Dear Friends,
Among other interesting activities, I moderate comments on a health blog. While the blog is popular and, on any given day, we may receive 10-15 comments, in this very special time of the year, we are averaging more like a comment a minute.
While, in the main, no one objects to the blog's new found popularity, I might point out that most of these contributions seem to be unintelligible. Often, these are thinly disguised as actual comments to posts -- "Specifically where there is married life with no romance, you will have romance with no married life"-- is one I noted as particularly irrelevant on a blog devoted to preventing teen drug abuse and addiction. Although one must also admire the daring of those discount pharmaceuticals attempting to peddle generic prescription drugs on a blog warning of the dangers of addiction!
Attention all spammers: I appreciate most those messages that demonstrate are outright selling as opposed to layering a thin veneer of commentary over an otherwise blatant spam. Nike's, Christian LaBoutain, Burberry, NFL jackets and Uggs are among the most popular, judging by the entries to-date. But social bookmarking and link building are also appreciative, though lesser known as brands.
But for those really inventive resellers, you cannot beat the creativity of wrapping a clearly fictitious article about the Israeli prime minister resigning and the PLO representative's reaction around the charade of selling pens and sunglasses:
Israeli Defense Ecclesiastic [montblancpensonlinesale]
Ehud Barak announced his acclimatization Monday, saying he
inclination quit civil affairs in January to lavish more time with his
family.
His resigning mont blanc
comes at a warmly delicate time for Israel, which is observing a
tenuous cease-fire with the hostile Palestinian unit Hamas after an
eight-day tiff that killed more than 160 people — the mind-blowing
majority of them Palestinians in Gaza.
Barak, who is married and the shepherd of three children, [montblancpensonlinesale]
said Monday at a word talk in Tel Aviv that he will proceed as defense
assist for the next three months, as elections are apposite in January.
He said he won’t debate the elections.
Hanan Ashrawi, a fellow of the Palestine Unshackling Consortium’s executive body, weighed in on the announcement.
“I contemplate this signals identification [lunettesdesoleilraybans]
of the futility of the military overtures in the adoption of fury as
means of dealing with the Palestinians,” she said. “If it is for
intimate reasons, we cannot opine, but if it’s recognition that his
complete tear was based on the military proposition to public existence,
then this demonstrates the recognition of the futility of militarism
and violence.”
Some Israeli factional commentators had speculated ahead of the
commercial that Barak was planning to quit the government of Prime
Churchman Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new center-left party.
A bid for Ehud Barak's shepharding a peace process in the Sinai, perhaps?
For all of the above, helpful links to the products abound, and in many languages: Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, English, and variations given fractured sellers helpers from Eastern Europe, not to mention the ever-present Spambots that must rely on Google algorithms and half-baked translations for their creative message management.
And the festive holiday season has just begun!
Question to the blogosphere: how are you managing this season's Spamalot? Surely there are better ways to see that actual questions and comments are addressed without succumbing to brand-name Season's Greetings!
And question to brands and their resellers: do you think your messages of cheerful consumption or comments wrapped around irrelevant stories are the most effective way of reaching consumers? Or is it just cheap and easy and you're thinking, "Couldn't hurt to cover all bases?"
I am curious to know...
Sincerely,
Robin Stevens Payes, Principal
Creating and Implementing Marketing Strategies
Health Communications and Social Marketing
WordsWork Communications LLC
Monday, November 26, 2012
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Sleeping to Remember—And Forget - Dana Foundation
New research in neuroscience shows how cues during sleep can interrupt, or reinforce memories. Through functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), researchers can measure where in the brain these memories are stored, and what neural (or brain) pathways are involved in remembering specific events or people associated with the memory. The implications for learning are fascinating, as is the potential to disrupt triggers for stress and trauma.
Sleeping to Remember—And Forget - Dana Foundation
Friday, January 7, 2011
What do we really know, after all?
I went to see Candide last night – a musical opera based on Voltaire’s famous satirical novel (“All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”) set to Leonard Bernstein’s music. It was a fabulous production by The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Bernstein decided to undertake the adaptation in 1953 upon the advice of his friend, playwright Lillian Hellman. At the time, Hellman was one of many artists, scientists and intellectuals under investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, the noted McCarthy hearings against alleged Communists. Hellman was one of many artist victims of this modern day witch hunt. Voltaire's 1758 satire of the institutions that held enormous sway over public opinion in his time - from the Catholic Church to the emperors, from physicians to philosophers - were intent on trying to impose their dogma, and control on the public. Even when the facts didn't line up with teachings - the inconvenience of the Inquisition being a notable breach of Christian spirit, for example - it was all for the best!
