The front page of the Boulder Daily Camera yesterday proclaimed “CU-Boulder takes steps to close journalism school.” As I pondered the fate of my profession, I, a former newspaper reporter, posted the story to my Twitter feed and my Facebook page. The fact that I chose to share the information online rather than blasting off a letter to the editor should tell me enough about the future of media to not make me upset about the issue.

However, I was upset.

For starters, I have a master’s degree in journalism. Is it going to be worth anything in 10 years? I knew when I got my degree that I could make a lot more money if I went to business school, but I chose journalism because I was fascinated by how people chose to communicate information and the different ways in which they share it. It was this fascination that drove me into the newspaper business almost two decades ago and it’s what led me to build my first website in 1996, and start my first blog 10 years later. Besides, I hate statistics classes.

Journalism schools, traditionally, have been horribly inept at providing a cross-discipline approach to the trade. There’s the broadcast department, the news-editorial department, and public relations. Never shall they meet. I remember as an undergrad at Colorado State asking about photojournalism classes and getting a quizzical look from my academic advisor because I was on the news-editorial track. I reminded her that they have pictures in newspapers too.

“But someone else will do that for you,” she said, as if the subject had been exhausted. Not anymore. Reporters are expected to write the story, update the blog, create a Twitter feed and post video to the website all before the 5 p.m. deadline. No wonder the quality of the reporting has been going steadily downhill. They don’t have enough time to focus on anything that could make an impact.

It is the spread of web-based information that is, ironically, leading to this need for better journalists. Increasingly, people are overwhelmed with information via online, on television and in print. In this overwhelmed state, they are developing more and more channels of information. “I’m a mom. Tell me about stuff I care about.” Enter the mommy bloggers. “I am passionate about politics.” Enter MSNBC and Fox News. These are just channels though, microcosms of information that provide no context or perspective. It’s more like a stream of consciousness.

Now, more than ever, we need people that can tell us what is important, why it’s important and explain it to us in a way that we can understand. As one of my old journalism teachers used to say, “Don’t just tell me what happened. Tell me why I should care!”

Despite my concerns, I think it can be a promising and very smart move for the University of Colorado to create a school of information if done correctly. You can’t deny the power or the influence of the Internet and social media in particular. If you stop looking at journalism in the silos of television, print, and public relations — and start looking at it as information sharing — then you get to the heart of what journalism really is.

I shared my thoughts with Sandra Fish, a journalist and journalism instructor at the University of Colorado who specializes in politics, government and interactive reporting. She wrote me back this reply:

“I think the potential to create something new that melds journalism and technology is exciting but we also need to keep in mind that journalism, no matter what the form or platform, is essential to our democracy.”

“What about ethics?” I asked. “And GRAMMAR?!”

Learning to understand and accept my own biases but not letting that overshadow my reporting was one of the most important things I learned in journalism school. I also learned people tend not to take you too seriously if you don’t know the difference between “there,” “they’re” and “their.” I see very little of either proper grammar or ethics on the Internet.

These are all issues that have to be taken into consideration when deciding what the future of journalism will look like. People still need information. Maybe we’ll need more “citizen journalists” who can bring an entrepreneurial culture to journalism and make money blogging, posting videos and podcasting. If that’s true, maybe there will be a need for some of those dreaded business statistics classes.

I can’t wait to find out. The fascination continues.

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One of the great aspects of social media is the ability for far more people than ever before to get involved in communications, but this represents a fundamental change for newspapers. Instead of printing a few letters to the editor each day, representing a tiny fraction of the readership, nearly every online story on most newspaper websites features the ability to comment. Individual stories often receive dozens or even hundreds of comments, even in smaller markets.

That’s usually a good thing–but it can be a bad thing. Sadly, it seems our own Boulder Daily Camera is an example of how this is becoming a bad thing. This problem isn’t limited to the Camera, but because the paper is in our town and I try to read it every day, I’m throwing down the gauntlet: I’m challenging you, Camera: clean up your comments.

Simply, you’ve lost control of your own living room. The comments are often more ridiculous than valuable. It’s time to kick the serial smartasses out of the party and see if your community is able to conduct itself in a better way.

I’m not talking about profanity, threats or other egregious violations. If those things are happening, they do seem to be getting shut down. And I’m certainly not talking about honest, open and respectful disagreement. That is the very best part of an open forum. It’s the myriad of feeble attempts at comedy coupled with mean-spirited comments that don’t further the conversation, but ruin it.

