Category Archives: Social media

How much would be enough? (A billion, or would $10 million do you?)

This Tweet earlier today got me to thinking:

@wis10WIS News 10

Sunday dinner interrupted by $100,000 lottery win http://bit.ly/dYkFUg

This fits firmly into the category of what I think of as lame non-news. I mean, who cares, really? I remember thinking it was pretty cool back in the 60s that time that my grandmother won $300 and they put her picture in the Marlboro Herald Advocate, but the main appeal of the item resulted from the facts that 1) It was my grandmother; 2) The prize was in the form of cash, and they had formed the bills into a sort of lei and hung them around her neck, and 3) I was a kid, and that seemed like a lot of money. Back then, you could get a comic book and a soda and some candy for a quarter, and maybe even have change.

And yes, I think it would be cool if I or someone in my family won a hundred Gs, free and clear. I’d like it. But as news for other people? I don’t see it. Because I put myself in the position of the person winning the 100k, and think, what would I do with it? I could do ONE, but not more, of the following:

Pay off our mortgage. It’s down to below that amount, and that would be helpful. I couldn’t really change my lifestyle or anything, and I’d have to keep working at least as hard as I do now, but it would be nice to have that off my plate.

Take a year off from working. Fine, but I just sort of did that, and it wasn’t fun. And you know that when the year was over, you’d have to go back to work. And you’d find that after a year of not working, you’d have trouble getting back into the kind of work you want to do at your previous rate of pay. Believe me, I’ve been there. Not worth it. And yes, you could live for more than a year on 100k, but I would not be tempted to quit working, for any period of time, for less. Anything less, and I’d just add it to the rest of the income I manage to pull in, and keep plugging.

Go to England or somewhere again, and buy a bunch of toys such as accessories for my new iPhone. Which, let’s face it, Mamanem’s not going to let me do if someone interrupts Sunday dinner to give us $100k.

All pretty cool stuff, but not dramatically life-changing. It wouldn’t have enough effect on ME and MY life for other people to find it interesting. So… I’m not interested in the effect on someone else’s life. Certainly not Tweet-me-the-headline interest.

Which raises the question: How much WOULD be enough? How much money would I have to get to think it newsworthy? For that matter, forget newsworthy. I’d just as soon other people didn’t know I had all that money. How much is my fantasy amount that would make me achieve my lifelong goal of never, ever thinking about money again? (Because I really, truly hate thinking about it, on any level.)

I used to have a figure in mind. As I wrote in a column several years ago, “Buddy, can you spare half a billion? And be quick about it?” As I wrote, I had this fantasy in mind in which I saved Bill Gates’ life somehow or other, and he offered to halve his kingdom, and I told him nah, that half a billion would do. Or a round billion, if he didn’t have change.

But that was back in 2006, when my newspaper was up for sale, and I had a particular use for the money in mind. I wanted to buy the paper from the ruins of Knight Ridder. I had a detailed plan for what I wanted to do with it. I had this idea that buying the paper, since it was one of the few really profitable papers KR had, could cost me as much as $400 million. That was probably WAY too much to pay even then, but the paper had been bought by KR in the mid-80s for $300 million, and I didn’t want to be chintzy.

I would have used the rest for capital improvements, and perhaps to allow me to run the company at a loss for a few years while I searched for the right business model. And that’s the thing. The demand for news, particularly political news, is as great as ever (and we’re talking the written word, here). The problem is that the business model has collapsed. I figure a few hundred million extra would allow for almost unlimited experimentation with financial models. And we — and the readers — could have a lot of fun in the meantime. (By the way, some people were displeased by that column at the time. Sort of surprising it took them three more years to can me, huh?)

Now… I don’t know. If I had unlimited funds — or what would do for unlimited funds — would I buy The State? Things have changed. It’s no longer about trying to save “my newspaper.” I’m not sure whether the value of the brand would be worth what I’d have to pay for it. I wonder whether I should just start something from scratch (that might be the best way to start a new business model, assuming I could figure out what sort to go with). I’m pretty sure I could get it for a LOT less than I was guessing in 06. Back then, I bought McClatchy at $39. Today, it’s $3.33. (Yeah, I know. I’m a financial genius.) How that affects individual newspapers’ value I don’t know. Even assuming they were willing to sell.

And there’s always the possibility of traveling the globe and hanging with my grandchildren. I could grow tomatoes, and chase the kids around in the garden… but no, I’ve still got stuff I want to say. And South Carolina NEEDS some good journalism, just as it always did. Dick Harpootlian was mentioning that today. He was mentioning it in a partisan context, but he was on point.

A certain amount of money could pay for some good journalism. AND achieve my lifelong goal of never having to think about money again.

So how much would that be? I tend to look at it in powers of 10:

$100k — I’ve already explained why that won’t do.
$1 million — Much better, but one could neither buy a newspaper of any size nor launch a new operation nor permanently retire on that, even if one were as cheap as Mark Sanford. An awkward amount (not that I’d turn it down, mind you; I’d find something to do with it).
$10 million — Now we’re talking. THIS a guy could retire on, and not feel the need to work to make more. And you might be able to launch an experimental publication of some sort. But you’d have to bet it all, and if the first business model you tried failed, that would be it, and you’d be broke. Or so I’m thinking.
$100 million — This would most likely provide it all — buy a business, revamp it, try a lot of stuff, and never worry about money again. Grow a lot of tomatoes when you felt like it. But you’d have to be careful you don’t blow it all, still. You want to leave something to the kids. I mean, as long as we’re fantasizing here, why don’t we go a bit further…
$1 billion — Done deal. Do it all, make a lot of mistakes along the way, and still be able to install a diving board in your cash vault, like Scrooge McDuck. So for me, this is the ultimate fantasy amount. TWO billion would also be nice — maybe I could get one of those miniature giraffes — but let’s not get greedy.

