Podcasts Are Changing Politics Now the Way that Talk Radio Changed Politics in the 1990s

I visited Reagan's Presidential Library about a year ago. I was so struck by the obvious: Reagan had mastered radio and TV before he entered politics. He'd been an radio announcer, then movie star, and then had a radio commentary program before running for office. He was an incredibly effective politician in large part because he had mastered mass media. (He won re-election with nearly 60% of the popular vote and with 98% of the electoral vote.)

He left office with early onset dementia and talk radio came in to fill the gap that this communicator had left. Reagan left office in 1989, the year that Rush Limbaugh's radio career took off.

What talk radio did for politics after Reagan's presidency, podcasts are now doing for politics in the years after Obama's presidency.

Radio fractures attention with lots of ads and artificial deadlines (news at the top of the hour, traffic reports every 15 minutes, etc.). To keep you tuned in, it has to provoke. To get callers, it has to create controversy.

By contrast, podcasts don't have to fit any time slot. The same podcast could be 26 minutes one week and 66 minutes the next, depending on the guest and conversation. No one calls in, so they can explore ideas without feeling the need to make them argumentative. People have time to explain nuance, explore causes, and talk about possibilities. Concise is nice but inadequate for some conversations. Conservatives on talk radio simply have to defend the past and that lends itself to concision; progressives on podcasts are trying to define a new future and that process lends itself to long digressions rather than quick quips. Some issues have taken a long time to develop, will probably take a long time to resolve, and might - just might - take more than 3 minutes to discuss. Oh, and some topics have more than two sides, more than two options for moving forward. Podcasts lend themselves to exploration and not just advocacy and I think they were a big influence on what happened in the 2018 election and what will happen in this year's election.

I enjoy Ezra Klein's podcasts. This conversation of his with Ta-Nehisi Coates is really timely and also a good example of what is possible in a longer conversation that isn't perpetually interrupted by ads and is more intent on manufacturing possibilities than dissent. You may enjoy it.

The Ezra Klein Show: Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful

Freud, Jung, Hidden Impulses, the Collective Unconscious, Hitler, Putin, Conspicuous Consumption and - Finally - Community

Freud's Couch Was Sort of a Bed

About a century ago two competing models for modern media emerged in the U.S. and Germany. Using what they were learning about psychology, the Nazis created state propaganda to sway the masses to serve the interests of the state and advertisers in the U.S. used those same insights to serve the interests of the corporation. (A fascinating documentary, the Century of the Self, makes this argument and can be found here.)

William James published what some argue was the first textbook on psychology - the Principles of Psychology - in 1890 and Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 and Civilization and its Discontents in 1930. If you visit the apartment in Vienna where Freud pioneered psychotherapy you don't just see that the Freudian couch was actually a bed. (Freud thought that a bed was a safe and  cozy place from which to free associate but perhaps the preponderance of sexual references would have given way to a preponderance of food references had he instead used a kitchen table.) What you get from the museum that once was his office is this very exciting sense of the mind as a new frontier. Rather than blame spirits or madness for weird thoughts and behavior, these early psychologists were taking a scientific approach to the mind, hoping to better understand the impulses that seemed to lay below the seemingly thin veneer of our civility. Jung's concept of the collective unconscious might be suspect but it gets to the reality that something binds us that is almost mystical and that these impulses could be tapped to sway large groups to do strange things - like drive to the mall on a sunny day or shout angry slogans at political rallies.

These insights were exploited with new and transformative technology of that time. The radio was the first technology to allow people across an entire nation to hear about the wonders of the Third Reich or nylons and electric razors and it was quickly followed by TV.

Obviously it made an enormous difference whether a community used these powerful new media technology to promote the interests of the state or the corporation. Someone once said that the book most likely to change minds in the Soviet Union would be the Sears Catalog. Magazines, newspapers, radio and TV shaped minds - and thus communities - as only churches and sacred texts had before. And it was no coincidence that the state and corporation undermined the dominance of the church last century.

This century's transformative media is the internet and the social media it has enabled. The shift in advertising revenue from newspapers to the internet has shattered old business models and forced a scramble to discover new audiences and sources of revenue for reporting and commentary.

