Keeping the shit away from the fan

Citizen One: Don’t worry about all the rain and the chance that there’s going to be a big flood. Relax. It’ll be fine.

Citizen Two: I can’t, I worry. I don’t think they’re letting enough water out through the dam.

Citizen One: Don’t worry. Cross that bridge when you come to it.

Citizen Two: What if the water overload spills over the dam and helps the river blow out the bridges and levees? Then what?

Citizen One: Start filling sandbags. Fast.

       When trouble is brewing it would be great if we could hear a booming voice from the sky repeating what that TV mechanic used to say in some long bygone commercial advising regular oil changes: “You can pay me now, or pay me later.”

       We tend to pay later, and if we aren’t lucky, we then have to pay the highest price. We do it all the time. Pay the big price. We never learn that with a little foresight, we don’t have to. But it’s pretty plain to see our preferred comfortable position is to keep our heads firmly planted in the sand.      

       Many years ago I had a washing machine that screeched increasingly louder as it seemed to be throwing grease onto clothes it was supposed to be washing. We ignored it and kept using it, not wanting to pay for repairs or possibly a new washer. Both of those scenarios meant spending money that was already tight. Ignoring the screeching worked best for us.

       Then one day while in the back yard I could hear the washing machine wailing in what seemed to be an otherworldly desperate pleading from an ailing machine, as if it were being slowly and painfully drained of life, and wanted some relief.

       Only then did I realize, wow, that thing is really messed up. Better get it fixed. Through good fortune I found out it would be under warranty for another week or so, and its repairs were done for free. We could have done this when the machine first started screeching, but…. we didn’t.

       Another time from the days of yore, the brakes on my car were getting increasingly bad. I’d pump the pedal to get a little more pressure, and it seemed to work every time. But because of that, I never made a mental note that I needed to fix the brakes. But one early morning, the brakes failed to stop me. I coasted into an intersection, right through a red light, while madly pumping the brake pedal.

       Luckily, it was so early in the morning, there were no other cars, and nothing happened. But I realized then I could have been in big trouble if there had been cars crossing through. Only then, after what could have been a major crash, did I go get the brakes fixed.

       Once, while an ex was being unfaithful, I vaguely knew something was amiss, but chose to ignore what were very clear signs. Upon an eventual confrontation, it all blew up and we went our separate ways. Even though the signs were visible for several months, on some level I decided to ignore them. As if ignoring them meant they couldn’t mean anything.

       This denial, conscious or not, happens repeatedly in the human experience, from the microcosm of individuals and their daily interactions, to whole countries confronted with problems that cause death, injury, property loss, widespread financial disasters, or other chaotic events.

       So while we in the United States may have sensed the economy was running too hot in 2008, and home loans were being handed out for practically nothing, most of us preferred to look instead at the bright side. We were happy with money being made all around in the booming economy. How could we worry about a slump? We didn’t want to go there.

       The sub-prime home mortgage debacle, which was clearly evident as a growing problem for months, wasn’t faced front and center until it came to the brink of toppling the U.S. economy. Only panic economic stabilizing measures by the government averted a total meltdown. But the problem still lingers with a crippling, longstanding double dip-recession that has the economy staggering like a punch-drunk fighter.

       Terrorist activities against us were on the rise prior to 9-11, and the general feeling coming from somewhere was that we should be ready for a big attack that could happen any day somewhere. We didn’t know when, or what it would be. So what could we do? Worry? No, we just went on with our lives and hoped for the best.

       Then 9-11 happened. And, once again, after disaster struck hard, the government acknowledged the problem: Its intelligence system failed. And for the country’s future health, it needed to be fixed.

       A few decades ago, governments all over the globe realized all the available landfills were just about filled up with trash. So only then, after years of evidence that it was a problem that wouldn’t be going away until it was dealt with, came the panicky realization that this problem suddenly had to be solved for a simple reason:  There was no place to put future trash. The answer came with big recycling programs to divert the massive inefficient waste flows, and globally, cultures tuned in to the necessity and common sense of recycling.

