Bashing Newsprint

Three recent articles offer advice to newspapers and all propose the same bold strategy-get rid of the paper.

Jettisoning Print

Knight Ridder Sale Could be McClatchy's Chance to Ditch the Print, Go All Online All the Time

Newspapers in Trouble?

In the writers's view the paper is the problem. Online is the future-it's cheaper, it's better. Go for it.

While the articles make much of the fact that traditional print is expensive, they do not provide any hard numbers about the actual cost savings for going digital. It is all fuzzy pronouncements like this.

Those massive rolls of newsprint and the whirring machines they feed that print newspapers are exceeded only in personnel costs on the typical newspaper operation, so getting rid of the first two ought to free up tremendous amounts of capital to be invested in new technologies and perhaps even in expanding the editor staff.

Sounds impressive, but how much of that "expense" is really sunk costs? How does the cost of newsprint compare to the cost of reporters?

None of the writers admit that newsprint might have some benefits for the reader. Is it not probable that some current newspaper readers/subscribers like print because it is convenient, portable, accessible or persistent? How many readers will be lost if a local paper goes digital-only and will the revenue loss be smaller than the cost savings?

A digital-only local paper runs smack into a stark consumer prejudice. Most of us expect to pay for paper but want online news to be free.

Why would any business throw away a solid franchise (the current subscriber/paper model) and stake their future on an untested revenue model that prices the product higher than customers perceive as fair?

None of the articles mention advertisers and that is a huge oversight. How much advertising revenue will a digital newspaper lose? Advertisers expect to pay a lower CPM for online ads. So the Daily Planet Online could lose revenue four ways-lower subscriber base, lower subscription price, lower reader base (for advertisers), and lower rate card for advertising.

Are we really confident that getting rid of newsprint will make up for that lower revenue and allow for more editorial staffers? Once again, let's see some numbers please.

Newspapers are in trouble. But their problems go deeper than the price of newsprint. The digital only option looks like a bold solution, but it is more hype than solid strategy.

Highly, highly recommended

Saddam's Delusions: The View from the Inside

by Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006 (/2006/3.html)

EDITOR'S NOTE: The fall of Baghdad in April 2003 opened one of the most secretive and brutal governments in history to outside scrutiny. For the first time since the end of World War II, American analysts did not have to guess what had happened on the other side of a conflict but could actually read the defeated enemy's documents and interrogate its leading figures. To make the most of this unique opportunity, the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) commissioned a comprehensive study of the inner workings and behavior of Saddam Hussein's regime based on previously inaccessible primary sources. Drawing on interviews with dozens of captured senior Iraqi military and political leaders and hundreds of thousands of official Iraqi documents (hundreds of them fully translated), this two-year project has changed our understanding of the war from the ground up. The study was partially declassified in late February; its key findings are presented here.

Another look at Nancy Grace

Reading Nancy Grace

I think it has the best summary of why these shows and their stories about missing girls dominate cable news:

The beauty part of the missing girls angle is that the story never ends; it's news that stays news ten years later. The girl is always still missing. Once you're missing, you're missing forever -- unless you're found, and that's even better. And if someone does finally get convicted, the story still doesn't have to end, because you can follow them through the trial and imprisonment, checking in at intervals with the victim's parents for doses of reliably gut-wrenching emotion.

Not only does tabloid television get high ratings, it's cheap as hell to produce. Essentially you are taking old archive footage from local stations and splicing in a few routine interviews to make it new. Night after night you promise the latest developments in the case to an audience who have no other way of knowing that there haven't been any developments.

Shirazi puts Grace into an ideological context, but that part of his argument is unpersuasive.

Nancy Grace is the first sub-ideological demagogue I have encountered. She doesn't shout about terrorists going nuclear in the Middle East or Mexicans pouring over our borders. She keeps things relatable: white girls raped by blacks in the tropics, and wives killed by their no-good husbands.

[snip]

When I was young, sympathy for victims was seen as the congenital weakness of the liberals, who were invariably called bleeding hearts. Today it is the conservatives who worship a cult of martyrdom validated by varying degrees of pain, revelling in stripes you earn by lashing yourself. So these days a TV personality denies being a journalist and dissociates herself from truth-twisting attorneys, and instead derives her authority by painting herself a victim speaking for other victims.

Glorified suffering is the bedrock foundation of popular conservativism. The real objection to the pathos of liberalism is that all external sympathy is misplaced, that any available sympathy should be drawn toward my own collapsed ego just as light is drawn backward into a black hole, that your sympathy and my own self-pity should merge perfectly with no wasted remainder.

First off, the writer ignores that the fact that the Aruba story has a white villan. Joran van der Sloot, like Scott Peterson, is a real life example of Tom Wolfe's Great White Defendant.

More importantly, conservatives are not the only ones pushing this tough on crime attitude. Clinton, Carville, and Begula used it in 1992 to prove that the Man from Hope was no liberal. A centerpiece of that repositioning was the execution of a brain-damaged man during the campaign in New Hampshire. (See here and here.)

Grace, like Clinton, panders on crime because it seems to be an issue that transcends ideology in a nation that is politically divided. Politicians want votes, anchors want eyeballs. Trivial issues and tabloid stories get each of them what they want.

Blame the victim headlines

The Junk Yard Blog has found another one.

Flipped Morality Tale at the Baltimore Sun

See here for previous example.

Nancy Grace is a caring individual

As an anchor, Ms. Grace is a firebrand, less concerned with legal nuance than with her own feelings about a case. As a boss, according to sources inside and outside her show, she presides over a sometimes-difficult workplace. The program is on its third director in a year, which sources described as a high rate of turnover at any television news program. At least four members of her staff have met with the network’s human-resources department to discuss problems with the management of the program, according to three sources.

From Rebecca Dana in the New York Observer.

One of the articles i mentioned before

Downhill Olympics

The vulgarized Winter Games feature pranks and petulance, not grit and beauty.

CNN's disGrace (and your little Fox, too)

A devastating look at CNN's rating star.

From the Daily Howler:

On the other hand, Grace is so repellent a figure that she serves a useful purpose; she helps us see the moral and intellectual corruption spreading through our mainstream "news" culture.

The piece dates from 2003 and subsequent events prove the Howler a prophet.

The one grace note: Grace's performance does helps us see where our corrupted "news" culture is going.

So true. Thanks to her appalling performance as a guest on Larry King Live she was given a show of her own on Headline News.

This point cannot be repeated enough:

During the summer of 2001, bin Laden's gang was preparing its mission. But on King, they had bigger things on their minds; people like Grace (and the late Barbara Olson) were trying to smoke Gary Condit for murder.

The Howler includes links to a bunch of Condit-Levy posts. They deserve a careful reading. They demonstrate just how useful lies and rumors are to a tabloid frenzy and how little effort cable news makes to screen out such chaff.

While cable chased Condit, Atta and KSM plotted. I hope our Aruba madness is not the prologue to another 9/11-type shock.

Fox News has plenty of shows as bad as Nancy Grace which makes them worse than CNN. For some reason, FNC has escaped criticism from the press-bashing right blogosphere. If the New York Times or PBS ignores important stories from the War on Terror, that is really no surprise. But FNC's obsession with tabloid crime feels more like a betrayal.

Fox was supposed to be different. After 9/11 it wrapped itself in the flag and donned olive drab. Then it lost interest. It decided to chase stories about missing white girls. The MSM might be giving us an incomplete picture, but FNC is not trying very hard to correct it.

OK. Back to Grace. The Howler has a soundbite from 2001 which has new resonance:

GRACE: You know, the fact that [Condit] would lie about the simplest things, his relationship, a sex relationship-how are we supposed to believe what he says about more important things, such as the last time he saw her? Did they argue? Was she pregnant? Was there a five-year plan? I can't believe anything the man says.