And curiously, the choice about whether this model will be funded by the state or the corporation, by advertising for political interest and shared values or great values on products you'll love, is still in question. This week's senate hearings with the social media giants Facebook, Twitter, and Google gets to the question of how social media has been used to manipulate voters and thus American policy rather than merely focus on getting us to buy more goods.

It's worth noting that this is social media.

About the same time as the emergence of the radio and television, a third really powerful technology emerged: the telephone. This was intimate and personal and allowed two people to communicate and in the process strengthen relationships. I think it's telling that so much of the internet is experienced on a phone. Even though actual talking on the phone is not even in the top ten activities people do with their phones, what they're doing is closer to what was done on the phone last century than what was done with TV and radio. They're creating and feeling part of a community.

Community is a third goal, different from the goals of consumption and propaganda. I think one thing we're seeing in the success of Twitter and Facebook is the strong impulse to belong. You can dismiss this as tribalism but I think it speaks to communities of the mind and shared values, to what it means to be human and feel the part of something larger. It's worth noting that the strength and vulnerability of these brands is that they are platforms. Zuckerberg doesn't make editorial decisions about what posts your Aunt Leola or cousin Curt should make on Facebook. They do. Your friends are rarely selling goods or trying to win votes for the political party they are starting. (Although I admit I would be interested in seeing the posts of someone who was starting a new party; that sounds like an interesting person.) They are simply connecting, sharing what they are proud of, what impresses them, what they are worried about and what made them laugh. The third way beyond media as a tool for conspicuous consumption or political propaganda is media a tool for creating communities of the mind, of shared interests and simple friendships. It's not novel that people would do that; it is novel that people could do that across distances, with a tool more inclusive than the phone or the kitchen table.

The Most Overlooked Reason for Growing Polarization in Congress

An interesting study here depicts how little overlap there is in voting in Congress compared to what it was decades ago.

As you can see, Republicans and Democrats are more clearly voting along party lines.

Why?

One overlooked reason is likely the reliance on national media and the easy access of anything a politician has said. Once upon a time a politician could say things that let him establish a brand but then go negotiate and vote in ways that might suggest he was insincere about his campaign promises. To win in many districts you have to be clearly conservative or liberal. Then, once the vote comes, you have to vote consistent with those promises or you will be taken down in the primary. And your constituents will know about it because you can't hide your record or speeches in this age of Google and online data.

It is possible that we aren't getting compromise that helps a government to function because politicians aren't allowed leeway to negotiate. Instead, they're expected to be "true" to their principles and promises which means they're unable to compromise and reach agreement. The result? Even when one party owns both houses of congress and the white house it struggles to pass any significant legislation.

What Trump Will Do to Continually Raise His Ratings - You Won't Believe What He'll Do Next

It is doubtful that any man has more fiercely craved attention than does Donald Trump. Throughout 2016, his ability to attract and hold our attention seemed to wax and never wane. Just when we thought he had topped himself, he found a way to outrage more. Not content merely to lead his rallies with chants of "Lock her up!" about his political opponent - a tactic more befitting to a banana republic than the world's first modern democracy - he then wound up his crowd with an indictment of Clinton that ended with, "Oh well. Maybe the 2nd amendment people will take care of it." A death threat that even banana republic leaders don't make on camera. And on it went, all throughout his campaign, an escalation of outrage that continued to get him more and more attention. Now that he's president the coverage has become even more intense.

Here, then, is a recap of his amazing ability to get higher and higher ratings. I've added four at the end of the list, forecasting simply based on his repeated ability to raise ratings.

