AR&D Reinventing Local Media

I’m awash in emotion this Saturday morning. Weekends allow me the chance to drift, to let my mind wander the paths that it chooses instead of those I force upon it during the week. The Web is a great gift to mind wanderers, because its unstructured paths can (if you’ll let it) produce a sort of mind fuck serendipity that enables this wandering. I’m aware of a deep sense of soul this morning, and I want to write.

I began today with a YouTube video of an old Kurt Vonnegut speech to college graduates in Albion, Michigan. This came via Mediagazer, via kottke.org.

Vonnegut’s statements about how the arts grow your soul is what got me going. His view was that trying to make a living through the arts is the wrong way to view creativity — that it, instead, was the path to growing your soul, something about which he was extremely passionate. I profoundly believe this, and it’s a big part of what shapes my views of copyright and how badly we’ve mucked things up in that arena. The “copyright industry” sticks its bony fingers through the soul of creativity by turning it into a business. Shame on us.

As a writer, I believe that creative endeavors such as the arts should reward those who bring things to life from nothing, but I am strongly opposed to treating copyright as property law. Nobody owns creativity. It all comes from one source, and that belongs to everybody. I’ve written about this many times (here).

The soul. If you believe numerology, mine is an old one. Sometimes I think so; other times, I think it’s a child. I’m not sure when I first became aware of my soul, but I think it happened when I was very young. Soul awareness produces a kind of give-a-shit attitude about the usual trappings of life, and that’s always been my curse. The soul taps into the Lifestream of all things, because, as C.S. Lewis was fond of saying, “humans are like amphibians — living in two worlds at the same time.” The soul is where those two worlds meet and play in a never-ending here and now.

I call these two worlds life (small L) and Life (capital L). The only place they meet is in the here and now, and that reminds me of Blaise Pascal’s wonderful thought from The Penses:

Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present, and when we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future…So we never live, but we hope to live, and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.

Trust me: if you can find the here and now, you’ll never want to leave. Finding it, however, isn’t easy. Regret, shame and resentments bond us to yesterday, while fear and anxiety keep us in tomorrow.

My mind then took me to Woodstock, more specifically Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s song (video below) about the event and the particularly haunting line that “we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

That is our quest, humankind’s ultimate quest, and it separates those more interested in Life than life. The baby boom generation seemed to grasp the capital L, which was a major threat to those who made a good living with small L life. I mean, who needs to get back to the garden, when this life produces a gardenesque living anyway?

But it’s an illusion. Small L life isn’t “real,” or perhaps I should say it doesn’t matter. What is the end of small L life anyway? As Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young sang, “Mother Earth will swallow you.” If you believe small L is all there is, then I feel sorry for you. On this issue, I side, again, with Blaise Pascal.

Ah, the soul? Nobody knows for sure, but I think the soul lives on somehow, some way, and perhaps that’s why Vonnegut’s words are so meaningful this morning. He advised everyone in that audience to go out, write a poem, show it to no one, and then tear it into pieces and scatter it. That simple act, he noted, would grow your soul, and, oh my, what that would do.

I think nations have souls in a way, too, and that ours is currently very sick. We’ve spent far too much energy at the feeding trough of mammon and not nearly enough time of late growing that soul. As Dylan wrote, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody,” and a day of reckoning awaits all of us. You want to know the solution for everything that ails America? Our soul is sick and needs attention. We need to create again and again and again.

So thanks for coming along on my journey this morning. Do yourself a favor and create something today. Perhaps if we all do that together, we’ll somehow find our way back to the garden.

And that would be pretty cool.

I flipped the TV set over to NBC last night and caught the end of the spectacular Macy’s fireworks show over the Hudson River in New York City. The closing number was the National Anthem, but even more breathtaking was The Battle Hymn of the Republic by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In a fit of incomprehensible political correctness, the lyrics of Battle Hymn were changed, and while most, I suppose, would find that acceptable, I do not and can not.

Among my earliest memories as a child is an album of my father’s containing various marches from World War II. His generation was exceptional, having conquered evil oceans away. You don’t find the courage to do that in your mind, but you do in your soul, and that’s what Battle Hymn touches. If you read the lyrics, you understand that. People who sang in back then were fighting on behalf of what they believed in, their God and their country.