In a contemporary parallel, some politicians of our day insist that our country's Founders had God and right on their side in the original framing of the U.S. Constitution -- and that they are the special people who can read he Founders intentions correctly and prune our laws of anything that the framers and their successors didn't really intend, except those parts that don't suit their current ideology. No hypocrisy there!
As the French themselves are fond of saying, Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
What struck me about the "philosophy" behind Voltaire’s mocking words was how the best knowledge of his day had much of the science wrong. The best medicine then promoted bleeding (leeches) to cure disease, the auto-da-fe to “purify” religion, and Optimism as a philosophical explanation for every Job-like tragedy that befell the world and poor Candide, including earthquake, war, plague. What do we "know" today that will lead the scientists and philosophers 300 years from now to conclude that our best practices are equally misinformed?
It would seem that skepticism - questioning what is generally accepted as fact - is actually a healthy approach to counter the conventional wisdom. Candide's teacher, Professor Pangloss, tenaciously holds to his optimistic philosophy ("All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds") despite suffering these personal trials and tribulations: war, poverty, beatings, earthquakes, Auto-da-fe (the Inquisition's infamous public heretics "trials" which inevitably ended up in conviction and public execution), hanging and, finally, destitution. Equally, today, we might be skeptical of the absolutists who claim to "know" what is best for our country, for our children and for our future.
Fortunately, technology, communication, transportation and a healthy public debate in our democracy promote ever greater tools to engage in public skepticism. Through the Internet, television, social media, ever-more transparent government and the free press, Americans now have more power than ever to question, debate, learn and challenge the status quo.
Still, it is tempting to stay out of the debate and "cultivate one's garden", as Candide concludes at the bitter end of his story. By this time, Candide's one true love, the Lady Cunegonde, has lost her station, her beauty, her youth and her wealth. To engage in the conversation - to challenge conventional wisdom publicly - may leave one subject to ridicule or worse. But, as in Voltaire's time, satire can be a biting tool that, on the face of it, seems to endorse the authorities whose knowledge is "beyond question" while mocking their hypocrisy. A musical highlight of Candide is the lovely Cunegonde's famous comic soliloquy, "Glitter and Be Gay", lamenting that a lady of high nobility stripped of her title, wealth and family should become the sexual object for everyone from Catholic Cardinals, to the City of Lisbon's wealthiest and most influential men in exchange for baubles and expensive clothes. True to the teachings of Professor Pangloss even in the most horrific circumstances, Cunegonde searches for the best in the situation. The aria is here performed by the incomparably comic and gifted acress Kristen Chenoweth. Her high E-flat is a Wicked feat!
Bernstein decided to undertake the adaptation in 1953 upon the advice of his friend, playwright Lillian Hellman. At the time, Hellman was one of many artists, scientists and intellectuals under investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, the noted McCarthy hearings against alleged Communists. Hellman was one of many artist victims of this modern day witch hunt. Voltaire's 1758 satire of the institutions that held enormous sway over public opinion in his time - from the Catholic Church to the emperors, from physicians to philosophers - were intent on trying to impose their dogma, and control on the public. Even when the facts didn't line up with teachings - the inconvenience of the Inquisition being a notable breach of Christian spirit, for example - it was all for the best!
In a contemporary parallel, some politicians of our day insist that our country's Founders had God and right on their side in the original framing of the U.S. Constitution -- and that they are the special people who can read he Founders intentions correctly and prune our laws of anything that the framers and their successors didn't really intend, except those parts that don't suit their current ideology. No hypocrisy there!
As the French themselves are fond of saying, Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
What struck me about the "philosophy" behind Voltaire’s mocking words was how the best knowledge of his day had much of the science wrong. The best medicine then promoted bleeding (leeches) to cure disease, the auto-da-fe to “purify” religion, and Optimism as a philosophical explanation for every Job-like tragedy that befell the world and poor Candide, including earthquake, war, plague. What do we "know" today that will lead the scientists and philosophers 300 years from now to conclude that our best practices are equally misinformed?
