Monday, March 19, 2018

A (satirical?) take on conspiracy theories

"There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment."
- Hunter S. Thompson

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. The good ones tend to involve enough people that there's just no way someone wouldn't slip and say something, thus blowing the conspiracy. For most they're a diversion, an exercise in entertainment. Others truly and honestly buy into them for reasons only they know. While I choose not to live in Conspiracyland, sometimes I feel like I can see it from here.

Like with the gun issue. I can envision a series of events, ending in court, whereby the average person's ability to buy and keep an assault rifle is revoked. It's far-fetched, but I can see it. Apart from the uproar this would cause among certain (but not all) gun owners, gun manufacturers will not be happy because eventually it would remove a revenue stream. What to do while that scenario played out? One might push the idea of arming teachers and other school staff as a way to "protect the children." It could be tied in with a broader good guys vs. bad guys notion that plays to our Old West nostalgia. To push that narrative even further, maybe cities could be flooded with guns to be used for conflict between groups that have more in common than they don't but that are conditioned through economics and social policy to see each other as competitors. The carnage could be highlighted to illustrate why guns are needed for protection. Just like that there'd be a whole new market for gun sales, and the financial effect of an assault weapons ban would be mitigated.

Sticking with schools, let's say one favors charter schools. Perhaps one even thinks public education itself is socialist and should be abolished in favor of straight-up private schools paid for with vouchers, or better yet, out-of-pocket. Reasonably, one might argue, schools should be run like businesses and their success or failure should depend entirely on the market. Good educational outcomes would lead to more business. Naturally, corporate entities would form to serve this educational market on a broader scale, creating investment opportunities for those with capital. One downside is that a lot of people still believe strongly, or at least have a notion that profit motive may not be the best driver of educational outcomes. And there is the issue James Howard Kunstler calls the psychology of previous investment, which is the reluctance to abandon things in which we've made large investments of time and money – i.e. the infrastructure of "the public school system". That's a lot to overcome.

A two-pronged approach to alter public opinion over time might consist of methodically demonizing public school unions – and by association, teachers – and slowly ratcheting down funding for public schools to the point where they can't fulfill their mission. A side strategy to rile up the teachers so as to paint them as extremist and out-of-touch with regular people would be to cut their promised benefits, including retirement and health coverage, so they angrily demand compensation that most people in the private sector don't receive. Those benefits, which include money teachers contributed, could be re-labeled "entitlements." From there it wouldn't be difficult to extend the same strategy to all public employees and even the military.

Once the entitlements beachhead is established, it's possible to open another front, this one against the social safety net – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs. One would start, of course, with Medicaid by painting it as an entitlement demanded by lazy people who prefer to loaf while everyone else works. Then, perhaps playing on the similarity between the two names, start calling Medicare an entitlement, too. Portray Social Security as a bloated bureaucracy that can't be sustained in its current form.

These programs are popular, though, and public resistance to change could be even stronger than with schools. Systematically cutting funding, thereby making the programs less effective, and suggesting the federal employees who administer them include the corrupt, the lazy or the leftist could chip away at public opinion over time. Then one might propose shifting management away from the federal government to the states, giving them more "flexibility." Finally, broach the idea of "fixing it" by privatizing the entire system, which will seem outrageous at first but gradually the shock will wear off and what will be left is a psychological association between these programs and the word "privatization," which through the same drip-drip marketing strategy becomes synonymous with "effectiveness."

It could all work because unions do tend to overreach when it comes to advocating for their members and because some percentage of people are corrupt and lazy and leftist and so it stands to reason that examples can be found among public sector workers and benefit recipients, too. Stories about these examples would need to be emphasized disproportionately in relation to their occurrence.

And lo, there is an app for that. Social media has given all of us a conduit to explore, reaffirm and exploit our natural fear of "others," our distrust of authority and our prurient interests. The weirder and more outrageous the story, no matter how isolated, the better for sharing. And those stories can now be amplified almost instantly, far faster than truth can be discerned, thanks to the use of devices we carry with us all the time. Anonymity has bred internet bravado when it comes to saying terrible things about one another, and our admirable embrace of the right to speak freely opens an unlimited access highway down which practically anyone with almost any view can travel nearly unimpeded. Naturally some people will take advantage of this vital freedom of speech to say vile and hateful things and degrade others to serve their own agendas, or even just for fun. Throw in some way to measure how people feel about all of it, through up or down votes, how often a message is spread or the use of funny faces, and make all that public, too, and the internet becomes a giant popularity contest competing for eyes and likes (or dislikes).