In the second-to-last verse, one highlighted by the choir’s interpretation at the show, this is especially evident:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Remember, this is a “battle” hymn, one sung in war, and given that the 4th of July celebrates our independence — a holiday soaked in the blood of our forefathers — you’d think we’d be faithful to that. The third line was changed, however:

As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free…

War is not nice. It’s ugly, and when our young men and women die, we acknowledge their sacrifice. But sacrifice for what? They’ve died, at least in part, “to make men free.”

Call me anything you want, but we do a gross disservice to people like my dad and to our own history altogether when we do things like this to mollify the masses. It is especially egregious, because we’re fighting a war right now.

And here’s the thing: do they think people don’t notice?

We’re got some serious soul-searching to do in this country, because we’re heading down a dangerous path when we tamper with stuff like this.

UPDATE: Wikipedia (among others) notes the following:

In later years, when this song was sung in a non-military environment, the clause “let us die to make men free” was sometimes changed to “let us live to make men free”. This change can be seen in most modern hymnals.

Okay, fair enough. But who decides such things? I certainly didn’t get a vote.

Like a lot of folks, I have a Google search RSS feed based on my name. Call it vanity or call it “reputation management,” but today’s world allows a degree of feedback never known before.

Last week, I ran into (and subsequently made friends with) a Finnish sports photographer named Kari Kuukka (also here and here). He’d just returned from the Vancouver Olympics and wrote a blog entry referencing a quote of mine that he uses on his Facebook page (see image). My Google search picked it up. I went to take a look. And now we’re Facebook friends.

This kind of thing happens more often than you might think, and it kind of freaks me out. Kari is a reader of this blog and also of my essays, which are published by The Digital Journalist. I showed the Facebook quote to Karen, and she said, “You’re famous.”

A few days later, my friend (and genius) David Weinberger posted a blog entry referring to a podcast he’d done on the subject of fame. In it, David speaks of a new form of fame that is here, thanks to the World Wide Web. In days past, “the media” determined who rose to the ranks of the famous. There was a neat, orderly process that one had to go through in order to “become” famous, but even if one followed all the right steps, the decision wasn’t based on anything other than the grace of media. He’s including Hollywood, the music industry, etc.

Today, it’s very different. The mainstream media still plays a role, but fame today is generally within smaller groups, peer groups or whatever. I think this is going to take awhile for people to accept that “fame” within smaller circles is actually fame, but I think David’s right. And not only is it more like “big fish/small pond,” the method of determining fame is very different, for the mechanisms of the Web allow for the audience – everyday people – to make the decisions on who gets to bask in the light of fame.

In Lexington this week, WLEX-TV General Manager Pat Dalbey took me to the Monday night taping of Woodsongs, a popular old-time music show that’s recorded in an old theater in downtown Lexington. One of the performers was Andy McKee, a remarkable guitar player that, well, you have to see to believe. Under the old world system, it’s unlikely Andy would be touring the country and selling CDs of his original compositions. His claim to fame? The guitar channel of YouTube, where Andy McKee’s music has been heard and seen over 72 million times. The members of YouTube vaulted McKee to fame, although it’s very unlikely his name will ever be a household word (neither will mine).

There are other stories popping up all the time. Colbie Caillat presented at the Grammies this year. Nobody ever heard of her before she put her music on MySpace. David Lehre’s work on YouTube got him a spot with MTVU, and he’s now a film producer.

So fame works in different ways today.

I first wrote about this in September of 2007 in our AR&D Media 2.0 Intel newsletter:

This is a generation unbound by the roadblocks used by the status quo to maintain their status, and I’m especially taken by the astute views of Ms. Caillat.

In an age when marketing has been elevated above content and so many songs are written and produced to a pre-ordained formula…Records these days…tend to contain one or two good tracks which you download to your computer so that you never have to listen to the rest of the album again.

The clue to the real power of J.D. Lasica‘s “personal media revolution” is found in this statement, and it assigns blame for current media chaos where it belongs — with the people who used to control everything. It’s not about technology or copyright or distribution or any of the other things you read and hear about these days that are cutting into music sales; it’s about the institution producing crap.

(Ask your employees how many watch your news, and then ask them why they don’t. Be prepared for the next response.)