       Regulators in the U.S. didn’t enforce safety rules for offshore oil rigs, or natural gas pipelines. Then, lo and behold, the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico happened from a poorly maintained rig. And a neighborhood in San Bruno, California blew up because an old pipeline that should have been repaired or replaced, leaked gas.

       Only after the mayhem of these disasters causing death, destruction and ecological ruin were moves made to prevent more of this stuff happening in the future.

       But not before, when the disasters would likely have been averted.

       In all of these cases, follow-up investigations show that signs of a potential disaster were clear for anybody to see if they’d bothered to look. Then come the cliché conclusions that “mistakes were made” and corrective actions are pursued.

       Still, we know that to take the needed corrective measures to turn away or minimize the mayhem of a disaster, it is inconvenient, costly and time consuming. And many times, the unwillingness or inability to pay the price for preventive measures is the sticking point. If prevention costs eat into profits, which they inevitably will, those actions are easy to ignore.

        Now an energy crisis looms for the United States bigger than any it has so far experienced. Not enough future oil supplies are lined up, and competition for energy of all kinds has become hot and heavy from China, the emerging giant of the East. Like it or not, we will continue to be oil dependent until the gasoline engine is no longer driving cars. That doesn’t look to be changing any time soon, as gasoline powered cars are continuing to be built and bought globally.

       Right now, all the signs are clear to see. We need to develop much more sources of affordable energy for our future. Or?

       Or, there will be an energy crisis hitting our country. History has shown we have been very resourceful in responding to the ill effects of big crises of all kinds. But at some point, one wonders, when will we wait too long to make an effective correction to a vast, critical problem that causes widespread chaos?

       If we keep on the same path of blissful denial when foreboding signs appear, we are our own worst enemy. We need to wake up to what’s going on around us. If we do, just like the TV mechanic used to say, we can pay now or pay later. Now is affordable, later will surely be very expensive.

       We need to listen to the washing machine when it screams out for relief, then fix it. We need to repair the bad brakes when they continually show signs of giving out. We need to confront those who break agreements or the law and in doing so, hurt people and nature.       

       It’s not popular to note and heed clear-cut warnings from unmistakable signs that point to a future disaster, by making early corrections.

       But if we stand by and do nothing and let harmful situations take hold, we may be unable to survive the flying load of doo-doo after it hits the fan. 


Mark Eric Larson has written two books of essays, "The NERVE...of Some People's Kids," and "Don't Force it, Get a Bigger Hammer. To read, visit: 
http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson/shelf

Self help made easy

       Self-help books are everywhere, but let’s face it, if we’re being truthful here, they’re a total waste of money, a total waste of time. They take several hundred pages, repetitively explaining their message, which, really, can be easily summarized on one page.

       Self-help books are just a moneymaking genre for publishers, dressed up to look like something that will help us, the behaviorally afflicted, to curb our bad habits. Publishers and self-help authors know that if their oh so insightful solutions are padded in page upon page of repetitive hash that is long enough to be bound into a book with a pretty cover, and given an eye-catching title, such as Your Clutter Free Life; voila, book sales!

       Publishers’ data tells them people with nagging negative behavioral hang-ups are going to buy these books. Publishers don’t care if these self-help books work or not. They just want the look and feel of the book to convince people with hang-ups that they'll rid themselves of the nasty behavior -- if they buy the book. 

       But let's be honest here. We who buy self-help books aren’t as interested in solving our problem as we are in looking like we are working on solving our problem. We figure if we buy a book aimed at stopping our binge drinking, or out of control gambling, or constant use of overly blue language, and leave it on a table where it is easily seen by friends and family, they will think, “Hey, Bob’s actually doing something about his problem. Good for Bob!” 

