-The rebirth, metamorphosis, and transformation of journalism
-The evolution of the dissemination of intelligence If all the world’s problems, pain and suffering are due to ignorance then wisdom, intelligence and awareness are the solutions to all the worlds’ problems, who can deliver the solution? We have a world out of balance, who is there to bring it back into balance? It is a world of disinformation and bias, who can clarify the truth without distortion by special interest? Who is it that is defined by their intention to “make aware” and who is it that can facilitate the many to see the reality behind the appearances?
Independent Journalists and Organizations of Journalistic Endeavor
Organizations of journalists exist to achieve what no individual journalist can achieve alone. They provide collective wisdom and a large pool of knowledge and information sources combined with a little structure and discipline. The organized journalists leverage and share resources reducing costs for all the participants in the journalistic organization and the end user. A journalistic organization is a collective effort that combines areas of specialty to deliver a complete product to the organizations readers.
The role of the editor is a special one to assist the author in, identifying errors and omissions, review of the logic, analysis of the possibility and probability, determining what is known, highlighting what is unknown and needs to be known, defining the questions to be asked. For it is the question not the statement that is most powerful creating a vacuum in the mind that must be filled, and since nature abhors a vacuum it is soon answered. Spotlighting the rational and the irrational views and finding the wisdom that ends the conflict between them. The main function of the editor is to take a lot of information and detail and reduce it down to provide a concise understanding, an executive summary for today’s short attention spans.
The editor translates concepts requiring a specialty framework of knowledge into terms and examples understood within a general framework of knowledge while providing some details to validate. Those working in other vocations don’t have time to study all the detail so the value of the editor and the journalists is saving the reader the time it takes to become knowledgeable and informed, so they can make decisions. The reader with greater interest is then directed to additional detail and more information if they require it and where and when to find the follow-up on the unanswered questions and culmination of the story if it has not ended.
Time is money, time is in many contexts a limited resource; knowledge is power so this is the value generated for other economic system participants by the journalistic vocation. As such the journalistic agents should be duly rewarded by other economic system participants with a portion of the wealth they create for it is the journalist that enhances their wealth creation.
Good investigative journalism is an “effort” intensive vocation which can demand substantial resources to juice and invest in the development of the story and this creates the need for a supporting body to nurture the individual cells. Simple cut and paste is not journalism, it is propagation and validation, something we should all do. Journalism requires study, disciplined placement of attention, a discerning mind, benefited by understanding and comprehension resulting from years of experience.
Enhanced and well exercised cognitive capabilities and a sharp mind are essential to connecting disparate pieces of information and clues to form and assemble the complete picture, the whole story, and the untold story that becomes told.
The New Journalist Organization
Very efficient, advanced communications, data mining, research and collaboration tools, diversified distribution channels, and a database of contacts and the maintenance of relationships to sustain information flow. The news organization is trusted by the readers to direct “attention” to the matters, issues, and solutions in order of priority. The news organization delivers the balanced view, one resulting from the integration of contrasting perspectives to deliver one that is whole and integrated.
The new journalistic organization is not a unidirectional flow of information it is bidirectional where readers provide feedback helping to evolve understanding, pose questions, and some actually becoming sources of information in their specialty area or as a result of their direct experience and involvement in the story line.
Formats: Diversity is good, sometimes print is good on a train, a subway, a plane, at the beach, and in waiting rooms. Print does not require power or energy to read just natural light making it a green sustainable fail proof technology. Newspapers should be available in these locations. A newspaper vending machine is itself a quick informer showing the front page, and the priority stories and current state of affairs. Are things in balance or out of balance, what is being done to correct imbalance? What must be done to bring balance? The static printed medium can supply the entry points, the URLs leading to the dynamic and more expansive content.
On the other hand there is the dynamic real time need for energy efficient electronic distribution to meet the speed of change, the accelerated rate of evolution that is itself a product of the light speed information flow combined with the furthering development of the story. Also we remember there are those, a portion of us that are empowered by the simplicity of access to information provided by the printed medium.
Advertising: There is nothing wrong with advertising and marketing, and it is evolving. The new department name is the Awareness Department. No longer is it a medium of gimmick, manipulation of ego, or motivation through fear or a producer of envy. It no longer attempts to create an illusion and seduce with fictions, but portrays a reality. People want to know a service or product’s features and functions, the level of quality and intelligence that goes into it; the efficiency achieved in producing it. The consumer wants to be educated in how the product or service can benefit them and the lives of others they know. The consumer wants to be able to access the detail specifications if needed so they can compare and the various levels of need each model of product or service package can fulfill. The consumer wants to be aware of what is available as a solution to a problem or challenge they are having. The consumer wants to be able to find the information they want easily. The consumer expects to find this information linked to the channels of interest associated with the product. If one is a music connoisseur then what better to see what is newly available, the evolutions of products and services and their current status, related to their listening pleasure, while they are selecting music to listen to. Advertising and marketing is not a “push operation” it is a pull operation, not one of force, but one of gravity, and it does this by making itself intelligently available and nudging with the creation of awareness.