It would seem that skepticism - questioning what is generally accepted as fact - is actually a healthy approach to counter the conventional wisdom. Candide's teacher, Professor Pangloss, tenaciously holds to his optimistic philosophy ("All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds") despite suffering these personal trials and tribulations: war, poverty, beatings, earthquakes, Auto-da-fe (the Inquisition's infamous public heretics "trials" which inevitably ended up in conviction and public execution), hanging and, finally, destitution. Equally, today, we might be skeptical of the absolutists who claim to "know" what is best for our country, for our children and for our future.
Fortunately, technology, communication, transportation and a healthy public debate in our democracy promote ever greater tools to engage in public skepticism. Through the Internet, television, social media, ever-more transparent government and the free press, Americans now have more power than ever to question, debate, learn and challenge the status quo.
Still, it is tempting to stay out of the debate and "cultivate one's garden", as Candide concludes at the bitter end of his story. By this time, Candide's one true love, the Lady Cunegonde, has lost her station, her beauty, her youth and her wealth. To engage in the conversation - to challenge conventional wisdom publicly - may leave one subject to ridicule or worse. But, as in Voltaire's time, satire can be a biting tool that, on the face of it, seems to endorse the authorities whose knowledge is "beyond question" while mocking their hypocrisy. A musical highlight of Candide is the lovely Cunegonde's famous comic soliloquy, "Glitter and Be Gay", lamenting that a lady of high nobility stripped of her title, wealth and family should become the sexual object for everyone from Catholic Cardinals, to the City of Lisbon's wealthiest and most influential men in exchange for baubles and expensive clothes. True to the teachings of Professor Pangloss even in the most horrific circumstances, Cunegonde searches for the best in the situation. The aria is here performed by the incomparably comic and gifted acress Kristen Chenoweth. Her high E-flat is a Wicked feat!
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Shoutout: Get the Facts on Drugs
Today launches the first National Drug Facts Week challenging teens and adults who care about them to "shatter the myths" and learn the facts about drugs and addiction. In what may be a coincidence of timing, over the weekend, my daughter and I caught the Kennedy Center performance of the 2009 Tony award winning revival of the musical Hair, the myth-making 1968 Broadway musical that rocked the country with its portrayal of America’s rebellious youth. With its “peace, love and pot” philosophy, and youth revolt against the war in Vietnam, Hair captured a sense of American values gone off-track and a growing "Generation Gap" between young people and their parents.
In 1968, for the first time on stage, theatre-goers witnessed drug use onstage to the accompaniment of the drug anthem, “Hashish”, in what may be the most comprehensive musical index of illicit substances known at the time:
Hashish
CocaineAPC, alcohol
cigarettes, shoe polish, cough syrup, peyote
Equanil, dexamyl, camposine, chemadrine,
Thorazine, trilafon, dexadrine, benzedrine, methedrine,
S-E-X Y-O-U WOW!
Equanil, dexamyl, camposine, chemadrine,
Thorazine, trilafon, dexadrine, benzedrine, methedrine,
S-E-X Y-O-U WOW!
It was a time of innocence and ignorance over what repeated drug use could do to your health - beyond sending users into psychedelic spasm. And, since this was an era before the emergence of the AIDS virus, no thought to what health risks might come from engaging in sex under the influence of drugs. The world of the ‘60s was a very different place from today.
The drug culture is still with us in 2010, and, arguably today doesn't have much to do with freedom, love or rebellion against the establishment. The stresses in our world, our schools, our families and communities, contribute to an atmosphere where "escape" sounds like an easier choice than facing stressful realities. In a media culture that invades our brains 24/7, young people need only tune into MTV or iTunes to hear – and experience - ample drug-inspired references composed to a rap, rock or pop beat.
A big difference today is that we know so much more about drugs, how they influence the brain, how young people’s brains are developing, and the effects that drugs can have to hijack healthy brain development.
Unfortunately, in the 21st century, growth of prescription drug abuse – opioids (painkillers) and stimulants (prescribed to treat the symptoms of ADHD). These drugs are often found in family medicine cabinets, or bought, begged or stolen from friends who use them safely under a doctor’s care. Though not "illegal", they also alter the way the brain functions. When used as prescribed, Rx drugs are safe and effective. When you use them in ways your doctor hasn't sanctioned -- say, to stay awake, study, party, or relax -- the effect can be quite different and lead to abuse and addiction.
The famous Harvard Professor and Psychologist Timothy Leary's crafted a catchy message to young people of the '60s, "Turn on, tune in and drop out," by experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, and so creating the drug myth that recreational use of drugs was a plus. But today, we know so much more about what drug abuse can do to disrupt people's lives.