       Problem is, after we the afflicted buy the self-help book, we  read a chapter or maybe two. But then we put it down and forget about it as soon as we realize solving our problem won’t be easy. We figure we have a very complicated, seemingly impossible problem to solve. We're not so keen on the fact that it will take fortitude and discipline to beat this thing. That we will actually have to quit an addiction, and/or comfortable habit that maybe we don't think is so bad to have after all. We sense that signing up for a routine of rigorous discipline that will kill our bad habit, for the most part, is something we can’t be bothered with. It's just too much. We know deep down we’re not that interested in improving ourselves. We think not having a bad habit or two would be great and all, but having them isn't the end of the world, either. After all, we are who we are, and if others don’t like us, flaws and all, that’s their problem! 
     And so our behavioral hang up, whatever it is – always being late, living in ever encroaching clutter, getting into ever more debt, etc., continues on. And our self-help book gets abandoned and takes on its new role of collecting dust. Until the time comes to donate it along with our old unwanted and unread books to whoever will take them. Absent any takers, we dump the clutter-causing books into the recycling bin as part of an inspired spring cleaning.

       So if we buy into the notion that self-help books are a waste of money, where do we go for behavioral help? Well, first we promise to never buy a self-help book promising to free us from our bad habits! We know they just don’t work.

       So, should we seek counseling to cure ourselves of our nagging problems? 
       Nah, who has the time for that? Yakkety yak yak yak. That doesn’t work either.

       Still, we want a quick fix to our nagging little behavioral issues. So in the spirit of supplying what the self-help market wants, what follows are cheaper and quicker fixes than those self-help books described above as nothing but deceptive sales pitches aimed at separating you from your money.

       You know, comforting little self-help titles like: Conquering  Clownphobia, or No More Spontaneous Dancing: Your Path to Freedom, or the wildly popular, Clutter Rules No More.

       OK, let’s just cut to the chase, amigos. 

       So, your house is cluttered? You don't like it? Here’s what you do: Rent a truck with a large enclosed bed. Then go through your house and throw into the truck bed all the items that are cluttering up your house. Drive the truck to a goodwill store. Unload the truck. Drive the truck back to the rental store. Go home. No more clutter. End of clutter problem.

       Next?

       So you’re fat or edging ever closer to morbid obesity? Don't want to be that way?  Well then, here's what you do: Eat healthy food in small portions, and exercise every day.

       Next?

       Always late? Don't like always being late? Here’s what you do: Get a watch that keeps accurate time. Now, keep looking at it so you always know about what time it is. If you have an appointment, figure out how much time it will take you to get there. Maybe add a few minutes to take into account any unexpected delays. Then, subtract that time from your appointment time. So if your appointment is at 4 and it takes you a half hour to get there, make sure and leave at 3:30. You must keep watching your watch so you leave on time. If you can’t keep an eye on the time and leave for appointments on time, you will always be late, nothing can be done for you. But if you can, you’ll be on time almost every time.
     Next?

     Can’t get organized? Figure out the tasks you need to accomplish. Then figure out what you need to do to finish each task. Prioritize the tasks with the most important one at the top of the list. Then, one at a time, do the tasks. Don’t put them off. Do them.

     Next?

     Procrastination a problem? This is just a matter of doing tasks now, and not putting them off. As stated above, don’t put them off, do them. If you put them off, you’re shying away from the problem, and there’s nobody that can change that but you. Deal with it.

     Problem with debt? Getting out of debt is something everybody has to do at some point. All it amounts to is paying off what you owe in monthly increments, until you don’t owe any more money. This isn’t easy, but this is all you have to do. Now, once you’re out of debt and you don’t want to get in any more out of control debt, there are a couple things you can do. If you can’t control the use of your credit cards because you’re a compulsive spender of money you don’t have, you simply shouldn’t use credit cards. Cut ‘em up and only buy stuff with cash. Otherwise you’re headed for bankruptcy.

       But if you do have some self-discipline, staying out of debt is simple. Don’t use your credit card unless you have the money to cover the purchase. And when you get the bill, pay it off immediately. That way, no interest accrues. Simple. The idea here is to only buy what you have the money to pay for. If you can’t pay off the bill when it comes, you’re in over your head because of your own lack of discipline.

       Next?

       If you happen to be an alcoholic, drug addict, compulsive gambler or any other kind of addict, here’s the scoop: Don’t drink alcohol, take drugs or gamble, or do the addictive behavior you have.

       Next?