Exploiting our inherent vanity in this way would turn out to be useful in promoting some of these ideas. And the repetitive feedback loop is also the perfect tool for turning once-outrageous ideas into dogma over time.

Of course it wouldn't be long before larger entities like state actors or large private interests began seeking to influence people through these means for their own interests, most likely monetary. Once money gets involved as a motivation it's Katy bar the door in terms of distinguishing news from opinion and true sentiment from marketing.

Then truth dies and we begin searching for some way to retrieve it, or at least revive our faith that a truth exists in some form. Into that void might step various people or entities professing to speak The Truth either as they see it or as it has been imparted to them through means we may not access or understand. And the cycle starts again.

But I don't believe in conspiracy theories. So probably I don't believe any of this is happening.

Friday, June 3, 2016

On clarity of writing, the purpose of journalism, and tronc

"Everyone will now be mobilized and all boys able to carry a spear will be sent to Addis Ababa.
Married men will take their wives to carry food and cook.
Those without wives will take any woman without a husband.
Women with small babies need not go.
Those blind, those who cannot walk or for any reason cannot carry a spear are exempted.
Anyone found at home after receiving this order will be hanged."

- Haile Selassie's 1935 Mobilization Order

UPDATE 6/18/18: tronc realizes its own ridiculousness.

Below is the internal memo former Tribune Publishing (now tronc) CEO Justin Dearborn sent to company employees on June 2. In it he's announcing a "rebranding" of Tribune Publishing into a "content curation and monetization company" called tronc (all lowercase). tronc stands for tribune online content. tr-on-c. The Tribune's motto used to be "World's Greatest Newspaper." It hasn't been great for some time now, but at least the phrase was aspirational. If nothing else it was a goal. What goals can we discern from Dearborn's memo?

There's "creating and distributing premium, verified content," which doesn't exactly stir the souls of journalists or readers. Whoops! I mean content creators and consumers.

Or how about "leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to create an interactive and customized user experience to benefit our 60 million monthly users"? Sexy, huh? God, it just makes me want to curl up on my straw mat by an electric fire, drink some kale juice and interact with my digital experience. Just like the old days.

And what of the name, tronc?

The thing from which it's derived isn't even worthy of capitalization, apparently. "tribune online content." Really we had to shorten that? And what's wrong with the words "Tribune" and "publishing?" That's what Tribune Publishing was – an electronic and print publishing company. That seems to be what it still is. Is the word "publish" so tainted by its association with "print" that it must be banished? Is the name "Tribune" so tied to a mediocre newspaper that … well, let's not pursue that line of reasoning.

As with so much in business today, this rebranding is just smoke and mirrors. They could have continued to call it Tribune Publishing and made the shareholders happy by saying they were going to fire more journalists and use computers to generate content, which is kind of what it sounds like TribCo is going to do. Why go to the trouble of digging through all those Kool & The Gang albums

to find the perfect retro font for the logo and the expense of hiring a consultant to program this Rube Goldberg strategy for getting information to people? Just issue a statement that says "To reduce costs and increase dividends to make shareholders happy, we are going to push the digital thing going forward. Eventually we hope to have mostly computers and just a handful of people producing information. Maybe someday it will be all computers. Please buy some of our stock. And an online subscription. And click an ad. Thanks."

That's at least way more to the point than this murky ramble Dearborn – or his AI doppelganger – produced. But murkiness is the investor relations person's friend. Using language for obfuscation, as opposed to enlightenment, is considered good business strategy. Unlike Selassie's call to arms after Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 – one of the clearest communications you will ever see – there is ample room for interpretation and debate over meaning and intent in Dearborn's memo.

And anyway the goal of Dearborn's note isn't to inspire journalists or entice subscribers. Its purpose is to comfort investors. Early in the trading day after the announcement, investors didn't seem comforted. Tribune Co.'s share price fell 3.4% to open trading on June 3.

I don't pretend to know how to arrest the decline of newspapers and other print media, and I don't know how to generate more advertising or subscription revenue. I think part of the problem with online advertising is that all the page takeovers, flash media and auto-play videos are supremely annoying. People refuse to click on them out of spite. Plus, not enough people are interested in what these pimps are selling. I don't want a personalized cloud technology recommendation from Microsoft and I'm not going to buy insurance from State Farm based on its blinking tower ad on the Tribune's home page. Maybe start charging people to comment on stories. That might work. You want to deposit your particular brand of snark and anonymous internet bravado at the bottom of the story about the Cincinnati Zoo mom? Pony up $1.

Meanwhile, I was struck recently by a prospectus from 1852 for a now defunct newspaper – the Frankfort Mirror. Note how the name clearly says what the thing is to be. Compare its aspirational tone with the rebranding memo below. I'd be interested to read your thoughts on the similarities and differences between them. And for now, Blogger won't even charge you $1 to tell me.