This week, you have the opportunity to get smart about what drugs might do, before you act. Learn the facts about drugs and addiction, then think twice.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Your Brain on Art
Imagine riffing on a mini-keyboard while immobilized in a tube that’s taking pictures of your brain. That’s what jazz bassist Mike Pope and other musicians have been doing to participate in Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist Dr. Charles Limb’s novel experiment to capture the brain on jazz.
Call it intuition, creative instinct, or "getting into the zone", but science is finding that artists brains work differently when they are in the creative act, and that they may, in turn have a feel for how their art will resonate in people's brains.
Call it instinctive neuroscience creative people seem attuned from the outset to tap into a social reserve of emotion and universal understanding. With artists holding such a head start, where do neuroscientists find the neuroagency that can help advance understanding of where we find creativity in the brain and what purposes it serves?
That was one underlying question during a lively converation with jazz musicians Pat Metheny and Mike Pope and otolaryngologist Dr. Charles Limb participating in a unique conference on "Perceptual Neuroscience and Aesthetics” on October 20 in Baltimore. The conference, at the American Visual Arts Museum, was filled to capacity with more than 300 attendees curious to explore how – and why – we respond to art, music, dance and drama. And to learn a little more about the brains of those people driven to create.
Are our brains hard-wired for Beethoven? What about Dr. Dre? Do mirror neurons attune to faces, such as the larger-than-life canvases by painter William Stoehr, and what emotions does it evoke in people? Stoehr pays most attention to the eyes of his models - reproducing them to draw us closely into the mind of his portraits. He highlights these black and white images with a splash of red, a touch of yellow. And much of the rest of the painting is more suggestion than explicit representation. Yet, he notes, that people who see his work believe that the eye, the ear, the chin is complete. The viewer's eye fills in what it expects to see, even when there is merely hinted at, in fact.
The former National Geographic photographer is exploring this theme on Facebook
The science of creativity
Science, technology, engineering, math and medicine – form a core of what might be called “left-brained” occupations – society recognizes the value of these roles through investment in education and reward in the workplace. Those possessing these functions in high degree are highly valued members of society: finding root causes and statistical bases for societal problems, creating living and working environments, curing disease. All these advance evolution of our species: inventing new treatments, technological advances, shelter, safety, defense. In short, these capabilities are fundamental to human survival.
Ars Artis
Bach might not save a life. Picasso never built a house. Although Doris Lessing, in a prolific career that has continued her publishing well into her 90s, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, it is doubtful that her most notable works, including The Golden Notebook, ever cured a reader. Throughout the millennia, artists have been alternatively ostracized and embraced, reviled and worshiped. But always, they have been seen as “different”, or outside the norm.
To glean art's ancient roots,listen to the tone of a 9000-year old Chinese flute here: http://www.shakuhachi.com/Sound/K-9KYearOldFlute.mp3
Poets, musicians, artists and writers, on the other hand, serve no noticeable function in preserving the species. The results of creativity serve less as tools of physical survival, but more in evolving the social and emotional capacity of society.
Neuroscience advances have begun to demonstrate that areas of the prefrontal cortex linked with self-expression and inhibiting censoring brain functions are active in artists in the process of creation, showing much different brain activation during periods of intense creativity, like improvisation. Measuring perception in the brain – vision, hearing, processing information – ties the neural output of the creative process into the realms of scientific understanding.
Science can illuminate art through its own creative explorations of what makes us pursue and consume art – is art its own reward?
What’s going on here?
In addition to an unusually articulate complement of left-brain and right-brained speakers, the conference drew from a disparate group – scientists, teachers, artists, writers, architects and musicians, all of whom might speak distinct languages. The stovepipes in our culture keep artists in their studios and scientists in their labs, and rarely the twain shall meet. Yet with the vernacular of hearing and seeing - the universal languages gleaned through the arts and beginning to be understood by neuroscience, each group might draw understanding to enhance their own work.
Is there a way to keep the channels open and engaged? How can we sustain such cross-fertilization of ideas in a society structured to reward specialization? What does the artistically creative mind conceive of during the act of creation? How does science measure the output? How does the process - from idea to output – unfold? What role does intuition play? Knowledge? And what are those teachable insights – where we can infuse science with creativity and art with measurement? These are only a few of the questions that began to emerge in the conversations that ensued.