Here are some recent examples:

The Emich sisters, former owners of Boulder’s Trilogy Wine Bar, are looking at opening a new business combining wine, yoga and other elements. Comments like this (taken from the Camera website) are just plain ridiculous:

“There are already too many yuppie Yoga places, coffee shops, and health clubs for egocentric stay home moms. Boulder men need to put down their man purses and run these wenches out of town.”

Or:

“What about tofu, granola bars and bean sprouts? Got to get all that no-MSG, all natural, range-fed, no artificial coloring, all organic, unsalted, no sugar, no preservatives food in order to survive in a world that will soon be crowded with windmills and solar machines. Haight-Ashbury, 1968. Bleeeeeeech!”

This is just a sampling of the mostly critical comments following this story. Are these thoughtful or an extension of a good discussion? The story talks about three women (full disclosure, friends of mine) who ran a business in Boulder, paid rent, employed people and contributed to the local economy for nearly 10 years, and you’d think from the comment thread they were planning to open an Opium Stand outside of a local grade school.

The point? I certainly don’t get it. Disagree with the concept, comment on the service–good or bad–once it opens or ask an honest question. But to just jump on and tell the world you hate something–to be clear, something that doesn’t even exist yet!–is narcissism at its worst.

Comments following the coverage of how cancer recently claimed rock legend Ronnie James Dio were mostly respectful. But Xenu007 (who seems to think none of the rest of us in Boulder can enjoy any story without his pithy input) left this gem:

“Who?”

Perhaps if you would have read the story (which is from the Associated Press) you wouldn’t need to ask. But really, it’s a waste of electricity to even fire up the computer and type that.

A June 25 article on the mosquito problem at a city softball facility has attracted 27 comments so far. Twenty-seven comments on mosquitos! Most of them are nothing more than snarky remarks, some even criticizing the players and the sport they choose. Bottom line: not much worth reading. Certainly not the best our community has to offer.

So what do I recommend? Let me stress again: differing opinions should be encouraged, not squelched, but there’s a difference between differing opinions and random ridiculous remarks. Honestly, an occassional, very clever quip can further the conversation, but I see precious few of those. Here are a few thoughts:

Eliminate anonymous comments. Nearly every newspaper requires that letters to the editor be signed. Occasionally the identity of the writer will be withheld from print, but such a decision is made with the consent and consideration of an editor and typically only when there is some sort of serious issue (whistleblowers still working at the target or similar). Allowing people to completely hide their identity behind names like Xenu007 (his/her avatar is a photo of John Travolta) practically encourages bad behavior.

Moderate more strictly. Let’s not just wait for profanity or the report of another user. Let’s use your skills as editors and reporters. Comments like “let’s run these wenches out of town” simply don’t have a place on the Daily Camera’s website. To wait until something really bad happens is a bit like pulling over speeders in a school zone only after a child is injured.

Set up a system to alert you to users that comment constantly, and watch their content. Readers leaving several comments on several stories every day are certainly engaged in the community, but are they good comments or simply random snark? It’s easy to jump on and leave a derogatory remark for nearly any story, and that seems to be activity of many of your most active users. Five good, conversational comments are far better than 50 dumb remarks. Encourage people to engage with quality content, not simply quantity of content.

Engage your community to help. I realize you’re facing shrinking revenue and lower payrolls, and here I am recommending additional work. Perhaps volunteers from the community could serve as a frontline defense. Try putting something inappropriate on Wikipedia and an army of volunteers will have it down in minutes. Again, the goal is not to squash disagreements, but to allow discussions of all kind to flourish in a respectful environment. I’ll bet there are many members of the community that would volunteer to monitor the posts and remove the stupidity.

Shut down comments on stories that get out of hand. When a string runs amok on any given article, shut it down and remove the offending string. This will make it clear you’re serious and will help strings stay on focus. I remember one string about a domestic incident resulting in death in Boulder that started out thoughtful and interesting and devolved into a running commentary on the couple’s tattoos. Shut that stuff off when it happens and before long it won’t happen near as often.

Some stories simply shouldn’t have comments available. Do we really need to accommodate the potential for issues with every single story? Turning off comments on certain sections would eliminate the need to monitor them. Take Milestones, for example. Do we need to open up potential problems for the announcement of an engagement or, worse, a death? This would allow you to focus on areas that deserve comments but require moderation.

