From Hugh McLeod’s Work Manifesto

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Work is your real life. It is the way you translate your feelings, your thoughts, your hopes and your desires into something valuable, tangible and useful every day. You can choose to make work into a dreaded, necessary evil that you can’t wait to finish so that you can get busy with your “real life.” Why not just do work you love?

Your secret desire holds the clue to your best work. You say that you would love to do meaningful work, but don’t know how to find it. What is your secret desire? What idea are you a little embarrassed to share with someone because it is so delicate or bold or crazy or exciting? You often claim to not know what you want to do, but in fact censor yourself from what you know you want for fear of appearing ridiculous.

You can’t fool your kids. Many of you claim passionless, dull and frustrating careers with the excuse that you must provide for your family. Providing for your family is noble; using it as an excuse to hide from your own greatness is a bad example for your kids. If you want them to grow up motivated, creative, free and enterprising, be that yourself. They are watching and emulating your every move.

Bruce Sterling: The Future of the Internet

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“The future of the Internet lies not with institutions but with individuals. Low-cost connections will proliferate, encouraging creativity, collaboration, and telecommuting. The Net itself will recede into the background. If you’re under 21, you likely don’t care much about any supposed difference between virtual and actual, online and off. That’s because the two realms are penetrating each other; Google Earth mingles with Google Maps, and daily life shows up on Flickr. Like the real world, the Net will be increasingly international and decreasingly reliant on English.

“The Internet crawled out of a dank atomic fallout shelter to become the Mardi Gras parade of my generation. It was not a bolt of destructive lightning; it was the sun breaking through the clouds.” — Science fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling in his final column for Wired

This idea resonates with me because I have very little faith or confidence in institutions… and a lot of confidence in (some) individuals. And the Net allows me to find and connect with individuals in ways institutions can not.

Blogging’s impact in the newsroom

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Steve Rubel points to an article in The American Journalism Review about how bloggers are changing journalism in the US. This should be required reading for any working journalist. The AJR piece concludes with some blogging tips from Dallas Morning News Editorial Page Editor Keven Ann Willey, who led her staff in launching the nation’s first editorial page blog. Here are her excellent suggestions:

1. Be brief and informal. Breezy, conversational tone is good. Two hundred words is too long. Go for the quick hit, light touch, witty aside. Attitude required.

2. Don’t be too proud to blog.

3. Respond to previous blog postings. This is about conversation, after all. It’s the back and forth that makes a blog engaging.

4. Vary your topics. Don’t be a wonk.

5. Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want your mother to read in the paper.

6. Use hyperlinks.

7. Incorporate interesting, provocative reader e-mail. The best blogs are two-way streets.

8. Be quick to correct yourself.

9. Don’t feel obligated to answer all blog-generated e-mail.

10. Don’t over edit; but designate a blog boss.

Do we really have a scoop?

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E-Mediat Tidbits: “It’s a perennial newsroom quandary: When a reporter has a hot story, should you break it online immediately or hold it for the press or airtime deadline?”

The anecdote related by an editor for the Nashua Telegraph suggests don’t hold the story:

“It is not TV or radio or other papers that are going to beat you — it is your readers. There are more of them, they know more than you, and they don’t have deadlines.”

I know that many of the people working in our newsrooms still can’t quite believe this could be true. And I can’t believe they can’t believe it (Can you belive it?). All those bloggers… all of those video-capable cell phones…

For the longest time there was this, “if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forrest” mindset. If the bank was robbed at 3:00 p.m. but none of the news media had reported it… it was like it hadn’t happened. It wasn’t real until we told you about.

From now on, when the tree falls…somebody blogged it.

How to pick a president or a lawyer

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Scott Adams makes a compelling case for why Bill Gates would be a good president (of the United States). If the election were held tomorrow, I’d vote for Mr. Gates without a moment’s further thought. The bonus nugget in Adams’ post was how to pick an attorney:

“I’ve always felt that you should pick a president the same way you’d pick an attorney to help you out of a dangerous legal problem. Do you want the attorney who dresses nicely and belongs to your church? Or do you want the attorney who can rip out your opponent’s heart and put it on the hibachi before he dies? Maybe it’s just me, but I want an attorney who is part demon.”

Of course. Everyone rags on lawyers but when they get in a jam, they want a gun-slinger.