It is the job of the awareness department representing an organization of producers, a business, to deliver this to the right places in a concise and understandable form allowing the seeker to drill down to the detail. When the want or desire of a consumer arises it is the job of the awareness department to make sure there is a link to a path that leads to fulfillment.
News Story: the local, regional, and global scope of perspective and story are all separate areas of focus and need yet all combine to provide a holistic view. There is an understanding that the local gives rise to the regional and the regional to the global, the story lines are all connected to our Great Epic story, the story of humanity, and it is we all of us that together are writing it.
It is the job of the journalist to create awareness leading to balance in the world while promoting evolution and growth, and the ability to adapt. It is the journalists that query the technicians that can solve the problems and the experts that have the insight and understanding. It is the journalist that helps generate the impetus that comes from the people to direct the politicians to orchestrate. It is the journalist that eliminates the fictions that divide, for truth only creates unity. It is journalists that bring attention to issues and their solutions, to direct healing, repair and aid to those areas of humanity needing it, so we can all sleep soundly at night without worry, knowing that tomorrow all the children will awaken to play and pretend, and fill the air with the music of their laughter, and appease the gods so that everyone has a life worth living.
"Let it be know that when the sounds of the children’s laughter grows dim in the universe and the divine vibration is replaced with sound of crying and tears the gods will come and with their enormous might carried by vehicles of light and eliminate that which silenced the laughter."
Richard Thomas Gerber - Feb 09
This was written in response to a planned event on April 23rd some 60 journalists will be meeting to talk about the past and future in the present in the Old Detroit Free Press Building. There are still 100 potential seats available to this exclusive revolutionary media event. Those that might like to attend can send an email to freepressevent@gmail.com . It would seem that we would be talking about and forming the new news media; the core of which is simply the journalists and editors empowered by new technology, connectivity and need.
American Politics has managed to reach a new low in World History. We have been shamed as a Nation, and diminished as a people before the World under the reckless guidance and administration of the 109th and 110th Congress, and the Bush Administration. We have endured through two questionable elections that went unchallenged which led us into a historic financial World Crisis, and an awakening.
Our Trusted News Media abandoned us, spinning confusion and deception which divided us and pitted neighbor against neighbor, State against State. They eliminated the purity of the White which has ever-bound the Red and the Blue together as one, raising walls between Republican and Democrat neighbors that must now be torn down.
The world couldn’t see that we Americans lived under a shadow of fear and neglect through the Media’s caustic webs. The world couldn’t know that we were under a Domestic Assault by corporate interests, until the world’s populations discovered we were all victims of a government sanctioned unbridled greed.
But the corporate interests that disrupted the world’s Global Economy got too reckless. Wall Street executives and Bankers rushed too quickly to cash in on the people’s suffering, and boldly entered into a Contract with an angry Nation. Then they promised “transparency” and reneged on the agreement only months into the transaction.
When our Federal Government failed us, our State and local Government Officials and Boards of Directors failed to protect us too. They ignored the pleas of the people and the Experts that didn’t agree with their own personal Experts. They demonstrated a consistency of putting their own personal prosperity above their own people’s welfare, our fearless leaders fearlessly hiding behind the Privilege of their elected offices.
Out of the gloom came Barack Obama, who had the audacity to speak of Hope in the face of the growing despair. And the prominent Politicians and the News personalities laughed at him. But the whispers of hope would not be drowned out by the laughter.
We saw the hope in a mother’s eyes, in our First Lady Michelle Obama, the image of strength, intelligence and grace. We witnessed the resurrection of a dream in the eyes of our people, and saw the light of hope cast back the shadow of fear hanging over us.
We were told if we dared to believe in Change, Barack could take us all the way to the White House, and hope flourished into new-found friendships and a new awareness of unity, determination and civic duty. Against all the odds, in the face of this enormous crisis, we won the election and took our Country back. Now President Barack Obama is in Washington, and with him is the good will of the American People.
We have our President and Team Obama but, there is so much work to be done. The last eight years have been traumatic, and cries for Justice against the transgressions by the Rogue Bush Administration and their pals are growing. We need not worry, there is nowhere for them to go.
We told President Obama that we would trust him, and at the first difficult decision he was faced with, in regards to the Bush investigations, he has already been criticized. We all feel the anger, we all feel betrayed but, we have to give the Obama Administration the ability to make those decisions if they are to have a chance to succeed.