       Now it’s true, the above-suggested solutions to behavioral problems may seem oversimplified. Not so. They all point to the fact that it’s up to us to face our bad habits, stop them, and replace them with good habits. So, don’t cause clutter, be neat. Don’t gamble with money, make gentleman bets. Don’t get into debt, just quit spending money you don’t have.

       It’s all easy on paper. However, this stuff really is tough to do. 

       Yes, curing ourselves of bad habits requires some serious inner work. That in itself is unsettling. We're forced to ask ourselves: Do I really want to improve myself this badly? I mean, the things it requires seem kind of Spartan, you know? What ever happened to enjoying life? 
      So we come to the same conclusion we would if we had paid for and not completely read a self-help book: Me, do the hellishly hard work needed to stop a bad habit? Nah!


Mark Eric Larson has written two books of essays, "The NERVE...of Some People's Kids," and "Don't Force it, Get a Bigger Hammer. To read, visit: 
http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson/shelf

Keepers of the flame

Neil Young, among the great singer songwriters of our time, was on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and told about the old guitar he held. Back in the early 70s when he was about to record Harvest, his breakthrough solo album, Young asked a friend in Nashville to find a guitar for him. The friend found a guitar, all right, the one that had been played by country music legend Hank Williams. It had a leather strap hanging down from the top of the neck below the tuning pegs. Young played it on Harvest and over the years, has played it along with his other choice guitars. He told of how the well-used instrument was once Williams’, and that after his time with it, somebody else would have it to play. He never talked of Hank Williams or of himself as owners of the guitar. He talked of it as if he and Williams were just its well known keepers because they both liked the sound it brought to their playing.

During that brief chat to the crowd and the audience watching the filmed documentary “Heart of Gold,” Neil Young’s thoughts were a reminder of how fleeting ownership really is. We may be fortunate enough to have temporary rights to things. We may tell ourselves we own a car, a house, a dog, a cat, all of our “stuff” that we use at our convenience. Sure, we may own these things in a legal sense. But we won’t own them forever. We will die, and those things will either be tossed or bought by someone, as the next round of thing keepers takes our place in the fluid ways of the universe. Nope, nothing is forever, and that’s a good thing. Everyone and everything has a birth, a life and a death, a space in time of togetherness between people, their environments and “things,” then, eventually, a parting of ways. When those windows of time end for whatever reason, including death, we sometimes are able to say goodbye, sometimes not. When the time comes, Neil Young and that magic music box once played by Hank Williams, will go their separate ways. The guitar may sit on a shelf and collect dust until it turns to dust itself. Or it will get a new life with another guitar player who will also play it for a time. That cycle will continue for the great old guitar until it can be played no more.

The ultimate cure for boredom

We’ve all heard of and seen footage of those adventurers that scale Mt. Everest, or any of the other mega mountain peaks around the world. “Because it’s there,” is the stock answer to why these people do these sorts of things. But it’s a reasonable question to ask. Why risk the very real possibility of losing your pulse on an adventure? Why do they want to trek to one or both of the poles? Why is it fun to risk drowning, or freezing to death scuba diving under the polar ice cap, or falling off a cliff? Why sign up for this stuff?

Peter Hillary is the son of the famed New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary, who along with his sherpa was the first to reach the peak of Mount Everest back in the 50s. The younger Hillary recently told a local audience of his life as the son of a famous mountain climber. Peter followed in his dad’s footsteps and managed to do him one better on Everest. He’s made it to the top of the thing and back not once, but twice. That’s not to mention hiking Antarctica on foot to the South Pole while pulling a ridiculously heavy sled of his supplies. He made the descent of K2, another famous monster mountain peak, during a storm. He’s fed pods of sharks.

So it’s clear, putting himself into extreme situations is in Peter Hillary’s blood. It’s a trait that calls upon him to find out for himself if he’s got the stuff to survive the nastiest of conditions that come into play while trying to reach life-threatening destinations. These are adventures most of us can’t imagine doing.