So far (in rough order)
1. Has some success as a NY real estate developer.
2. Builds biggest casino
3. Goes bankrupt
4. Coauthors best-selling book
5. Becomes star of wildly popular reality TV show
6. Stirs up birther controversy, claiming that the nation's first black president must not have been born in the country.
7. Announces run for presidency with claim that Mexicans coming across the border are rapists and murderers.
8. During the campaign, brags about the size of his penis in a presidential debate, threatens to lock up his political opponent at rallies, is caught on tape bragging about sexual assault, asks the Russians to release illegally obtained Clinton emails, insults a series of people, including a gold star, Muslim family,  etc., etc., etc.,
9. After election claims that some neo-Nazis are good people, fires or loses a string of key White House staff (including a speaker who is fired within 10 days), insists Congress pass healthcare legislation that he calls mean, insults a series of Republicans he'll need to pass any legislation, threatens to walk away from NAFTA, NATO, Paris Climate Accords, challenges his secretary of state (who called him a f*ing moron) to an IQ test competition, etc., etc., etc.

Then (a prediction of things he'll do to continue to gain even more attention)
10. Is put on trial by Mueller and Congress for colluding with Russians to win the 2016 election
11. Is found guilty and sentenced to prison
12. Forces an armed standoff before surrendering to federal agents (the most watched TV up to that point)
13. In prison is paired with a black Muslim roommate, something that is aired each week for an hour in the world's most popular TV series ever.

What Would We Be Fixating on if Trump Didn't Control the Media Narrative?

Because Americans couldn't look away from Trump, they now can't look away from Trump. A question worth asking is What would Americans be fixating on if it weren't a topic that Trump pointed us towards?

For about a year, Americans (myself included) could not look away from the train wreck of a candidate who was Donald Trump. He offended everyone from veterans (dismissing McCain's sacrifice because he prefers heroes who weren't captured) to women (bragging about how he can grab anyone's pussy because he's a star) to anyone with a triple-digit IQ ("I know more than the generals," "I know all the words, all the best words"). He kept the country incredulous throughout his entire campaign. I honestly thought at one point that he'd made a bet with some friends about all the things he could get away with before finally dropping in the polls. (Of course now we realize he has no friends. He has only sycophants and people who fear him.)

We couldn't look away from the candidate and now the price we pay for our inability to simply dismiss him and move on with a normal campaign is that we now can't look away from the president. He might gut our healthcare. He may start a nuclear war. He might jettison an investigation that would prove he colluded with Putin to seize the White House. He might pardon any racist who has committed any crime. Now he is the most powerful leader in the world and the damage he can do is worse than any hurricane.

One of my beliefs about us is that what we fixate on we head towards. Like a little kid learning to ride a bike, we steer in the direction of the thing that captures our attention. It's worth being careful about what seizes your attention because - whether it's fear of being alone or poverty or looking foolish - what you fixate on could become your reality.

We're living towards the end of the information economy, a time when little seems capable of holding out attention. In every direction there is a new distraction and it seems shiny at first. Trump's genius was knowing how to seize and hold attention. Now, of course, what he does has very real consequences, whether it is failing to initiate aid to Puerto Rico, Florida or Texas or initiating nuclear war. Before we could not look away. Now we can't look away.

One thing we do know about Trump, though, is that he creates the biggest distractions when he has the most to hide. Talking about "fire and fury" with North Korea or tweeting about firing black athletes who protest are topics that are sure to horrify or embolden people and pundits. And as Twitter and the airwaves become full of these topics, less attention is paid to the mounting evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election.

What should the American people and pundits be angrily debating? Not taking a knee in protest. Instead, they should be angrily debating whether the same rules of the Olympics hold with our elections. In the Olympics, if they discover that the gold medal winner cheated, the silver medal winner gets the gold. Once we prove that Trump cheated to win the election, the presidency should go to Clinton. That seems both obvious to me and like a topic that Americans should fixate on. This is unprecedented in our history and, it seems to me, worthy of our focus. Let's start that conversation.

GDP Grew 4.6% in 2nd Quarter (Politicians and Media, Committed to Bad News, Look the Other Way)

The final estimate is that the GDP grew by 4.6% in the 2nd Quarter of this year, according to today's report from the Department of Commerce.

Consumer spending on durable goods (things like cars and refrigerators) and business investment were up 14.1% and 9.7%. Consumers spending more on purchases that could be deferred demonstrates that they are feeling more confident about the economy, as does businesses spending more to invest in the future.