Spell out the rules, and stick to them. You’re inviting people to your house. Insist on respect in your terms of use and eliminate those who don’t follow the rules. Set forth your behavior parameters and, just like a bouncer at a bar, remove the patrons that want to ruin it for everyone else.

The comments are far enough out-of-hand now that I carefully consider recommending to a client that we contact the Camera for a story, and that’s pretty sad. Your reporters are good to work with, and the coverage itself is often beneficial. I’m more than happy to have a thoughtful discussion about my client’s story follow–even if the comments are not all favorable. I’m not willing, however, to subject my client to thoughtless, often stupid comments from the most obnoxious among us.

Your thoughts, Daily Camera? I’d love to get this discussion started. I just ask that we all treat each other with respect in the conversation.

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posted by Doyle

Tonight I wanted to watch the University of Denver Pioneers—my alma mater—take on the North Dakota Fighting Sioux in the semi-final game of the WCHA Playoffs. I’m willing to pay to watch the game, either on TV or online. I would have probably paid $34.95 or so without hesitation.

The funny part? It’s being broadcast on Fox Sports North, which just isn’t available in my area. Bottom line, it’s not like they needed to send a special crew and set up a complete broadcast. That’s already done. All they have to do is set up a stream and charge for it. I’d pay. Lots of others might as well. Let’s say just 500 people pay $30 each to watch. That’s $15,000. I have to believe that a substantial amount for a college hockey divisional playoff game.

Sadly, either no one thought of it or—more likely—there are some issues with broadcast rights that prevent Fox North from doing something so simple. So, I’m paying $8.95 for a very average audio stream.

Stupid.

Everyone involved—the universities, Fox Sports, even the advertisers, who get a larger audience—would win by making this available. When will we stop worrying about the handful of people that might steal the content and start serving—and profiting from—the large audience that’s more than happy to pay?

Soon, I hope.

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I often remark how social media is not a new set of behaviors, but just a new set of tools. We’ve always just wanted to talk to each other, and social media makes that easier than ever. As a professional communicator, social media has provided me with a myriad of new outlets—and challenges—but I believe the basics remain. In order to be an effective member of any social media community, your communications must be clear, honest and transparent.

There is no one that fits that description of communication better than my good friend and mentor Joe Fuentes. I learned today that Joe is fighting for his life against cancer, and it caused me to pause and reflect on the many lessons I learned from Joe while working for him at what was then Adolph Coors Company. The things Joe taught me honed not only traditional communication skills, but his constant example as a warm, caring and open person set the stage for understanding how to use social media 20+ years before any of us had so much as a Facebook page.

It was Joe that told me—again and again, until I got it through my head—that a great editor makes the writing better, not different. An ego is an editor’s worst enemy, he would say. You don’t change it because you can, you change it because your change makes it better.

I remember the first news release I wrote for Joe. I was in my early 20s and, of course, I knew everything. Back in those days, we typed our drafts and handed them off for editing. Joe walked the draft back to my office, literally covered in red ink. No sentence seemed beyond the reach of Joe’s pen. I must have had quite the look on my face, but Joe just smiled and said “oh, don’t mind that… this was pretty good, actually! Let me show you what I did.” And he sat and shared freely more than 20 years of experience as a writer and and editor at the Rocky Mountain News along with another 10 years or so of public relations experience with Public Service Company of Colorado. And consistent with his own advice, there was not a single mark on that page that didn’t make the piece better.

Working for Joe was an ongoing lesson. Long before Google wanted headlines to be less than 22 words, Joe asked what every word was doing there, what role it played, and challenged you to make sure it was the best possible word for the job. If there was to be a drop head, it had to play a part in telling the story. And leads (or ledes, as Joe, ever the newspaperman, would write) had better be strong and to the point. Show up in Joe’s office with a normal PR lead/lede filled with buzzwords and braggadocio regarding your company’s leadership in some area and you were sent back to start again. It was Joe that demonstrated that PR was better for everyone—from company to client to reporter to reader—when the tenets of journalism were followed. “Don’t write puff,” he’ll say, “it won’t get past anyone worth getting past.”

While Strunk and White might have written it first, it was Joe that drove it home for me: “Omit needless words,” he would say, often followed by “I’m pretty sure we don’t get paid by the word around here!”