Hillary recalled scaling Everest and using his ice pick to gouge out a narrow shelf from the face of a sheer ice wall. That enabled him to get a toehold on the ice so he could sleep, suspended, upright in a sleeping bag. He talked of preparing soup to heat up while parked on the ice wall, and sharing the soup in the dark with his hiking buddy. It’s pitch black, freezing, he has to try to sleep, and try not to think about the fact that there’s an endless abyss below which means certain death if his tie lines come loose and he falls into it. And onto something unforgivingly hard at the end of the fall.

Another time, during the days-long trudge through the flat white cold of Antarctica, he was wracked with stifling boredom. To keep from turning into a blubbering maniac, he forced himself to think of family and missed loved ones. It worked.

An amiable, quick to joke, self-effacing guy in his 50s, Hillary doesn’t give the impression he does what he does to boost his ego and brag about what a manly man he is. It seems like he does it as an inner journey, a personal quest to test his will. On his treks, he has to overcome physical adversity and emotional challenges that come with scaling the ice of the tallest mountains in the world and other dicey, less than comfortable adventures. If he can’t push back nature's attempts to knock him around enough to surrender to its unforgiving forces, he won’t live to tell about it. He’s a bona fide adventure junkie bent on experiencing his life to the fullest.

While the going gets extremely tough on Hillary’s chosen path, the rewards are otherworldly, spiritually charged encounters most humans can only glimpse through photos or footage: looking out from the peaks of the world’s tallest mountains, witnessing the snow and icescapes of the North and South Poles.

As Hillary told his image filled stories of red zone adventure, it occurred to me what his worst fear has to be. He wants to avoid it more than losing footing on a sheer ice wall, and dangling like a hooked fish over an endless abyss. He’ll do anything to keep from being overtaken by one dreaded feeling: Boredom.

Putting himself to the test in all his expeditions has kept him away from the mundane, make-a-buck world many of us wade through for years on end with 9 to 5 jobs. Except for long stretches of trudging to the South Pole, he’s managed to put the slip on tedium, boredom, and the awful state of regularly going through the motions, that many of us do all our work-a-day lives.

For Peter Hillary, a good day at the office is doing what it takes to stay alive to tell the stories of his adventures. It’s a tough job. But the benefits – a life lived to its fullest -- aren't too bad.

I can play this, but I’d rather play that

Arturo Sandoval is one of the most facile and passionate trumpet virtuosos who ever blew the instrument. At a recent San Francisco concert, however, the fun loving musician confessed something to the audience. He prefers playing the piano over the trumpet. He’s been playing the trumpet for 50 years – he’s 61 – and over those years, his marriage to the brass horn has been nowhere near as easy and as fun as the much easier to play piano.

“I’ve gone through a lot of pain, with my lips with THAT,” he says, looking toward his trumpet, sitting to his left on the stage, upright on a stand. Continuing to refer to his horn as “THAT,” he says it has been a difficult partner to perform with over the years. He told of its most annoying habit. It almost always cooperates without protest to his rigorous high and low-note playing demands in rehearsals. Then, when it comes time to perform on stage in front of live crowds, to his dismay, his trumpet is often a cranky, unwilling partner in producing the notes he wants from it.

“Play nice tonight,” he says he’ll cajole the instrument. He then stands bolt upright, frowns and shakes his head defiantly as if he’s the trumpet, refusing to play nice for the concert. He then slumps, sighs and shakes his head.

He says in Cuba where he grew up, the piano was considered the instrument of choice -- for girls. If a boy said he wanted to play the piano, “Everybody said, Uh oh…..”

“A piano is so nice,” he says. “It plays nice all the time, the way you want it to.”

He then sits down at the grand piano on stage and plays his version of “As Time Goes By.” He coaxes a beautifully nuanced and personally styled rendering of the standard. The audience hears every note in quiet awe of Sandoval’s fluid piano play.

When he switches gears into percussion and conga driven dance music, Sandoval rips it up on a waist high electric keyboard and dances while he plays. He’s a ham and isn’t afraid to show his musical talent, which is easy to see, is big time. He scats in his own trumpet-like style and playfully hits the lowest lows and the highest highs on his trumpet that are not only fun to hear, but hard to believe he can reach.