It's not just the best quarter since 2011. It matches the best quarter since before 2007.

But you won't hear much about it. Not on the news, not from politicians. It is in no one's interest to present positive news. A reporter on Bloomberg said, "There's no reason to look at GDP growth today." Other news outlets, apparently agreeing, simply failed to mention it in their top of the hour reports.

The Obama administration is still pushing for programs that would create more jobs and raise median income. To say that things are going great makes it harder to argue for those programs.

The Republicans move blithely from one irrelevant and bone-headed argument to the next, whether it's invading the Middle East or paying for two wars with a tax cut or screaming about how huge deficits during the Great Recession are going to blow up the economy or how Obamacare is going to create huge deficits and blow up the economy.They repeatedly show themselves completely tone deaf on policy and - sadly - in tune on politics, managing to win the attention of media and voters without ever actually being right about anything of substance.

Liberals think it's awful that the GDP is growing because corporate profits are going up and it is only the rich who are getting richer. So for them, the economy actually sucks and numbers to the contrary are misleading. Misery still exists and they'll focus on it. Liberals fail to see the humor in Woody Allen's quip, "I can't enjoy a meal as long as I know that someone, somewhere is starving."

Conservatives think it's awful that the GDP is growing because it suggests that Obama's and the Fed's policies might actually be sensible rather than disastrous. Today's most influential conservatives are ideologues who think that pragmatism is the worst kind of betrayal and wouldn't admit that government policies could have any positive impact even if the fastest growing economy of the last quarter century was communist.

The media think it's best to ignore mention that the GDP is growing robustly because it undercuts an incredibly lucrative narrative that brings up ratings. Whether they're trying to get ratings from liberals outraged at how only the 1% are benefiting from this recovery or from conservatives who are clinging tightly to their belief that the world is getting worse and has been since Adam and Eve's expulsion from the garden, and that any proof to the contrary is either fabricated or fleeting. Bad news is good news for news outlets. People stay tuned for news about hurricanes, not 70 degree weather.

It's an odd time. Never has technology and business innovation offered more potential and yet rarely have people been so gloomy about the future. If a huge swath of us get wiped out by Ebola, we'll look back chagrined at what petty things we whined about. If - as I think - we'll hit an inflection point that makes us more prosperous and privileged than any previous generation has dreamed about, then we'll look back chagrined at how incredibly pessimistic we were at the dawn of this change. In either case, the committed pessimism strikes me as absurd and increasingly takes a commitment to denial that hopefully fewer and fewer people will be able to muster.

Scandals, Policy, and Fast & Slow Thinking (About that IRS Scandal)

Daniel Kahneman begins his book Thinking Fast and Slow with a picture and an equation.

In an instant, 90% of people know that this girl is mad. 

By contrast, 90% of people take at least a few seconds to calculate the answer to this equation.

37 X 4.

Some things we can do so quickly and effortlessly that we don't even think that we're thinking. Other tasks make us very aware that we're thinking.

The media - and by extension the political dialogue - is defined by the fact that we can instantly judge scandals but it takes time and effort to judge policy. (Not that we always resort to actual judgment for policy; once we know whether a particular proposal is considered liberal or conservative, we can judge it as quickly as we can this little girl's mood.)

The federal government has nearly 3 million civilian employees. When they do something wrong, the question is whether it actually stems from policy or - even better for the media - conspiracy. If they were just acting on their own - mavericks in the system - it may qualify as a scandal but it is no indictment of the White House. (Unless, of course, you have mavericks in the White House like McCain and Palin who would, presumably, encourage maverick behavior.) 

Abu Ghraib and My Lai were atrocious but don't seem to have been the result of either White House conspiracy or policy; neither Bush nor LBJ were ever indicted in these awful acts and it would be unfair to judge them by those events.

By contrast, it really is fair to judge LBJ and Bush by the wars (occupations?) of Vietnam and Iraq. Those are the result of policy, choices that emanated from the White House. It's harder to judge whether those were good decisions. My Lai and Abu Ghraib? We can all confidently criticize those as wrong.

