American Democracy: We were lucky

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In an interview with CBS’ Mike Wallace, Russian President Vladimir Putin said “Democracy cannot be exported to some other place. This must be a product of internal domestic development in a society.” Putin went on to say that leaving Iraq without “establishing the grounds for a united country” would (also) be a mistake.

While there’s no reason to take tips on democracy from a former KGB agent, I think Putin is right. My gut tells me that even if we could find and capture every insurgent, and put them on a plane and fly them to say, Mississippi… the good people of Iraq could not or would not cobble together anything you and I would consider Democracy. Never gonna happen.

But in all fairness, I don’t think we could do it again either. Seriously, if we had to start from scratch today, do you think the American people could write a constitution and all the rest? Shiiit. I know I wouldn’t want to live under a government that we’d be capable of forming today. So I thank my lucky stars for our Founding Fathers and hope the government they crafted is strong enough to survive us, their descendants. Like they say, timing is everything.

New Convergence program at MU J-School

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Mike McKean heads up the new Convergence program at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. This fall he begins his 20th year teaching at the J-School. Once upon a time, he was a reporter for The Missourinet, one of the state news networks owned by the company I work for. Mike and I get together every few months to talk about radio and journalism and the Internet and stuff like that.

Today I took my recorder along and asked him about: Teaching journalism in 2005; podcasting; blogs; radio; advertising; newspapers; “citizen journalism” and some other stuff.

AUDIO: Interview with Mike McKean 20 min MP3

Caged bird sings

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Jefferson City prison inmate Irving Berry has written a song for Missouri, entitled “Missouri, Home Sweet Home to Me,” which he calls a gift of honest reconciliation from all of Missouri’s incarcerated sons and daughters. Berry says 90 percent of the inmates he has come into contact with are remorseful. Berry, who has been in prison for nearly 30 years, wrote the song while incarcerated at the Cameron prison. When he was transferred to Jefferson City, he met with fellow inmate Mark Immekus, who wrote the music. They recorded the song with fellow inmates at the Jefferson City Prison. [Missourinet.com]

Kevin Kelly: We Are the Web

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Kevin Kelly has written a wonderful article for WIRED.com about the Web that perfectly sums up what I’ve been feeling but didn’t know how to say. I encourage you to read the complete article, but here are a few grafs that jumped out at me:

The scope of the Web today is hard to fathom. The total number of Web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request and document files available through links, exceeds 600 billion. That’s 100 pages per person alive.

No Web phenomenon is more confounding than blogging. Everything media experts knew about audiences – and they knew a lot – confirmed the focus group belief that audiences would never get off their butts and start making their own entertainment. Everyone knew writing and reading were dead; music was too much trouble to make when you could sit back and listen; video production was simply out of reach of amateurs. Blogs and other participant media would never happen, or if they happened they would not draw an audience, or if they drew an audience they would not matter. What a shock, then, to witness the near-instantaneous rise of 50 million blogs, with a new one appearing every two seconds. There – another new blog! One more person doing what AOL and ABC – and almost everyone else – expected only AOL and ABC to be doing. These user-created channels make no sense economically. Where are the time, energy, and resources coming from? The audience.

The Web continues to evolve from a world ruled by mass media and mass audiences to one ruled by messy media and messy participation. How far can this frenzy of creativity go? Encouraged by Web-enabled sales, 175,000 books were published and more than 30,000 music albums were released in the US last year. At the same time, 14 million blogs launched worldwide. All these numbers are escalating. A simple extrapolation suggests that in the near future, everyone alive will (on average) write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a weblog, and code a program. This idea is less outrageous than the notion 150 years ago that someday everyone would write a letter or take a photograph.

There is only one time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large Machine. Later that Machine may run faster, but there is only one time when it is born. You and I are alive at this moment.

AgWired.com

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I’ve been a blog bore for a few years and helped 10 or 12 friends get started blogging. Some were/are very good at it but none have run with the ball like Chuck Zimmerman at AgWired.com. I used to work with Chuck and his wife Cindy until they left and started their own consulting business a while back. Anyone interested in agriculture marketing should (does?) make AgWired.com their first stop. He’s making Old Media publications like AgriMarketing look… old. If you want to see how to do this blog thing right, click over to AgWired.com. From this point on, Chuck gives me tips on blogging.