Former Bush staffers consider their legacy

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My favorite pull from a story by Peter Baker at WashingtonPost.com:

“(Rove) does not want to be identified solely by his ties to the president. He knows he will go down in history as Bush’s “architect,” but he thinks he can expand his identity beyond just that. “It’s not like my life from here forward is going to be defined by it,” he said. “I have a chance to create something else. I’m not just going to be typecast as, ‘Oh, that’s the Bush guy.’ “

We’ll see. I’d love to see someone put together a website that keeps up with all of the people most responsible for the last seven years. Maybe a big map of the world with a little red dot representing each of the players. Just showing where they are now, and what’ they’re doing. They played a major role in creating the world in which we live. I’d just like to know where they live and what they’re up to. Sort of a Marauder’s Map.

Scott Adams: The future of newspapers

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“…I see printed newspapers lasting until you upgrade your phone two more times. But the newspaper business can thrive online if it changes how it gathers and edits content. And clearly there will be massive amounts of consolidation. There won’t be 3,000 newspapers online. There might be a dozen. And local news will come from hometown bloggers who self-syndicate to all of the newspapers.”

It’s a brilliant post and I encourage you to read it.

Why I don’t listen to talk radio

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Mark Ramsey observes that broadcasters have given listeners the talk radio they want… but do a crappy job of giving them the non-music radio they might want:

“Wandering amidst the posters at NAB promoting radio’s prime Talk properties, it’s hard not to be struck by the fact that these talents are overwhelmingly Male, late-middle-aged, conservative, politically-charged white guys in suits. Sure, there are the exceptions, but for every Dave Ramsey there are a dozen Michael Savages.”

Ramsey goes on to point out that younger folk are not listening to these guys. You think?

OK on XM

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Radio Iowa News Director O. Kay Henderson will be doing a weekly shot on XM Radio’s POTUS’08 channel (XM 130). Few details yet, but looks like her bit will be around 1:10 p.m. Central time. I’ll try to remember to record and share snippet here.

Update 8-Oct-07: And here’s the snippet. Kay gives the low down on the campaign in Iowa to XM host Rebecca Roberts. Runs about 10 min and my apologies for the audio quality. I recorded on the nano, holding the wee microphone up to the car speaker. But this clearly illustrates why the Big Kids can’t get enough of Her Kayness.

Online Block Party

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Just had a nice chat with Brad Olsen and Amy Laughlin. They’re involved with Revolworks.com. They’ve got a really nice looking site, packed with ideas, mostly of a “spiritual” nature. They’re ready to move on to “phase two,” in terms of what they’re doing online and wanted my thoughts on blogging. I talked until their eyes glazed (Amy was on speaker phone, so her head was probably on her desk) over.

The point of this post is to illustrate how well blogs do in terms of Google search results ranking. I predicted this post would –within a week– show up on the first page of results of a Google search on “RevolWorks.”

This is happening hundreds (thousands?) of times a day. Companies and organizations jumping into the online conversational pool. RevelWorks.com looks great and the information found there is rich and deep. It’s like walking into a beautiful, well-furnished home… but you can’t find the people who live there. You can tell they’ve been there… but they don’t seem to be home a the moment.

A good blog would be like throwing a party on the front lawn.