Conspiracies never make as much difference as policies. Abu Ghraib and My Lai did not kill as many people or cost as much money as the Iraq and Vietnam wars, did not have as much impact on the region. 

Yet policy is boring. It requires slow thinking, the same plodding thought that solves equations. Scandals, on the other hand, are exciting. It lets us rely on fast thinking, letting us judge them almost instantly. They make us feel smart because they are easy to think about. 

Scandals rarely matter. Policy almost always does. And yet savvy media and politicians will continue to feed us scandals and largely ignore policy. Not because that's a smart thing to do when it comes to running a country. Instead, they do it because it makes us - and them - feel smart.

ADD News Covers Causation

I remember once stumbling across two maps about the same time. The one showed European countries color coded by when the serfs had been freed. The next map showed those same countries color coded by per caipta income. To my eye, the correlation was striking. And it suggests that one of the best ways to raise income here in the 21st century is to free your serfs back in the 17th century.

So much of what passes for analysis today ignores causation that dates back much further than Monday. While this might make for some invigorating arguments, it does little to reveal any actual causation or, for that matter, suggest change of any substance.

There is one caveat to this. While creation is slow, destruction is quick. When an event is actually caused by some action only a short time before, it is almost inevitably destructive - at least in the realm of economics and progress.

What if Twitter & Facebook Were Revolutionary?

When we listened to just a few, we listened a long time. Politicians and pundits were expected to go on at length - speeches and programs of 30 to 60 minutes, essays and books that were hundreds of - or even a hundred thousand - words.

But today's model is less about spending time with a few respected voices than spending time with lots and lots of friends and friendly - or not so friendly - voices. Even if we double the time we spend collecting news and opinion, we have to fragment it over more and more people. This necessarily forces concision, forces us to condense our thoughts into fewer words. 

Brain cells continually communicate with each other, but they are very efficient at it. These cells tend to communicate by exception, minimizing the "I'm here" signal. The brain already burns an enormous amount of energy even with this minimalist model. This efficiency is the only way to allow billions of cells to be connected. 

Facebook status comments, tweets, and texts seem to be moving us towards this model of communication over a broader net of people - a truly distributed model that doesn't dispense long messages outwards from some central point (like radio or TV) but instead sends lots and lots of short messages between nodes, or people. This model is not about hierarchy; it is about connection. 

For centuries, the progression in the West has been towards dispersing power outwards rather than concentrating it in a few. It seems as though we are now rapidly evolving a communication and reporting model that supports this more than ever. 

Stay tuned: power follows the flow of information and communication. Our old institutions that place power at the top - from church and schools to governments and corporations - are going to rapidly evolve as the communication structures that hold them in place shift. In fact, they used to call this kind of thing revolutionary. This could get really interesting. 

Time for Real Business News

In today's world, we rightfully praise brave reporters who work inside of repressive countries, struggling to report and analyze facts. But right here in the US, we have closed societies that get even less objective reporting than what comes from these countries: the corporations that define so much of our societal norms, incomes, and menu of products and services are largely exempt from real reporting.

Imagine even something as simple as the approval ratings of CEOs and senior management by a companies' employees, something akin to the approval ratings of presidents or Congress. "Do you approve of the strategic direction of your senior management team?" Or, "Do you think that the CEO is adding value to the company?" would be incredibly revealing questions that could be asked of employees at, say, Fortune 500 firms. Investors, prospective employees, strategic partners, customers and - of course - current employees would greatly benefit from such an insight. As it is now, though, the thing that passes for business news is simply movements in stock price and new product announcements. And when reporters talk to anyone about the company, it is inevitably a CEO or other Chief of some kind. This is akin to taking the word of only the president in a country when trying to understand it.

Modern corporations define far too much of the modern world to be exempt from reporting standards similar to what we subject democratic countries and their leaders. (And as the Wikileaks brouhaha has revealed, even supposedly open Western nations react badly to the equivalent of diplomatic gossip being leaked.) It's time for this to change. The question is, what network is brave enough to pioneer a new standard for business reporting? And speaking of business, it seems to me that such reporting would make for good business.

