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The Next Time Someone Asks You If Journalism Is Worth Paying For, Say This.

Funny how some things are cyclical. Again, I’m hearing reporters question whether or not there’s money to be made in journalism. And again, I’m wondering why reporters feel the need to undermine themselves. Why not just come up with an explanation for why your job is essential to our democracy? Why not say something like this?

Journalists are a lot like teachers. In any other society, they’d be highly paid and highly trained. They’d be the best we’ve got, because they’re the ones educating us and keep us informed.

But we don’t live in one of those societies right now. In America, teachers aren’t highly paid, and journalists wish they had the kind of financial security that teachers have. We live in a society that places less value on information, because it’s too easily accessible. The truth can be fudged. The facts can be altered. This is the first democratic society that doesn’t see legitimate, verified information as important to its existence.

Don’t believe me? Turn on cable news for a minute. That’s all you’ll need.

Right now, Wikileaks is releasing thousands of pages of information about what the United States government is doing. But even the news organizations reporting about it can’t get simple details right, and others news organizations are spending time openly attacking transparency. The stories will be easily available, but they won’t be read. (Except, maybe, for the one about the wild wedding in Russia. It’s very TMZ.)

Our society is supposed to be built on being highly informed. We’ve got apps that tell us where to save $.03 on gasoline, but we don’t have nearly the same instinct to seek out truth. How can we live in an interconnected world that sees facts as irrelevant?

So the question is: Do you want to live in a society that does value truth? Because good reporting is just like everything else in our society: if you value it, you’re going to have to pay for it.

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How Far Can 100 Really Good Books Travel?

That’s the question I’m asking in a new project that will soon be launching over at BooksAround.org. It’s a spin-off on the old dollar bill experiment: if I send 100 interesting books out to people around the country, and ask those people to read and pass the books along to friends, where will those books eventually end up?

To get this off the ground, I’ve enlisted the help of Kickstarter. You’ve probably got a dollar or five lying around. So watch the video below, click the link and help get this experiment off the ground.

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The Power of Love (or: Things My Mother Does Not Know About My Father After 29 Years of Marriage.)

If you are reading this, then there is a good chance that my mother knows everything about you. She knows when you were born and how much you weighed. What elementary school you went to. Your favorite type of Girl Scout cookie.

Everything.

I can say this with certainty because she really does remember everything. I’ve seen her whip out personal trivia on people she hasn’t seen in decades, and I’ve seen them stumble for an explanation on how she could have remembered something so forgettable. The first time I saw the show “Chuck,” I thought: a Jewish person with a Polish-sounding last name and a database of totally useless information stuck in his head? Hey, that sounds like my mom!

Which is why I was so surprised to learn last week that when it comes to my father — with whom my mother has been married for the previous 29 years — my mom doesn’t really know that much.

At all.

It started innocently enough at first. My mother wanted to transfer some airline miles between frequent flier accounts. We logged onto Delta’s website, and logged in with my dad’s information. (He had the miles.) They asked us to first submit two security questions for my father. Our choices were:

Mom looked at me. “Are there any other choices?” she asked.

I just stared. “Mom, one of the options is, ‘Where did you meet your spouse?’ Come on, you remember that one.”

“Don’t you?”

Mom kept staring at the screen. Then she yelled up the stairs.

“Billy! Where did we meet?”

Now, I’ll say this: some of those questions are tricky. I don’t even remember the name of my first pet. (Or even what type of animal it was. A goldfish, maybe?)

But it’s also worth wondering: Should a woman who’s been married nearly three decades really get foiled by a Delta security questionnaire?

Especially on a question involving herself?

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Lessons From My (Attempted) Week Without Twitter.


I took the week off from Twitter last week. Not with any real purpose in mind, really. I just didn’t want to tweet, and I thought that maybe, it’d open up some free time for me to read the paper or be productive.

But it didn’t.

I kept checking Twitter — habitually. I keep reading stories on the Internet — habitually. And when I sat down for breakfast, I did so with my laptop in tow.

And habit isn’t really the right word here. It’s ritual now. I have a routine for checking news, and something like last week’s spontaneous break isn’t going to change that.

For proof, see this. And this. And this.

Which is where I started thinking about how we can apply this information to newsrooms.

What news organizations need to do is create stories that demand attention. So much of our media is just noise in the background: TVs on mute, tweets ignored.

It’s why, in the launch of Stry, we put this line in our mission statement: “We’re a news organization that’s not easily distracted.” We’re focused on building a team of reporters who’ll focus on the important issues, not the headlines, and we hope it shows in our stories.

And the lesson for publishers: invest in well-reported, original content. Your readers/viewers/listeners can tell the difference.

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Introducing The Roadside Journalism Assistance Network.

There is a fad coming. The buzz inside journalism circles is that great reporting needs to be supported by multiple revenue streams. Walmart won’t support the Beijing bureau anymore, and a paywall might not either. Something else needs to fill in the funding gaps.

Smaller news organizations are looking for their extra sources of revenue, too. Some are encouraged by a chain of joint hyperlocal sites/coffee shops launched[1. And recently closed] in Germany. But I’ve got another idea.

See, I’ve been spending a lot of time at Starbucks lately. That’s what freelance reporters tend to do: find a coffee shop and park themselves there. But my friends and family seem to know this too.