So, it looks like I’ll be working for a while.

There you have it. A twist on the “Office Space” question of “What would you do if you had a million dollars?”

What’s your answer? How much would it take for you to feel like you had it all?

My top 24 Twitter feeds (WAY better than TIME’s top 140)

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Here’s a case of bad first impression…

My attention was just called to this piece at TIME.com, “140 Best Twitter Feeds,” which includes such micro-literary stylists as Sarah Palin, Kanye West, Lady Gaga and Ashton Kuchner.

At least, those are the ones pictured.

So I was set to tee off on a rant about the descent of a once semi-respectable newsmagazine into the seamier depths of trash culture, full of references to lowest common denominators and defining deviance down.

How, I was prepared to demand indignantly, could one prepare a “best Twitter feed” list without Roger Ebert, to name but one?

But then, when I finally found something to click on that gave me the full list (one of the most irritating things about such lists by TIME is that they tend to make the full list — the main thing that interests me — something you have to hunt for; what they want you to do is click through them one by one, so that you see as many ads as possible, I suppose)… and there was Roger Ebert at number 15.

And there was Nicholas Kristof, another great Tweeter, at No. 2. And there’s Felicia Day at No. 26. You go, Felicia!

OK, well then, never mind…

Although I will gripe about how lame it is that you can’t easily link from the list to these Twitter feeds so you can check them out. Which would not only be nice; one would think it would be obvious.

Anyway, I’ll be interested to read your thoughts if you check it out.

Meanwhile, here are my faves from my list of 500 feeds I follow, a deliberate mix of local and national, substance and fun:

Nicholas Kristof — Talk about substance. Talk about getting it straight from the guy on the scene. Nobody covering the world beyond our shores brings the drama of international developments to our attention in a more thoughtful and humane manner. A remarkably self-effacing sage. Typical Tweet: “It’s interesting that attitudes toward Libya intervention don’t follow a left/right split. More int’list vs isolationist.”
Mark Knoller — This guy’s Tweets are so awesome, frequent, informative and just plain interesting that the WSJ did a front-page feature on them last year. He is THE trivia master of the White House Press Corps. And he lets you know what’s going on in Obama’s house from moment to moment. Typical Tweet — actually a series of Tweets, since that’s Mr. Knoller’s specialty: “Then at 730pm this evening, Pres Obama addresses the nation about Libya, what’s at stake, how long will it take, who’s in charge, etc.”… “Tonight’s speech responds to criticism that Pres Obama involved the US in Libya without so much as an address to the nation.”… “Pres Obama will stress tonight that NATO is in command of US/allied military ops in Libya incl. no-fly zone & protecting civilians.”… “Pres. Obama also expected to make the point that US/allies responded to Libya far quicker than to Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Darfur, et al.”… “Pres. Obama offered a preview of his Libya address in his Weekly Address over the weekend. Transcript at http://1.usa.gov/g78qLX“
Adam Baldwin — My favorite celebrity follower. The man who played “Jayne Cobb” rants from the right, but at a higher level than one often finds in rants. Such as his references to “repressive tolerance.” Typical Tweet: “Divisive Multiculturalism! | MT @MarkKnoller “While at Bell Multicultural H.S., Pres ☮bama will also focus on Hispanic educational issues.” (See, Adam also knows how useful it is to follow Mark Knoller.)
Roger Ebert — Burl turned me onto Ebert’s Tweets, and I appreciate it. Of course, I like him less when he veers into politics, because it’s not his strength, but at least he provides some liberal balance to Adam Baldwin. Typical Tweet: “Reporter sez he wasn’t “kidnapped” by Joe Biden, and the blogosphere over-reacted. Who would tweet such a story? Me? http://bit.ly/fthhbs“
Felicia Day — Like Adam Baldwin, another denizen of the Joss Whedon ‘verse. Why do I follow this offbeat beauty? Duh. Doesn’t every red-blooded American geek follow her? Typical Tweet: “March 29th the Dr. Horrible BOOK comes out! http://twe.ly/Jfhb Tons of awesome stuff in there!”
Adam Fogle — Former mastermind of The Palmetto Scoop (and author of the “TPS Reports”), Adam is perhaps SC’s wittiest Tweeter. Typical Tweet: “Got a diamond ring for this girl I like. It was a pretty sweet trade.” Another: “I stopped bringing my lunch in a brown paper bag because it’s just too easy for chickens to peck out of those things.” Yet another: “Being a local celebrity is a lot like not being a celebrity.”
Meg Kinnard — Because this local AP reporter just helps me keep up with what’s going on. Typical Tweet: “AP – Carolinas utilities report radiation from Japan – http://tinyurl.com/4l9love“
TheBigPicture — This is really host Mark Quinn, and I list him for much the same reason as Meg, with the added factor that he is a consummate reTweeter of things of SC interest. Typical Tweet: “RT: @WolfeReports Michele Bachmann, blowing up the ads on The State.http://yfrog.com/h4vu0fhj“
FrumForum — A separate feed from that of its author, David Frum, a conservative trying to save his party from Tea Party madness. Typical Tweet: “What Libya Reveals About Obama’s Views on War: Toby Harnden writes at The Daily Telegraph: America’s inte…http://bit.ly/hfoSbS #tcot“
Peter Hamby — I mention this CNN reporter, among all the national MSM people I follow, because of his expertise in the way SC interacts with national politics, and because it gives me another excuse to link to my flip-flops anecdote. Typical Tweet: “and as reported earlier, Bachmann has been laying the groundwork for weeks now: http://bit.ly/dHsIl5“
Lenore Skenazy — Crusader for sensible, non-obsessive child-rearing. Author of “Free Range Kids.” Typical Tweet: “Scientists develop perfect learning toy for babies. “Cube of Wood.” Short vid: http://bit.ly/hVf1wW“
Jeff Vrabel — An often-entertaining, irreverent commentator on pop culture down in the Lowcountry. First came to my attention for the way he trashed “Avatar.” Typical Tweet: “Elizabeth Taylor, Nate Dogg currently having the most awkward conversation ever in the waiting room”
Kenley Young — A former editor at The State and prolific local musician, Kenley and wife @shellevator (also a former editor at The State) have recently moved to LA, and it’s fun following their adventures on the Left Coast. Typical Tweet: “Actors also end phone calls by agreeing to meet up: “See you there.” They never say what time. It’s apparently never openly discussed. ESP?”
Logan Stewart — An SC Democrat stranded in Charlotte. Secret to her appeal? She reTweets me a lot. Typical Tweet: “@kokomodianne I think u have me beat on the languages by long shot. I just squeak by with English, some spanish & a lot of tweeting&yelling”
Thornton Kirby — The head of the SC Hospital Association doesn’t Tweet all that often, but when he does, he offers insight into the complexities of health care — from the hospitals’ perspective, of course. Typical Tweet: “The Stockdale Paradox http://bit.ly/an5O9W“
Debra Legg — Debra’s a West Coast Mommy Blogger who also writes for ADCO. Typical Tweet: “To the commenter who blames the family: If the restaurant can’t swear a food is allergen-free, it simply should say so.http://bit.ly/ePXpmR“
Burl Burlingame — Because he’s our guy in Hawaii. Typical Tweet: “No matter how you spell Quadaffi or Khadaffy or whatever, you still know who is being addressed. Just throw a handful of consonants down.”
Adam Beam — One of the best local MSM user of social media, effectively integrating the medium into his reporting. (Actually, I’d also list John O’Connor as an exemplar of the same thing, but I’m trying to make each feed on my list different from the others.) Typical Tweet: “City Hall gets a security upgradehttp://t.co/7GMN0T“
Rick Stilwell — OK, I admit that I’m mainly putting him on the list because he’s from Cayce, and because I like the name of his feed: RickCaffeinated. Because I, too, love coffee. But his Tweets are fast and furious, and often interesting. Typical Tweet: “Told everyone in the house I wouldn’t do it. Swore I wouldn’t do it. Dang it. #turnedheatbackon“
Simran ‘Simmi’ Singh — Because Nikki Haley’s look-alike sister is just so freakin’ OUT THERE. Typical Tweet: “Grateful or Greatful? Be both. Full of gratitude and full of greatness! Being Light and Light Being? Full of Light…http://fb.me/TQTnXSMr“
Alison Agosti — Her feed is called “Just_Alison,” and it is just… weird. But I like it as a sort of change of pace, a sorbet to cleanse the palate before going on to something else more, uh, relevant. Typical Tweet: “I’m going to print out this digital booklet so I can throw it in the actual garbage.”
Jay Barry — Another co-worker. Jay is my cameraman on “The Brad Show,” and the drummer with Lunch Money. I’m putting him on the list for this one Tweet he did over the weekend, while his band was touring in the Northeast: “Driving through rural Mass. Saw a VW up on blocks in front of an organic farm.”
Nathan Ballentine — The most avid Tweeter at the State House. And he doesn’t just Tweet politics. Typical Tweet: “this one might come down to Jimmy Chitwood hitting one at the buzzer”
Harvey Peeler — This is to keep the Senate from being envious because I listed Nathan. The senator’s profile: “I am a milker of cows and herder of cats.” This is good. Almost too good. Wesley, are you or someone else doing this for him? If not, hat’s off to you, senator. Not flashy, but he gets the medium. Typical Tweet: “To me ‘March Madness’ starts when the House sends the budget over to the Senate.”

