Archive for September, 2008
September 29th, 2008
What was the U.S. House of Representatives thinking today as it voted against the $700 billion financial stabilization plan? Clearly, they were not thinking about your 401k, your job or your struggling company. Nope, instead of educating their constituents on what this whole thing really means, the Congressmen who voted against the bill were thinking of their own cushy careers.
Careers in which they get the best of all medical plans, great retirement benefits, connections to the world’s richest and most powerful (in case they want to work a bit or write a book after leaving office), and the overall wherewithal to live decently in two places, home and D.C. Not for them the worries about whether their employer will go belly up, their jobs disappear, their medical insurance sky rocket or vanish. Not for them the worries about how to pay the bills after retiring (they get a pension; something non-government employees said farewell to years ago.).
Nope, they were just thinking about getting back home to campaign to keep those cushy jobs. Heaven forbid, they lose a seat in Congress; they might actually have to find a far less secure posting back home.
The representatives who voted against this bill need to get their fannies back to D.C. and back to work. They need to squarely face their constituents and teach them the mathematics of what did happen and what’s about to happen. Don’t like this plan? Get another done — and fast. I do not want to see Don Manzullo’s face here in the district until he and his buddies in the House and Senate figure out how to keep the plug in the dike long enough for the financial markets and companies to stabilize — and that is likely to be 10 years.
This is NOT about handing a check over to a bunch of thieves, though there are plenty of thieves and dumb-cluck boards of directors out there who created this mess. The financial stabilization plan (I refuse to call it a bailout) is all that stands between the much celebrated and cliched Main Street and another Great Depression. Do I sound like the sky is falling? I mean to.
Anyone who thinks there’s an easy way out of this isn’t paying attention. Anyone who thinks this is the time for revenge, retribution, finger-pointing and punishment is wasting energy. Can I pick holes in the bill? Yep. Am I sure it’s the best it could be? Nope. Am I dead certain we need it? You bet.
Without implementation of a strong plan, within weeks, if not days, the regular guy — that’s you and I — can expect to see: few or no new home equity loans, which for some means farewell to paying the bills for higher education; stringent to the point of being impossible down payments and documentation for mortgages; higher credit card rates and lower limits; and, very likely, escalating unemployment.
We need this shakeout. We do. Our love affair with “now” made sure everyone could have a house, a couple of cars, a Wii and unlimited credit cards. We’re paying the price for “irrational exuberance,” as Alan Greenspan once called it. But that correction was already in play. Now, rather than a horrifically bumpy, frightening ride to the bottom, we are staring crash and burn in the face.
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives rolled the dice and bet your house, your job and your 401k on a gamble that things really aren’t so bad, on a gamble that someone will white-knight this implosion. All so its members could go home and campaign for another term. We lost.
September 19th, 2008
I’m a “little d” Democrat and normally that means I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative. So, when the federal government starts taking over private businesses — nationalizing, so to speak — I get a tad perturbed. I am no fan of too much government.
For a journalist — and for you – too much government can translate into local elected officials and government employees circumventing the Freedom of Information Act by withholding public records. It can translate into public-private organizations that take taxpayer funds but stay outside public oversight because they are “private.”
So, when the federal government nationalizes the financial industry (Thursday’s announcement of a major “systemic” takeover of failing financial institutions), loans staggering sums to a private insurer (AIG), and takes over the mortgage lending market (that’s Freddie and Fannie), I all but hyperventilate.Then, I take a deep breath and I am glad, very, very glad for this government takeover. Friday’s Wall Street Journal nailed the headline: “Worst crisis since the ’30s; no end yet in sight.”
It’s a headline guaranteed to scare the checkbook right out of your pocket, not because of what it said, but because of who said it: the conservative, hard-to-fluster, pro-business Wall Street Journal. Yes, it really is that bad. (You might enjoy this column from Columbia Journalism Review.)
There is, however, one resounding difference between the crash of ‘29, and today. The federal government — indeed, governments around the world — is stepping in quickly to plug the holes through which the world’s major corporations will plunge. Make no mistake. Some of the bad guys will escape with their cash firmly in hand. I wish that were not so, but I am more than happy to trade that bit of unfairness for assurance that freefall and meltdown may not be permanent fixtures in my headlines.
The weekend’s upcoming news will overtake my column I am sure. Still, sitting at my kitchen table Thursday night and seeing the warring Congressional parties come to the same podium committed to shoring up our country’s economic foundation was reassuring. This is, for now, government’s appropriate role: protect and defend. This time with cash not guns.