Ask Not What Your Media Can Do For You (Parallels Between JFK and Obama)

Today at the 6th Floor Museum, I couldn't help but think about some parallels between John Kennedy and Barack Obama.

Kennedy was a candidate whose charisma helped him to win in spite of the fact that many questioned his youth and status as a minority. (Kennedy being Catholic was probably a bigger obstacle to becoming president in 1960 than was Obama’s being black in 2008.)

JFK angered many by supporting Civil Rights. LBJ predicted that this would cause Democrats to lose the south for a generation or two, as good old boys switched affiliation from the Democratic to Republican Party. (The working class used to more predictably vote Democratic in the south.) 

Curiously, in spite of the backlash of anger in reaction to desegregation in many conservative circles, no conservatives today argue for a return to segregation.

Obama angered many by signing legislation to ensure health care for all Americans. Today respectable conservatives argue that Americans who haven’t money enough for their own coverage or medical care ought to face the prospect of death or bankruptcy. I predict that in 50 years, universal health care will be more like desegregation in that no normal conservative will argue for its reversal. 

Like Obama, JFK seemed to be more loved and adored abroad than at home.

But the parallel that is perhaps most unsettling was the kind of hatred felt towards JFK and Obama by mainstream conservative groups. The day that JFK came to Dallas, business leaders there had taken out an ad in the daily paper making a series of outrageous accusations against Kennedy. About 5,000 flyers were passed out in Dallas accusing Kennedy of treason; like the newspaper ad, these flyers accused Kennedy not just of bad policy but of actually betraying the constitution. Some of JFK’s people advised him against visiting this, the most hostile city in the US. And in this milieu of hatred, a lone assassin acted.

Looking at the arguments against Kennedy by conservative groups, one sees how little has changed in their tactics over a period of 50 years. They don’t resort to reason but instead try to inspire fear. They conflate a willingness to negotiate with a capitulation to the forces of evil (communism for Kennedy, terrorism for Obama.)

While Oswald may have acted alone, it is worth noting that he acted in Dallas, not Boston or New York. Alligators do better in swamps than pastures; some environments are more conducive to certain kinds of people.

The most important thing is to create a culture that feeds a dialogue about what kind of country we’re creating. We can’t afford to create a culture that is hospitable to alligators. You can do something about this.

Ask not what your media can do for you. Ask what you can do for your media. It’s time to turn the channel whenever you hear nonsense reported as if it were fact, or cancel subscriptions when you read an article that can’t distinguish between reporting conflicting (even if absurd) opinions and actual investigative reporting. And, most importantly, demand that your media sources distinguish between really bad policies and evil people. Anyone should work to kill legislation they don't agree with; no one should work to kill people they disagree with.

Today is the 47th anniversary of JFK's assassination. It's worth thinking about.

Whatever Happened to Jobs?

Two months in a row, jobs have disappeared. There is no more important economic issue we face right now and the parties need to define why this is and what they will do to address the problem.

From 1980 to 2000, the American economy created almost 2 million jobs per year. For the first decade of this century, the economy has LOST about 200,000 jobs per year.

George W. Bush stimulated the economy enormously - jacking up spending and lowering taxes. In spite of that, during his administration, jobs were created at about 1/10th the rate as during Clinton's administration. And of course, the slow creation of jobs under Obama's policies has reversed, and on net, job losses each of the first two years has been about 2 million.

I have some theories about this but they are just that - theories. I do have some facts, though. The Republicans have shown themselves irrelevant to this problem by clamoring for deficit reduction - calling for budget cuts in a time of near-double digit unemployment. Whatever questions we have about how to create jobs, we can be pretty sure that this is a good way to destroy them. The Democrats, too, have shown themselves irrelevant to this problem. They ask for more time for their stimulus package to work (or, rather, put Americans to work) but are unable to explain why massive stimulus has had so little effect on the economy. And they holler about candidates who dabbled in witchcraft.

This problem of job formation would be problematic in the best of times. It is compounded by the fact that the media is all about defending or attacking the major parties rather than exploring a problem for which there appears to be no obvious solutions.

