Media Watch

Received this via forwarded email.  The author is unknown. We're ticked off at your Neanderthal attitudes and politics and we've decided we're leaving. We in New York and California intend to form our own country and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that will include New York, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and the rest of the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation and especially to the people of the new country of The Enlightened States of America (E.S.A). To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Andrew Cuomo and Elizabeth Warren. You get Bobby Jindal and Todd Akin. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and ent...

I sincerely hope that the video I shot of Gov. Mitt Romney  (R-Mass.) and Iowa radio talkshow host Jan Mickelson five years ago can finally die a dignified death.  An edited version of it was recently resurrected and posted on YouTube in an apparent attempt to expose a prickly side of the former Massachusetts governor and Mormonism. I'm tired of seeing this clip show up partly because it's always mischaracterized by the press who toil over it, getting even the basic facts wrong.  No media has contacted me for several years about the facts surrounding the shooting of this video, so I'll answer a few claims here. Claim: The exchange was off the record. False.  There were no less than eight people within earshot of the governor, with various affiliations, so even if an assurance had been extended, such a promise would have been impossible to keep.  The host stated at one point: "While we're off the air..."  The camcorders were not p...

One of my marketing mentors, Drew McLellan of McLellan Marketing Group in Des Moines, has always been very open about making your marketing successful, and in his recent column he shares one that caught my eye:  Stop Making These Three Excuses for Not Making Videos . As a thirty-year radio vet, I've been shooting online videos for a fraction of that time, but I do because I recognize the value in putting it to work.  I don't shoot the high-end pieces or create animations, but I do like clean, well lit videos that are easy to understand -- someplace in between the glossy agency presentations and Flipcam-style quickies. Drew's warning go directly to the objections business owners often use that stop them from using videos before they even get started.  I encourage you to read the article and see if you've used any of these objections and what you should consider to overcome them. Why is this important?  Here are a few facts he relays and a few of my own.  D...

An email arrived a few minutes ago.  It was from a co-worker and contained a forwarded joke: I was visiting my son last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper. "This is the 21st century," he said. "I don't waste money on newspapers. Here, you can borrow my iPad." I can tell you this, that damn fly never knew what hit him. I was mildly amused.  But how about this? “Grandma,” my nephew said to my mother, who handed him a Ladies Home Journal to amuse him, “this is broke… the pictures don’t get bigger when I try to stretch them.” But score one for granny because newspapers have many functions beyond crossword puzzles and swatting flies.  They’re great for cleaning windows and laying out cookies, too!  Most importantly, they’re impervious to electromagnet pulses, which could be a big deal some day.  An enemy E.M.P. blast could easily melt the microprocessors inside iPads and computers and phones – and nearly every household appliance made in ...

Medicine, like education, is a convoluted industry that seems more interested in bilking people out of their earnings than one in which public service is the goal. The monstrosity we now call health care is so enormous that it's eating the US government's budget -- feeding off the gigantic teat of the wage earners in this country. Medicine, as a model, is now ripe for an infusion of technology, the likes of which created a subeconomy out of a music player. we can do for diagnostic medicine what Apple and Steve Jobs did for portable computing. Four years ago the President told us that we were embarking on a jorney to digitize health care records in a way that would streamline the industry and the patient experience. That didn't happen. i recently visited a walk-in clinic that was in my health care insurance "network" and stepped up to the counter, where I was asked, "Who sent you?" "Nobody. Me." How else was I supposed to answer tha...

The phrase, "perception is reality" has taken flight among US press organizations, ignoring factual information and relying on public opinion and the viewpoints of the most extreme partisan pundits as the basis for its news coverage. The founding fathers viewed the press as so fundamental in the political process that they gave it special privilege and protections under the Constitution.  The press is afforded the opportunity to shine a light on the government and investigate claims made by politicians -- and to reveal truths not otherwise available to the average individual.  But today members of the press happily enrich themselves by advancing corporate propaganda on a wholesale level.  Their only measures of success are opinion polls and their bottom line. Like the media, Congress is merely another operative --  a tool of a corporatist government profiting through propaganda.  But that's another article. The way the media operates today is an obvio...

The question Republican voters are left with is this: which of Paul Ryan's beliefs will be compromised now that he's hitched his political wagon to Gov. Romney's Presidential campaign? One of Romney's most notable traits is that he changes positions with the winds of public opinion, leaving voters confused and confounded by the candidate's ambiguity. Choosing a running mate that is a polar opposite -- in terms of his explicitly stated positions -- is unquestionably good for Romney, but how badly will this marriage hurt Ryan? What of his values? His moral consistency? Imagine if you will, in light of the number of times Romney has had to apologize for his own mistakes in positions (abortion), the level at which he will be forced to qualify Ryan's incompatible policy statements. Rep. Ryan's a spreadsheet guy; he'll always turn to the numbers to inform his own initiatives. The now-infamous Ryan Budget is the elephant in the room. Which parts of...