September 11th, 2008
A couple months ago, the Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch stopped delivering its newspaper to Harrisonburg, VA, about two hours away. Delivery stopped because gas prices, newsprint prices, a bad economy and alternative sources of information all combined to make it unreasonably expensive to keep delivering the newspaper to readers that far away.
My mother and dad, long-time RTD readers, were not happy, nor were thousands of other southwestern Virginians who had relied on the RTD for generations. The editor of the RTD is one of my “friendly acquaintances,” so I gave him a heads up to expect some nasty correspondence from my mother. I told her she wasn’t going to win and explained why. “Don’t care,” she said. “I understand why. I’m just mad and they need to know their decision completely upsets what I and hundreds more like me start our days with.”
Thank God for the loyal newspaper reader. They are my mother and my mortgage payment. In the Rock River Valley there are an unusual number of loyal readers (more today than at any time in our history) and we reach almost 80 percent of the adults who live in Winnebago and Boone counties. We are not, contrary to popular wisdom, dying or disappearing. We are, however, smack in the middle of a technological change not seen since Gutenberg invented moveable type back around 1440. Newsprint prices are at record levels and climbing. Add to that the every-100-years-or-so, global economic “adjustment,” and it is a wildly wicked time in the information business.
So, we’re adjusting, and, if we do it right, we’re transforming. And all that change is making readers unhappy. Thanks to decisions we made 10 years ago (news on the Web), the new press (narrower and shorter pages) and a deep commitment to local news, the Register Star, at least for now, isn’t in the survival throes like the ones in the big cities. Do you know that the Chicago Tribune could be, somewhere around the end of the month, a three-section newspaper with a strikingly different design? Did you know the Trib eliminated its print help-wanted sections? Did you know the New York Times shortly will be four sections instead of double that? Did you know that this week the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., the state’s largest newspaper and a family-owned one, completely stopped using news from the Associated Press?
Those are just a smattering of what’s happening. There will be news forever. There will be newspapers for almost that long. But, it’s rapidly becoming a very different model and readers — like you and my mother — don’t care. You’re just mad.
So, back to the TV book. Last Sunday, we replaced the “little book” with the bigger tabloid version. You hate the size. We accidentally left out the WGN listing. You were not amused. It will be back in next Sunday. We don’t have the late night listings and we have too much daytime. Half hated; half loved. We’ll try to figure a better balance. I hate that bigger book, too; the little one was ever so much handier. Though, I must admit, I stopped using the TV book a couple years ago when I went TIVO and Insight-cum-Comcast offered the TV Guide channel.
So, why annoy you loyal, little book fans? Because it was either the do the big book or dump three staffers. And, we need every journalist, ad rep, pre-press tech, online producer and general cook-and-bottle washer we can keep here in the News Tower if we are to come close to fulfilling our mission statement: To serve the Rock River Valley as the leading information source that empowers our community, while never compromising our principles.
People or paper? I’ll take people over paper any day.
September 9th, 2008
Be oh, so careful about believing what you read on the Web. Ditto for anything forwarded to you in an e-mail — even from a trusted friend or family member. And, as much as some folks love to hate the mainstream media, most of us live by this mantra: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
United Airlines stockholders learned that lesson the hard way on Monday morning when their stocks tumbled 75 percent in just a few hours. UAL stock prices dropped to $3 per share from around $12 a share on “news” that the airline giant had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy — again. In a nutshell, here’s what happened: A researcher thought he/she had spotted a “breaking news” story on a Florida newspaper Web site. The story, which was about the 2002 bankruptcy, was reposted out of the newspaper’s archives by the researcher as a new story, and the Web world went “viral.” (That means information takes on a life of its own and is spread far and wide, either by individuals, or by mechanical things called “bots.” You don’t need to know the technical stuff; just think of it as neighbors gossiping until “everyone” knows a bunch of different versions of the facts. ChicagoTribune.com has a terrific explanation of exactly what happened if you’re interested.)
Less dramatic, but far more common, are the “I know it’s true because my brother sent it to me” stuff that anyone with an e-mail address gets. The most are two common kinds of “must be true” e-mails: (1) political stuff (Barack Obama has relatives in Africa who are terrorists; Sarah Palin faked her latest pregnancy and the child is really her daughter’s); and (2) sweetness-and-light (American soliders in Iraq tell it like it really is; David Letterman/Jay Leno celebrate the good things about America). I get dozens of these things forwarded to me by good-hearted — and not so — readers and family members who want me to be in the know.