Time to Copyright Investigative Journalism

When our founding fathers wanted to encourage more innovation to make a better world, they gave us patents. Patents reward an inventor with a monopoly for a time, making the payoff for sacrifice and applied creativity greater. The result is more of a good thing.

Investigative reporting is also a good thing. With facts and a better understanding of what's going on, a community can make better choices. The crooks in high places are more careful. Yet even as we get more media coverage, we seem to get less investigative reporting. Maybe its time for something like a patent or copyright for news uncovered.

Imagine that you learn a story behind how the number of deaths attributed to medical malpractice are generated. Right now, you do the work to generate this story and the instant you publish it, it becomes news. Talk shows, columnists, and other reporters can use your startling insight to opine and make their point about why malpractice insurance or litigation should be changed. You do all the work and they get the buzz.

But what if every time they cited your study, you'd get a little kickback, like royalty paid for use of a patent? Think about how much money could be made by infusing the news with ... well, with news. Right now, all the money is in generating opinions and the republic is no better for it. What if it were an investigative reporter who made the big bucks for unveiling a link between DEA officials and Mexican drug cartels, or showing how earmarks have made political donors rich? Think how much more energy would go into revealing what is really going on if that were the case.

A community simply hasn't got a chance to be well governed without a good media. Maybe it is time to less passively wish for good reporting and put in place some laws that actually reward it. It worked with invention.

Facts Just Aren't News Any More

I used to rely on Newsweek for a recap of the week. A way to make sense of the headlines I'd seen in passing. Newsweek has apparently fired their reporters and hired columnists.

Don't get me wrong. The columnists are great - Fareed Zakaria is insightful and Sharon Begley is the kind of science writer who makes us laymen feel a little smarter by the end of her piece.

The good news is that these columnists seem to have opinions that they generally subordinate to facts. The bad news is that it is no longer clear where those facts come from. Apparently investigative journalism is now too boring or expensive or risky. Their opinions may be more balanced and nuanced than that of Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olbermann, but it is still opinion.

In retrospect, this may have been inevitable. Our generation has grown up with the same main stories. Unrest in the Middle East. Celebrity scandal. Questionable American military involvement in [fill in the blank]. Fiscal recklessness. Lots of health care debate but little health care policy. Global competition eroding American industries. The facts, apparently, change little from news cycle to news cycle. Opinions, it would seem, are less constrained by events and easier to tailor for consumption. But even so, once you've taken the news out of Newsweek, it seems a little weak.

News Warp Up for the Week

I was going to post about the plausible reasons why Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but my list includes only one item: he got Cheney to leave office without any violence. (It's not hard to imagine a scenario in which Biden would have given his acceptance speech with his skin sprinkled with bird shot.)

Communication major Sarah Palin's comments about the value of the dollar now leap straight from Facebook to the Financial Times. Meanwhile, analysts are scratching their heads about why the traditional media is floundering.

And speaking of journalism that makes you wonder who they have not laid off at these papers, Bloomberg has a headline, U.S. Trade Deficit Unexpectedly Falls as Exports Rise. Given that the trade deficit = Exports - Imports, it would only be unexpected if the trade deficit fell as exports rose. This headline is akin to "Residents Surprised to Find Streets Wet After Latest Rain Storm."

NASA scientists had an interesting idea: turn cameras into high-speed projectiles and aim them at what you want to photograph. Their good idea of smacking two spacecraft into the moon as a means to photograph it did not work too well. Curiously, the crashed cameras have yet to return any pictures. This could still change photography, though. Imagine news conferences in which every photo session looks like the incident in which Muntazer al-Zaidi threw his shoes at Bush. Instead of throwing rice at weddings, guests may just throw disposable cameras at the lucky couple. As if celebrities don't hate paparazzi enough already, just wait until they adopt the latest from NASA.

Rush Limbaugh may buy the St. Louis Rams. [The rich and poor just have different toys, Martina Navratilova says. "The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football."] If he does, the team will be easy to defend against. You can hear the defenses they face look at each other before every play, shrug and say, "What do you think? They'll go right again?"