Now that we know about Nancy Grace's own problem with the truth, that is a funny quote in a painful sort of way.

The American Conservative Surprises

The latest issue has a dead-on article about the Olympics by Diana Moon and a nice appreciation of Christopher Lasch by Jeremy Beer. (Neither on-line yet.)

TAC is a maddening magazine. It is hard, most of the time, to tell what their conservatism represents (other than antipathy to the neocons). I keep resubscribing, though, because each issue usually has one or two articles that get it right-- articles that could never appear in National Review or The Weekly Standard.

An international Enron

Read David Warsh's latest reporting on the Harvard/Russia/Summers scandal: Gangsta-nomics. In many ways this was a more serious scandal than Enron. The culprits were more tightly connected to the executive branch and the shady dealings have poisoned Russian/American relations.

The only problem is that this is a purely Clintonian scandal and the bad guys are professors at Harvard, not Texans.

Steve Sailer has more here.

This could be the basis for a very useful book

It appears there's a fine line between an Army of Davids and a Mob of Clowns, both of which are empowered by the new communications technologies.

From the Coyote at the Dog Show

They really make it hard to like them

T.O. joins the Cowboys

The reviled receiver joined the Cowboys on Saturday, signing a three-year, $25 million contract to play for Jerry Jones and Bill Parcells in what promises to be an interesting combination of strong personalities. The deal includes a $5 million signing bonus, with salaries of $5 million this year, $8 million in 2007 and $7 million in 2008.

Balkan echoes

Dimitri K. Simes, "Jihad, Uninteded," The National Interest, Winter 2005/2006

One would have thought that the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the simultaneous attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the strike on the USS Cole in 2000, among other incidents, would have alerted policymakers that a new major challenge to American interests and American lives was in the making. However, instead of combating this threat, the United States focused on "wars of choice" and haphazard attempts to "nation-build" in the Balkans.

The architects of this tragic diversion are unrepentant and even proud of what they have done. As Richard Holbrooke, the person largely responsible for shaping a flawed U.S. policy in the Balkans, wrote in the Washington Post in July 2005, "Was Bosnia worth it? As we approach the 10th anniversary of Dayton, there should no longer be any debate."

Holbrooke's claim that there should be no debate about Bosnia demonstrates his chutzpah, but it does not pass even minimal analytic scrutiny. If the United States had wanted to stop the war, it could have supported the Vance-Owen plan-rejected by the Clinton Administration at the time as allegedly too favorable to the Serbs. And given the administration's inaction on genocide in Rwanda, it is not surprising that major powers like China and Russia found it difficult to accept that humanitarian considerations alone motivated the United States to act, first in Bosnia, then in Kosovo, especially when American protŽgŽs engaged in ethnic cleansing operations of
their own.

The "unintended consequences" of the Kosovo war in 1999 were to poison U.S. relations with Russia and China alike, leading eventually to the Clinton Administration's contemptuous rejection of Russian proposals for joint action against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda-proposals that resurfaced after 9/11 and eventually contributed to removing the Taliban from power.

*********

Mr. Holbrooke wants the United States to support independence for Kosovo, whether the democratic Serbian government accepts it or not. But what if ignoring Serbian objections discredits the moderate and pro-Western politicians now leading the country and results in a rabidly nationalist government there, reopening the Balkan can of worms? What if Russia takes the predictable position that what is good for Kosovo should be good for other unrecognized but de facto independent states such as Nagorno-Karabakh or the transdniester Republic? What of separatist regions like South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which share borders with Russia and where local populations overwhelmingly do not want to be a part of Georgia? In the latter case, the United States would face a series of unpleasant choices. Would the United States, in the name of principle, compel a pro-American Georgian regime to abandon its desire to restore the country's
territorial integrity? Or would Washington side with Tbilisi, especially if it decides to use force to recapture these regions? If the latter, the United States could find itself embroiled in a major dispute with Russia that could effectively end cooperation on other matters of vital importance to the United States. And how would the United States force a resolution granting independence to Kosovo through the UN Security Council over probable Chinese objections, without offering guarantees that Taiwan will never become a separate, independent state? Or argue that Kosovo deserves full independence without setting a dangerous precedent that the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey may seek to emulate? The potential for trouble seems serious and real.

More on the Balkans


Croatian President Franjo Tudjman
The Balkans' (not much) lesser evil

In 1995, Tudjman again showed his talent for limiting his brutality just enough to get away with it. That summer, he invaded the Krajina, the Serb area captured by Milosevic in 1991. The 200,000 Serb residents fled to Serbia rather than fight. Tudjman punctuated the arguably justified invasion with a vicious exclamation point. He had his troops burn down 70 percent of Serbian houses, passed laws to confiscate Serb property, and allowed gangs of Croat thugs to murder the few elderly Serbs who remained. "What he did after the invasion was inexcusable," says Peter Galbraith, then U.S. ambassador to Croatia.

Even so, Tudjman again restored himself to the West's (semi-) good graces by signing the Dayton Peace Accords and agreeing to let Serbs return to their burned homes. But he has not allowed them to return in fact. Only a handful of the 200,000 Serbs have come back to the Krajina. (He has also refused to extradite the Croats indicted for war crimes to the Hague, perhaps fearing they would implicate him.)

The War against Serbia: Illusion Versus Reality

In the Krajina region of Croatia, the United States tacitly accepted Croatia's ethnic cleansing of 300,000 Serbs because the killing weakened the Serb position in that country and in neighboring Bosnia. Because Turkey is a U.S. ally, the United States not only accepted the Turkish regime's brutal repression of the Kurdish minority (another conflict in which casualties have been much greater than those in Kosovo) but actively aided Ankara by helping apprehend the Kurdish leader Mohamad Ocalan.

Michael Kelly: A Perfectly Clintonian Doctrine

Finally, (4), it is at bottom a fraud. Note the use of the term "world community." There is no world community. The war against the Serbs in Kosovo was an exercise not of any global village but of the great powers, and the great powers pick and choose their moral causes. The great powers stood complacently by in the summer of 1995, when the Croats ethnically cleansed their turf in Bosnia of 300,000 Serbs, and they are standing by now, as the Kosovo Liberation Army and returning Albanian refugees rapidly cleanse Kosovo of 200,000 Serbs.

The emerging all-Albanian reality of Kosovo underscores the underlying fraud of the Clinton Doctrine, which is the idea that what the West is forging in the Balkans is a triumph for pluralism and democracy. It was a very good thing that the United States finally acted to stop the Serbs' slaughter in Kosovo, as it was a very good thing when it finally acted to stop the Serbs' slaughter in Bosnia. But it is nonsense to pretend that these accomplishments gave rise to a reversal of ethnic cleansing or anything like a pluralistic democracy.

Consider the reality of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as detailed in a searching article by Gordon N. Bardos in the April issue of the Harriman Review. As Bardos reports, four years and two missed deadlines for troop withdrawal after the Dayton Peace Accords, Bosnia is a protectorate of NATO divided into what Bardos calls three "ethnities" -- the Serbian entity of Republika Srpska, and a Croatian territory and a Bosnian territory that are uneasily federated under Dayton. Each is run by nationalist hard-liners backed up by ethnically pure military forces.

U.S. gave green light to terrorists in Bosnia

Yugoslavia policy helped build base in Europe for Hezbollah, others

The Dutch government has released a report that details the alliance between the United States and the Islamic effort to help Bosnian Muslims. The report determined that the United States provided a green light to groups on the State Department list of terrorist organizations to operate in Bosnia. This included the Lebanese-based Hezbollah. For the European Union, the U.S. effort marks a stain that calls into question Washington's war on terrorism.