Internal memo to tronc employees from CEO Justin Dearborn:

Colleagues,

Today, I am pleased to announce another important step in our transformation – the renaming of our Company to tronc, or tribune online content. At our core, we remain a content curation and monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified content across all channels. This rebranding acknowledges our important evolution as a company and captures the essence of our vision for the future.

Tribune Publishing has a proud history, with iconic brands that remain the core of who we are. But as we are all well-aware, the media industry is shifting rapidly, and the path to success requires an innovative new approach and a fundamentally different way of operating.

We are embracing this evolution with open arms and executing a transformation strategy focused on leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to create an interactive and customized user experience to benefit our 60 million monthly users. It has been a busy time – in just a few short months, we have already made significant progress, including:

  • Reorganizing the business into new operating and reporting units to increase transparency and drive corporate focus;
  • Launching troncX, our content curation and monetization engine, which combines our existing assets with new artificial intelligence (“AI”) technology to accelerate our digital growth; and
  • Partnering with Nant Capital and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong to accelerate the transformation from a legacy news company to a technology and content company.

    Renaming the Company is the logical next step in this journey and underscores our commitment to completely transform the business – and the industry – and to continue to best serve our readers and the communities in which we operate.

    We will be communicating with you often over the coming weeks about the mechanics of the transition process. Importantly, this change does not impact the name of our proud and iconic brands.

    As part of this announcement, we also announced that the Company will be transferring its stock exchange listing from the New York Stock Exchange to the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. tronc shares are expected to begin trading as a Nasdaq-listed security under the new ticker symbol “TRNC” on June 20. Nasdaq is the home to many other leading innovators and technology companies, providing the ideal platform for tronc shares.

    Separately, you may have also seen that our Annual Meeting of Shareholders was held earlier today in Los Angeles. We are pleased to announce that shareholders elected all of the Company’s nominees. On behalf of the Board, we are grateful for the support of our shareholders, and look forward to continuing to serve their best interests as we execute our strategic plan.

    Importantly, the majority of voting shareholders rejected Gannett’s symbolic, feeble and expensive withhold campaign. We cannot speculate as to what Gannett may choose to do as a result of this rejection, but the best thing we can do is to stay focused on the important work we have underway. I sincerely hope that the Gannett shareholders begin to express their displeasure to the Gannett Board regarding the corporate waste that has been perpetrated these past six weeks with their massive spend on this emblematic campaign. Gannet’s interest in our Company only reinforces the high value of our innovation and strategic vision.

    This is an incredibly exciting time as we continue to transform our Company and industry. As we start this new chapter as tronc, I want to thank each of you for the hard work and dedication that has allowed us to create a better future for our Company.

    Thank you for all that you do.

    Best,
    Justin Dearborn

  • Sunday, December 27, 2009

    Knee Surgery Recovery

    I’ve been watching the snow come down all day. It’s not a hard snow, just a steady stream of fat flakes drifting diagonally through the air and piling up in a fluffly white ground cover. This is the same storm that caused blizzards to the south and west of Chicago. Here, though, just a nice, steady snowfall.

    Here inside, where it’s warm, I have been marvelling at the ability of the human body to withstand and recover from trauma. I had knee surgery on Dec. 3. I tore the anterior cruciate ligament in my right knee this past spring, and the pain and discomfort were to the point where not having surgery wasn't a good long-term option. Sometimes the knee would just wobble, or nearly give out, walking down stairs or stepping off a curb. There were other sharp pains that I later learned were associated with tears in my meniscus. Occasionally the knee felt like it was on the verge of locking up, with shooting, pinpoint pain somewhere deep inside. When that happened, I would shake my knee from side to side, which seemed to help. I learned later the shooting pain was from a flap of meniscal tissue that would make its way into places it shouldn't. The shaking often moved the flap back into place. Again, not a good long-term solution.

    During the week after the surgery, my knee looked and felt like the doctor had inserted a tiny mixer and flipped the switch to "whip." Obviously the surgery was much more intricate than that. The doctor replaced the ACL with a ligament from a cadaver and trimmed the torn pieces of meniscus. As the knee has healed I give the doctor a great amount of credit with conducting a skillful procedure that has improved quickly; the word I have used repeatedly is: exponential. Every day starting on the day the doctor removed the Ace bandage and told me I didn't need a brace, the thing has experienced more flexibility, less pain and less swelling than the day before. Today I experienced a huge breakthrough during a hamstring stretching exercise wherein I lay on my stomach on the bed with the edge of the mattress about mid-thigh. After five minutes, as I slid off the bed, my right knee popped. There was initial pain, but then huge relief. Must have broken through some scar tissue or something, because it feels better today than even some days pre-surgery.