Perhaps the poets have intuited all along the metaphysical expression in their craft:
To see a world in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour. -William Blake
Call it intuition, creative instinct, or "getting into the zone", but science is finding that artists brains work differently when they are in the creative act, and that they may, in turn have a feel for how their art will resonate in people's brains.
Call it instinctive neuroscience creative people seem attuned from the outset to tap into a social reserve of emotion and universal understanding. With artists holding such a head start, where do neuroscientists find the neuroagency that can help advance understanding of where we find creativity in the brain and what purposes it serves?
That was one underlying question during a lively converation with jazz musicians Pat Metheny and Mike Pope and otolaryngologist Dr. Charles Limb participating in a unique conference on "Perceptual Neuroscience and Aesthetics” on October 20 in Baltimore. The conference, at the American Visual Arts Museum, was filled to capacity with more than 300 attendees curious to explore how – and why – we respond to art, music, dance and drama. And to learn a little more about the brains of those people driven to create.
Are our brains hard-wired for Beethoven? What about Dr. Dre? Do mirror neurons attune to faces, such as the larger-than-life canvases by painter William Stoehr, and what emotions does it evoke in people? Stoehr pays most attention to the eyes of his models - reproducing them to draw us closely into the mind of his portraits. He highlights these black and white images with a splash of red, a touch of yellow. And much of the rest of the painting is more suggestion than explicit representation. Yet, he notes, that people who see his work believe that the eye, the ear, the chin is complete. The viewer's eye fills in what it expects to see, even when there is merely hinted at, in fact.
The former National Geographic photographer is exploring this theme on Facebook
The science of creativity
Science, technology, engineering, math and medicine – form a core of what might be called “left-brained” occupations – society recognizes the value of these roles through investment in education and reward in the workplace. Those possessing these functions in high degree are highly valued members of society: finding root causes and statistical bases for societal problems, creating living and working environments, curing disease. All these advance evolution of our species: inventing new treatments, technological advances, shelter, safety, defense. In short, these capabilities are fundamental to human survival.
Ars Artis
Bach might not save a life. Picasso never built a house. Although Doris Lessing, in a prolific career that has continued her publishing well into her 90s, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007, it is doubtful that her most notable works, including The Golden Notebook, ever cured a reader. Throughout the millennia, artists have been alternatively ostracized and embraced, reviled and worshiped. But always, they have been seen as “different”, or outside the norm.
To glean art's ancient roots,listen to the tone of a 9000-year old Chinese flute here: http://www.shakuhachi.com/Sound/K-9KYearOldFlute.mp3
Poets, musicians, artists and writers, on the other hand, serve no noticeable function in preserving the species. The results of creativity serve less as tools of physical survival, but more in evolving the social and emotional capacity of society.
Neuroscience advances have begun to demonstrate that areas of the prefrontal cortex linked with self-expression and inhibiting censoring brain functions are active in artists in the process of creation, showing much different brain activation during periods of intense creativity, like improvisation. Measuring perception in the brain – vision, hearing, processing information – ties the neural output of the creative process into the realms of scientific understanding.
Science can illuminate art through its own creative explorations of what makes us pursue and consume art – is art its own reward?
What’s going on here?
In addition to an unusually articulate complement of left-brain and right-brained speakers, the conference drew from a disparate group – scientists, teachers, artists, writers, architects and musicians, all of whom might speak distinct languages. The stovepipes in our culture keep artists in their studios and scientists in their labs, and rarely the twain shall meet. Yet with the vernacular of hearing and seeing - the universal languages gleaned through the arts and beginning to be understood by neuroscience, each group might draw understanding to enhance their own work.
Is there a way to keep the channels open and engaged? How can we sustain such cross-fertilization of ideas in a society structured to reward specialization? What does the artistically creative mind conceive of during the act of creation? How does science measure the output? How does the process - from idea to output – unfold? What role does intuition play? Knowledge? And what are those teachable insights – where we can infuse science with creativity and art with measurement? These are only a few of the questions that began to emerge in the conversations that ensued.
