hannumdrive

Maureen Dowd  considers whether outsourcing might be a viable future paradigm for the tanking newspaper business.   She takes a look at James McPherson’s daily online magazine Pasadena Now and its novel way of gathering and reporting on news.

He fired his seven Pasadena staffers — including five reporters — who were making $600 to $800 a week, and now he and his wife direct six employees all over India on how to write news and features, using telephones, e-mail, press releases, Web harvesting and live video streaming from a cellphone at City Hall.

Dowd contacted one of McPherson’s new staff writers, a G Sreejayyanthi, who lives 8000 miles away from Pasadena in Mysore City, southern India.    Apparently, this employee was still coming up to speed on some of the finer points in Pasadena’s culture, saying:

“Regarding the Rose Bowl, my first thought was it related to some food event but then found that is related to Sports field…”

But before we become too outraged, McPherson counters that his news-gathering system is not quite as coldly detached as Dowd made it seem.  He points out that local stories are, in fact, covered directly by inexpensive “legmen”, who observe and collect data (photographs, video, audio, etc) at the scene  . Their efforts are directed remotely by veteran news-desk editors, who maintain  two-way communication at all times with them via “live remotes”.   It’s only after  all the relevant local data has been collected, that it is then beamed around the world to outsourced staffers, who write-up/assemble the final product.  In theory, they’ve also been “prepped” by watching the live feeds of the local event online. 

McPherson wants to make it clear:

At its core my system recognizes that the heart, mind and soul of a newspaper (or a web “newspaperless”) must live in the community which is being covered.

Where is the heart, mind, and soul of someone who lives in Mumbai these days?   Is it with their own safety in  their own streets, or is with the Pasadena Police Patrols, protecting shoppers during the holiday season?

And  where does the next Maureen Dowd (or Peter Jennings) develop in this new system?    If she’s not the eyes & ears, and she’s not the overseas “writer” - who is she or he?   And isn’t there value in having the person who writes the final story be the same person who witnesses events in person (not over a video feed as they sip their tea) ? 

I think if someone like McPherson means what he says about the “heart, mind, and soul” of a newspaper being rooted in the community it covers - then he is kidding himself, if he thinks something isn’t being lost in translation 8000 miles away.

December 2nd, 2008 | Tags: Dowd, India, James McPherson, newspaper business, outsourcing, pasadena, pasadena now | Category: Uncategorized, random | Leave a comment

Roger Ebert on his cancer and thoughts of his mortality:

Nor do I mope about fearing that my cancer might return. If it does, it does, and that’s what she wrote. At Pritikin they have a truism: “If you don’t die of anything else, sooner or later you will die of cancer.” We all nod thoughtfully.

If this news depresses you, reflect that for “cancer” you can substitute almost any other fatal disease or even any accident, save perhaps Spontaneous Combustion, which I do not believe in, but have always thought an entertaining way to go. If that happens, they’ll be talking about you when you’re gone.

After all he’s been through, Ebert continues to churn out words at an astonishing rate, and with a burnished insight that rewards all comers.    Writing recently about the recent rise of celebrity cult at the expense of film critics, Ebert observes:

The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.

The news is still big. It’s the newspapers that got small.

 

November 30th, 2008 | Tags: cancer, roger ebert | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Chris Erskine of the LA times has compiled his “All Ego Sports Teams”. Here is what it takes to make it on his lists:

… [ it ] isn’t about steeling self-confidence. It’s about bloated ego, about heads too big for the helmet, and mouths too big for the microphone. It’s about the real-life Apollo Creeds. Being merely obnoxious doesn’t get you on this list. You have to be seven flavors of insufferable.

The list includes first teamers Kobe Bryant, Bob Costas, and Barry Bonds. No disagreement here. Pretty soon these guys will need their own planets to support the weight of those massive cabezas….

November 22nd, 2008 | Tags: barry bonds, costas, Kobe | Category: random | Leave a comment

Zogby and Ziegler - it sounds like the circus, doesn’t it?

Well then, that thud you just heard was John Zogby falling off his partner’s flimsy trapeze.

According to the WSJ’s Carl Bialik , Zogby, while still standing by the John Ziegler poll results, would not have approved the poll or the press release defending it had he been around at the time the decision was made. (he was on s “book tour” )

In other words, Zogby’s now saving face by throwing his own staff under the bus. Bialik quotes Zogby as saying -

“This was not Zogby International’s finest hour…Something, somehow, fell through the cracks..”

No kidding. More here.

November 21st, 2008 | Tags: John Ziegler, Zogby | Category: political | Leave a comment

The back and forth rhetoric between stat guru Nate Silver and “entertainer/host” John Ziegler is a wonderful window into the pathetic state of affairs on the far right. Poor Ziegler and his “survey” simply wilt away under any kind of objective scrutiny, and Nate Silver effortlessly exposes the BS like nobody else.

Post interview, Silver observes:

There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

John Ziegler is a shining example of such a conservative. During my interview with him, Ziegler made absolutely no effort to persuade me about the veracity of any of his viewpoints. He simply asserted them — and then became frustrated, paranoid, or vulgar when I rebutted them.

If you take the time to read the interview transcript, you’ll see exactly what Silver is talking about. The same could probably be said for other personalities on the far right (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc).

