

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1. Note: Presses are no longer hot. In fact, the moist ink is a bit cool to the touch when the pages first come off the press.
2. Hat tip to Nick.
3. Off topic: The other day my 7-year-old daughter asked me what a "paradigm" was. I told her it was twenty cents.

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tagged: newspaper, journalism, advertising, press+, Murdoch, NewsCorp, Microsoft, Bing

YouTube Tuesday: Fear the Boom and Bust

So what do you think? Are we spending way beyond our means in an effort to try to generate a healthier economy? Are we suffering from a spending hangover, the cure to which is nationwide deleveraging and building up savings?

Don't know? Not sure?

Well maybe this old-school hip-hop throw down between John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek can help you decide. Two of the great economists of the 20th century lay down the beats in this production from EconStories.tv

Pay close attention for the appearance of Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner pouring drinks from behind the bar at The Fed.



Hat tip: Planet Money

tagged: economy, economists, Keynes, Hayek, Bernanke, Geithner, video, YouTube, Tuesday

Surely some revelation is at hand

Uncle Nick was kind enough to point out one of the money quotes from the ongoing Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearings headed by Phil Angelides (a Democrat from California, which has one of the brokest-ass budgets in the country, so you know this guy has the fiscal street cred).

Here's the quote:

Wall Street is in effect selling cars with faulty brakes, and then taking out insurance on the buyers.

The statement was directed at Lloyd Blankfein, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs (and budding Bond Villian). Remember, this is the same Goldman Sachs that was making $100 million a day just a few months after taking a $20 billion bailout payment from you and me.

Just to make sure that sinks in, they were bringing in 100,000,000 dollars A DAY.

Anyway, Blofeld's Blankfein's response to the quote above was basically "I don't see anything wrong with that."

The temerity of these bank executives during the hearings would be comical if it weren't so enraging. C-Span has video of the hearing on their website. If you feel the need for a quick hit of Hulk rage, I highly suggest you watch. Skip through the first 40 minutes or so since that's just the bankers reading their prepared PR statements.

In the meantime, here's an example of why The Onion is the smartest news source. EVAR. Jon Stewart is getting his ass kicked by these guys.



In The Know: Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?
tagged: politics, economy, bailouts, The Onion, Doomsday Cycle, Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, Phil Angelides, humor, satire

The Doomsday Cycle

Yesterday I mentioned that "the system" is broken, and I realize that is a gross overstatement of the obvious. But I want to be clear that I'm not just talking about the electoral system.

I'm referring to a socio-political system as a whole that allows -- actually encourages -- an unchecked collusion of industry and government. It is what will cause the eventual catastrophic decline of our Republic (if you can still call it that).

About a year ago, when we were in the heat of bailout fever, I was having a discussion with a friend of mine over lunch. We were trying to figure out whether the long term affects of bailing out companies that make poor management/business decisions was worth the short term gain of saving jobs.

You see in order for our system to work, failure is essential. Companies must be allowed to fail, to be punished for their failures by losing their assets and financial fortunes, in order to serve as an example to other companies of what happens when you employ risky business practices.

But, going back at least to the 1970s, we've seen more and more bailouts, followed by admonitions and vows to "never let this happen again," accompanied by additional layers of regulation.

But then when that regulation fails, additional bailouts are forthcoming, more regulation is added, and the cycle begins again. Businesses take bigger risks because they know the taxpayers will have to bail them out. In the case of the latest crisis, banks could be doubly assured of a bailout since Goldman Sachs has basically purchased the entire executive branch as well as key legislators.

The point, as Logtar stated in our lunch conversation, is that it's dangerous to socialize risk. But you don't need to take his for it.

In an editorial in Financial Times, superintelligent economists Peter Boone and Simon Johnson, gave a name to what is happening in the U.S. financial sector: the Doomsday Cycle.

They draw a parallel of the cycle described above -- risk, failure, bailout, repeat -- to what happened when the USSR finally imploded.

During the final years of communism’s decline, Soviet bureaucrats argued for futile tweaks to laws that would crack down on speculators and close “loopholes” – all in the vain hope they could keep the unproductive system of incentives intact. The US, UK and key European countries are now making the same errors. Rather than recognizing the dangerous systemic failures in our financial system, their leaders are proposing bandages that can – at best – only postpone another, possibly much larger, meltdown.