For nearly a decade, the Clinton administration helped Islamic insurgents aligned with Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilize the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were allowed to bring weapons and explosives to Bosnia-Herzegovina and fight Serbs and their allies. The insurgents also were allowed to move further east to Kosovo.

The United States was helped by a range of Muslim countries – from Iran and Saudi Arabia to Turkey. In short, the Clinton administration thought that the stronger the Muslims in Bosnia, the weaker the Serbian hold over Yugoslavia.

Today, there are tens of thousands of Islamic insurgents throughout such countries as Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and many of them are moving west to Austria, Hungary, Germany and Switzerland.


A Massacre in Kosovo

A member of the United Nations police force murders his American colleagues.

ON APRIL 17, as reported in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, two American women and an American man were slain in Kosovo, and eleven people were injured when they came under armed attack by a Palestinian from Jordan. The killer was a member of the same body in which they served: the United Nations police force in the territory.

The male American, who died of his wounds, was Gary Weston, of Vienna, Illinois. The Palestinian, Sergeant Major Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali, was killed when members of the contingent in which the Americans were traveling returned fire.

In the days since the first reports of the crime were received, more details have emerged, which make what was already a scandal for the United Nations in Kosovo even more alarming. First and most disturbing is that the dead assailant, Ali, is being investigated for connections with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. Second is that the same Ali had visited the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, home of the Wahhabi Islamic sect that produced al Qaeda, only a month before he was sent to Kosovo in March.

[snip]

Because Kosovo media operates under heavy U.N. censorship, the whole truth about this atrocity may not be known for some time.

Another reason why Steve Sailer may be the bravest man in the blogosphere

The Official Bad Guy of the Balkans is dead:

In a nutshell

Powerline gets to the heart of the matter:

The real issue here is: what is the Constitution? Justice Scalia has famously noted that the Constitution is a legal document which, like all legal documents, says some things and does not say others. In Justice Ginsburg's view the Constitution is, on the contrary, a roving charter for nine individuals to decide what "basic fairness" requires. It should hardly be necessary to point out that the former understanding, which was universal until quite recently, is a charter of freedom, inasmuch as the people's representatives can vote on amendments. Conversely, the "basic fairness" approach is a form of tyranny in which a small elite can impose its policy preferences on the rest of us.

It is also utterly unworkable. There is a reason why people reduce legal documents to writing: it's the only way to know what the deal is. Under Justice Ginsburg's approach, the "law" is ineffable. There is no way to know from one day to the next what it might be.

A point worth pondering

Regardless of whether culture change is or is not a part of the strategy, companies have to recognize that the very introduction of strategic management into a company requires a change in that organizations culture.

Ian Wilson, The Subtle Art if Strategy

All too often, the formal "culture change" initiatives end up fighting the strategic initiatives. I have blogged my thoughts on some aspects of this problem here:

Two ways to plan

Why corporate change is hard and failure almost inevitable

Why corporate change is hard and failure almost inevitable (II)

Why corporate change is hard and failure almost inevitable (III)

This must mean something

Looking at my traffic stats, I found something interesting. On Wednesday Ace linked to my post about prison movies. On Thursday, the Junk Yard Blog linked to my post on the Church arsons. Later in the day, Slate linked to that same post.

Both Ace and JYB sent over 200 readers this way. The Slate link brought less than 10 readers here.

If I worked for Gartner or Forrester, I would be tempted to spin this into a Grand Theory. Of course, the nature of the theory would depend on who was writing the check. I could say that this traffic differential shows that the typical blog reader is a restless, open-minded hunter of new information with an innate desire to verify and evaluate sources. In contrast, the readership of the MSM is unengaged, credulous, and happy to absorb the predigested content set in front of them. OTOH, I could say that this proves that most of the readers of the MSM see no value in blogs which means that the Army of Davids is no threat to the MSM hegemony in information space.

Like I said, it all depends on who signs the check.

The obstinate persistence of myth

From the New York Times:

From the beginning, investigators had theorized that the fires had no racial motive, as there had been for many church fires throughout the Southeast in the mid-90's. And that, they said, was borne out.

There was no racial motive this time. But then, the mid-90's "racial hate-crime arsons" were mostly hype and hoax. See Michael Fumento for more.

Prank?

Ala. Church Fires Started 'As a Joke'

Nothing to see here, just move along.

Oh, wait a minute:

An academic standout, his true love was deer hunting. But hunting was intertwined with booze, and a rebellious anger crept into Cloyd's personality.

After he got a speeding ticket - 85 mph in a 70 zone - his Web site musings grew cryptically violent. In a posting to Moseley last summer as the two planned a road trip, he wrote, "Let us defy the very morals of society instilled upon us by our parents, our relatives and of course Jesus."

or how 'bout this?

Said he was Satanist:

DeBusk, whose home address was listed as the Russet Woods subdivision in Hoover, had other interests as well. Friends said he and Ben Moseley were Satanists, which DeBusk told friends was "not about worshipping the devil, but about the pursuit of knowledge," according to Burgess.

DeBusk invited Burgess and others to go demon hunting last summer. Burgess said it didn't amount to much.

"All it ended up being was us playing guitar in the woods while a few of them got drunk," Burgess said. "I didn't think anything of it."

Burgess said he and DeBusk discussed religion loosely, debating whether pets go to heaven and what heaven looks like. "He told me I was one of the more intelligent Christians he's talked to," Burgess said. "Coming from a Satanist, I didn't know quite how to interpret that."

Ian Cunningham, a sophomore who lived in the same dorm as DeBusk, recalled returning from the campus chapel recently to snide remarks about being saved from DeBusk and Moseley. "He would constantly mock me," Cunningham said of DeBusk.

I'm still trying to figure out how arson and cruelty to animals can be written off as youthful pranks. Usually they are referred to as indications of a budding sociopath.

A little shot of Chesterton

I came back to the same conclusion: the sceptic was quite right to go by the facts, only he had not looked at the facts. The sceptic is too credulous; he believes in newspapers or even in encyclopedias.

Orthodoxy, Ch. 9.

What would we do without academics?

Here I thought that "Angels in Chains", "Chained Heat", "Red Heat", and "Fugitive Rage", were hyper-realistic portrayals of life inside women's prisons. Luckily, a professor did the hard work to discover the truth and set me straight.

But if you watch these films, you won’t know anything about the inside. From depictions of the inmates and their behavior, to the lack of security and impossible happenings of the celluloid facilities, the content of the four films viewed for this project can at best be described as misleading, and at worst, as damaging.

You, too, can be enlightened by reading DYKES, GANGS, AND DANGER: DEBUNKING POPULAR MYTHS ABOUT MAXIMUM-SECURITY LIFE in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture.
--------------------
Thanks Ace.

Three stories

Three 6 Mafia: Oscar Winners

The whole process leading up to the Three 6 guys getting the award is just dumbfoundingly unlikely: young white director decides to make a movie about a pimp who wants to make crunk music, films it in Memphis instead of Atlanta or Miami or Houston, recruits legends from the local underground to write songs for the movie instead of out-of-town ringers. Said movie does well at Sundance, becomes surprise hit, quietly becomes one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the year despite not really being all that great.

Oscar Winner Hits Angry Chord

Several people interviewed said they found it ironic that the academy -- praised earlier in the evening by actor George Clooney for breaking down barriers for African Americans with an Oscar to Hattie McDaniel in 1939 for her role in "Gone With the Wind" -- would glorify the travails of a man who earns his living exploiting women.

Erika Scott, 17, a Largo High School eleventh-grader, said she was a little shocked. "Growing up where I live, you see, all the time, people who are wanna-be pimps and aspire to be pimps," she said. "Knowing that there is a song that tells the world about what goes on with people like that was surprising, and I was surprised that it won. It made me wonder what the world has come to."