Why 24? Because that’s how many I had after a quick pass through those I follow. I grabbed them hurriedly, and on another day I might have grabbed different ones. But I thought you might find these interesting.

Surging sea of rage (not): The ‘Reinstate Darla Moore’ rally

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Well, that was a bust. As I Tweeted when I arrived at the “Reinstate Darla Moore” rally at the State House on this sunny day:

@BradWarthen
Brad Warthen

The big protest over Darla Moore being unceremoniously dumped by Nikki Haley looks like a bit of a bust so far. They DID say noon, right?

As I said again at 12:43, it was still a bust. Which is a shame. Because Nikki Haley insulted all of the 30,000 or so students on the Columbia campus alone with her petty patronage move — not to mention the way she dissed the other 4 million of us who have a right to expect a governor to exercise some modicum of responsible stewardship at our most important state institutions. Instead of, you know, what she did.

Old New Left Activist Tom Turnipseed grumbled about these kids today who don’t know how to stage a protest: They think they do something with social media, and it’s done, he says. Well, yes — the “We Support Darla Moore” Facebook page has attracted 4,703 people who probably think they’ve made a statement by “liking” it.

But that doesn’t mean that Martha Susan Morris, the 22-year-old economic and poli sci senior who started the “Students for the Reinstatement of Miss Darla Moore” FB page, lacks seriousness in her convictions.

After all, she showed up, and spoke at the rally — once it finally got around to getting started. And she understood why she should be there, and why thousands of others should have been there with her:

Gov. Haley cited that her main reason for replacing Mrs. Moore with Mr. Cofield was the fact that Mr. Cofield’s vision was more clearly aligned with her own.

Martha Susan Morris

And we the students ask ‘What vision?’ What vision is not aligning with Gov. Haley…?… Mrs. Moore’s vision for years has been one of high expectations, increased educational funding, and increased standards for universities, research and development in our state…. and we could not be more grateful to her…

Our university is on the upswing, and we want her to be a part of it. She’s been an amazing benefactor… since she was appointed to the board in 1999…

Amen to that, Martha Susan. She said afterward that she started the FB page at 4 a.m. after having hearing about Ms. Moore being dumped. When she next looked at the page later that morning, there were 400 fans. There are now 2,495.