I’ve had the opportunity to introduce several of my employees to Joe from time to time at different events, and they’d often say, “Oh, you’re the AP Style guy.” And Joe will always smile. “If you want to communicate with someone, you’ve got to speak their language, and AP Style is the journalists’ language,” he’d remind us. Even today, when news releases are more often than not read directly by the general public, it’s maybe more important than ever to have your writing look and sound as professional as any news outlet. It helps give the story credibility. I learned that from Joe.

I remember working on a news release one day, typing feverishly (yes, typing on a typewriter!) when Joe asked me what I was doing.

“Working on a news release,” I answered, a bit incredulously.

“I’m just impressed that you memorized the entire AP Stylebook, since I don’t see it on your desk while you’re writing,” he said. “Make sure it’s all correct when you send it to me.” Joe knows the Stylebook better than anyone I’ve ever known, but his was always within easy reach. Now, I never really put mine away. Like Joe’s, my AP Stylebook is within arm’s length at all times.

But even more important than the writing, Joe is always the professional’s professional. His standards are high and he expects your best work, but rather than yelling or chastising, Joe simply makes you want to do your best because you never want to disappoint him. I’d do anything to meet a deadline for Joe, not from fear, but from respect. Joe and I worked together in a large department that could be difficult at times with office politics and turf battles. Somehow, Joe stayed above the fray, did excellent work and set an example for his staff. Without exception.

I remember one day, Joe got very, very angry with another manager on the staff.

“Darn that guy, he really makes me mad sometimes,” he said in a pretty even voice—and that was pretty much the end of it. I honestly don’t know how Joe put up with my high-strung mannerisms all those years, but he did, and if it drove him half as nuts as I now fear it might have, he never let on. He just continued to show me through example that there was another way to get things done.

In many ways, Joe is a true old-time newspaperman, but at the same time, he has always been years ahead of his time. You see, Joe understands the importance of clear, honest and transparent communication as being the foundation upon which everything else is built. It doesn’t matter if you’re chatting with a friend, writing a news release, completing a column for a major daily or a launching your very first blog, it all begins with clear, honest and transparent communication.

Despite what you probably thought all too often, Joe, I was listening to every word. My very best to you today and every day, my friend.

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posted by Cortney Harvey

The New York Times recently covered Coca Cola’s inclusion of social media in their Super Bowl ads. Some said “Huh?”

I disagree. Though it has been slowly emerging recently, this is yet another brilliant way that socmed can and should be used. Reading this article got me thinking about how socmed will impact this famed sport event and what means for the future of sports and media.

For most, the first thing that comes to mind when they think about the Super Bowl (besides the game) is the commercials. Although Coca Cola still holds two commercial spots for tomorrow’s main event, they are, for the first year, putting their eggs in the socmed basket. So what effect does this rush of socmed into the Super Bowl spotlight have? And why hasn’t this come to the forefront sooner? There has been the slow introduction of communication technologies incorporated into these scenarios over the past few years, but nothing compared to what is possible.

My question: why isn’t there a stronger push being made towards using socmed for this purpose? When used right, socmed can be of such great value… Who cares if it’s not traditional, it’s what’s happening now and will be what’s happening tomorrow. And not only does this mean something for once-a-year sports events, but can have a profound impact on how sports news and updates are communicated daily. The relationship between the two will change sports media forever, because today so many of us enjoy these play-by-play updates on our Facebook page and Twitter feeds instead of the annoying “too much information” one-liners.

Another trend in advertising for the Super Bowl!

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Mass-market adoption of electronic media is a serious threat to print – but not deadly. Not everyone wants to read everything on a computer screen or mobile device, and not all newspapers, magazines and books are going the way of smoke signals, carrier pigeons and Morse code. Some will survive. But, which ones, and how?

Some newspapers are succeeding in small and mid-size markets by focusing like laser beams on local news, with well-written, in-depth journalistic coverage that readers can’t get anywhere else. Unfortunately and at their peril, some papers no longer dig deep into the many interesting stories lurking below the surface. These once well-respected media outlets have chosen instead to cut staff, report less local news, and publish mostly national wire copy, which can be found elsewhere easier, cheaper and faster.

The metro dailies with a good chance of survival have found and are dominating a niche. The San Jose Mercury News’ with its now nationally recognized coverage of the technology industry is a great example. Trade magazines and specialty publications are still popular and for the same reason. They are often carried around for weeks at a time in briefcases and backpacks, and read on buses, planes or trains, and when there’s no handy Internet connection. Their readers relish the in-depth, insightful articles that only seasoned industry insiders can deliver.