There is a conservative effort to expunge the Bible of its liberal tendencies. In this version, Jesus still heals people but charges for his services.

Processed News in its Purest Form

On a flight home the other day, I put down my book (Michael Connely's Scarecrow) about an investigative reporter losing his job to watch a movie (Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck in State of Play) about an investigative reporter being demoted before coming home to read an article about the death of investigative reporting(The Story Behind the Story by Mark Bowden in this month's Atlantic).

Where the individual was once left to form an opinion about well researched stories, the news outlets have seemed to leap past all that nuance and boring litany of facts and endless prose. Instead, the modern media just provide you with an opinion with minimal time spent investigating or actually reporting.

Well, I've lived on the coast long enough to know that it's easier to ride waves than fight them. So, if investigative journalism is dead, maybe it's time to just go with this trend and offer media 3.0: all opinion, no news.

The point would be to simply provide the reader with their reaction to the news events, without hassling them with all - or any, really - of the facts. Like processed food that skips the actual food to simply provide you with fats and sugars, this news would skip directly to opinions. It might work like this.

Obama's Health Care Plan: you're outraged. (And it's true, really. Whether you can't believe what he is proposing or the opposition he's facing, you're outraged.)

Asian typhoons and tsunami earthquakes: you are so saddened by this.

Iran's plutonium enrichment program: outraged.

Toyota's recall of 3.8 million cars: shocked!

Potential reversal of Jon and Kate's divorce: outraged

.

These would not be headlines that are followed by stories. These would be the stories.

You get the idea. The one real weakness, of course, is that people may begin to realize that they have a fifty percent chance of not needing the service if they simply choose to be outraged at all the news. But for those readers who want to spend 30 seconds finding out just what ought to outrage them today, it would be an invaluable service.

This might just be the future of journalism. [Oh, and for the record? You should be outraged.]

Obama Wants Your Child to be a Black Socialist

Obama will give a speech 8 September in which he plans to encourage school children to become black socialists. The right is outraged.

I wonder how long it'll be before they change the name from "the right" to "the could-you-be-more-wrong?"

Is This Really News?

Obama is issuing the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 16 people and having a couple more over for beers. He's going to need to think bigger if he wants to reverse his declining poll numbers. Like invite the people of Ohio to the mall for a kegger.

A new report indicates that tanning beds are as risky as smoking. Even riskier, of course, is tanning until you are smoking.

The housing market is recovering and house prices are slowly edging back up. If the recession recovery continues, by fall the news organizations will be reporting a new financial crisis: how housing is becoming unaffordable. And then wonder why it is that people tend to dismiss them.

Sarah Palin may host a radio talk show. The thought of her using that medium is rather like the thought of Congressman Barney Frank announcing that he's joining the World Wrestling Federation.

Commentators are alarmed by Madonna's biceps. Have we gotten so numb to obesity that we are now alarmed by muscle? I obviously missed the memo that explains this.

Waiting for Meaning

why do I like this so much?
It seems to explain everything.
- The essence of the message from my brother in law. I don't know what more I could offer by way of commentary or sentiment. It, inexplicably, amuses me. (Is it legal to say that it inexplicably explains so much?)

TV News Offers an Escape from Reality

The other day I'm on the treadmill and I'm watching the TV monitors hanging from the ceiling: CNN, MSNBC, and Fox were all on. As I watched the odd behavior and even odder reporting of the talking heads, I became convinced that the news has changed.

There seems to have been a time when the purpose of the news was to get us in touch with reality, report on what is happening.

After watching Fox report on how Obama is losing so many jobs (in a recession that began before Obama was even nominated by his party) and CNN speculate on whether Michael Jackson's ex-wife will sue for custody of kids we average Americans would not recognize even if they ended up on our porch selling cookies, I can only conclude that reality has become too much. Now even the news has to perform the task previously reserved for TV sitcoms, soap operas, and movies: it has to give us an escape from reality.

Color me strange, but for all my day dreaming, I've always kind of liked reality. Too bad the TV producers don't think I can handle it anymore.