Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

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On being careful to distinguish what you know from what you don’t:

Carl Caves (no one calls him “Carlton”) is the smartest person I know.
My wife laughs when I say that, pointing out that I often describe someone as “the smartest person I know.” She is right. As the Journal’s science writer, I have the privilege of talking to a lot of awfully smart people.
But only a few get the label “smartest person I know.” Caves is one.
They share an important characteristic. In addition to knowing a lot, understanding it deeply and explaining it well, they are especially careful about understanding what they don’t know.

Elephant Diaries: The NPR Model

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One model being discussed in the journalism world as an alternative to the faltering for-profit newspaper model for the production of local news is what we call “the NPR model” – not-for-profit, supported by philanthropies. That is how I would describe the Independent, for example.

My aforementioned smart old pal Chuck, one of the founders of the incredibly interesting and innovative (and apparently economically unsuccessful) Crosscut talks about the pluses and minuses of the non-profit model:

Will employees of Microsoft or Boeing want to become subscribing supporters of Crosscut if it publishes content critical of Microsoft or Boeing? Will Seattle’s substantial and interconnected philanthropies, governed by influential people with means, want to support an organization whose mission is to afflict the comfortable? Could an exposé of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, a local sacred cow if there ever was one, be published by a news outlet whose funding is dependent on the same network of philanthropists and civic leaders? Hopefully, the answer to all these questions is yes.

But the answer also might be no.

I commend your attention to the whole discussion.

Key Points From the Kwik-E-Mart

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Standing outside the Kwik-E-Mart this morning while on a cycling break, my mates and I had occasion to converse with a homeless guy, who made several important points:

  • Lance Armstrong has been wrongly accused of doping. He is clean.
  • The microwave in the Kwik-E-Mart is broken. (It was cold and our homeless friend was apparently really looking forward to a hot breakfast.)
  • Cars are ruining everything. (There was initially some confusion about this. Several of us thought he had said “girls,” and there was consensus among the bike crew that girls are neat. Further discussion made clear that he was, in fact, referring to “cars”.)

Less Water in the Rio

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Today, the other shoe drops in the Journal’s coverage of Albuquerque’s new drinking water system:

You will begin drinking, showering and watering your lawn with water from the Rio Grande soon, and there will be less water in the river as a result.
What effect that will have on the Rio Grande, the ecosystem surrounding it and the state’s long-term water supply picture remains the subject of heated debate.
Officials in charge of the project say the effect on the river will be minimal.
“I don’t think you’ll notice,” said John Stomp, who oversees the drinking water project for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.
Critics are not so sure.
“They’re trying to minimize the appearance of an impact to the river,” said Steve Harris of Rio Grande Restoration, a group dedicated to preserving the river’s ecosystem, which is still in court fighting the project.

The Elephant in the Room

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The name of this blog means a lot to me. I am an ink-stained wretch.

I have largely avoided blogging about the fate of my beloved industry, because I frankly dread the well-meaning thread of comments from ‘Net people who are happy to explain that if newspapers only would do “X”, things would improve. Please, don’t. I don’t want to hear it. Whatever “X” you have to suggest has already been tried, by people far smarter than either you or I. And it has not worked.

The bottom line is that we probably did not deserve the money we made all those years, when we had a quasi-monopoly on daily information delivery, and (more importantly) on advertising delivery. The newspaper has always been an odd product – a bundle of only vaguely related goods that you’re forced to buy as a package. That’s a terrible idea, but it worked for years. The civic mission – the wretch sitting in the city council meeting, or poring over campaign finance reports, or shivering in the cold at dawn at the scene of some horrible accident, the formal witness to mark the passing of the deceased – piggybacked on the revenue generated by the fact that most people really want sports pages and comics and that dreadful little box that every day delivers starlet gossip.

It was lousy economics to spend all that energy on the civic mission stuff, because the best evidence available (especially web traffic) suggests not very many people actually read it. But it’s there, and its presence is nevertheless central, I believe, to the civic dialogue, to the lives of our communities. Now that economics is what matters, the stuff that was noble but not profitable is what will go. Roger Ebert was right last week to bemoan the loss of the thoughtful, but, dude, not enough people are apparently reading that shit any more to pay for people like you and I to keep doing it.

News on the web works great for readers, but not terribly well at all for generating revenue to support the wretches, so there are fewer and fewer of us.

I was thinking about this today while I read my old college friend Chuck Taylor’s blog post on his search for a path forward. Chuck’s a good journalist and a very smart guy. When you think of “X” – the creative new stuff worth trying – Chuck has been in the vanguard, working in straight mainstream press, alternative press, the terrific (and not so financially successful) web-ony regional press.

I don’t think the average person out there realizes what’s about to happen with the demise of newspapers. Whatever you think of their relevance to your world, they do the heavy lifting when it comes to covering both routine and important local news. Newspapers, and not blogs or TV or radio, are consistently and methodically covering and holding accountable local governments, businesses, and institutions. Sure, they miss stuff and don’t always live up to our expectations, but they’re reliable.

I was really excited with the emergence of Chuck’s Crosscut, in Seattle. I’m really excited by what my friend Trip Jennings and his colleagues are doing with the New Mexico Independent. I hope alternatives will flourish. But I have yet to see a model other than the strangely archaic approach of words on paper thrown on driveways that can support the civic mission.

I think the solution is to find the core of the civic mission, and to keep doing it as our audience declines. 100,000 people buy the Albuquerque Journal every day, but the core audience, the one that matters for the civic mission, the players and actors, is likely far smaller than that. It differs depending on the topic, but whatever its size, that core audience will continue to read the newspaper. Its size remains unchanged.

They will still need Dan McKay at the city council meeting.

Coal-to-Liquids Watch

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This week’s episode of coal-to-liquids watch involves Shell and Anglo American Plc., which were planning a coal-to-liquids plant in Australia, incorporating carbon capture. Now? Not so much, says Bloomberg:

Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Anglo American Plc have delayed plans to develop a A$5 billion ($3.2 billion) project in Australia to convert coal into clean fuels, citing higher costs.

(Note that the whole “clean fuels” meme is Bloomberg’s, not mine. But the partners were developing technology to capture at least some of the carbon during the manufacturing process, which, in global warming terms, is better than having a lit cigar stuck up your nose.)

Bird Show

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Two new birds this afternoon for my yard list, both in the neighbor’s elm tree (denuded of leaves, much easier to see the birds): a Red-naped sapsucker and a Ruby-crowned kinglet. The kinglet was an especially fun find, because I kept seeing it over the last few weeks, but never got a good enough look to be sure of what it was. It’s a bug-eater, hopping around the trunk like a hyperactive nuthatch, but smaller.

But the real treasure this afternoon is a pair of goldfinches that are, as we speak, making their way methodically through the seed pods on the trumpet vine right outside my window. They look for a perch close enough to get to the pod, extricating the seeds and working them over until they can eat them. But if they can’t find a perch, they alight on the seed pod itself, like little acrobats in the birdy circus. The sparrows try, but can only look on in awe, far too big to execute the goldfinch gymnastics.

(picture courtesy National Park Service)