Perhaps the poets have intuited all along the metaphysical expression in their craft:
To see a world in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour. -William Blake
Monday, December 14, 2009
10 Reasons 2010 Will Be Better: True or False?
10. The worst of the financial meltdown is over.
9. We are out of the war in Iraq.
8. The world has not ended.
7. Health care reform is about making healthcare more affordable and better.
6. Education reform is about giving every child the opportunity to improve their learning.
5. We can conquer the challenges of climate change before it's too late.
4. There is no climate change challenge.
3. Happiness is a state of mind.
2. We can improve our state of mind.
1. We should all resolve to be happy in 2010.
Reading a fascinating book by Robert Burton, On Being Certain or How We Know What We Know, which challenges us from a scientific point-of-view to check our assumptions at the door. Is my "pink" the same mixture of red-and-white that you see when you think of pink? Do I believe that science will one day reveal evidence for the rational view that all we see is random? Is "reason" the answer over "faith" because it is based on facts that can be proved?
Or do all these facts that we take for granted (I would say, "hold on faith", but that would be too ironic) only true until we find something "truer" that invalidates what we've deduced? And even if we can answer these questions, is there still a larger question about what set the random universe we inhabit (which is not even to tackle "knowing" multiple universes or multiverses and different understandings of time and space relative to other positions outside our tiny vantage point of knowledge) in motion?
Mind-boggling, no? What do you think?
9. We are out of the war in Iraq.
8. The world has not ended.
7. Health care reform is about making healthcare more affordable and better.
6. Education reform is about giving every child the opportunity to improve their learning.
5. We can conquer the challenges of climate change before it's too late.
4. There is no climate change challenge.
3. Happiness is a state of mind.
2. We can improve our state of mind.
1. We should all resolve to be happy in 2010.
Reading a fascinating book by Robert Burton, On Being Certain or How We Know What We Know, which challenges us from a scientific point-of-view to check our assumptions at the door. Is my "pink" the same mixture of red-and-white that you see when you think of pink? Do I believe that science will one day reveal evidence for the rational view that all we see is random? Is "reason" the answer over "faith" because it is based on facts that can be proved?
Or do all these facts that we take for granted (I would say, "hold on faith", but that would be too ironic) only true until we find something "truer" that invalidates what we've deduced? And even if we can answer these questions, is there still a larger question about what set the random universe we inhabit (which is not even to tackle "knowing" multiple universes or multiverses and different understandings of time and space relative to other positions outside our tiny vantage point of knowledge) in motion?
Mind-boggling, no? What do you think?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
USA-ification of the News
While journalists minds are focused on the "Death of the News as We Know It", management is busy trying to catch up the print product to electronic news standards. USA Today recognized the salience of this approach to news reporting when it began in 1982 - the short stories (with only one jump from Page One of each section), "pertinent to readers' lives" headlines and colorful design mimicked then-emerging cable news channels' styles of reporting.
Today's challenge is even greater - what news is being consumed by the vast majority of younger readers if balkanized and customized to an unprecedented degree - delivered directly to your inbox by sources as varied as Yahoo! and Facebook. Digg and Reditt enable bloggers to show up the same way. Google Search and now Bing offer Web surfers to seek expertise to a very specific degree.
So what's a newspaper to do? The latest to strip off the trappings of traditional news reporting and jump into the ring of redesign is The Venerable Washington Post. Seems "venerable" is now a bad word - that long, in-depth reporting and deep investigation are Bad Words has become incontrovertible TRUTH. The new design features a framed format: stories are lined off from one-another to give them that trendy "school newspaper" look, as if readers might otherwise be unable to tell where one story ends and another begins. The center hole of the front page, beginning above the fold, boasts a large color photo designed to draw the reader's eye and evoke a particular emotion (a recent edition showed one candlelit mourner of the Fort Hood massacre with a tear tracing his cheeks) that could tell the entire story without words. Apparently, a reporter's crisis is good news for the photojournalist.
Experimental give-away versions to tease younger readers who, say, ride the Metro to work everyday seem to offer crumbs of news and more activity listings or lifestyle news, with still more color pix (often badly reproduced). The Express is The Post's giveaway paper: theoretically, a trifle to whet the appetite for the daily's filet mignon. How many consumers of cookie-cutter news convert to Chef Katharine Weymouth's five-course, white tablecloth banquet remains to be seen.
Further accentuating the trend of McNews: columns in The Post now sport thumbnail photo-sketches of their authors. This seems to be so that fans of, say, Mike Wilbon's sports commentary can recognize their fearless commentator on TV - where the Post can further profit from his appearances. Even such lesser mortals as E.J. Dionne or Richard Cohen, who have much to say on serious news can become Post "brands" when they appear in other media, both online and off-. Personality journalism does not reside solely within the cover of "E" or People anymore.