Too bad more of them didn’t show up. Because although we know Nikki Haley loves her some Facebook, she’d have been a tad more impressed to look out her window and see some folks show up to protest her action. Not that she’d have changed her mind, but it would have made an impression.

One of the people I chatted with before leaving was Candace Romero, communications director of the South Carolina House Democratic Caucus, who observed how much of the crowd were media types, and she complained that that there was no media turnout like that for the “Rally for a Moral Budget” back on March 12. (I asked her, and her Senate counterpart Phil Bailey, whether they were in any way involved in this rally. No, and no. They had just dropped by. That’s the answer I got from all the usual suspect-types I found.)

Well. As one who didn’t even thinking about going downtown on a Saturday for that particular quixotic gesture, I must accept service. But I will add that good-government-type rallies tend not to draw multitudes. Have it about something people get passionate about, such as the Confederate flag, and you can get a crowd (5,000 or so if it’s pro, as many as 60,000 if it’s anti).

Which is a shame. Today’s rally was for good government — or at least, against grossly irresponsible government. (I enjoyed hearing a speaker who followed Martha Susan say he and his fellow protesters were there to “change the usual business of government.” You know, what Nikki Haley is always saying she wants to do — right before she does something as old-line political Business-As-Usual as dumping a highly respected board member in favor of someone whose only known qualification is having contributed to her campaign.)

But it was a bust.

Oh, one more thing — it was announced, late in the rally, that Darla Moore herself will address students “in a town-hall meeting at 12:15 p.m. Thursday, March 24, in the Russell House.”

I wonder whether that will be better-attended.

: Martha Susan Morris

By the way, I’m available for that Aflac gig

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Don’t think it would have occurred to me to wonder about this at any point in my newspaper life, but now that I’m into the whole marketing/PR/Mad Man thing now, I find myself wondering about stuff like this…

So I hear that Aflac has fired Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of their duck. You know, the one that says “Aflac!” Here’s something about it, although you’ve probably already heard:

He’ll quack for Aflac no more.

Insurance giant Aflac axed comic Gilbert Gottfried as the voice of its iconic duck yesterday after he posted jokes on Twitter about the quake and tsunami in Japan.

“I just split up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say, ‘They’ll be another one floating by any minute now,’ ” was among the dozen tweets Gottfried fired off over the weekend….

I first heard about it at breakfast this morning, and didn’t think anything of it (no skin off my beak), then heard it again at ADCO later, and at that point thought, “Wait a minute…”

Why, I wonder, did they turn to Gilbert Gottfried to do the Aflac duck to begin with? I mean, he’s moderately famous, although irritating, and you pay a premium for that. Agents to feed and all. What was the value they got from that?

Because, while I was well aware of the ad campaign — it’s memorable, and sort of clever in an absurd way — I never knew that that was Gilbert Gottfried doing it. Sure, when you hear it, it sounds like Gilbert Gottfried… but it sounds like Gilbert Gottfried when I say “Aflac!” in a nasal quack, too. (Brian from ADCO agreed when he heard me do it at lunch today. I don’t just say these things, people; I check to confirm first. Back off; I’m a professional.)

It really doesn’t take any special talent. And unless they were getting a bounce from people knowing it was Gottfried, why pay him to do it?

So… here’s what I’m thinking. If Aflac is hard up, I’ll do the duck voice for them from now on. I might even do it at a discount from what they were paying Gottfried. And I won’t make horrible jokes about the poor Japanese, or any other suffering people.

I can use the phone to get that new iPhone or HTC Thunderbolt (which I think is coming out Thursday!) or whatever I get to replace my moribund Blackberry, which is definitely on its last legs. So this couldn’t have happened at a better time.

I hope I’m making this offer in time, before they line up someone else… You gotta move fast these days…

I won’t sell MY Tweets, either — unless and until someone offers to buy them

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Roger Ebert took a stand for principle today:

@ebertchicagoRoger Ebert

I will never ever sell my Tweets. Yes, 3-4 times a day I do an Amazon link, with any income going to help my site.http://on.wsj.com/dRm3FN

OK, so it wasn’t MUCH of a stand, what with the Amazon exception (as Jubal Harshaw said, “”So? Minds me of a wife who was proud of her virtue. Slept with other men only when her husband was away.”) I mean, I’m inferring here — I’m not sure what “Amazon links” he’s referring to.

But at least Mr. Ebert, whose Tweets I follow and enjoy, is drawing a line somewhere — unlike Charlie Sheen.

Personally, though, I’m not inclined to close off any potential sources of income, and not only for my own sake. The most important question hovering over the future of journalism in this country is this: How are we going to get paid to keep doing this? The old business model — letting mass-medium print and broadcast advertising pay for it — has collapsed. The new model has not yet emerged. Sure, there are national blogs and websites making money and employing people, but that’s because of the scale of what they’re doing, and the broad appeal of national politics (and yes, celebrity “news”).

But no one’s figured out how to pay people, going forward, to really cover state and local politics, something that is critically important to keeping the electorate connected to what’s going on in their communities. The MSM have scaled back such coverage dramatically, which makes some of the more marginal, shoestring operations look better by comparison than they once did. But no one has really figured out a model for financing the kinds of newsrooms you have to have to really cover a community every day.

Will paid Tweets be the mechanism for doing that? I doubt it. But until we figure out how to link the demand for such coverage (which is as great as ever) to an effective business model, I’m not inclined to close off potential lines of innovation.

Unless, of course, you can argue a compelling argument for why Twitter, in particular, should be sacrosanct. But to me it’s a Wild West medium thus far, and “Twitter” and “integrity” are two words you seldom see in the same sentence. To me, it’s a laboratory, and journalists are still figuring out how it serves their craft, beyond being a headline alert service. Perhaps one of the ways the tool will be useful is as a way of contributing to the revenue stream. I don’t know. But within the fundamental bounds of journalistic ethics (such as, say, telling the truth), I think there’s room for experimentation.