Area Juvenile Sex Rings Targeted Using Anti-Trafficking Laws

The teenagers testified for hour after agonizing hour about their months of prostitution, quietly describing the tricks they turned on some of the District's and Maryland's seediest strips.

They performed sex acts with men in cheap motel rooms, alleys and the back seats of cars, they said. Clients had 10 minutes or it cost extra. One girl, 14 when she was recruited, said her quota was $500 a night, with various sex acts ranging in price from $50 to $150. Every dollar she and her "

That man, Jaron R. Brice, 27, of Northeast Washington, was convicted last week of sex trafficking of a minor, transporting prostitutes across state lines, pandering and child sexual abuse -- a litany of federal charges that probably will land him in prison for decades.

The paradox of elite tastes

Steve Sailer has this beauty from Steven Pinker:

People are surely better off with the truth. Oddly enough, everyone agrees with this when it comes to the arts. Sophisticated people sneer at feel-good comedies and saccharine romances in which everyone lives happily ever after. But when it comes to science, these same people say, "Give us schmaltz!" They expect the science of human beings to be a source of emotional uplift and inspirational sermonizing."

The decadence of cable news

Tim Rutten unleashes a broadside against Nancy Grace in the L.A. Times:

Grace, on the other hand, has no journalistic background whatsoever. Even her employers at the once reliable and now lamentable CNN Headline News are careful to call her simply the "host" of the rhetorical free-fire zone they have created for her. (It's the kind of programming decision that probably would have been forestalled by a slightly more expansive reading of the pandering statutes.) Grace's standing to badger, fawn, scold and grimace her way through 60 minutes of Time Warner's airtime every weeknight rests on just two credentials, which she endlessly repeats: She once worked as a prosecutor in Atlanta and she is a "crime victim" whose fiancé was murdered 27 years ago.

As it turns out, both credentials are a little crumbly around the edges.

He also has a theory about cable's slide into decadence:

Turner has a loose lip and an unsteady personality, but he never wavered in his belief that serious news has a place on television. The same cannot be said of the corporate apparatchiks now running CNN and CNN Headline and cringing before Fox News' success. They're the ones who have unleashed Grace on their Headline network and defaced CNN's regular report with things like Jack Cafferty's bizarre and incoherently histrionic intrusions into the afternoon news and the increasingly demagogic Lou Dobbs' second rate imitations of a Howard Beale rant.

These desperate acts have been triggered by CNN's inability to come even close to matching Fox in the ratings. The commercial genius of Rupert Murdoch's network, of course, resides in Roger Ailes' intuition that the talk radio model could be transferred to television, thereby avoiding the expense of real reporting while cultivating viewers with a taste for conservative partisanship and, more important, entertainment

As with most nostalgic myths, this one glosses over the less edifying bits of history. It is true that Murdoch and Ailes built Fox prime time around a talk radio and tabloid model. But the serpent was in the garden long before Roger met Rupert. Turner gave us Crossfire and Larry King. Greta got her first show on CNN. CNBC wallowed in the OJ trial and the Jon Benet Ramsey case in a way that Rush Limbaugh never did.

What remains striking is the evident lack of courage and imagination at MSNBC and CNN. Instead of trying to find a viable model for serious news, they meekly imitate the Fix recipe.

Nancy Grace

Her story of victimhood is central to her TV appeal and her on-air style. This New York Observer article suggests that she has twisted and exagerated parts of that story to make it more dramatic and compelling. In the process, she lied about the legal system she represents.

Because of what happened in Georgia, Ms. Grace has said over and over, she knows firsthand how the system favors hardened criminals over victims. It is the foundation of her judicial philosophy, her motivation in life, her casus belli.

And much of it isn’t true.

OU bomber: questions and dots

Mark Tapscott and Flopping Aces still have a lot of good questions about Joel Hinrichs and his suicide by bomb.

An odd way to put it

Wanted Man Gunned Down By U.S. Marshals

CHESTER, Pa. (AP) -- The man being sought for the shooting death of a central New York police officer was gunned down by U.S. Marshals last night outside Philadelphia.

"Gunned down" implies that Walter Richardson was shot in an ambush with no opportunity to surrender.

The reality is that he was a murder suspect who refused to give himself up and tried to shoot it out with police.

A man police believe was a cop-killer barricaded himself inside a Chester rowhouse last night, shooting at officers who had surrounded the home before being killed.

Few details were immediately available, but it was clear that about 10:30 p.m. an exchange of gunfire took place between a man holed up at 818 McDonald St. and officers from the U.S. Marshals Office, State Police, Chester Police and Delaware County detectives.

James Webb

Hugh Hewitt writes about the Virginia Senate race. He wants to make it a straight-up referendum on the Iraq war. But I think that will be only part of the story. Webb may also wage the campaign on the broader issue of the Bush administration's handling of our armed forces.

HH calls for modern Lincoln-Douglas debates in the campaign. I hope he gets them. But for that to happen Webb will have to avoid capture by the Sheehan left and not repeat the mistakes McCain made in 2000. At the same time, warbloggers and Fox News will have to give Webb an honest hearing instead of the Murtha treatment.

See also:

The Wall and Fran Townsend

ABLE DANGER: Filling in the blank spaces

ABLE DANGER: Is it fair to bring up Tailhook?

Blast from the past

Kaus from 2002

As a friend of mine once quipped, Carville and Matalin are famous because she's the woman who ran the worst presidential campaign in history, and he's the guy who beat the worst presidential campaign in history.

There are many paths to celebrity and most have nothing to do with competence.

The new tech boom

The Boswell of Silicon Valley offers some smart advice to would-be entrepreneurs.

I thought his assessment of the opportunities in the Blogosphere was especially good:

3. Marketing the Blogosphere -- OK, here's another blog-world opportunity. As I just noted, of those millions of blogs out there, the ones most likely to survive are those that nail down some serious advertising -- more than the current run of T-shirt makers and art galleries. Someday General Motors will place ads on Lileks, Kos and Little Green Footballs, but not for a while (most newspapers will have to die first).
The big, established advertising agencies are sticking to what they know best -- placing ads in the mainstream media -- stuff they know their advertisers read and trust, and where there are established reader profiles and metrics. Still, sometime in the next five years, hundreds of millions of advertising dollars are going to shift over to the blogosphere. Find yourself a place in the middle brokering that shift. Aggregate blogs, develop reader profiles and demographics, put together realistic rate sheets, and pitch, pitch, pitch. You'll starve for a while, but if you are good and can survive, when the big agencies finally come knocking, you'll enjoy one handsome buyout.

I think he is on to something, but i think there is another option that is also out there. I discussed it in this post.

The indispensable innovator is the advertising genius who will make internet advertising a serious competitor for print, TV, and radio. Once that happens, ad money will flow to the audience bloggers attract.

But right now, blog ads and pop-ups just don't fit the needs for most big advertisers.

Andrew Jackson

Dean Barnett is exactly right:

there is no denying Jackson's accomplishments. He is the Godfather of our democracy as surely as Washington is the father of our country.

Many, if not most, of the traits that distinguish American politics from European politics trace back to Jackson. The French can understand Jefferson. The English can see Washington through the prism of Cromwell or Wellington. But Jackson and the culture he embodied remains an enigma to Europe and our own coastal elites.

Nancy Grace: Defending the Bill of Rights is like working at Auschwitz

CNN's ratings star unloads this in a USA Today profile:

CNN Headline News dynamo Nancy Grace has no love for defense attorneys — especially those who know that their clients have killed people but use every possible legal maneuver to get them off or get them better deals. In other words, for doing their jobs.

"What they do is entirely acceptable under the Constitution and the court of law, but I just don't personally like it," Grace says. She quickly notes that her best friend is Renee Rockwell, a defense lawyer and regular on Nancy Grace.