So what do people do when confronted with crap? They usually find another path, and that’s at the core of what’s happening around us. This is why I so strongly recommend that local media companies search their own neighborhoods for tomorrow’s employees in addition to following the more traditional paths.

We’re being disrupted by the prosumer movement, and so far, we’ve taken the wrong path in trying to defend ourselves. Steve Jobs was asked last week why Apple came out with what could be considered an iPhone killer, an iPod with everything the iPhone has except the phone. His response is telling: “If anybody is going to cannibalize us, I want it to be us. I don’t want it to be a competitor.”

So rather than wait for somebody else to embrace the prosumer movement, we need to be doing this ourselves. This is essential Media 2.0.

So to Karen’s statement about Kari putting a quote of mine on his Facebook page, yes, I may be “famous.” But my tribe is a far cry from that which produces old world “fame,” and I’m very happy for it to be that way. You see, I write to challenge my own assumptions, not necessarily to be read, so anything that comes of that is really just an ancillary benefit. Oh it makes me “feel” good to know that people notice, but that’s not my goal.

And maybe that’s what real fame is all about anyway.

(You might be interested in a Google search on “1,000 true fans” and what that means for media professionals today as they work to grow their personal brands.)

Writers write, and so I write.

The Tiger Woods event today has really torn at my heart, and I find myself incredibly sad. I’m so sad, in fact, that I don’t believe I can move on unless I share that sadness here, in the place where those who know me so well have been with me through thick and thin.

In the days leading up to this event, I have read, watched and listened as observer after observer shot holes in what Tiger was about to do. It was a staged PR event that “legitimate” reporters would do well to avoid. The golf writers association actually boycotted the event, saying – are you ready for this? – that to attend would lend credence to the canned event. They wanted a news conference to ask questions. Shame on them. As I heard on the radio this morning from Colin Cowherd, “This is their superbowl, and they’re not attending.”

Observers called it every ugly name under the sun, and now, in the hours following his statement, I’m reading words like “pathetic.” Pathetic?

So let me say what’s on my heart, and you be the judge.

What Tiger Woods did today was straight out of the rehab recovery manual, the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you’ve ever been there, you know that addicts need to make amends in order to find peace, and that’s exactly what I saw today. Every sentence in that statement was carefully worded to accept responsibility for his behavior, acknowledge those he had harmed, and state that talk is cheap, and only future behavior (what’s known as “living amends”) really matters. Moreover, I felt genuine contrition in his statements and a ton of self-loathing and anger. He acknowledged a return to a higher power, and his description of why he did what he did – “I convinced myself the normal rules didn’t apply” – came not from a man who is trying to get his kingdom back but from one who has confronted the humbling reality that he is not God.

The only person who can say that Tiger Woods is an addict is Tiger Woods. From what I saw today, he is behaving like an addict who is trying to find his way home, and anybody who has been there knows that is a lonely journey. I’m not suggesting feeling sorry for the guy or that you consider him a victim, for as he admitted himself, he’s guilty of despicable behavior that he brought on himself. I do believe, however, that addiction is a dark, dark place, and only those with the light of experience can bring others out. If he finds his way home – and I certainly hope that he does – he will have a light that he will carry himself to help others find their way out of the cave as well.

Addiction is a form of insanity, and what is the behavior of one of the most recognizable people in the world orchestrating dalliances with porn stars and prostitutes if not insane? Any non-addict would view this as impossible. “He’d never get away with it.” But not an addict, for the addict lives by intentions, not behavior.

If you’ve never read any literature about sexual addition, I encourage you to look at the seminal book on the subject, “Out of the Shadows” published by Patrick Carnes in 1994. It is a chilling look at the life events and conditions that shape people with this horrible affliction.

Addicts feel unloved and unlovable, which means other people cannot be depended on to love them, so their needs will not be met. The resulting rage becomes internalized as depression, resentment, self-pity, and even suicidal feelings. Because they have no confidence in others’ love, addicts become calculating, strategizing, manipulative and ruthless. Rules and laws are made for people who are lovable. Those who are unlovable survive in other ways. (pg 84)

Addicts confuse nurturing and sex. Support, care, affirmation, and love are all sexualized. Absolute terror of life without sex combines with feelings of unworthiness for such intense sexual desires. Sexual activity never meets the needs for love and care, but continues to be seen as the only avenue to do so. Addicts have a high need to control all situations in an effort to guarantee sex. (pg 85)

To us, Tiger Woods was a child of privilege, because he could hit a golf ball better than anyone twice his age, and yet none of us knows the price he paid inside to do that. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not blaming his environment or upbringing, but we know so little about what disconnects addicts from reality or at what point in life. The bottom line is that at some point – if he is indeed an addict – Tiger Woods made decisions based on self that later put him in a place to get hurt.