We need to stay focused on the Change, on restoring the damage our Country has suffered. Team Obama cannot stand alone against our corrupted Congress. We must use the Call to Service to work swiftly and challenge any obstacles who try to keep us from moving forward.
We need to continue organizing and get to those who have yet to get involved. Our President needs us to stand by him, and behind those Public Servants who are standing with us. All across this Country there are many Public Servants who have been blocked by partisanship who need our help too. We have more friends in Government than it appears.
We can’t lose sight that there are many Americans still suffering at the hands of corporate interests. There are homeless families that need us, and our precious World War II generation has been tragically abandoned. Thousands are barely hanging on to their homes while the Mortgage companies are refusing to help them. We are involved in two wars, and our Soldiers and their Commanders have been disastrously neglected. Our wounded Soldiers continue to be neglected as well by an antiquated system. It’s long past time to Show them that their Country is behind them.
We Americans have been through times like this before. These are indeed bad times but, we have endured through the misery of the Status Quo until it shattered itself and exposed the big Conspiracy to be nothing more than a self-perceived Ruling Class, and their utter contempt for their own people. Well, they don’t need to love us. They just need to serve us.
We have also seen from the World’s reaction to the election of President Obama, that it wasn’t America that the world hated. Our global friends and neighbors remember who we are and want Americans to succeed. And from the world we have learned that what makes our Country great isn’t uniquely an American thing. It is a shared human quest that lives among all people. A quest that believes there must be a place in the world where hope and dreams and prosperity can be the birthright of all people, and that one day, that birthright can belong to them and exist within their Home Countries.
We now find ourselves in a new age of technologies that is initiating a New World Culture, in which the world’s populations have a shared interaction and a voice. There is a free exchange of ideas and culture that is redefining the established Media bias of distrust between Nations. With the new technologies we are organizing, and we are also re-establishing Journalism in a new tradition, one that can be trusted by the people, a New Age interactive Journalism that can be easily sourced and verified.
The Global Markets have also opened up opportunities that have yet to be explored in developing new Industries and re-establishing the old. The middle executives have been discarded by the top executives into the melting pot. New networks of entrepreneurs from around the world are free to spawn a new era of growth, while the old Icons of Business blunder their way to ruin. And the corporations who take care of their workers will be favored above the rest by consumers.
The Chronicles of History are no longer the providence of conquering powers or Media historians. In this age, the Chronicles of History are the providence of technology, owned by none and belonging to all. It is continually being recorded by the witnesses of our time by the most unprecedented intercommunication in human history. The story of our time is being recorded every minute of every day, amidst the multitudes of posts on Web Forums and Feature sites, in text messages and in personal Blogs. History is being recorded by you.
The Representatives of Government may write their hundreds of books to shape their own Legacies. And the world will respond with their hundreds of millions of unique perspectives for the future Historians to study in retrospect.
P. G. Rose
The older I get, the more cynical I become. I thought it was just me. The evidence falls all around me like autumn leaves from a tree and proves it's not me, its reality.
As an American who is a hard working, debt free responsible saver, I have already lost money to a company who was allowed to lie to their potential shareholders on TV & website by telling them they had very little if any sub-prime and they were doing fine. An oversight reporting regulation could have prevented this. It occurred just a week or two before they filed bankruptcy. I have not bought any stock since. I have no trust in the stock market. Stockholders are just thrown to the wolves' one deal after another; merging, bought up with private equity, bankruptcy, etc. While CEO's and Board of Directors rake in the outrageous salaries, options, health plans, perks, bonuses, and golden parachutes. The shareholders and the American people are being treated like pawns at the mercy (and there is none) of the rich and powerful.
All the top executives with their fat salaries, options and parachutes and the top power brokers that be, have had their Wild West reign and spending money out the wazoo, with their big ostentatious homes, big yachts, expensive vacations. I haven't had a vacation in 10 years or more.
OPINION - If you haven't noticed, the "Best Poltical Team on Television" at CNN has been playing a kind of epic spin game to keep the campaign close. While CBS, NBC, ABC and MSNBC have been done what they always do, hunt down stories on Sarah Palin to tell us more about her, identify inconsistencies, fibs and outright lies in her stump speeches, and document the immense waffling of John McCain on every politically sensitive issue on the economy this week, CNN covers it very lightly, and is always careful not to step on the McCain camp's toes, even when they have to follow the press pack into a story.While dozens of media outlets were lambasting McCain for saying that he would fire the SEC chairman one day, and then do a 180 on the next, news cycle or come up with a "Plan" for the bailout even though everyone knows that the Fed and the Treasury Secretary will have a "plan" long before McCain can do anything about the financial crisis, CNN reported the facts of the event, and kept its talking heads away from calling McCain on any of it.