Blogs are great, too, but of the many thousands, few are produced by professionals who write with objectivity, consistency, style and journalistic integrity. Reporters used to be held above the fray of emotional, opinionated public chatter. But instead of differentiating their craft with the value propositions of objectivism, completeness and fact-checked accuracy, newspapers are firing their veteran journalists, overworking the few who remain, and hiring college interns. Cheaper, yes. But not better.

And speaking of cheap, many newspapers are making huge mistakes, not only in reverting to this amateur coverage, but in allowing un-monitored comments to pollute their readers’ experience in their online versions. Anonymous and callous commentary now accompanies just about every story, with one smart-ass trying to out-do the other at every turn. Newspapers never used to publish every letter to the editor, so why would they now?

Not every newspaper and magazine is going to make it. But some will survive. Those that have a prayer would do well to focus on editorial quality and focus, and less on panicked cost cutting. Maybe journalism needs to hire a PR firm.

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The outstanding CBS-TV news program 60 Minutes did a piece last night called “The Movie Pirates” which outlined the global problem of motion picture piracy. Overall, an interesting piece. Sadly, in the end — thanks in large measure to what I think is a lack of technology background and understanding on the part of correspondent Lesley Stahl — it turned into a piece that gave corporate media a chance to get a plug in for network regulation without ever uttering “net neutrality” or anything close.

Let me be very clear: I do not condone the piracy of intellectual property and believe those who engage in the activity for profit should be punished. However, I also do not condone ridiculous schemes to limit my ability to use and enjoy the content I’ve paid for or the slippery slope of network management that can limit our ability to get the data we want from the Internet connections we pay for. An example for each:

First, let’s think about digital rights management (DRM) and how it limits our ability to use and enjoy what we paid for. I use this example frequently: I remember buying an album in high school (won’t tell you which one… too much potential abuse!) and really liking one of the songs. So I drove to my friend Mark’s house, and we listened to it. Our friend Greg called, and we went to his house, where we listened to the song. We all liked it. We then took the album to the party and played it there, and it was a hit. Sounds reasonable, right? But imagine if when we got to the party, instead of playing the song, a voice came from the speakers that said “I’m sorry, but your license for this music only allows you to play it on three different stereos. You may not play this content here.” Sadly, it’s not much different than many DRM schemes we all accept and deal with today. Instead, because I could play that album for my friends — and they liked it — the sampling that took place generated the sale of 10 or more additional copies of the album.

Second, let’s look at the potential for “packet sniffing” and how it can be used badly and against us. I will defend any ISP’s right to manage its network — that makes it better for all customers. However, if ISPs were able to legally limit certain bits while letting others go through unfettered, that would be problematic. For example, let’s say my ISP also offers telephone service, but I chose to use Skype or Vonage instead. What if, through deep packet inspection, my ISP was able to degrade my service when I’m on a voice call through a competitor, making the service so bad I caved in and signed up for their service. That’s not fair, and it’s not what I pay for. Think this is crazy? Comcast was already found to be doing similar activity when they were caught placing false-reset packets in BitTorrent streams by several users, a violation of its own Terms of Service. The FCC got involved, but not because of the denial of content, but because it was a violation of Comcast’s Terms of Service with it’s users.

Which brings us back to 60 Minutes this evening. The story did a great job of telling the story of piracy from many points of view. Director Steven Soderbergh told how piracy is limiting the number of projects which get made by studios. While this doesn’t hurt the mega-stars, it does hurt the camera operators, the grips, the caterers and the thousands of others who only work if movies are being made. In the end, it hurts us as consumers as well, by limiting our choices. I agree.

But when Ms. Stahl began to describe what she called “a whiz-bang technology called ‘BitTorrent’” and how it made it easier to pirate movies, I had the feeling we were headed south. The story concluded by basically indicting the Internet for Hollywood’s $6 billion per year piracy problem. My issues:

• Ms. Stahl’s level of technical expertise and her probable understanding of her audience caused her to position BitTorrent transfers as some new and bad thing. It was inferred that the only real use was to pirate movies. From this report, I could see many people supporting legislation they don’t fully understand.
• I’m curious how the $6 billion figure was arrived at? If the assumption is that every pirated copy takes a full-priced legal copy out of the studios’ hands, that’s a seriously flawed number. If users wanted to spend $29.95 on a movie, they certainly wouldn’t purchase one shot on a camcorder in a theater… they’d buy the real thing. These folks are looking to save a few bucks.
• One industry source said “I wish Al Gore had never invented the Internet.” Again, given the audience, this can open the door to a favorable response to legislation many won’t fully grasp.

