Author Archives: Steve Mays

“Scared to let our people blog”

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Kevin O’Keefe points to an excellent post by Liz Strauss, an expert in corporate online communications. Whether they say the words or not, many companies are afraid to let their employees blog. Liz wonders “is the blog the problem?”

“Look to the people. Isn’t the issue one of trust and control? The employer is concerned about what employees might write on the blog. We let employees talk to customers daily — answering email, answering phone call, answering questions at exhibits, and answering letters at the office. We trust what they write on behalf of our company. We once worried in the same way about the telephone and email.

It comes down to hiring and training employees who make good decisions. If we trust our ability to choose the right employees and to let them know the values that we hold for our company and our customers, the question of whether we should let them blog falls away as an issue. A blog is a powerful, customer-facing tool. Like a computer, it’s as strong as the people we choose to use it.”

Kevin was told recently of one senior lawyer who was told by the firm that they would not be permitted to blog. ‘The firm does not allow its lawyers to blog.’

The lawyer responded with a question. ‘Why am I working at a place that does not trust me to talk about what I do – about a niche in the law I am passionate about?’

Stephen King’s Webcam

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Officecam062508No matter which direction I point my office webcam, or the time of day or season, it surprises (and delights) me with tiny, empty moments in time. I got all creepy last time I posted on this so I won’t do that this time.

This is what my webcam sees, hour after hour. This particular image brings to mind a hospital room in the wee hours. The patient can’t sleep and listens to the awful sounds of a hospital floor. Now and then a nurse or orderly passes by. But mostly it’s the empty corridor. (shudder)

Man, I gotta aim that thing out the window.

Jay Rosen: “The Rise of Semi-pro Journalism

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“The professional news tribe is in the midst of a great drama. It has over the last few years begun to realize that it cannot live any more on the ground it settled so successfully as the industrial purveyors of one-to-many, consensus-is-ours news. The land they were living on–also called their business model–no long supports their best work. So they have come to a reluctant point of realization: that to live on, to keep the professional press going, the news tribe will have to migrate across the digital divide and re-settle itself on a new ground, or as we sometimes call it, a new platform.”

Professor Rosen has hit upon a pretty good metaphor. You can read his full piece here.

If I were a young person interested in doing journalism, I’d find a wagon train with a good wagon master (like Ward Bond) and a good scout and get on board.

You are your lapel pin

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LapelpinsI’m not much on symbols. Like the endless array of ribbons you can stick on the back of your car. Or the little red Fight AIDS ribbons that were so much in vogue. And flag pins for your lapel. Senator Obama caught a lot of shit because he sometimes didn’t wear one. So he must not love his country, right. Uh huh.

I sometimes wear a little computer mouse pin in my lapel and it drives people nuts trying to figure out what it is. Sometimes a button that reads: Never Shake. The actual reference is to babies, but I choose to use it as a warning not to shake someone my age (we pee very easily).

I debated pin or no-pin for my photo with Senator Obama a couple of weeks back but finally opted to show my support for Gnomies everywhere.

My first yoga class

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YogaFeeling a little stiff these days. Muscles don’t have the elasticity they once did. So I decided to take a yoga class. A couple of the volunteer instructors are regulars at the Coffee Zone. So I decided to check it out.

There were only five of us in tonight’s class and the other four were too polite to laugh out loud when I made little mewling sounds. But I must say I enjoyed the hour and plan to go back. My Christmas card will be me touching my toes.

Skinny jeans, fat jeans

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Oldjeans

If you have an “issue” with weight, skip this post. You won’t find it amusing, insightful or nostalgic. It will only piss you off. (Are they gone?)

If turning 60 was a  milestone, this week I passed one of far greater significance. I outgrew my Levis. First time.

I’ve weighed 155 pounds since high school. I’ve worn the same size Levis –34″ inseam, 32″ waist– for more than 40 years. And I have some jeans that are 20 years old. The same age as some of our summer interns.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

I’ve gained about 5 pounds in the last 6 months, enough to make all of my comfortable, fashionably warn jeans just a little too snug. Oh, I can lie down on the bed, like some supermodel and get them buttoned but they just aren’t comfortable any longer.

So this weekend I purchased some new jeans, with a 34 inch waist. Talk about Passages. On the up side, it’s a hell of a lot easier to find 34×34 jeans than 32×34, although I’m not sure why.

Still in the last stages of denial, I came home and tried on –one final time– all my dear old jeans. Only a couple made the cut. The rest are in suspended animation in a big Tupperware crate in the basement.

I have no doubt they could fetch a couple of hundred a piece on Rodeo Drive (assuming straight leg jeans ever make a comeback). But you can’t put a price on knowing Jessica Alba’s little keester was packed in a pair of my old Levis. Sigh.

“The Beltway-Blog Battle”

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Writing in Time Magazine, James Poniewozek has an interesting take (The Beltway-Blog Battle) on the passing of Tim Russert.

“…the press lost its most authoritative mass-market journalist, just as it is losing its authority and its mass market.”

The New Meida vs. Old Media argument got tiresome a long time ago, but Mr. Poniewozek offers a fresh take. A few paragraphs to wet your whistle:

“In their original division of labor, the old media broke news while the blogs dispensed opinion. But look at two of the biggest stories of the Democratic primary: Barack Obama’s comments that working-class voters are “bitter” and Bill Clinton’s rope-line rant that a reporter who profiled him was a “scumbag.” Both were broken by a volunteer for the Huffington Post website, Mayhill Fowler.

Traditional reporters were aghast at Fowler’s methods–the Obama meeting was closed to press (she got in as a donor), and Fowler did not identify herself when speaking to Clinton. But mainstream media had no problem treating the scoops as big news; if she had overheard both quotes in the same way but told them to a newspaper instead of publishing them, that would have been considered a coup.

The case against Fowler, in other words, was about process and credentials, not content. If sources stop trusting us, reporters asked, how will we do our jobs? But however sneaky her methods, Fowler’s stories prove that one reason sites like Huffington have an audience is the perception that Establishment journalism has gotten better at serving its powerful sources than its public. Fiascoes like the Iraq-WMD reporting gave many the impression that the old rules mainly protect consultant-cosseted public officials who need protection least.”

[For more on the Mayhill Fowler story, here’s a bit of audio with Arianna Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media’s internal Future of Journalism event on 18th June 2008.]

Mr. Poniewozik poses this rather rude question regarding MSM: “…if 3 million people read Drudge and 65,000 read the New Republic, which is mainstream?”