OK, so maybe he IS just 32

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A friend this morning alerted me to the fact that on his LinkedIn page, Christian Soura — the governor’s mysterious dollar-a-year man — does look young enough to be 32. (His job, on that same profile, is listed as “Executive Director at South Carolina Center for Transforming Government.” The governor’s office is not mentioned. Hey, if the gov were only paying me a buck a year, I wouldn’t mention her, either.)

OK, so that still leaves us wondering how he was receiving a state pension from Pennsylvania.

Yes, I know they’re much more into what our governor would term Big Government in Pennsylvania. The taxes are higher, and they have taxes yet unthought-of in SC. Pause for an anecdote…

Fred Mott used to be publisher at The State. He’s the publisher who made me the editorial page editor, which tells you that he’s a great guy to work for, and a splendid judge of character. But boy, did we used to have some arguments over politics at editorial board meetings. And a constant course of disagreement was Fred’s insistence that taxes were relatively high in South Carolina. I’d give him stats to the contrary, and he’d just give his patented dismissive wave and keep on believing what he believed. (The “emotional center” — to use a favorite phrase of an editor I once worked with — of this for Fred, I believe, was that he had previously lived in Florida and there was no state income tax in Florida, and there was one in SC, so taxes in SC were therefore higher…)

Then Fred left here and went to work in Philadelphia. He lived in the ‘burbs, but worked in the city. I will always cherish the first phone conversation I had with Fred after he moved up there. He said, “I’ll never again say that taxes are high in South Carolina.” The emotional center of this change of mind was that he was required to pay a tax for living outside the city but working inside it, which really rankled.

Anyway, they have more and higher taxes, and they provide services that we don’t even think about here. (They are also proud — and this is hard to take in for a South Carolinian — of having been in the forefront of the public-employee union movement that the governor of Wisconsin is trying to roll back.) So maybe they do have retirement benefits so awesome that you can start getting them at 32.

But this still seems a little unlikely. There’s still a puzzle here. I look forward to learning more.

“What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness”

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Isn’t that a great headline?

Stan Dubinsky sends out a lot of cool stuff to read via e-mail. You should ask to be on his list — if you’ve got time to read the stuff. I don’t really, but I do tend to glance at the headlines to see if anything draws me in (which, Journalism 101 here, is what headlines are for). And “What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness” definitely did the job.

And the piece was worth reading. An excerpt:

What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness

The decline and fall of American English, and stuff

I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. “And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ” She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel.

Uh-oh. It was a classic case of Vagueness, the linguistic virus that infected spoken language in the late twentieth century. Squirrel Woman sounded like a high school junior, but she appeared to be in her mid-forties, old enough to have been an early carrier of the contagion. She might even have been a college intern in the days when Vagueness emerged from the shadows of slang and mounted an all-out assault on American English.

My acquaintance with Vagueness began in the 1980s, that distant decade when Edward I. Koch was mayor of New York and I was writing his speeches. The mayor’s speechwriting staff was small, and I welcomed the chance to hire an intern. Applications arrived from NYU, Columbia, Pace, and the senior colleges of the City University of New York. I interviewed four or five candidates and was happily surprised. The students were articulate and well informed on civic affairs. Their writing samples were excellent. The young woman whom I selected was easy to train and a pleasure to work with. Everything went so well that I hired interns at every opportunity.

Then came 1985….

Undergraduates… seemed to be shifting the burden of communication from speaker to listener. Ambiguity, evasion, and body language, such as air quotes—using fingers as quotation marks to indicate clichés—were transforming college English into a coded sign language in which speakers worked hard to avoid saying anything definite. I called it Vagueness….

We all note, and many of us decry, what social media have done to (and for; there’s an upside as well) effective and elegant use of language. But I found this piece interesting because it went far beyond that, and identified an insidious enemy not only to communication, but to clear thought as well.

That enemy is Vagueness.

My exchange with “Jayne Cobb”

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Today, we descend into the dubious ground of celebrity name-dropping…

One of my favorite things that’s ever been on television was “Firefly,” the space western (you have to watch it to grok that description) that lasted less than a season several years ago — which says about everything that needs to be said about commercial television.

My favorite character on the show was Jayne Cobb. Actually, he’s my public, admitted favorite character. My actual, secret favorite is Kaylee, but being a happily married guy, I don’t want to admit that, so my official favorite is Jayne.

Jayne is, that is, was played by Adam Baldwin, who has a Twitter feed that differs from other Hollywood actors’ in that you won’t read Tweets like, “Yoga class was awesome today! Off to a lunch, then rehearsal.”

Mr. Baldwin tweets about politics, and from a decidedly, shall we say, muscular conservative perspective (even though he apparently once Tweeted this).

Last night, I saw this post:

@adamsbaldwinAdam Baldwin

“Repressive Tolerance”: http://bit.ly/efIXeq ->http://bit.ly/fVwiF -> http://bit.ly/18ScHT ->http://bit.ly/fivqAt = #RepressiveCivility

This really impressed me. I hadn’t heard that phrase since I had studied the absurd theories of Herbert Marcuse, the intellectual father of the New Left, who game up with the Orwellian-sounding concept of “repressive tolerance.” Which, in my paraphrase, means that liberal societies are repressive because they manipulate people by being… tolerant. In other words, they absorb, co-opt and redirect revolutionary fervor by not particularly caring about it. This makes people who really, really want to be angry revolutionaries even angrier, of course, because it makes it impossible for them to keep others angry. You’re a revolutionary — red rag on your head and everything — and you’re like, “We demand reform!” and the maddening liberal society goes, “OK, here’s your reform,” and next thing you know, nobody cares enough to show up at your revolutionary cell meetings, and you’re like all ticked. OK, go read another definition if you don’t like that one.