You should read the entire piece (free registration may be required). The authors make many good points, not the least of which is that the proposed wrist-slap or regulatory "reform" is nowhere near enough to limit bad business practices, let alone stop the Doomsday Cycle.

Rather, we need to make risky business behavior more painful by NOT BAILING BUSINESSES OUT!

tagged: politics, economy, bailouts, USSR, Doomsday Cycle, Goldman Sachs

Mass appeal

A lot of my friends who had bought into the Obama promises back in 2008 are pretty bummed today with the loss of former Senator Teddy Kennedy's key Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown.

They have concluded, rightly in my opinion, that the election is a message to the ruling party that they are already corrupted by their own power, they they have sold out to special interest groups at the expense of their constituents.

The two key sentiments I've read are that "there is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats" and "the next 7 years will be politics as usual."

If -- and it's a monumental IF -- there's going to be real change, it's important for more and more people to realize this.

Republicans shouldn't be patting themselves on the back too much either. I don't care enough to look into it, but I would bet my mortgage that this Brown character is just as big of a sellout as any Kennedy ever was.

What I want people to begin to understand is that all people are the same. And the people who actively seek political power are more "the same" than most.

The problems here is systemic. It seems like a painfully obvious thing to say, but money is a corrupting influence in both parties. A lot of people who view politics as a spectator sport think their "team" is beyond reproach. But how can we expect representatives to have any clue about the real America when nearly half are millionaires and they are being courted 24/7 by billionaires?

It's nearly inexplicable that more voters don't see how unsustainable this system is.

tagged: politics, Democrats, Republicans, Ted Kennedy, Scott Brown, Obama, election

Celebrity chef to visit KC

I'm no foodie but I like food and do eat. I also read. And I read something about eating that I thought I'd pass along to you people who are foodies (You know who you are. Always eating at restaurants and watching food TV).

The Shawnee Mission School District's culinary arts students ("culinary arts"!?? In my high school we had "home ec") will hit the kitchen with "world renown Mediterranean food expert" Gregory Zapantis next week at the Broadmoor Bistro.

Personally, I've never heard of Zapantis. I don't watch the Food Network, or Americas Next Top Chef, or Culinary School Survivor. I used to watch Iron Chef when it was the overdubbed Japanese version. That was some funny cooking.

Anyway, apparently Zapantis is a bigshot New York chef who specializes in Greek seafood

Zapantis’ passion for Greek flavors and deep knowledge of fish seasons, textures, boats and even the special techniques used by fishermen throughout various parts of Greece, has earned him 2003 “Best Chef Mid-Atlantic” by the James Beard Foundation, among many other honors.

Zapantis was born and raised in the Adriatic fishing village of Skala, on the Island of Cephalonia, Greece. Coming from a long line of Greek fisherman, Zapantis’ love of fish was sparked while learning to fish with his father.

It was at his family’s dockside tavern, however, where his mother and grandmother allowed him to cook and his passions really took flight.

Zapantis will be at the Broadmoor Bistro on Jan 19. Unfortunately the evening is already sold out. Guess I should have told you guys sooner.

tagged: food, chef, Zapantis, Broadmoor Bistro, Kansas City, Greek, culinary arts

Death of a blogsman

It's only natural that when a man reaches advanced age, he begins a more serious consideration of his own mortality.

In the case of XO, a person who basically has one foot in the grave already, that consideration made him reconsider his "end of life" plan. And it's a surprisingly good plan. For someone of XO's questionable mental state it shows some unexpected clarity of thought.. even something resembling logic, which is new for him.

But my BFF's mom started talking about how her sister was going to donate her body to science and how they would pay for the cremation and send your ashes back home...

... instead of paying thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to a funeral home to host a maudlin weep-fest, all my survivors need to do is make a phone call.

So yeah, donate you body to science so med school students can cut you up and learn about surgery by removing all of your internal bits. Finally, XO will be contributing to society!

But -- not to throw a monkey wrench into the plan -- I'm not sure if XO has looked at the option of promession.

From what I can tell it's a pretty new thing, patent pending and all. But for people like XO, it may be just the scratch for that end-of-life itch. It has the added bonus of being "environmentally friendly" -- and let's face it, incinerating a corpse isn't exactly kind to Mother Nature, what with all of the ashes and soot, not to mention the amount of carbon it takes to produce enough energy to burn a body completely, believe me I know.