So what can we logically assume Mr. and Mrs. Middle America took away from this report? Maybe, “We need to regulate this Internet thing to stop these bad people from stealing money.” Sadly, all that does is escalate the already irritating game of cat and mouse between pirates and DRM schemes. I’d like to offer another solution: Let’s stop protecting business models and let the free market economy take over.

What if we let people who wanted to watch a movie the day it comes out on their home theater system do so… but we charged them $50. Right now, I have to go to the theater to watch a movie if I want to see it when it first comes out whether I like that experience or not. Maybe I don’t wait for DVD just to save money, but maybe I’d rather watch the movie in my home on my equipment with my friends. In the end, people are not passionate about theaters, they’re passionate about the movies they can see there. Let’s let Hollywood (and every other industry, for that matter) deliver their content in the way that they believe can make them the most money. It’s the same reason many restaurants offer dine-in, carry-out and delivery — because they recognize that not everyone wants the same experience. Entertainment content providers need to understand this paradigm to succeed in the evolving marketplace.

Sorry, 60 Minutes and Lesley Stahl, but I think you got taken in on this one — perhaps by the very kinds of powers you’ve done such a great job bringing down over the years.

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Posted by Lisa Greim

The phone rang at 9 a.m. Saturday. It was my high school friend Michael, calling from Switzerland to ask me to interpret a dream.

“My Aunt Lucy used to call and tell people she dreamed about them, and she usually got it right and that was odd, because she was kind of a hermit,” he said. “So I have to honor that.”

"Marie Antoinette en chemise," Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, 1783 (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Here’s the dream: “You had written an article and posted it on Facebook, and you were very proud of it,” he said. “I don’t remember what the article was about, but the title was ‘Let Them Eat Op-Eds.’”

Long pause. “What does that mean?”

It meant that Michael’s subconscious had just written me a great head for a blog post. But I thought about it a little bit and here’s what I came up with.

In 2009, we have no shortage of opinions to draw from, found on blogs, TV comedy shows, talk radio, interview programs and in print. But verifiable facts are thin on the ground, and a discouraging percentage of Americans seem unable to tell one from the other.

This lack of reading comprehension is being exploited by everybody from the banner ads that say “You’ve Just Won a Laptop!” to the people who claim that the proposed public health insurance option will cover illegal immigrants but not taxpaying American citizens.

You can look it up. Everybody knows it’s true.

Everybody also knows that the French Queen, Marie Antoinette, famously said of peasants who were rioting for bread, “Let them eat cake!” (In French: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.”) Except that there’s no record of Marie Antoinette ever saying that. And brioche is not cake, it’s pastry.

Marie Antoinette’s biographer, Lady Antonia Fraser, has found no evidence she said “Let them eat cake” or anything like it. Fraser speculates that Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV, may have said ‘Que ne mangent-ils de la croûte de pâté?’ (‘Why don’t they eat pastry?”) more than 100 years earlier.

The probable source of the phrase was philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his 12-volume autobiography, Rousseau attributes the quote to an unnamed grande princesse. But Rousseau published his Confessions a year before 14-year-old Maria Antonia arrived from Austria to marry the Dauphin Louis Auguste. Two biographers, Leo Damrosch and Paul Johnson, point out that Rousseau’s memory is not to be trusted. He was neither a journalist nor a historian, and mentally ill besides.

But the Jacobins loved him, so it’s likely that some propagandist combined Rousseau’s anecdote with the general hatred of the monarchy, spiced it up with details of the Queen’s lavish lifestyle and published the story in broadsides known as libelles (from the Latin for “little book,” but, ahem).

“Let them eat cake” lives on because it was catchy, not because it was true.

See how boring that was? I had to look stuff up, take notes, translate French and Latin, and put in all the italics and accent marks. I also had to remember what I learned in three semesters of European history and from actually reading Fraser’s book[i].

It’s so much more fun to repeat what you heard on the bus this morning, and when challenged, smile and say, “Everybody knows the other side lies. I know the REAL TRUTH.”