But, she adds, "when people say defense lawyers are just doing their jobs and are necessary for our system, you could say that about a lot of people who claim they're just doing their jobs. You could say that about the guards at Auschwitz."

I am not really surprised. I just expected he to be a little more careful in expressing her disdain for a the idea of a fair trial. Someone like Grace was in at the start of most lynch mobs. We despise lynch law but CNN somehow gives this woman a talk show.

And shouldn't attorneys be held to a little higher standard when it comes to these kind of outbursts?

More on Grace here and here.

Madden and the SuperBowl

This is one of the best articles i've read on Madden's worse than mediocre performance at SB XL.

A few snippets on the two plays that drew the most post-game bloviation:

The fourth play of the series is the first of several that have dominated post-game conversation. On a play where the coverage of the Steelers’ secondary was every bit as good as the blocking of the Seahawks’ line, resulting in a seemingly endless downfield search and scramble by Hasselbeck, Darrell Jackson completed his route, then had to ad lib in an attempt to work himself free. In an end zone where he could have gone in any direction to try to elude Chris Hope, Jackson ran directly at Hope as though he was run blocking, forcing Hope to brace himself, then pushed Hope hard enough with his right hand to make the safety take a step backwards and propelled himself away in the opposite direction. Madden initially characterized the play as “When you think of push offs, that’s not the kind you think about.” Perhaps it would be easier to call if it looked more like a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine gives Jerry a double fisted pounding to the chest with an emphatic “Get out!”, but, short of that, it was a push off, as Madden would later confess. If it was a legal technique that Jackson used, then offensive coordinators around the league would be clamoring to teach their receivers the maneuver and had the official not called it, the league would undoubtedly be sending the Steelers another apology after the game. But Madden’s characterization of the play leaves many, particularly those with sympathetic to the Seahawks and officiating antagonists, believing it’s a call that should not have been made and that the referee who called it somehow doesn’t understand the spirit of the rule, when it was the analyst who was wrong.

****

Of course, another play that stirred controversy was the holding call that nullified a long Seahawks’ pass to Jeremy Stevens. Replays showed that Locklear did in fact grab Haggans’ jersey and pulled down to knock Haggans to his knees. Stating almost indifferently that he didn’t see any holding and that “you can call holding on any play” is simply not good enough, not in the Super Bowl, not on a play as critical as that. It was incumbent on Madden to study the play and make a declaration one way or the other, then support his argument. He was the expert.

**********

Clark Haggans was a mismatch for Locklear. He provided the only consistent pressure the Steelers had all day. The fact that Haggans got a great jump on the holding play because he could anticipate the snap count since Hasselbeck hadn’t changed up the cadence was never mentioned. Had he been credited properly during the broadcast, it’s possible that it would be Haggans not Hines Ward going to Disney World.

Credit where due: Tunch Ilkin, the Steelers's radio analyst, pointed to Haggans as an “under the radar” guy who would come up big against Seatle.

Demurral: I don't share Pasek's confidence in Tony Kornheiser. For my money, Kornheiser has become lazy and over-extended and substitutes a third-rate Borscht-belt routine for real thought and reporting.

What i think is funny is how Pasek praises Kornheiser:

Had Tony Kornheiser believed that a call was bad, you can be sure he would not only say so, but he would say so in several different sarcastic ways, then he’d proceed to question the referee’s eyesight. One of the delicious inputs we all anticipate from Tony will be to belittle on our behalf those who deserve it. Bad referees and pompous players like Randy Moss whose effort often doesn’t match their paycheck are sure to hate Tony’s input, words that will undoubtedly polarize viewers into two categories: those who will laugh loudly at what he says, and those on the other side of his tongue who will think violent thoughts when informed of what he’s said.

Kornheiser may do all of that. I'll hold my applause, though, in light of this bit of Tony history:

When Stephen Rodrick noted that "sports television turns [pundits'] columns into shrill, non-reported versions of their televised rants" in Slate earlier this year, Tony Kornheiser (who, in addition to his responsibilities as a Washington Post columnist, hosts a morning radio show and co-hosts Pardon the Interruption in the afternoon) had a conniption fit, calling on the Post (which had recently purchased Slate) to fire the writer.

It will be interesting to see how the thin-skinned Kornheiser handles the reviews when the season opens. Equally interesting will be Theisman's reaction when Kornheiser goes into his comedy routine to cover-up his lack of preparation.

I guess Texans are right

They are tougher than the rest of us. And politer, too.

Wounded hunting partner regrets trouble

His face marked with tiny birdshot wounds, the lawyer shot by Vice President Dick Cheney while quail hunting left a hospital Friday, saying "accidents do and will happen" and apologizing for the trouble the incident had caused the vice president.

"My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with," Harry Whittington said, his voice a bit raspy but strong in his first public comments since being shot on a south Texas ranch six days earlier.

Seventy-eight years old, gets hits with a load of birdshot. Walks out of the hospital in a week. And apologizes for the bother caused to the shooter.

Bryant Gumbel

His remarks on the Winter Olympics were not the first time that he played the race card under the guise of sports commentary.

Here's an example from early in his career as recounted in Mark Kram's excellent Ghosts of Manila

Seven months after the first fight, Bryant Gumbel, the editor of Black Sports, grafted on the temper of the day and stripped some more flesh from Frazier. He was a mediocre writer and thinker, excellent qualifications for the large success he would have on television's Today Show with a shallow, hard-worked ultra-sophistication, a cool broker of opinion next to Howard Cosell's weaselly conniving. Gumbel never let a bandwagon pass without jumping on it or trying to blow out its tires, depending on the mood of the day; the ultimate limo liberal. Durham said: "He's got soft written all over him, a country club black." Gumbel said he walked home after the fight with tears in his eye for Ali; a hired weeping pallbearer for the times and its temporarily stalled here. Strapping up his backbone, he wrote a piece meant to further Ali's campaign for victory by proclamation, to blur Frazier's definitive prize: Is Joe Frazier a White Champion in Black Skin?"

Ghosts of Manila: The Fateful Blood Feud Between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier

The MSM's insular echo chamber

Rabbi Daniel Lupin on one reason for the media's Cheney obsession:

Not only have most liberals never gone hunting, most don't even know anyone who goes hunting. In fact most wouldn't know a Browning A-Bolt long action Stalker from an office stapler. They simply cannot believe that someone who hunts actually made it to the White House.

What they don't realize is that they sound like fools to large parts of the country where hunting is a common pasttime.

See also this.

A good way to cut down gun crime

The Cincy Enquirer has a good story about straw purchasers and LE efforts to combat this often overlooked crime. What an idea--- target the criminals who buy guns for other criminals.

This race is about to become interesting

NRO has a good article on James Webb's run for Virginia's Senate seat. (HT: Irish Pennants)

I wrote about Webb and the GOP here. A smart, courageous man who understands the demography his state. George Allen could be in big trouble.

Threee women

Susan Sontag

Betty Friedan

Phyllis Schlafly

I liked this


52 REASONS ESPN/ABC/DISNEY SUCKS

The comment thread started back in November, it is still going with over 700 entries.

SuperBowl Wrap-up

I liked this one for a bunch of reasons.

A couple of choice bits:

So, that officiating … really not nearly as bad as a lot of people want to make it out to have been. The refs made a lot of good calls that get blown all the time: they rightly picked up the flag against Michael Boulware for helmet-to-helmet contact; they correctly overturned Hasselbeck's fumble; they didn't flag anyone for any ridiculous almost-but-not-quite-out-of-bounds late hits. Most of the whining has been that certain things that are in fact penalties should not have been called. Sorry … what? That's the best you can do? "Yeah, he did it, but it shouldn't have been flagged." Oh, okay.