When he takes the lead on an up tempo “Cubop” number with his band, Sandoval generates a fusillade of artfully controlled, yet fat notes that flow from his horn, soaring above the rhythmic textures of his band. And when he slows down to play a ballad alone on the quiet stage, a sound as pure and rich as poured honey flows from his horn, a soulful power that fills the room. Listening to him play a beautiful solo song, it’s easy to forget the breath control it takes to produce the clean sustained notes he crafts through his horn.

Sandoval does a tune with his record producer sitting in on the drums. After the tune, his producer takes the mike and tells the crowd he walked out of Macy’s a couple hours earlier and on the sidewalk saw an 11-year-old kid playing Moon River on a trumpet. He told the kid his father in law, Henry Mancini, wrote that very song. He talked with the kid’s mom, then left to walk back to his hotel.

“I thought to myself, hey, Arturo Sandoval, the world’s greatest trumpet player, is playing here tonight.” So he turned around and walked back to the kid and his mom and told them to be at the theater 15 minutes before the show. Then he introduces the kid and waves for him to come on stage. With a few nerves, the kid plays most of Moon River serviceably, and stops a few times, because of trouble with his mouthpiece.

When the kid finishes to big applause, Sandoval leans down to him with mike in hand and says, “You’re lucky. Go backstage and give them your address and I’ll send you a new trumpet.”

Sandoval doesn’t seem to be hung up on trying to prove he’s the best trumpet player on the planet, which he very well could be. He just loves to play and hear music. And in his joyful playing, he simply gives listeners music of emotional highs and lows few musicians can muster. He just plays like a ravenous monster and lets his audiences decide for themselves how good he is.

Step up, do something

When he anchored the NBC Nightly News, I always liked Tom Brokaw. With his big baritone voice, he seemed like a genuinely nice guy. Like other big name network anchors of his generation, he got one of the world's few highly paid jobs reading news copy because he looked and sounded good on TV. Even though for years, he seemed to have trouble saying his Ls. Most TV news anchors around the country are pretty faces, but they're mostly pegged as airheads, or “blow dries,” for their perfect hair yet seemingly thought-free heads. But Brokaw always came off as a worldly, brainy guy.

Dan Rather at CBS and Peter Jennings at ABC were the two others that competed with Brokaw in the days of yore when national networks were the kings of broadcast news. Like Brokaw, Rather and Jennings got their nightly network TV news reading jobs because they fit the desired image the network bosses wanted for good ratings: Earnest, handsome newsmen, nice friendly guys that wanted to get and read to you the newest news they could from their chairs in front of the cameras.

But neither Rather nor Jennings ever had Brokaw’s winning combination of brains, movie star looks, compassion, and friendly wholesome neighbor-like demeanor.

Rather always came off as a little dumb, like the guy who always says, “What’s funny?” after a hilarious punchline is delivered and everybody else is laughing. And he always seemed annoyed, like he constantly wanted to get up from behind his desk and punch someone.

Jennings always seemed like he was trying to be an aristocrat on the air. His style was to have rolled up sleeves to show he was really on the job and working hard, and a haughty, yet smooth delivery. A lot of people liked his schtick, others didn’t. He didn’t rub me the wrong way, but he seemed just a little too full of himself with his occasional knowing smirk and nod to the camera.

Not that any of this broadcast past matters now.

These days, these three once powerful news networks don’t hold sway over the nation any more. They, along with newspapers, are now within a sea of competitors in the “news” dispensing arena all fueled by the onset of the Internet. So these days, old retired network news anchors are either retired, or dead. They are, for the most part, irrelevant artifacts of news broadcasting history.

But Brokaw has tried, like Walter Cronkite, the most credible national TV news anchor that overlapped with Brokaw’s pre-Boomer generation, to remain relevant in his gray days. After Brokaw retired from showing his earnest, handsome face and perfect hair on national TV most weeknights, he wrote books.