    Here are two photos, one taken six days after surgery and one taken today, 17 days later.

    My right knee still looks bad, still swollen and the incisions are still healing. There's also not a lot of definition. When your leg is basically hanging on your body for two weeks, not doing any work, that's what happens. The left leg is starting to get agitated. It's tired of doing all the work. "A little help, here!" I can hear it saying to the right.

    If today is any indication, help is on the way.

    Thursday, August 20, 2009

    The Myth of the Golden Turd

    I'm glad I went to journalism school when I did, and learned from the people I did and have had the career I've had. Because with people like Rebecca Maitland and Karen Zurawski around, newspapers will be dead in a decade. And when the corpse is buried I'll be glad to still be above ground, knowing I did it the Right Way.

    This Houston Chronicle episode reminds me of a story my good friend Aaron tells about his first interview with a public relations firm, right out of college. As he's in there with one of the principals, another employee comes in with a quote typed on a sheet of paper. He asks the principal with whom Aaron is interviewing if the principal can just say what's written, so it can be properly described as a quote.

    That's really not a whole lot different from Maitland's approach in constructing quotes and searching for someone to whom they can be attributed. But it gets the job of a reporter exactly wrong. As a reporter you dig, dig, dig for information and in the end you take what you get. If you're lucky and/or good, you get better stuff. If you're lazy, you won't get shit. When someone gives you the perfect quote for your story, but refuses to be named or even let you use the quote, you drop it. Does it suck? You bet. It's like getting handed a gold nugget, only to turn it over and find it's a painted turd.

    But a gold turd is still a turd, and crap is no good. So you go back to work and keep digging. That's how it's done, people. Writing takes work; reporting takes work. Being a journalist is not supposed to be easy. You don't just get to ask your friends or colleagues to say shit and then shop the shit around hoping someone will take it.

    Excuse my language, but this story stinks.

    I don't know anything about Maitland as a journalist, but this is one stupendous lapse in judgment. And it's just compounded by Zurawski, who is supposed to be an editor. The proper response for a newspaper editor, when asked about a reporter who shopped quotes like Maitland appears to have done, is, "That's not how we do things here." Period. End of story. There's no need to sell your reporter out; you deal with it one-on-one, not in the media column of an alternative weekly. But you definitely make it clear that the behavior that was described to you is not how your reporters are expected to conduct themselves.

    This isn't rocket science; it's journalism. I know it's Houston and that with the heat and humidity and the Johnson Space Center so close it might be easy to get confused and think things are more complicated than they really are. But they aren't. It's simple. To paraphrase Durham Bulls skipper Joe Riggins, journalism is a simple game: you report the story, you write the story, you publish the story. Got it?

    Friday, August 14, 2009

    Riding With Respect

    This past spring, I joined the Patriot Guard Riders, specifically the Illinois chapter. I thought about it for several weeks before I signed up. How would I feel participating in such a visible group? Would I have the time to devote to it? Finally I came down on the side of "You know what? What they say is true: One person can't do everything, but we can all do something." And so I joined.

    To me it's not about whether or not I support a particular conflict. I'm not in favor of war. What's important to me is showing respect to these men and women who volunteer to serve in the armed forces and who go where they're told when they're told and do what they're told, no questions asked. I can disagree with the policy, and I often do, but my beef is not with the soldiers.

    And I appreciated the PGR's original mission—to provide a barrier between families mourning dead soldiers and those Fred Phelps-indoctrinated wackos from the Westboro Baptist Church who insisted on protesting homosexuality by disrupting the military funerals.


    For several months after joining I didn't participate in any missions. Either there weren't any soldier funerals (thankfully) or welcome home rides taking place nearby or they were at times when I couldn't get away from work. Finally two weeks ago I was able to go on a welcome home mission for Charlie Company of the 178th Infantry Battalion of the Illinois National Guard. More than 550 bikes showed up on a sunny Sunday morning in Monee, and escorted the 130-plus guardsmen to the community center in downtown Kankakee. I was pretty thrilled to be there and be a part of that. And I was glad it wasn't a funeral.

    Then last night I participated in a welcome home ride for U.S. Marine Cpl. Heath "Beaver" Parvis of Lemont. About 50 bikes gathered in the parking lot of a strip mall at 135th Street and Archer Ave. Cpl. Parvis arrived at about 8:45 p.m. After exchanging hugs with family and friends, he shook hands with anyone else who extended one to him. At about 9:15 we escorted him from the parking lot to the American Legion post in Lockport. It must have been quite a sight for the residents of the neighborhoods the procession wound through and for the drivers we forced off the road. Here were three police cars, two fire engines and 50 bikes riding two by two with their emergency flashers blinking, revving their engines and honking their horns.