-Let's see if I can cover these without wasting too much time: Darrell Jackson pushed off. Roethlisberger's ball probably crossed the plane, and if it didn't, there was no way to tell from the replay. If a pass rusher is between a lineman and the quarterback and his progress is impeded, he's being held. No, one foot in-bounds and one calf touching a pylon is not a completed catch, no matter what John Clayton said three years ago. Not every horse-collar tackle is illegal, and Porter's wasn't the sort that is. Am I missing any?

The truth is, most of the whining is as bad as it's been because of the apparent results of the plays that they negated. Not nearly as big a deal would have been made about the push-off on Jackson if it hadn't been an apparent touchdown. No one would have questioned the hold on King of Holding Sean Locklear if it hadn't wiped out an apparent long gain. Of course, such whining ignores the possible contributions that said penalty-drawing actions made to the plays in the first place. Would Hasselbeck have completed the pass as he was being drilled by Clark Haggans ? I tend to doubt it. Would Jackson have been able to change his momentum enough to catch the ball without pushing off? Who knows. Physics suggests otherwise. Would Hope have had a chance to jar the ball loose if he hadn't been pushed? Seattle's receivers' tremendous demonstration of good hands throughout the game suggests that he might have.

I'm still waiting to hear the uproar over the catch-and-fumble that Jerramy Stevens got away with, or the block in the back on Roethlisberger after his second interception. I'm not saying that Pittsburgh didn't, overall, get the benefit of the officiating. It wasn't nearly by the margin that a lot of people want to make it out to have been, though.

But this one is my favorite:

Hines Ward doesn't care who the safety is.

Unbelievable

Showing of Danish flag roils town

But many people in town saw the foreign flag display as insensitive and inflammatory. Several town employees told Stankiewicz they did not agree with his decision and worried the flag could provoke violence against Town Hall in light of the attacks against Danish and other European embassies throughout the Middle East. Stankiewicz described their concerns as an ''overreaction."

Wimps

Apologies

My PC crashed big time so blogging will be light for the next several days.

It's pretty surprising: in sixteen months i've had more trouble with this Dell equipment (two junk printers, a DVD drive, and now a compound problem) than i had with the previous four computers and three printers i've owned (combined).

Carnival

The Carnival of the Capitalists has its latest roundup of econ and business blogging.

Merry Christmas

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:8-14

i'll miss him

Lane Core is going on hiatus.

Remember the Anthrax Attacks?

Four years later and the case is still open. I've just finished an interesting book on the subject: Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks by Edward G. Lake. (Lake also has a website: Anthraxinvestigation.com ). Both are a useful compendium of the known facts an do a good job of debunking the false leads that crept into the media narrative.

There were a lot of false leads that the media trumpeted. In some cases the reporting on the anthrax letters looks like an overture for the MSM meltdowns over Niger, WMDs, Abu Ghraib, and the false TANG documents. For instance, before Nick Kristoff signed up as Joe Wilson's PR flack, he was doing the same for Barbara Hatch Rosenberg in her vendetta against Dr. Stephen J. Hatfill. In both cases, Kristoff combined a preening moral passion with gullibility, obtuseness, and laziness. He went into a a dudgeon, but could not get his facts straight.

Before it botched the Koran/toilet story, Newsweek printed a harebrained story about bloodhounds identifying Hatfill from scents found on the envelopes. (Lake argues persuasively that the FBI used the bloodhounds after they lost Hatfill while he was under surveillance and had nothing to do with the envelopes.)

Lake believes Hatfill is innocent based on some pretty powerful evidence. The case against him, in contrast, relies heavily on innuendo, speculation, and misinformation.

It is telling, but wholly unsurprising that the voices raised over the NSA/al Qaeda wiretaps were silent during the highly publicized pursuit of Hatfill.

(Hatfill, like Richard Jewell, is an example of the how the free press can sell out the presumption of innocence for a few scraps of leaks from law enforcement.)

The Anthrax case is also a rebuke to Greta and Nancy Grace and all the other Holloway obsessives. For six months they've croaked about sending the FBI to Aruba. They act as if the Bureau has magical powers that let them solve every case they are assigned. The anthrax letters, like the Unabomber and Chandra Levy cases, are a standing rebuke to that conceit.


Analyzing the Anthrax Attacks

"Those who can't, don't know"

Incompetence, the study demonstrated, represents a dismaying troika of of cluelessness: Incompetant people don't perform up to speed, don't recognize their lack of competence, and don't recognize the competence of others.

Marc Abrahams, Harvard Business Review, December 2005

Business Education

Photon Courier discussed an interesting new book in this post:

MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND THE ROLE OF TECHNIQUE

PC makes an astute point:

This critique of an excessive reliance on contextless technique in business is, I believe, also applicable to the current excessive dominance of "theory"--ie, specific techniques for things like textual criticism--in the teaching of the humanities.

See also:

Clausewitz

Knowingness

Military education and business

Sobering thoughts on the dead tree media

Knight Ridder is the second-largest newspaper chain in the country, behind Gannett, although perhaps not for long. The company's single largest investor, Private Capital Management, sent an ultimatum to the board last month demanding an imminent sale or breakup so it could realize some sort of premium on its 20 percent holding considering the stagnant stock price. The announcement that CEO Tony Ridder had dutifully hired Goldman Sachs to begin looking around prompted those newly romantic journos to suggest nominating a slate of their retired colleagues to the board or inspiring communities to buy their local papers, as if they were Green Bay and Knight Ridder were the Packers. They have nothing but disdain for PCM, the institutional shareholders who care about nothing other than the share price, and the Wall Street analysts who approve of radical cost cutting to justify the deal. (Morgan Stanley's Douglas Arthur, whose "scorched earth" recommendation would pare $350 million in costs, was denounced in the pages of Knight Ridder's Philadelphia Daily News, which under Arthur's plan would be the first thing to go.)


Of course, if these same journalists were writing about any industry besides newspapers, they might be less soft-hearted and more hard-headed. They'd point out that newspapers are losing their main reason for being in business -- their readers. They'd point out how websites are draining away lucrative classified advertising. They might even applaud PCM for shaking up management.


They don't, of course, because they're hopeless romantics about the business they're in. Investors like PCM are realists and figure that newspapers are no longer growth properties. They're not even value properties. They're cash cows to be milked -- a trick that private equity funds do best. What's fascinating in Knight Ridder's case is how its leaders -- who have been less willing to cut costs than their peers at Gannett or Tribune Co. -- have been upstaged by presumably savvier investors who want out of the stock right now.

Is the Romance Gone From Newspapers?

Worse than Jayson Blair

Patterico points to these two articles on LAPD corruption, the murder of Biggie Smalls, and the L. A. Times.

The Front Page Magazine piece seems to pull no punches in going after the LAT:

the once venerable paper faces a scandal of Jayson Blair proportions, one that may topple key players-including a Pulitzer Prize winner-and permanently sully its reputation.

But I have to disagree. When compared to the actions of the LAT, the Jayson Blair scandal pales in comparison. Blair lied, but he lied about matters of slight consequence. It was a grubby little inside baseball affair that served, mainly, to let Andrew Sullivan even some scores. The LAT stands accused of covering up for a murderous mélange of gangster cops, gansta rappers, and just plain gangsters.

The Rolling Stone piece lets Randall Sullivan update his reporting in LAbyrinth (a highly, highly recommended book). The civil case brought by Voletta Wallace is turning over rocks and Sullivan is taking careful inventory of what scuttles out from underneath.

It is more than a little puzzling that our crime-obsessed cable channels have ignored this case and the on-going litigation. They have hours to devote to Aruba, Natalie Holloway, Michael Jackson, and Robert Blake. Yet they have no interest in this juicy story.

One reason for the silence is the role played by Johnny Cochran in the scandals and in the media. He was deeply involved in parts of the cover-up (the Kevin Gaines shooting) and played the race card to buffalo the city into dropping its investigation into Gaines, Death Row Records, and Suge Knoght. Cochran was also a friend and colleague of Dan Abrams and Nancy Grace at Court TV.