His latest effort was a book of personal stories from veterans of World War II. Brokaw, in what was essentially a pitch to buy his book, recently told a local crowd a few anecdotes from it. The book points out that this was a humble, selfless bunch, reluctant to talk about their life-wrenching experiences. This generation gave without a whisper of complaint, all they had to serve the country, and help it win World War II. Yet it has been largely unappreciated, Brokaw contends, by later generations like the Baby Boomers.

Brokaw called on the crowd to take a cue and follow their elders’ example of selfless service to their country. Volunteerism is a critical need right now, he said, which is a time, in his mind, that is as critical to our country’s survival as winning World War II was then. The U.S. is no longer the world’s unchallenged economic power, he said, noting China and India as big new rising players in global commerce.

He meanwhile lamented the history of violence in American politics and how easy it has remained for crazy people to buy lethal handguns.

Brokaw asked the crowd to reach out to any families they know whose sons and daughters are serving in the military. They are paying a big price for all of us, he noted, adding they could use a lot more help and good will from their fellow citizens.

Brokaw offered plenty of food for thought for his audience to chew on. He showed that while his old job may be all but irrelevant these days, he is not.

Mark Eric Larson has written two books of essays, "The NERVE...of Some People's Kids," and "Don't Force it, Get a Bigger Hammer. To read, visit: 
http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson/shelf

Media arrogance

For more than a century, daily newspapers dominated media audiences. They made a tradition of posting double-digit profits, when most businesses have traditionally been more than happy with low single-digit profit. But even though dailies were longstanding, powerful profit machines, they rarely felt any urgency to make adjustments to their business model. They pretty much sat pat, even as the market they served changed, and competing, much more efficient technology to disburse information was developed.

But beginning in the 1980s that audience domination started to erode with declining daily readerships. The weaker of two-paper cities were forced out of business. The survivors sailed on with even bigger monopoly profits. Some dailies were shamed into beefing up their business pages, because local business weeklies were making their skimpy, behind the sports page coverage look bad. Realizing that running black and white photos was beginning to look grayish and bland to increasingly visually oriented readers, they took a cue from the color-blitzed upstart USA Today. They started displaying much more expensive color photographs and graphics. But that was about it. They were still profitable, so for them, all was moving along fine, with profits showing the proof.

Meanwhile, entertainment became more popular among a growing younger generation in the national population without any interest in reading daily newspaper stories. And this audience demographic of course, held no interest in buying or subscribing to a daily. That shrank daily newspaper readership even more. While staying profitable, several surviving dailies became publicly traded as a defensive move when younger generations of their family ownership wanted no part of taking over the reins of the newspaper. They wanted only the wealth they were entitled to. Publicly traded dailies then became even more squeezed for short-term shareholder profit and veered away from the more prudent path of long-term investments meant to help them cultivate growth over the long haul.

And then one day the Internet came along. Early on, the new online medium was something the dailies saw only as a potentially minor competitor. They and other media started their own websites. But they had no idea how they could make money selling advertising on websites as profitably as they had done for years with print.

But then, almost instantly, the 800-pound gorilla to replace daily newspapers as a dominant advertising medium, appeared. Google came along and figured out how to sell advertising – a lot of advertising -- to support its lightning fast, dynamic search engine. Google offered the news gathered by newspapers by linking users to their websites, and any other with useful information.

Then along came Craigslist, a 600-pound gorilla offering free classified ads online. That exploded a major revenue stream of daily newspapers. Suddenly, it was realized by a lot of former daily newspaper classified advertisers that Craigslist gave them the same or greater audience reach of a newspaper. All without having to pay a dime.

So now, the once omnipotent dailies are in the advanced throes of near bankruptcy, bankruptcy, or death. A lot fewer people read them anymore because of all the news and information available online. Fewer businesses and services buy advertising in them because online ads cost less and generate better results. Debt ridden, dailies have resorted to cutting staff, putting themselves up for sale, printing less pages on smaller sized formats, all while trying with little success to make their online sites profitable with ad sales.

Only a few big market dailies with national readership may survive, clinging to an antiquated business model that has been soundly beaten by technology and a changed appetite for media among the masses.