Essentially the promession process consists of freezing your corpse in liquid nitrogen, then shattering your frozen body, T-1000-style, with a sudden vibration.

Your shattered mortal remains are freeze-dried to remove any residual moisture, then any metals are removed (including those two titanium hips that XO received a couple of years ago).

Now, XO is nothing but inert organic material -- which is pretty much what he is now -- but when he's buried, this material is readily biodegradable. The nutrients are returned to the earth to be used as worm food, plant food, or even marijuana fertilizer.

Now that's what I call dust-to-dust.

Anyway, just wanted to put this option out there. It still seems overly complicated compared to my own plan, which is to just have someone toss my bloated corpse out of moving pickup into a ditch along a lonely county road somewhere in Northwest Kansas.

tagged: death, burial, cremation, promession, corpse, body, environmentalist

YouTube Tuesday: Epic FAILS 2009

YouTube and other online video sharing services have become a real boon to people like me who like to get all of our rubbernecking done at one time.

This 2009 FAIL Reel is really hard to watch in places. But it's also really hard to not watch. My personal favorite moment is the roundhouse kick that comes at 1:45. And I put the number of broken noses at about 10. This is great documentation of Darwinism at work.

BTW: I noticed that in a lot of places this is getting taken down from the video sharing sites due to "terms of use violations" -- not sure what that is, but this might already be deleted by the time you read this. Rest assured, though. It was awesome.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, video, Best FAILs of 2009, movie, humor

Random Photo XXIII: Ice pix

Hey good news guys! The weather man says we have a slight chance of seeing above-freezing temperatures today. Hurray for good news!

But just to season the celebration with a pinch of cynicism, I should point out that while we're expecting a high today of 33 fabulous degrees, Base San Martin in Antarctica is looking at a balmy high of 42 degrees today.

That's right, it's still colder here than it is in Antarctica.

With that, here are a few shots of the icicles that formed as a result of the glacier in my front gutters.

tagged: weather, icicles, photo, cold, Kansas, Antarctica, Kansas City

Look for that silver lining

Hey guys. I don't know if you realized this or not, but we're in the midst of a pretty nasty national economic recession.

We have been for the better part of two years. Now, we could spend a lot of time talking about who did what to whom to cause the economic meltdown in the first place (it was politicians and investment bankers, btw). The truth is, pretty much everyone played some part in what I call Economageddon (but mostly it was politicians and investment bankers).

But who likes to focus on blame and bad news. Not me. Rather, let's consider what we need to do to dig ourselves out of this hole. Now some people -- namely everyone in any governmental position of power -- think the best way to dig ourselves out is to keep digging deeper. They theorize that spending more money that we don't have will miraculously translate into everyone having more money in the end.

Interesting theory.

But there are also a lot of people -- namely millions of ordinary, hard working Americans -- who realize that spending what you don't have is kind of what got is into this mess in the first place.

This is the good news. This is the silver lining. Because even though it’s a bitter pill and it means we'll have to live with spending less and having less "stuff", it is the path back to economic solvency.

I recently discovered Mike Mandel's blog (great analysis on economic/financial data) and found the chart illustrating household borrowing over the last 20 years.
As you can see, household borrowing has fallen precipitously over the past three years. I mean, that graph looks like the wall of the Grand Canyon. I think the only thing that fell faster in the last two years is Mark Mangino's popularity in Lawrence.

The keen observer will note that household borrowing has fallen so much that it is now negative. That's right, for the first time in the Age of Information, American households are saving money. We're slowly digging ourselves out of the debt hole we've dug over the previous decades.

Of course, this isn't the whole solution. Our government leaders are still spending way more money than we have, which is actually reducing our national net savings despite what individual households are doing.

But my hope is that we're seeing a shift in attitude. That people are accepting the fact that we can't continue to spend what we don't have. And with time and enough ridiculous bailouts (yes, that's California looking for a handout), this attitude will trickle up to the boneheads who hold the power of our national purse.

It's not going to be easy. A cool 70 percent of our economy comes from consumer spending, and with consumers saving more and spending less there will have to be some major adjustments. But that's the pill we have to swallow.

And it won't be quick. Hell, I don't even know if it will happen in time to avert the global social breakdown (currently scheduled for the third quarter of 2013, fyi).

But it's a good start.

tagged: economy, household savings, debt, spending, Mark Mangino