A quick check of Snopes.com almost always shows these things to be just so much garbage, even the sweetness-and-light ones that bring a smile to your face and a warm fuzzy to your heart. Check ‘em out, even if they come from your mother.
So, how do you know it’s true? Three quick steps weed out the most egregious. First, check Snopes.com. It’s a great site for debunking or affirming most of the forwarded e-mails that purport to be the truth. Second, do some homework. Research multiple sources. While one source might be right, seeing if multiple sources say the same or similar things is best. That’s what we do at the News Tower; we need more than a single source for most everything we publish. And, third, swallow a healthy spoonful of skepticism. If it sounds too good, too off-the-wall, too bad, or simply too perfect or too awful, it probably is.
And, one last safety net: Don’t sell all your stock in a panic.
September 5th, 2008
One more reason I want to know how she’s thinking on the mom-first-job-first front: I could learn from her. Every mother I know — whether they work inside or outside — wants to know “best practices.” We share survival tips. Sarah Palin would be the first working mother to balance a public life and a private life at the top of the most visible pedestal in the world, and she’s going to be doing it with FIVE kids. Anyone who can balance all that I can learn from.
BTW: This column from Don Wycliff, formerly of the Chicago Tribune, is a must-read. This excerpt ought to whet your appetite: “But if Palin and her ardent GOP supporters have a real beef, it is less with the hated “mainstream media” than with the bandits and highwaymen of the information superhighway, the Internet. It was these lone strangers who drove the pregnancy story and whose increasingly lurid speculations created the pressure that, ultimately, led Palin and her husband to make their announcement. The mainstream media, at least, can be appealed to on ethical grounds—even if every member doesn’t always make the best decision. But for the verbal gunslingers of the blogosphere, there are no ethics, no rule of law. It’s the Wild West, a free-fire zone. And Palin’s daughter is just the latest of their victims.“
September 5th, 2008
For crying out loud, of course Sarah Palin, the GOP pick for vice president, is going to put her career (country) (politics) above her family. On some days. Other days, it’ll be the kids and hubby ahead of career (country) (politics). That’s what we do — men and women. We make choices every darn day. I’ve worked outside the home for 36 years. I work in a newsroom filled with men and women who raise their kids and fight with their spouses over who’s going to take PTA duty tonight, wash the clothes or do the science project. Sometimes work comes first; sometimes the kids. Most of us get the balance right most of the time.
Is it fair to ask how Palin might approach that balance of choices? You bet. What criteria will she use to make the choice between heading to Iraq on a diplomatic mission and being in the hospital with her daughter when her grandbaby is born? I’m not bothered by her having to make the choice, nor do I much care which choice she makes. I want to know how her brain is going to approach the decision making. That’s the real test of how strong a vice president, mother, wife and person she is.
Would I ask the same of a man? Honestly, probably not, and certainly not with the same depth and breadth. Sexist? Hardly. Realist. Women do the kids and family — and they do the workplace. Men, even the most enlightened caregivers among them, don’t carry the primary responsibility. Ok, so some do, but no way is it a 50-50 deal.
I ask myself every day what’s my plan for balancing work and home. I expect my coworkers to have a similar plan. What ARE you going to do when you have to cover a disaster news story and the kid has a school play? I don’t give a rip whether you’re the dad or the mom. You better have a plan. There’s not a darn thing sexist or otherwise about it: If you’re going to work outside the home and have a personal life, you’re going to make choices — and you are flat out guaranteed that sometimes those choices are going to be dead wrong and you’re going to pay a price — either with your personal life or work life.
When my soon-to-turn 30 son was three months, I went back to work. I remember clearly standing in my kitchen hallway on the phone obsessing with my mother over whether Lee might turn into a serial killer because I was going back to newspapering rather than baking cookies for some future imagined school party. Her words echo today: Love him. Keep him safe. Make sure he knows he’s secure. Do the best you can. He’ll turn out fine.
That from a woman who reared five children, the first three as a traditional stay-at-home mom, the last two as a working librarian. And, for the record, Lee turned out OK.
Sarah Palin, no more than I, can have it all both ways. You can be a full-time mother or a full-time professional. You just can’t be fulltime at both at the same time. You make choices between family and work. I made ‘em. She’ll make ‘em. And, yes, I care a lot more about how and why she will make the choices she makes than I care about how and why John McCain will put his country ahead of HIS wife and kids. It’s a darn site easier for him than for Sarah.