The substitute for persuasion among these folks is the always instructive, brute force approach — shove it down their throats. That’s what Ziegler’s newest venture HowObamaGotElected.com manages to do in spades.

What’s appalling is that reputable pollsters, like Zogby International, are willing to take someone like Ziegler seriously and even defend him.

November 20th, 2008 | Tags: John Ziegler, Nate Silver | Category: political | Leave a comment

Well, we are still quite new to the blogosphere but this blog currently skews a bit toward the “analytical and logical”, at least, according to www.typealyzer.com , which instantly generates the “type” of blog when you enter the name of the website. Here is how they currently describe us:

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

It’s a little like reading a fortune cookie, isn’t it? We also come up short on “Feeling and Spirituality” — Gotta work on that touchy/feely stuff, I guess.

November 20th, 2008 | Tags: blogging | Category: humor, random | Leave a comment

Yes, times are tough.  

The iPhone 3G still has some bugs, my sinuses are acting up again, and oh yeah, the economy is still sliding off the edge of a cliff…

So today we got some more bad economic news: consumer prices falling a record 1 percent in October - this is based on records going back to 1947.   Then, right on cue, our good friends at The Commerce Department announced that construction of new homes and apartments has fallen to its slowest pace since record keeeping began in 1959. 

Recession is now old news — we’re in it.  Depression, or Great Depression, are the words of the day. Get your Zoloft, your Lexapro, and fasten your seat belts….

Paul B. Farrel, from marketwatch.com, can give you 30 reasons why we’ll be plummeting into a Great Depression by 2011. Some notables:

1. America’s credit rating may soon be downgraded below AAA

3. Congress has no oversight of $700 billion, and Paulson’s Wall Street Trojan Horse

12. Consumer debt way up, now at $2.5 trillion; next area for credit meltdowns

15. Washington manipulating data: War not $600 billion but estimates actually $3 trillion

18. Big three automakers near bankruptcy; unions, workers, retirees will suffer

Drake Bennett, while acknowledging that a full-blown depression is unlikely, draws us pictures of what modern day depression might look like:

We might see more former lawyers…shopping at Target or Wal-Mart rather than Bannana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch…We’d see more products like Nextel phones and the Panasonic Toughbook laptop, which trade on sturdiness, and few like the iPhone - beautiful, cleverly designed, but not known for durability…the booming organic food movement could suffer as people sstart to see specially grown produce as more of a luxury than a moral choice…

In other words, it would be back to basics, and would that be so bad? That earthy, migrant-woman look from the 30’s might make it back to the fall collection, who knows? But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

How likely is a Great Depression, anyway?

In reality, most economists agree that a depression differs most from a recession by two key factors:  duration and degree of joblessness.  Most recessions last only months, while a depression will go on for years.   And while our unemploment numbers are increasing steadily (up now to 6.5%) - they’re no where near the levels of the Great Depression, which saw a quarter of Americans out of work.

So, we’re not quite there yet, but our economic leaders should be wary, and have a plan to keep our heads above water.  After witnessing the debacle of this past October, I can’t say I have a lot of confidence in the Henry Paulsons of the world.

It’s also clear that the lessons of the Great Depression are not so cut and dried, and that even the best and brightest among us — have widely differing opinions on what happened all those years ago.  Witness this exchange between Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman and George Will:

Krugman clearly had the upper hand in that exchange, but it reminds us that the overbearing and dangerous role of politics in economic decisions should not be underestimated.

November 19th, 2008 | Tags: Great Depression | Category: political | Leave a comment

The McCain/Palin wall of lies continues to crumble.   Yesterday, William Ayers further discredited the notion that he and Obama were somehow in nefarious cahoots together:

“This idea that we need to know more, like there’s a dark hidden secret, a secret link, is just a myth,” Ayers said. “And it’s a myth thrown up by people who kind of wanted to exploit the politics of fear, and I think it’s a great credit to the American people that those politics were rejected.”

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin (who increasingly seems like the obnoxious drunk who won’t  leave the party) -  still doesn’t get it, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday:

“I still am concerned about that association with Bill Ayers,” Palin said. “And if anybody still wants to talk about it, I will, because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol.”

If you ask me who is more dangerous to the well-being of our country - Ayers or Palin - I’d have to go with the unrepentent clueless-hate-and-lie-spewing hockey mom.  

Not even close.   And in any case, I’d be more concerned if Obama had some kind of “secret link” to Governor Palin than to Mr. Ayers.  But ironically, it was Palin who became John McCain’s darkest association, and American’s concern with that association may have cost Mr. McCain the election.  

More Ayers here:

November 15th, 2008 | Tags: sarah palin, William Ayers | Category: political | Leave a comment

While we’re on the subject of Hillary, Nate Silver gets all hypothetical, and wonders what would have happened if Hillary had defeated Obama in the primaries:

…If Hillary Clinton had headed the Democratic ticket, would John McCain have been dumb enough to name Sarah Palin as his running mate? 

No, and without Palin, who knows how far he’d have gone…Silver concludes: 

Hillary Clinton might have beaten John McCain by more than Barack Obama did. She also might have lost to him. I doubt you’ll find too many Democrats who would be willing to take that trade.

Well,  Lanny Davis comes to mind, but other than that - no, not too many…

November 14th, 2008 | Tags: Hillary Clinton, Nate Silver | Category: political | Leave a comment