Did Obama or McCain pull out the race card first? Does it even matter? And wasn't Obama speaking the truth: Did NOT Hillary Clinton and John McCain do exactly what he (Obama) told his supporters they would do?
They attempted to make this nation afraid of:a) His raceb) His namec) His upbringingd) His churche) His religious affiliationsf) His wifeg) His actions (fist bumps, flag pin, hand over heart, his 'confidence factor'-called "arrogant" on a black man and "confidence" on a white man-, and all of that)h) His African father's heritagei) And that's just the beginning...
So far, Obama has been challenged on every aspect of his life except the fact that he is a man and on his social work values in Chicago's inner city ghettos, which would be viewed as too charitable to come against and might quickly cost them the election if they tried (squawk! And, and, and "HE HELPED THOSE POOR BLACK PEOPLE IN THE GHETTOS, TOO!!!")
Hillary even came close to trying to call him on the fact that he is a man; BUT for the fact that America has NEVER had a female president and may not any time soon, she might have hit him up on that, too.
If Obama drew the so-called "race card" first, he MOST CERTAINLY CALLED IT RIGHT.
It was better that he do it himself; because that effectively watered it down when they did exactly what he expected and said that they would do.
And why is the news media continually hyping and hawking this old news as if everyone BUT them has not totally put it out of their minds?
Can you say "yellow journalism"?
Another day of angst over prejudicial programming practices by the cable networks. In a relatively slow news day... It's tough to understand why the cable and network news nets fail to provide live coverage of Barack Obama's appearance before the National Urban League conference in Orlando. Hard to believe... but of the cable nets, only Faux News actually started to carry Barack's speech, but after a few minutes cut away to run commercials. After that, Faux returned with a voice over Obama speaking.. "We will continue to monitor this... and return if something newsworthy happens."
Excuse me.... "Newsworthy?" What was this appearance by Obama in Florida?!?!?!
TO THE NEWS MEDIA:
PLEASE STOP SWAYING PUBLIC OPINION BY PLAYING CLIPS OUT OF CONTEXT.
The news media owes Michelle Obama an apology for playing her comments out of context and making her look unpatriotic. They never play the whole clip and have incited people to believe this claim to be true. This, coupled with Rev. Wright's comments have caused undue problems and stress.
I DEMAND THAT YOU SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT.
On Countdown Keith Olberman reported that Fox radio host Tom Sullivan alternated Hitler speeches with Obama's speeches. He said it was to compare their similar styles?LinkWrite a letter to Tom Sullivan and Fox radio to protest the unbelievable nastiness. I fired off a scorching one myself threatening a letter campaing to Fox's advertisers. We have to let these disgusting news media know we won't take their garbage any more. foxnewsradio@foxnews.com tomsullivanradio@foxnews.com
The following is the the letter I wrote in protest;
Dear Mr. Sullivan,
I assume you are of Irish lineage because of your name forgive me if you aren't. Years ago when I was a little girl growing up in the late 1950's and early 1960's I heard stories of WW2 and the evil man called Hitler. I remember listening to the words and the cheering crowds when a part of his speech was played. I couldn't understand those words but I remember the unbelievable human destruction he caused. He drove others to hate their neighbors. He drove them to exterminate millions of people just because of their religion or ethnicity. And it chilled me too my soul.
Even as a little girl I knew evil when I saw it and I spoke up against it. I stuck up for the fat kid next to me. I spoke up for the girl with the hand me down dress. Most kids don't achieve this kind of wisdom until they are much older. Some never grow up and are forever stuck in cowardly attacks on others. You are one of them, just an ugly little kid trying to be the bully.
The reason I asked if you are Irish is because I and Barack Obama are too. Yeah that's right his great, great, great grandfather came from Ireland. And my mother told me that the Irish weren't treated very well when they first came to America. I know now it was because of ignorant, self serving people like you. Willing to say or do anything to get the ratings. No wonder the kids in this country are going around shooting each other. God help us all.
To play the speeches of Barack Obama and Hitler alternately to make a point puts you in the same category as one of the most evil men to have ever walked the earth. You are no better than Hitler, spreading hate with glee. Barack talks of empathy and treating others the way you would want to be treated, his life has been to do nothing but good.
Jesus Christ preached those same words 2000 years ago, and he was crucified. I know that will never happen to you, your followers never persecute the evil amongst themselves. They feed the beast. And if there is a character assassinationI will hold ou and the garbage like you responsible. His blood will be on all of your hands. Just like it is already there from all of the ones who died trying to bring us together.
Sincerely, Terry xxxxxxxxxxxxx,NY