“So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so.”

Here’s another matter. Celebrities have problems with rehab, because their “handlers” force them back into the limelight before they’re ready. Addicts shouldn’t even open their mouths – except for 9th Step amends – for at least a year. Why? Because they know nothing. Zip. Nada about which they wish to speak, and to do so is, again, selfish. They want to brag about how well they’re doing, when the very act of doing so is self-centered and almost guarantees failure. Life is filled with such sorry creatures. Relapse is an indescribable hell, if one is truly trying to find their way home.

“Take questions?” What a moronic thought that is. He doesn’t even have the first idea of how to answer them. He should not answer questions, and the answers are really none of our business in the first place.

The question for Tiger is not how does he get his wife back or how does he get his family back or how does he get his life back or how does he get his adoration back or even how does he get his swing back. Much more than that is on-the-line here, for a young man’s very life is at stake. Tiger is, after all, a human being, and as a very wise fellow told me a long time ago:

Human beings are like snowflakes, all the same, yet all different. Put a flame to the snowflakes, and they melt. Poke humans with an icepick, and they bleed. Poke the psyche of humans with a figurative icepick, and they bleed, sometimes even worse.

Tiger Woods is a human being, although he has been thoroughly dehumanized by those who view themselves as better than him. It is, after all, so much easier to point fingers of scorn and ridicule when the object is less than human.

Again, Tiger brought all of this on himself, but the thing is he now knows it. And it appears from this heart that he’s acknowledged that there is a higher power, and It isn’t him. That’s a powerful starting point, for he’s going to need all the strength he can get to ever hold his head high again.

How dare we call that pathetic? How dare we judge him by that with which we judge ourselves?

Shame on him? No. Shame on us.

I’m a fan of the Food Network, especially its competition shows (and I know I’m not alone). I’d not seen any of the “Next Food Network Star” series this season, so I was happy to find there was a marathon ending at 11pm last night. For the uneducated, NFNS features ten contestants each vying for the prize of their own half-hour show on the popular network. If you’ve got personality and can cook, it’s a doorway to prosperity. Each week, a contestant is eliminated until one remains.

So Karen and I are watching the marathon, and we get to the semi-finals, during which the network starts running promos for – you guessed it – the new show by the winner of the Next Food Network Star! During the final, the network even offered us a lower third “bug” with the face of the winner and the name of the show, “Ten Dollar Meals.”

I realize the audience was probably small (most people have better things to do than watch the Food Network on New Year’s Eve), but this was one of the most bone-headed moves I’ve ever witnessed by any network.

Sandra Seich

My old friend and business partner, Sandra Seich, has passed away. She died Christmas Eve following a four year battle with breast cancer.

I met Sandra at a time of transition in my life. I’d left TV news in late 1998 and was searching for some sort of meaning to everything that was happening around me. Sandra had authored a fascinating personality study mechanism called ANSIR, A New Style In Relating. I took the test and was flabbergasted at how well it spoke to me, so I contacted her.

We formed a partnership, and I put my life’s savings into the company and became its president. We had a little B2C business running and ran into some investors from a business incubator in Huntsville, Alabama. They introduced us to others and soon valuations of $100 million were being bandied about. We changed the business model and built an advertiser-supported online community, based on personality. When the bubble burst three years later, we lost everything. Had they had the courage to stick it out, we’d have been a hybrid of eHarmony and MySpace. Sigh.

Sandra was a genius by most definitions. She could read people at the age of 10. It’s a shame she never got the recognition she truly deserved for that. Who knows? Perhaps someone will pick up the mantel and move forward with it. Like all geniuses, she had her edge, but that was a small trade-off for the knowledge she intuitively possessed. Her book, The 3 Sides of You, is still available via Amazon.