Not that The Post had an original thought in creating this visual fingerprint for its regulars - the Wall Street Journal originated the trend. WSJ seems intent to prove itself as the only member of the mainstream media that can monetize its own online product by leaving its content accessible only to subscribers. Whether the purveyors of this brand can indeed see their strategy become profitable remains to be seen, but it is also true that, if one searches for a specific online headline and byline hard enough it may often be picked up and repackaged by online aggregators for free access.
It's a crap-shoot that newspapers are betting will save the brand, offer more ad sales opportunities and keep the news viable. Whether newsprint will survive the onslaught from its many digital options is debatable.
Before the funeral begins, perhaps we should undergo an examination of all this "new" news and its many sources to determine whether the heralds of doom have the story right. From citizen journalists to bloggers drawn from the ranks of former mainstream reporters, there is evidence of new momentum to telling the story of our lives. It may look different in a news generation, and there's no question that delivery channels have grown. It might even be Good News, that reporting and reading are more democratized than at any time since Thomas Paine's Common Sense or Poor Richards Almanack in the early days of the Republic.
Any way you look at it, the trend towards many sources of news beats state-controlled media where free speech is stifled and the only sanctioned news is what "they" say it can be.
The News Is Dead, Long Live the News.
Today's challenge is even greater - what news is being consumed by the vast majority of younger readers if balkanized and customized to an unprecedented degree - delivered directly to your inbox by sources as varied as Yahoo! and Facebook. Digg and Reditt enable bloggers to show up the same way. Google Search and now Bing offer Web surfers to seek expertise to a very specific degree.
So what's a newspaper to do? The latest to strip off the trappings of traditional news reporting and jump into the ring of redesign is The Venerable Washington Post. Seems "venerable" is now a bad word - that long, in-depth reporting and deep investigation are Bad Words has become incontrovertible TRUTH. The new design features a framed format: stories are lined off from one-another to give them that trendy "school newspaper" look, as if readers might otherwise be unable to tell where one story ends and another begins. The center hole of the front page, beginning above the fold, boasts a large color photo designed to draw the reader's eye and evoke a particular emotion (a recent edition showed one candlelit mourner of the Fort Hood massacre with a tear tracing his cheeks) that could tell the entire story without words. Apparently, a reporter's crisis is good news for the photojournalist.
Experimental give-away versions to tease younger readers who, say, ride the Metro to work everyday seem to offer crumbs of news and more activity listings or lifestyle news, with still more color pix (often badly reproduced). The Express is The Post's giveaway paper: theoretically, a trifle to whet the appetite for the daily's filet mignon. How many consumers of cookie-cutter news convert to Chef Katharine Weymouth's five-course, white tablecloth banquet remains to be seen.
Further accentuating the trend of McNews: columns in The Post now sport thumbnail photo-sketches of their authors. This seems to be so that fans of, say, Mike Wilbon's sports commentary can recognize their fearless commentator on TV - where the Post can further profit from his appearances. Even such lesser mortals as E.J. Dionne or Richard Cohen, who have much to say on serious news can become Post "brands" when they appear in other media, both online and off-. Personality journalism does not reside solely within the cover of "E" or People anymore.
Not that The Post had an original thought in creating this visual fingerprint for its regulars - the Wall Street Journal originated the trend. WSJ seems intent to prove itself as the only member of the mainstream media that can monetize its own online product by leaving its content accessible only to subscribers. Whether the purveyors of this brand can indeed see their strategy become profitable remains to be seen, but it is also true that, if one searches for a specific online headline and byline hard enough it may often be picked up and repackaged by online aggregators for free access.
It's a crap-shoot that newspapers are betting will save the brand, offer more ad sales opportunities and keep the news viable. Whether newsprint will survive the onslaught from its many digital options is debatable.
Before the funeral begins, perhaps we should undergo an examination of all this "new" news and its many sources to determine whether the heralds of doom have the story right. From citizen journalists to bloggers drawn from the ranks of former mainstream reporters, there is evidence of new momentum to telling the story of our lives. It may look different in a news generation, and there's no question that delivery channels have grown. It might even be Good News, that reporting and reading are more democratized than at any time since Thomas Paine's Common Sense or Poor Richards Almanack in the early days of the Republic.
Any way you look at it, the trend towards many sources of news beats state-controlled media where free speech is stifled and the only sanctioned news is what "they" say it can be.
The News Is Dead, Long Live the News.
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