    As I rode out of the American Legion parking lot later, several of those gathered for the continuation of Cpl. Parvis' welcome-home party thanked me for coming. It's a good feeling, receiving that kind of appreciation for doing something out of my own sense of appreciation.

    One day I'll attend a funeral, and that will be sad. It's inevitable, living as we do in this state of seemingly perpetual conflict. But for now it's nice to welcome some of these people home. They deserve it.

    Sunday, June 7, 2009

    The Bit Man

    I often complain I never write anything, but that’s not true. I write emails and instant messages all day, every day. Some of my favorite turns of the phrase and most insightful analysis have been contained in brief missives I’ve tossed off in the minutes between projects at work. It’s when I sit down to deliberately compose something that I get fouled up and stuck.

    What’s up with that? As much as I don’t want to admit it, I believe I’m a short-attention-span creature of the ‘80s TV generation. I think in sound bites, movie clips and song lyrics. Gotta break myself out of that….

    Friday, March 13, 2009

    Try

    Just a quickie tonight. The urge to write is strong, but I must sleep soon. I’m flying to Cleveland tomorrow afternoon, and before that I have many Important Tasks to finish at work. Not getting enough rest before flying means the immune system is weakened, and as we all know air travel nowadays primarily involves being sealed in a metal tube with a hundred vectors for god-knows-what sorts of germs and viruses.

    The reality is there simply are not enough hours in the day to accommodate “want to” and “need to.” This evening, for example, I wanted to play my guitar for a while, write something serious about Bernard Madoff and greed and fire off a couple of long-overdue emails to friends. However, I needed to do some dishes, pack, shave and, as I mentioned, sleep.

    I dream of writing successful books–novels and nonfiction. I dream of running an insurgent campaign for mayor of Chicago, and winning. I dream of becoming a good enough guitar player to be able to spontaneously pick up and play should I find myself in an Amstel Light ad.

    I believe now that I’ll get around to all of it. Eventually.

    In the meantime, you know that feeling when you’re listening to music and suddenly you hear the words; I mean really hear them? I had that experience recently listening to Suzanna Choffel, a talented singer/songwriter from Austin, Texas.

    (Aside: Choffel and her band were playing at The Belmont in Austin the first night I was in town last April for CNU XVI. It’s not often you see a xylophone as part of a band, I thought when I walked in. I listened to a couple of songs and was hooked. I asked the bartender downstairs who was playing. He said the regular Tuesday night band wasn’t there, and he didn’t know who was filling in. As it turned out, nobody working at the Belmont that night could tell us who the band was. It took me until Saturday to learn it was Suzanna Choffel, and it was the sound guy working the Afrofreque show at Lambert’s BBQ who finally told me who I’d seen.)

    Anyway, “The Challenge”, one of the songs on Choffel’s album “Shudders & Rings”, contains these lyrics:

    I don't want to finish anything I started; that's the problem with me
    I just want it to be finished as soon as I begin it; I just want it to be.

    Everybody wants to know what my goals are; where I'm going and how far
    But goals are for suckers; me I've got dreams.


    I heard her sing that and I thought, she gets it. Later, on “Try,” she sings:

    What do we have against our dreams
    That we don’t try in every way to make them real?
    It’s like we’re all on automatic
    We don’t want anything new to fear.

    Beneath, I am so bold
    An overlooked dream I just can’t afford.
    I have to look it in the eye … and try.
    I have to look it in the eye … try, try … I try … try … try

    This world is huge, but it can feel so small
    When you put yourself between four walls.
    And all I want to do is go, but instead I just stay here.
    Comfort always lends a hand to fear.

    Goodbye can be so hard to say and hear.
    What do we have against ourselves
    That we don’t want to take each chance that comes our way.
    We just sit here in our fear, thinking someday … someday.


    Then I knew she got it. She’s dreaming and at the same time afraid of her dreams. I’m so there. But what’s cool is she’s singing about it on her album. Dream realized, baby. So what’s the message? The way I hear it, we know what’s holding us back and we are not alone. Overcoming inertia requires work. The challenge is out there, for all of us. The first step toward meeting it, is to try. Stop making excuses and succumbing to “shouldn’t” and “can’t.” Shove “need to” in its place once in a while and indulge the creative “want to.” You may lose that hour of sleep you were hoping for. But out of that loss may come some small thing you’re proud of. Another step forward.