We UnPartisans are often amused by the silly things that theorists come up with on the right AND the left, and Marcuse was one of the leading unintentional jesters of the left.

Anyway, I was impressed enough to reTweet this:

@BradWarthenBrad Warthen

Wow! A TV actor citing Marcuse! RT @adamsbaldwin: “Repressive Tolerance”:http://bit.ly/efIXeq -> http://bit.ly/fVwiF->…

And to my amazement, I quickly got this reply:

@adamsbaldwinAdam Baldwin

@BradWarthen Herbert Marcuse, an #IntellectualMoron –> http://bit.ly/5NyBMx

So I’m like:

@BradWarthenBrad Warthen

@adamsbaldwin Oh, I agree, Adam. I just thought it was cool that you mentioned him. Haven’t run across his silly concept since college…

Because I’m thinking, “I don’t want to tick off Jayne Cobb. You know how he is.” And then he’s like:

@adamsbaldwinAdam Baldwin

@BradWarthen Seen this one:http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Rules%20for%20Revolution%20(2).pdf

Of course, the Obama/Alinsky connection wasn’t new to me, although I don’t fret about it the way people on the right do. But I then answered with these two Tweets:

@adamsbaldwin Nope, but that reminds me. I’ve been meaning to read the recent biography of Alinksy, “Radical” http://j.mp/dIka9R

@adamsbaldwin Of course, since it’s written by Nicholas Von Hoffman, it’s an “homage.” But if you know that, it still can be informative…

I figured I’d better add that last bit, since he was likely to dismiss it from such a source, and I wanted to head that off.

Then, I went home for the day, and didn’t get any more Tweets from Mr. Baldwin. Nor did I send any. But I enjoyed it while it lasted. And now, I’ll be interested to see whether an exchange like that with someone with almost 50,000 followers will boost my own followership (and ultimately, blog readership, which for me is the point of social media).

Can’t tell yet…

What are you trying to say, Wesley?

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The other day I ran into Wesley Donehue at Starbucks (see that, Starbucks? yet another product placement you’re not paying for), and we talked briefly about my appearing on “Pub Politics” again, which would make me a member of the Five-Timer Club. I’m totally up for it, particularly since I’d like to discuss this aptly titled “rant” on Wesley’s blog.

I think I want to argue with him about it, but first I have to get him to explain more clearly what he’s on about.

I say “rant” is apt because it seems to come straight from the gut, without any sorting or organization from the higher parts of his cortex — and Wesley is a smart guy. The problem I have is that his thought, or emotions, or impulses or whatever, don’t add up. They just don’t hang together.

He makes the following unconnected points:

Where does the media get off making like it’s a champion of transparency?
How dare WACH-Fox defend itself from a slur leveled at it by Gov. Nikki Haley on Facebook?
The media are just lashing out, because they are becoming irrelevant in the new media age, when politicos can go straight to the people.
“Transparency” doesn’t mean going through the MSM, so the media have no legitimate excuse to criticize the gov.
Any problems the media have are their own damn’ fault, for failing to be relevant and keep up with the times.

Did that cover everything? I may have missed an unrelated point or two.

Here, respectively, are my problems with his points:

1. Golly, Wesley, the MSM may be guilty of a host of sins, but suggesting they are somehow an illegitimate, insincere, incredible or inappropriate advocate for transparency is most illogical. They’re kinda obsessive about it, and this might be a shock, but they were into it a LONG time before Nikki Haley ever heard of it. Finally, the media are the one industry in society that actually have a vested, selfish interest in transparency (unlike certain politicians who TALK about it, but belie their commitment to it with their actions) — they kinda rely on it in order to do what they do — so I’ve just gotta believe they really mean it.

1a. Furthermore, what does this have to do with the ongoing talk about the gov’s failures to be transparent? What did I miss? This seems to me to be about the TV station defending itself from the governor’s insult. The transparency issue — the one that I hear folks in the media talk about, anyway — has to do with everything from Nikki not wanting to disclose questionable sources of income and refusing to release her e-mails back during the campaign, all the way up to meeting with two other Budget and Control Board members while excluding the others. I’m missing the connection in other words, between this incident and your complaint that the media are going on inappropriately about transparency.

2. Well, let’s see. The governor wrote “WACH FOX 57 is a tabloid news station and has no concept of journalism.” Wesley, I don’t care whether the governor said that on Facebook, or through an interview with the MSM, or in a campaign ad or by use of skywriting. The choice of medium does not take away from the fact that that was an extraordinary thing for a governor to PUBLISH (and that’s what she did; if governors and other empowered “ordinary” folks are going to take it upon themselves to communicate directly with the people without the offices of the MSM, perhaps they need to take a little seminar on the difference in significance between merely muttering something to your friends, and publishing it). Next — are you really suggesting that WACH or any other business does not have the right to defend itself when maligned by the governor? I assert that they have that right under the 1st Amendment, whether they are Joe Blow’s Used Cars or the MSM.

3. This one’s really interesting. I’ll grant you, WACH looks pretty lame technologically when it fails to provide a direct link to the FB post with which it is disagreeing. (Here you go, by the way.) But beyond that, let’s talk about the new rules. Here’s the kind of thing that happens in this wonderful, marvelous new world in which anyone can publish their thoughts and don’t have to go through the stuffy ol’ MSM. In the old, benighted days, a former employee of the governor (and of the last governor) might go around muttering about having had an illicit personal relationship with the governor, but he would have been ignored. Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology that you extol, he can publish it himself with practically zero effort or investment. So it’s out there — because, you know, those bad old editors can’t keep it away from the people. And then it starts affecting the political campaign, and therefore becomes news. Now, let me ask you — when that same blogger follows that up by publishing salacious details related to his allegation, having already caused it to be a news story, what are the media supposed to do? Well, I don’t know, and others aren’t sure either. Me? I ignored it. WACH made the call that it made. Did the governor have the right to get ticked and trash WACH because of it? Yes, she did. (Although it was, as I say, pretty extraordinary for a sitting governor to say something like that about a business in her state.) Did WACH — that poor, pathetic institution that’s falling apart as you say, have the right to defend itself? Of course it did.