And they’ve been taking advantage of it.

Now that they know I’m around — “and since you’re only typing, Dan,” they’ll say — they’ve made me their go-to emergency contact. This past week, I’ve been the guy they call when their car needs a jump start, or when their cover letter needs a last-minute edit, or when they’re hoping for a ride to the thing in the place that’s only half an hour away, and, Sorry, Dan, but it’ll be during rush hour.

So I’ve been running these errands free of charge. But I think there’s a larger network of coffee shop-based reporters just like me, and I think it’s time we cash in.

With RoJAN.

That’s the Roadside Journalism Assistance Network, as I’ve taken to calling it. Here’s how it’ll work. We’re going to build a network of reporters across the country. When they arrive at their nearby coffee shop, they’ll log into our system. They’ll pop up as “live” on our national map of available reporters. Then, thanks to our handy mobile app, anyone looking for immediate assistance can check to see where the nearest RoJAN reporter is based and contact him/her.

Meanwhile, our reporters will be waiting. They’ll respond to any call — Need a tow? Need an edit? Need a fantasy football dispute settled? — and then they’ll accept payment.[2. Via Square, of course.] Unlike AAA, which costs hundreds of dollars each year, RoJAN will make its money by being speedy, efficient, multi-talented and price-effective.

In other words: it’ll be cheap, it’ll be quick, and its employees will be more versatile than a Swiss Army knife. RoJAN: the roadside emergency service for any problem.

And here’s the best part: once the reporter has finished serving the client, that familiar seat at the Starbucks will be waiting.

Fellow reporters: your alternate source of funding has arrived.

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When Your Newspaper Wishes You ‘Good Morning.’

I’ve been spending most of my time this week looking at the front pages of newspapers. It’s a strange thing, almost, to see so many dailies still printing. Two years ago, after the Rocky Mountain News closed, the prediction was that dozens of daily papers would be gone by now.

But they’re not.

Still, having now sorted through hundreds of front pages lately, I’ve seen an unusual thing happening out in a few small papers out in California, including the Lodi News-Sentinel. Here’s what their front page looked like yesterday.

But let’s zoom in a bit closer, to the bottom left corner of the page:

It’s quirky, yes. But why stop with a little blurb? Why not blow this out into a weekly feature: Readers’ Lives, with profiles of their businesses and families?

What I’m really saying is: Why does a news outlet have to limit itself to quirky stuff like this in order to cultivate the best stories from its community?

I’ve said it before: engage everywhere.

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An Open Letter to the PR Firm That Represents AT&T Regarding Potential Dunk Tank Promotional Opportunities.

Dear Fleishman-Hillard,

You’re the PR agency that represents AT&T. They’re one of your biggest clients. They’re also one of the largest companies on the planet, and for the last few years, I have been among the millions of AT&T customers who have come to decide that they are totally screwing me over.

I pay AT&T for both my cellular and Internet service, and I dislike both. Every time my phone loses service, and every time the wireless router at my apartment has a random, unexplained outage, I find myself quietly coveting Verizon, the AT&T competitor who may be just as evil.

I try not to take out my frustrations on AT&T’s customer care representatives. It’s tough to get mad at a kid in a call center on another continent. Sanjay, for anything I’ve said before: I didn’t mean it.

But I would like to vent to someone. And for you, the PR team behind AT&T: I think I’ve got a way for you to offer customer catharsis and win the Internet for a day.

Two words: dunk tank.

Go rent a park, say, the one next to the Golden Gate Bridge. Fly out 10 of your most dissatisfied customers. The ones who’ve said things to Sanjay that they cannot merely repent for on Yom Kippur. The ones who blame AT&T for running their business or their marriage or their lives. The ones who’d rather lick an oil-soaked pelican than say something nice about their iPhone service.

Find those guys. Fly them out to the park, and line them up in front of a dunk tank. Get the AT&T board of directors, and have them sit their turns in it. Let the angry customers finally get our collective revenge on someone within the AT&T family.

Consider the dunk tank a peace offering from AT&T to all of us who feel wronged. The rest of us will thank you for it.

And if you’re looking for someone to cast the first ball, let me know. I might have some dropped-call issues to work out.

Thanks,
Dan

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Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

Biloxi is not a town of comfort. It has its simple pleasures — the Waffle House, the Whataburger, the Five Guys — but when it comes to some brand names, head elsewhere. The nearest Bank of America is in New Orleans. So is the nearest Kinkos. When Target opened here, they held a celebration just a notch below Mardi Gras.

But what they lack in brand names, they make up for in service. I stopped by the local print shop today to ask about printing a few copies of this magazine I’ve been working up. I hadn’t been in there since early July, when they’d printed out my new business cards.

So I went in, reintroduced myself — hi, I’m a reporter, in town for a few months, yada yada — and asked if they could do this print job. They couldn’t, but they did suggest a competitor who could.

And as I was walking out, the owner of the store called out, “Good seeing you again, Dan.” The door closed behind me, and I swiveled around and went back inside. “Wait,” I said, stopping the owner before she headed back to her office. “How did you remember my name?”

She looked right back at me. “That’s just what we do,” she said.

So here’s to PDQ Printers in St. Martin, Miss. If you’re in town, stop by and let them know Dan sent you. They’ll know who you’re talking about.

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