Another reason for the media's failure is that the story does not fit their template. The Smalls murder and the real Ramparts scandals upset their simplistic formula of old LAPD=bad and Reno-sanctioned reforms=good. I discussed that aspect here last year.

A final factor is the MSM's pathological reluctance to admit mistakes. Taking a hard look at the LAPD scandals in light of the new information would reveal that the media got it very wrong the first time.

Off to OTB's Beltway Traffic Jam

Bud Carson, RIP

The father of the Steel Curtain has died.

Nice stiletto work

The Singing Journalist

Today’s award for skimpiest journalistic credentials for an expert source goes to Dateline NBC.

Stupid bloggers

A lot of pro-war bloggers are pouring their trademark invective on Rep. Murtha. Sorry, I'm not buying it. The man may be wrong, but he is no "moonbat".

I grew up in Murtha's district. I volunteered in the campaigns of a couple of his opponents and I also voted for him a few times. He was liberal on domestic policy, but always was solid on national defense. He gave crucial support to Reagan in some tough fights during the end-game of the Cold War.

Murtha's plan may be (probably is) flawed. Certainly that is a legitimate matter of debate. But the pointless name-calling says more about the war-bloggers than it does about Murtha.

I believe Murtha reflects the views of his district. It is not Cambridge, Mass., But there is a growing unease and war-weariness in solidly-red areas like Somerset. The root cause is the course of the war and the public conduct of it by the Bush administration.

The strategy for victory seems to be "endure". To my ears that sounds too much like the generals in 1916-17. They have no solution-just the promise to keep doing what they have been doing in the hope that it will eventually work.

Even worse, the administration operates as though the war is over. Too much business as usual on domestic issues-too little focus on the war. FDR understood that "Dr. Win the War" had to take center stage after Pearl Harbor while "Dr. New Deal" exited for the duration. This administration passes out Medals of Freedom to Aretha Franklin and Muhammad Ali while the fighting rages in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Drucker, Core Functions, and Economic Development

Peter Drucker's point about real business functions (see below) and cost centers is of crucial significance for local officials concerned about business development. New call centers, logistics terminals, or assembly plants provide a one-time boost to employment. However, they suffer from two signal weaknesses in Drucknerian terms. First, because they are expenses, not functions, they are under constant threat of outsourcing and retrenchment. Smart companies always try to manage expenses lower.

Second, they lack the vital "DNA" to create spin-offs and start-ups. That resides in the marketing and innovation functions. Where this DNA is present and concentrated, a self-sustaining industry cluster can take shape (e.g. Silicon Valley). If it is absent, new business creation will be limited.

Weekend reading

The best place to catch up on your blog reading is over at Lane Core's place. He has his latest Blogworthies up.

Peter Drucker

There is something paradoxical about Drucker's career and influence. He was an acute thinker and often prescient. He was a prophet showered with honors. Yet there was a Cassandra element in his pronouncements as well.

For instance, in 1954 he wrote in The Practice of Management:

It is the customer who determines what a business is. For it is the customer, and he alone, who through being willing to pay for a good or service, converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. What the business thinks it produces is not of first importance- especially not to the future of the business and to its success. What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers "value," is decisive- it determines what a business is, what it produces and whether it prospers.

And

Because it is its purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two- and only two- basic functions: marketing and innovation.

A half century later, few corporations have internalized this crucial point. We still spend an inordinate amount of time on the expense side, and never come to grips with the central questions of creating customer value.

In fact, marketing is still treated as something less than a core function. A recent article in the Sloan Management Review concluded:

In many companies, there has been a marked fall-off in the influence, stature and significance of the corporate marketing department. Today, marketing is often less of a corporate function and more a diaspora of skills and capabilities spread across the organization.

The Decline and Dispersion of Marketing Competence
Frederick E. Webster Jr., Alan J. Malter and Shankar Ganesan

Similarly, Drucker was a voice in the wilderness during the Internet bubble. He understood that most dot-coms were not businesses in a real sense and said so forcefully. Yet the business press continued to laud these dot bombs even as they praised Drucker and published his articles.

Steve Sailer pointed to another inconvenient observation the guru made:

But the immigrants have a mismatch of skills: They are qualified for yesterday's jobs, which are the kinds of jobs that are going away.

This is manifestly true and yet it rarely is discussed in the great immigration non-debate.

Photon Courier has several good posts on Drucker.

Rerun Season

Originally posted Monday, April 28, 2003

Waiting for our Clausewitz

Carl von Clausewitz died in 1831 leaving an unfinished manuscript and other papers that his wife edited and published between 1832 and 1837. The most important of these was On War. That work was not an instant success, but it has been an enduring work. Even today articles and books continue to analyze Clausewitz's work and, most interestingly, use that work to analyze military problems in the present. See here for examples.

Clausewitz holds a position that is striking. Not only is he esteemed by scholars, he is read by current practitioners. In business studies few hold an analogous position. There are scholars whose work gets taught in B-schools but these are rarely the books that executives recommend. Further, these latter are often examples of the fad de jure (reengineering, discipline of market leaders, Tom Peters, etc.) and lack staying power.

The only exception i can think of is Michael Porter. His work is used in B-schools and also in corporate strategic planning. Porter, however, differs radically in his approach. Clausewitz presents descriptive theories, his aim is to help the future commander prepare himself for the challenges he will face. In contrast, Porter's work is intensely prescriptive. His Five-factor framework and generic strategies are templates waiting for the executive's implementation.

Porter's, then, implies that the key to business strategy is "knowing". The doing will almost take care of itself. Clausewitz never presumed that the science of war (which gets studied in peacetime) could ever supplant the art of war (which wins actual battles and campaigns).

One big reason why command remained an art was "friction" one of Clausewitz's signal contributions to military theory:

In war, "everything looks simple; the knowledge required does not look remarkable, the strategic options are so obvious that by comparison the simplest problem of higher mathematics has an impressive scientific dignity."

"Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war."

"The military machine-- the army and everything related to it-- is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should bear in mind that none of its components is of one piece: each part is composed of individual, everyone of whom retains his potential of friction."

See also:

Clausewitz (II)

Central Staffs

Misplaced blame

I found this over at the American Spectator blog:

the media, as it slowly became colonized by Boomers in their “long march through the institutions,” forced peace and reconciliation with Ali onto the rest of us. Read the press reaction to Ali in the 1960s from some of the old guard of the sporting press. Easily dismissed as narrow-minded or racist today (and with reason in some cases), their outrage at Ali’s behavior was nevertheless justified. You don’t hear so much as a mild reservation expressed today.

Once again i have to stand up for my generation. A host of per-boomer media people (Schaap, Mailer, Cosell) made Ali a hero before we boomers had any influence.

I don't understand why right-wingers like to bash the boomers so much that they will distort history to do so.

See this for another example:

Stephen Schwartz dances on HST's grave

Beautifully said

The Christmas Truce Leaves Living Memory

A Scotsman named Alfred Anderson was the last person alive who could remember the Christmas Truce of 1914. With his death on Sunday at the age of 109, that definitive moment of the Great War leaves memory and enters history.

RTWT.

I loved this

CBS Cruises, but SpongeBob Sops Up Viewers

We interrupt this tedious TV ratings report to bring you an important bulletin about SpongeBob SquarePants, whose search for his beloved pet snail -- missing-and-presumed-escargot on the mean streets of Bikini Bottom -- attracted a colossal 8 million mollusk lovers to Nickelodeon. That's nearly 6 million more than caught Greta Van Susteren's effort to find missing white chick Natalee Holloway in Aruba on Fox News Channel and more than 7 million more than watched Nancy Grace shed big crocodile tears for the missing Holloway on CNN Headline News in July.