4. Who said it did? I missed that. Maybe you have a link to it; I’d be interested to read/hear that argument.

5. The problems that the media have result from a massive restructuring of the way businesses — the ones they relied upon for the advertising revenue that underwrote the gathering of the news — market themselves to the public. The long-term trend has been away from mass-media advertising on the local level, and to more targeted approaches. Nothing about what the media have reported or not reported, or positions they have taken, have anything to do with it. The public is lapping up news and commentary more hungrily than ever — from the MSM as well as other sources. But the business model that supported newsgathering — the model that’s falling apart — has nothing to do with that; it’s a whole separate transaction from the one between a medium and its readers/viewers/listeners. So you’re way off base there.

Anyway, have me on the show and we’ll talk further. Keep the beer cold.

Hamlet misses out on the new iPhone

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Alas! poor Blackberry. I knew it, Horatio; a device of infinite usefulness, of most excellent fancy; it hath borne me on its back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! ... Where be your emails now? your Tweets? your texts? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the Blogosphere on a roar?

To switch or not to switch, that is the question…

Get thee to a Verizon, go!…

Something is rotten in the state of 3G…

Neither a Twitterer nor a blogger be…

My hour is almost come
When I to sulphrous and tormenting flames
Must render up my PDA…

OK, so none of those work as well as I’d like. But the thing is, my Hamlet-like indecision caused me to miss out on the first wave of iPhones being offered by Verizon, so I will not be one of the cool kids (I’m sure this amazes you). I was thinking about making the move today, but then I see that they’re all gone. There will be more next week, but that’ll be like being the 27th man in space, instead of the first. And now that the first rush of lust for the new gadget has been disappointed… I’m wondering if I should wait a bit longer than that.

Here are the facts, which I’m sure Shakespeare could render more beautifully, but I will stick to plain prose:

I work in an office full of Apple people. All the computers in the office are Macs. For my part, I bring my laptop PC into the office every day, and work from that. Yeah, I get it; Macs are cool. But my fingers do all the PC commands so automatically that I find the Mac functions awkward, laborious.
Some of these people I work with are fanatical about their iPhones (and their iPads, etc., but that’s not what this is about). And over time I’ve seen what their iPhones can do that my Blackberry Curve can’t, and how beautifully they do those things, and I’ve thought that if I could have one, I might want to.
My entire extended family (and I have a large family), except for one of my sons, is on Verizon. Several of us are on the same family plan, which is economical. I just couldn’t see getting an AT&T device. So for the last year or so, I seized upon every rumor that Verizon would get the iPhone.
My Blackberry has been acting up for months — losing the data signal and having to be reset (by turning it off, taking the battery out, putting it back in, and waiting a long time while the hourglass spins before it works again) several times a day. Lately, it’s started turning itself off completely, and refusing to come back on unless I go through the whole reset routine.
I was due for an upgrade as of January. Miracle of miracles, that’s when Verizon and Apple made the announcement that the longed-for day had come.
I figured I could spring for an iPhone at the upgrade price ($199) from my blog account. I would need to, because it would not fit into our new, super-tight, post-England household budget. Besides, Mamanem, who pays the household bills, does not believe anyone needs such a gadget, even though I do. (I’ve tried to explain the critical importance of having constant, excellent connection to my blog readers, Twitter followers and Facebook friends, but she looks at me like I’m babbling in Sanskrit. She thinks of me as being the Dad in the commercial, Tweeting “I’m… sitting… on… the… patio…“)
I started worrying that another barrier could lie in my way: What if the monthly cost of data access was greater than with the Blackberry? No way I’d get that through the family Ways and Means committee.
Last week, I went by Verizon (that is to say, made the trek out to Harbison at the end of a long day) to ask some questions about the upcoming iPhone, asking specifically whether it would cost more per month, and no one knew. All they knew was that I could order one starting Feb. 3. So I left, figuring they’d know more then.
Meanwhile, asking around, I learned to my shock that my friends with AT&T iPhones were only paying $25 a month. This kind of ticked me off, because I was paying $45 a month (part of a family plan account costing well over $200 a month). They had a better device and were paying less for it, which seemed to me outrageous. I began to wonder whether I should secede from the family plan and go with AT&T after all. AT&T had been tempting me with an offer for a TV/internet/landline deal that sounded better than what I had with TimeWarner; maybe I could save even more by adding mobile…
Then someone told my wife that I was probably paying more than the usual because when I got the Blackberry originally, in January 2009, it was on a corporate server (you know, “Corporate Server” is on my list of potential names for my band). This hassle sort of ticked me off at the time, because up until that time I had had a company phone, but now the paper was making people go buy their own phones, and then be reimbursed a set amount that, of course, would not match the full monthly cost of the device. Two months later, I promptly forget that enormous injustice when I learned of another innovative cost-saving measure — I was laid off. No one at Verizon ever told me that I was paying $45 a month because I was initially connected to a corporate server. Nobody at Verizon noticed that I was no longer connected to anything of the kind. So for almost two more years, I paid $15 too much a month.
Last night, it being Feb. 3, I went back to Verizon, hoping for some answers. I was happy to learn that an iPhone would NOT cost any more a month for the data. Then I told the guy that I suspected I was paying too much a month already, and he looked it up, and said yes, I was. So he fixed it, and said from then on I would only have to pay $30 a month for data. I asked him whether I would be reimbursed for all those overpayments. He said no, quite flatly. This was one of those techie sales people who makes you feel like all your questions are stupid and an imposition on his valuable time (every question I asked, he answered with a tone and a look that said, “Are you quite done bothering me?”), so the cold look in his eyes as he let me know what a stupid question the one about reimbursement was was in no way a departure from the rest of our conversation.
He said if I wanted an iPhone, I’d have to order it online, and that the first day they’d have them at the actual store would be Feb. 10, but that if I weren’t in line by about 5 a.m., I probably wouldn’t get one.
I had thought that the new iPhone would work on the new 4G network when that rolled out, but he said no, it wouldn’t.
Then he raised a new problem… he mentioned, in passing, that in moving to an iPhone I’d lose some data — such as old voicemails. Well, I didn’t care about that, but it made me wonder: Would I lose any of my 2,044 contacts I’d accumulated over the years, starting in my Palm Pilot days (and when I say “contacts,” I mean several phone numbers and email addresses each, street addresses, extraneous notes about each person — the crown jewels to me, and quite irreplaceable) or my calendar, and would it still sync with my data on my laptop? (As you may know, I lost access to it all on my computer for several months after a disastrous Outlook crash.) My stuff was all on Google now, connected to my gmail account (which is what brad@bradwarthen.com is), so surely it would work, right? He said he didn’t know. When I insisted upon knowing, he wearily passed the question on to another Verizon employee. She didn’t know either. So I asked the clerk whether he thought I should get a Droid instead, since it is built on Google. He shrugged. I asked him what he would do. He said he had a Droid, and showed it to me. I asked whether he was thinking at all of getting an iPhone instead, and he said, no, not unless they gave him one. Which they wouldn’t.
To me, there is little point to a PDA — Twitter and email and all aside — if the contacts and calendar don’t sync smoothly with something also accessible via laptop. Might as well have an ol’ dumb phone as that.
Lose all my contacts, or even not be able to sync them smoothly? Must give us pause: There’s the respect that makes technological indecision of so long life. I was 99 percent sure that there was no way Steve Jobs would make something that wouldn’t connect smoothly with gmail data. But that wasn’t good enough. Sure, I could go home and order an iPhone online, but I wouldn’t be able to get my questions answered first. Even if I could chat with a person online, to what extent could I trust their assurances? Wouldn’t I need it in writing? And no online salesperson would have time for that — there were millions of others who wanted to buy the thing without asking stupid questions and making demands.
So I began to wonder whether I should do the equivalent of what I do with movies — not rush out and see them in the theater, but wait for Netflix. Patience is, after all, a virtue. Maybe I should even wait until 4G was out, and the rumored iPhone 5, which (maybe) would run on the new 4G network. Maybe, after a few million people actually start using Verizon iPhones, I could find out from some of them whether they sync well with Google. Or I could just go with a Droid. But I’ve looked at both, and like the iPhone SO much better.
I had also learned that a new Blackberry Curve would only cost me $29. So if my old Curve was dying (and it seems to be), maybe I could get one of those now, and wait for more info on how the iPhones actually work. Except that that would use up my upgrade. And without the upgrade, the iPhone would cost more than $700. Which might as well be 7 million. So that’s out.