Some people see this as a sad thing. They grew up reading newspapers every day, and can’t imagine life without them.

Others applaud the demise of the daily newspaper, which to some, arrogantly wielded its power for too long.

TV and radio news media often were considered second-rate headline readers to the literary depth a newspaper provided in its news stories. TV and radio journalists chafed at being cast as lesser quality journalists with their limited air-time work than dailies, which had the luxury of more space for in-depth news. Meanwhile, some reporters at powerful dailies were arrogant and bullied sources to get information. They generally didn’t feel a need to be fully professional. They felt untouchable in their power, which was without a doubt, intimidating. Though only a few daily journalists were in that mode, with many others solid professionals, the arrogant bad apples left a bitter taste with those they’d slighted over the years.

One radio journalist I know who is usually reserved and diplomatic, changed his tune after a few drinks. He spewed his resentment of daily newspapers, and his delight at their demise.

“They had all the chances in the world to adjust to the changes in the market, but they never did,” he said. And he apparently thinks all daily journalists were too arrogant, and crowed at the change of fortune for them.

“Now they’re unemployed,” he said. “That’s OK. It’s good for them. It’ll toughen ‘em up.”

I’ve been a daily journalist in my career, but most of my years were spent at a business weekly newspaper, which is a different, more specialized animal than a daily. Still, I found myself a bit taken aback by his hostility at dailies in general, and his resentment-fueled glee at their downfall.

But his beef wasn’t any less arrogant than the daily newspapers and reporters he no doubt despised for arrogance in his dealings with them. He boasted his journalistic medium of public radio is now more popular than ever, hinting that it is the only credible journalism source left in media. He seemed to relish the notion of his medium as finally emerging from what had been the ever-present shadow of daily newspapers as the new superior source of journalism available to the public. He seemed more than willing to assume the dubious mantle of the arrogant journalist now, convinced of his news medium’s invincibility.

But if daily newspapers can go down, so can any medium, including public radio. Arrogance, while an inherent affliction of some journalists drunk with power, is just that. It’s an affliction of self-importance that doesn’t do anything but alienate people who come in contact with it. And because the daily newspaper industry has no doubt been arrogant in its many years as the dominant news medium, other news media should take note. It’s not a good idea for any media enjoying wild popularity and success to assume a top-dog arrogance that it will never have to change with market shifts. That ultimately led to the humbling downfall of dailies, and it will no doubt happen again because of blind arrogance.

As somebody wise once said, “The second you think you’ve got it all figured out, you’re toast.”

To see Mark Eric Larson's digital book of essays, "Don't Force it Get a Bigger Hammer," A newspaper journalist's memoir with names changed when that seemed best, visit:

http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson

His second book of essays, "The NERVE of Some People's Kids," will be posted at the above site in May 2011.

Once they're gone, they're gone

As daily newspapers start to close around the country, it symbolizes the end of a long era in which newspapers dominated as an information and advertising distributor. But with the digital age gaining momentum, these dailies are dying a slow death. And while younger generations growing up with digital media don't see much of a loss without a daily newspaper to pick up, those that have read them all their lives will miss them badly. I know I will. The San Francisco Chronicle was the newspaper I grew up reading, and still do to this day. But it's owner, Hearst, has already closed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. And if it can't sell the loss-ridden Chronicle, it will close it too. So the Chronicle, it appears, has a short future as a print and ink newspaper. Which is a sad reality. Because once a formerly great daily like the Los Angeles Times dies, it's gone forever. Maybe digital offerings of newspapers will build the industry back, but it's not likely they'll be as big and robust as they were as print products. Information sources have decentralized too much for that. It remains to be seen if digital news sources will fulfill the free press role as well as newspapers did. Will it be worse for those wanting professionally gathered news to read, or will it be better? Only time will tell.

To read Mark Eric Larson's book of essays "Don't Force it Get a Bigger Hammer," a newspaper journalist's memoir with names changed when that seemed best, visit:
http://www.scribd.com/Mark%20Eric%20Larson
His second collection of essays, "The NERVE of Some People's Kids," will be on the above site in May 2011.