T. O.: Mixed Emotions

TMQ has the concensus view here:

In other football news, He Who Must Not Be Named is now He Who Need Not Be Named. This gentleman continued to throw selfish temper tantrums because there was never a cost associated with such behavior. Every time he denounced teammates or demanded special treatment, he got away with it. Now there has finally been a cost. The NFL Players Association has filed a grievance, but NFL players have a stake in making sure the discipline sticks -- because they will benefit. The descent from team play to selfishness is what started the NBA's tumble from charmed sport to vanishing ratings. It is imperative the me-first virus, busily destroying the financial structure of pro basketball, not be allowed to catch on in the NFL. Eagles' owner Jeff Lurie should be lauded for taking a stand for the whole league; players will benefit too, as keeping the me-first contagion out of the NFL will preserve the league's ability to provide handsome income to the majority on NFL rosters. Now, sports media -- let's see a little more attention for the majority of players who bust their busts, never complain and behave with dignity in public, a little less 24-hour coverage of a guy who deserves to be traded to a day-care center.

I'm no fan of TO and players like him. (See here and here for my take from two years ago. But I have mixed emotions watching Owens crash and burn.


TMQ touched on part of the reason in a comment unrelated to the trouble in Philly.

Sour Play of the Week No. 2: Game scoreless, Cleveland threw deep along the sideline. Dennis Northcutt caught the ball at the Tennessee 22, where rookie corner Raynaldo Hill was in position to make the tackle. Instead, Hill attempted to snatch the ball out of Northcutt's hands -- and missed him entirely, allowing the Browns' receiver to stroll the rest of the way for a 58-yard touchdown. Yours truly blames this on ESPN's Sportscenter. Defensive backs now take silly risks in the hopes of creating highlight plays that will be shown on Sportscenter, instead of just making a routine tackle that ends the down.

The sports media now pours obloquy on Owens, but for years they were his enablers as he pursued his narcissistic path to career destruction. Their willful amnesia calls to mind C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man:

And all the time-- such is the tragicomedy of our situation-- we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that our civilization needs more 'drive' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the gelding be fruitful.

Drew Rosenhaus, Owens's agent, failed his client. He, too, was an enabler. The "journalists" who cover the NFL are now criticizing him. But Rosenhaus is a "high profile" agent largely because those same journalists raised that profile. Rosenhaus was good copy. He gave provocative interviews.

Rosenhaus's methods were good for the agent and good for the journalists. Too bad they were so harmful for his most famous client.

At Tuesday's press conference, Rosenhaus refused to answer many questions. One of the best was "what have you done for TO other than get him fired." His refusal to answer was wholly expected. But I wonder if the guys at ESPN will keep asking it? Or will they forget about it in a few weeks. Will they let Rosenhaus come on PTI and do his spin for other clients with TO forgotten and unmentioned?

I'm not convinced that the Eagles are as principled as TMQ lets on. The assessment at Galley Slaves may be more realistic:

The Eagles were right to keep TO around and not trade him, because the poor value they would have gotten (a future second round pick, at best) would not have compensated them for having TO playing against them.

So, the Eagles took a chance which almost paid off and have now moved on. Where are they going from here? Nowhere, obviously. I'll be very surprised if they sneak into the playoffs. (If I ran the team, I would have sent McNabb in for the surgery after week two; when you play hurt, you tend to get hurt.)

I wonder if Philly would have done more to defuse the situation if they were 6-1 in a weak division?

As it is, the Eagles have a banged-up quarterback in a pass-happy offense, a suspect defense, and play in the toughest division in football. They were not going back to the Super Bowl-not even if TO said nothing and caught a hundred balls.

Now they have shifted all the attention to bad, evil, selfish TO. Andy Reid gets to play the tough, old-school coach. Quite a relief after all the questions about his refusal to run the football and his defense's inability to stop Denver.

On Wisconsin? Not this weekend.

Pittsburgh 20, Green Bay 10

Penn St. 35, Wisconsin 14

Plame/Wilson

Fitzmas turned out to be less decisive than most hoped. I wonder what the next phase holds?

Tow straws in the wind are op-eds by Victoria Toensing and Zell Miller. Now that Fitzgerald came up dry in terms of an immense White House conspiracy to "punish" Wilson, maybe a few reporters will look into Wilson, his lies and the unanswered questions about his mission.

Macsmind and AJ Strata are still the two must read sites. Frankly, each speculates more than I would, but they are unearthing a lot of interesting information. To my eye, they have uncovered more dots and better connections than were found in the Phoenix memo or on Moussoui's laptop.

Clarice at American Thinker has some good questions that an enterprising reporter could ask. Some of those questions have been bothering me since 2004.

I doubt there will be many volunteers from the MSM for reasons set out here:

The rotten heart of investigative journalism

Clinton Taylor made a vital point here when he noted:

While the CIA may back Wilson's account to reporters, it has now twice contradicted him when the chips were down and the threat of perjury loomed.

Whether Libby is guilty or innocent, the activities of some in CIA have been disturbing. Time after time anonymous CIA sources have fed lies to journalists. Such active disinformation operations in the US are supposed to be strictly off-limits to Langley. Nor are CIA personnel permitted to lie or stonewall Congressional investigators.

From Just One Minute:

Among other things, the Senator discussed the question of whether Valerie Plame was involved in the selection of Wilson for the trip. The Senate staff had asked her that very question in January; the Senator asked them to check the transcript, and he was astonished by her answer - "I honestly do not recall if I suggested it to my boss".
I do not fully share his surprise at her conveniently lapsed memory. Ms. Plame is a highly trained covert operator, schooled in techniques that will enable her to resist the most vigourous of interrogations by Russkies and other baddies (not that the Russkies are baddies now, but... oh, forget it). We did not know that the training technique included listening to old Steve Martin routines, but it is still impressive to see a top pro in action.

From The Weekly Standard:

"Some CPD [Counterproliferation Division] officials could not recall how the office decided to contact [Wilson]," its report says. "However, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip." There's more: "The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name,' and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife, says, 'my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.'"

See also these two Powerline posts which discuss the disinformation spread about Curveball and the INC:

The Cloak of Anonymity

The media's curveball

Under normal circumstances this would have the MSM in a frenzy over the actions of "rogue elephants" at CIA. Instead we get this odd piece on the Washington Post op-ed page:

It is not surprising that your White House distrusts and/or despises the media, the CIA, the State Department's career officers, the United Nations and a host of other institutions that you could not control, but that you could not accept that you could not control. Like most paranoia, yours is not totally unfounded: People in those institutions were out to defy and/or get you.

But you and yours helped them accomplish the mission. One lesson available in this story is that amateurs are no match for the CIA in disinformation campaigns. The spies are far better at operating in the shadows than you politicians will ever be. They have a license to dissemble.

The hidden management of the criminal justice process and the news media practiced by spooks in Wilson-Rove-Libbygate is nothing short of brilliant. So you were right to fear the agency. Where else do you think the one-page crime report that triggered the investigation and then the pressure-building leaks disclosing its existence came from?
Fear probably caused you to keep the Clinton-appointed leadership in place at the CIA long after some of its top operatives mounted a rebellion against the White House, in part to shift attention from their failures to yours. I know that George Tenet charmed you, and the rest of us. That's what spies and spymasters do, sir. You should have been taking that into account.

The raw cynicism takes your breath away. Apparently, it is OK for rogue elements of CIA to undermine an elected government if that government does not play the game the way reporters want it to play. Hoagland's piece also gives lie to the idea that shield laws protect our freedoms. All too often, the press and unelected insiders use anonymous leaks to undermine our elected officials.

Catch up on your reading

Lane Core helps you out with his latest Blogworthies.