What to do, what to do? I was too tired to figure it out last night. Today, I had a busy morning of meetings with clients and such. Twice during the morning, I had to reboot my device to check my email or the web. Once, it did that thing where it dies completely, and has to be force-reset. So I’m going to have to do something.

At lunch today with Lora — the most fanatical of my “iPhones are better” friends — I started blathering about my dilemma. While I was doing so, she glanced at her device and informed me that Verizon had just run out of iPhones.

So now I don’t have to think about this for awhile. Until the Blackberry dies completely, that is.

Isn’t it wonderful living in our modern age, with all these fantastic devices to make our lives easier?

Welcome back to the ‘sphere, Laurin!

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Did y’all know that Laurin Manning has returned home to the blogosphere? I expect you DID know, because she’s been blitzing the media the last few days. Here’s her new blog. And here’s her Twitter feed. And she was on Pub Politics the other day. Note below.

And some people think I’m media-savvy. (No, really — some people do. I didn’t say how many.)

Laurin’s candidate Vincent Sheheen didn’t make it, but Laurin has apparently accepted the mantle of loyal opposition to keep his successful opponent straight in office. Someone has to do it, I suppose, and I can’t, because I’m too shy.

An example of Laurin’s Haley accountability efforts:

An intrepid reader points out that according to this article in The State this morning, Gov. Nikki Haley met with fellow Budget and Control Board members Sen. Hugh Leatherman, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Dan Cooper, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, behind closed doors….

So what’s the big deal? Well, the three of them constitute a quorum of the powerful five-member Budget and Control Board, a public body that controls much of the administrative functions of state government. Brian White, head of Ways and Means sub-committee for health care was in attendance too, so they were obviously discussing health care, budgets and deficits. Under the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, meetings of public bodies must be open, and a “meeting” is the “convening of a quorum of the constituent membership of a public body, whether corporal or by means of electronic equipment, to discuss or act upon a matter over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power.”

Intrepid reader remarks: “Where was Loftis and Eckstrom? Transparency so the public can see government, or secret meetings defying the rule of law? Where are the minutes of the meeting? Almost 300 million on the table for deficits and they meet in private and without all members.”

Smoke-filled room indeed. Not exactly the sunshine and transparency we heard so much about in the 2010 election.

It’s good to have Laurin back, and I don’t say that for any sort of political reasons (heck, even Will Folks is glad to have her back — and rightly so). This isn’t business; it’s personal. Laurin was one of my first blog friends back in the early days of my old blog, and helped me find my way as I was figuring the medium out, because she had been there and done that. Despite her tender years, she was old in Blog Years, compared to me. Back in 2005, SC political bloggers were a mutually supportive community, and Laurin was one of the most helpful.

Go check out her new effort. You might want to get oriented by reading her introductory post. If you forget where he blog is at any time, find the link in my rail at right.