Sandra taught me much, and while our parting wasn’t under the best of circumstances, I have always bragged about our friendship when the subject came up. I learned about people from Sandra Seich, and I use that knowledge even to this day.

Rest in peace, Sandra, and may God hold you forever in His loving arms.

I sit with my laptop every day, amazed at this thing we’ve created called “the Web.” How did humankind survive without it? Future generations will take its connectivity for granted, and future wars will be fought here. It is pure artificial intelligence and beyond, because it’s learning every time we add something or associate one document with another.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve learned something else about the Web: it’s preserving history on many, many levels, including my own, and that has ramifications, both good and bad, for tomorrow.

From time-to-time, old memories will slip into my head, and I’ll head to the Web to see what I can see. Over the past couple of days, I’ve found some things I thought were long lost: evidence of my days as a surfer on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. That’s right, Lake Michigan.

It was the summer of 1964. The Beatles had just invaded America and the most popular U.S. band was The Beach Boys. Vietnam was escalating, and it was a crazy time. I had hooked up with a couple of guys in Grand Haven, Michigan, and one of them, Terry Laug, had surfboards in his garage.

In searching for Terry a couple of days ago, I found a treasure trove of information about an organization I helped form, the Great Lakes Surfing Association, GLSA. Sandhillcity.com contained photos, newspaper articles, and the fundamental history of the organization.

Here’s Terry’s GTO. That’s my board on the right.

This picture is from when a group of us went to the Upper Peninsula and drove the entire coast of the eastern shore of Lake Michigan in search of waves. It was a real “surfin’ safari.” That’s my 1959 Volvo in front. I’m the guy with his left hand on his hip. It’s an old newspaper photo from the Grand Rapids Press, so the quality sucks, but I remember that whole trip very well.

GLSA logo

I designed the logo for the group and apparently functioned as a spokesperson (who knew?), per this quote in the July 18, 1965 edition of the Grand Rapids Press “Wonderland Magazine:”

Most of the Great Lakes group uses a square back tail board instead of a pointed one to get the biggest ride from the smaller Lake Michigan waves, explains Terry Heaton, spokesman for the group.

“We don’t need those 20-footers like they have in California to have fun,” he pointed out.  “We’re happy with six-inch ones.  That’s all that is really needed to get a push.”

As happy as this makes me to find all this old material that I had thought lost, it gives me pause as I think about tomorrow, for all of our deeds — whether good or bad — have the chance of being preserved for all time on this glorious creation of ours, the World Wide Web.  And while I find that thought somewhat disconcerting (do we really want EVERYTHING preserved?), it may, over time, result in a odd form of governor for our culture. The West has lost its internal governor, so perhaps an external one like this is inevitable. Of course, the question then becomes, who controls the governor?

Those will be thoughts and issues for another generation. As for me and mine, I’m just enjoying being a part of the first generation whose early memories are being preserved. Our history — my history — is being preserved right before my eyes, and I am thankful and amazed.

Walking the day after my hip replacement

Greetings one and all. It has been a long time since I’ve ventured here. The reasons have been many: I got hacked and it took a long time to get back. I’ve been busy as hell writing stuff for which I actually get paid. And then there’s the latest, the total replacement of my right hip.

I’m now 2 1/2 weeks out from the surgery, and I’m on target for total recovery in 4-6 weeks. I’ve just moved from the walker to the cane for getting around the house, although I still use the walker for jaunts around the neighborhood. I’m in physical therapy, but there’s no exercise better for this than just plain old walking.

Pain management is an issue, for the tissue around the titanium implant is swollen and sore. That will just take time. I know well the dangers of narcotics, and I’m being very careful to stay with what my doctors recommend. I hope to be back on the road consulting in December.

I’ve lost 25 pounds, mostly because I have no appetite. I’m also drinking water like crazy, which helps flush the system. I’m a mere shadow of my former overweight self, which is, I suppose, a good thing. I can’t say that it’s been “fun,” but the pain that originally drove me to the surgery is gone, and I am very grateful for that.

Over the next few days, I’m going to go back into files of our newsletter since the hack occurred in early June and post some of the best items. I want them here for posterity’s sake, and I think you’ll enjoy reading them, especially if you aren’t subscribed to our newsletter.

Now back to rest.