If they don’t have facts, let them eat op-eds. When they finally notice the difference, it will be too late.

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National Public Radio affiliates like to talk about “driveway moments” – when an NPR story is so compelling, you have to stay in your car until it finishes.

Truth is, driveway moments are a big pain in the ass, especially when your kids (or co-workers) are staring at you, wondering why you’re still sitting there  10 minutes after you arrived.

NPR.org relaunched Monday with a more newsy focus, and I like it. Instead of forcing users to hunt for stories within programs, the site brings the stories out front. It will be updated throughout the day.

I’m a storyteller. I like to tell, read and hear stories. This, for example, is a great story: Ari Shapiro skulking around D.C. with novelist David Baldacci. Don’t read the text – it’s missing some of the best quotes. It’s quintessentially NPR: wild sound of a motorcade going by while Baldacci notes that the windows of the presidential limo, a.k.a. “The Beast,” are as thick as a phone book and don’t roll down.

Baldacci cracks up as he talks about a public park so well known as a meeting place for operatives that kids on his son’s Little League team call it “the spy park.”

The audio has texture, personality, and a feeling that you’re somewhere besides your breakfast nook. Listen – then go back to the Web page for photos and an excerpt from Baldacci’s latest book, First Family.

It’s not only a good story, it makes me want to do something I’ve never done before: read a David Baldacci crime novel.

Vivian Schiller, who left the New York Times’ digital division to become CEO of Washington, D.C.-based NPR, spearheaded the change. She told her old paper that the Web site will flip “from being a companion to radio to being a news destination in its own right,” using NPR’s reputation for solid journalism to attract readers as well as listeners.

NPR is particularly interested in capturing more eyeballs and ears at midday, when people are at work and more able to click than tune in. Eventually they hope to be able to offer whole programs to download.

I like both the companion and the destination concepts. Unlike television, we listen to radio while we do other things. It’s hard to write down a book title while driving, and frustrating to get out of the shower and catch the last 15 seconds of an interview that you really wanted to hear. So a time-shifted, annotated version of what you heard driving home is really cool.

Radio is linear, the Web is, well, webby. Radio is time-constrained, the Web is not. Online you can hear what you missed, read the text and click related links. You can listen to the whole interview, not just the best five minutes (on NPR) or 15 seconds (anyplace else).

Radio – good radio – gets into your head like nothing else. I’ve gone to the NPR site to get a recipe, see a photo or hear a song, but most often I just had to listen to something one more time, like the story of the Giant Pool of Money, or the StoryCorps segment where the kid with Asperger’s syndrome asks his mom if she’s sorry she had him, or Laura Rothenberg’s “My So-Called Lungs,” a radio diary recorded from a hospital bed while waiting for a lung transplant.

Detractors fear that a move to multimedia will dilute the impact of NPR’s broadcast programming, according to the Times. Some local stations worry that fundraising will suffer. Au contraire! As a public radio supporter, it has irked me for years that there’s no magic switch to turn off the begathon as soon as you donate.

I will happily give more money to Colorado Public Radio if I can get the programming without the groveling.

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I’m not a big fan of platitudes and cheesy advice. I find the self-help section of book stores creepy. And, at the risk of offending and alienating the entire Western world and certainly a good ¾ of the rest, I think the Cult of Oprah is pathetic. Blaspheme, I know. Going to hell for sure (as if there were any doubt!!)

But…then again…as we all know, clichés, or perhaps more to the point, seemingly obvious truisms do indeed have their place and can, even for sardonic cynics like myself, hold deep meaning. Perhaps it is the feel-good, down-to-earth clichés that we need the most right now, especially today, when everyone is struggling – struggling to make it and to stay optimistic.

I just read this short piece by Al Lewis (former Denver Post reporter and currently columnist for the Dow Jones newswire) about a recent encounter he was lucky enough to have with Jim Collins (best selling internationally acclaimed author of Built to Last and Good to Great). The two talked shop, of course, and Lewis was able to, if even briefly, pick Collins’ brain about what it takes to stay in business in today’s wacked out and uncertain economy.

Collins’ advice, or wisdom as it were, was simple. But, as Lewis comments, it was not without profundity. Take a look. Simple: probably. True: without question. Worth being reminded of: always.

Here’s the link:

http://tellittoal.newswires-americas.com/?p=1549

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