PeterGlenshaw.com

Summer Time

"Summer Time, and the Livin' is Easy..."

....and man, it's true.  Thank you, George Gershwin, for capturing the season just so. 

In this year of 2008 -- with $4.00+ gasoline, food prices on-fire, and housing in a major slump -- when there is good, solid, non-partisan reason to be worried (and I mean worried like you got the shingles), it's hard to deny to pleasures of Summer time.

Tonight provided a small but meaningful sample of Summer time cheer.  It came from so many places.

The sight of bicyclist after bicyclist cranking away on all sorts of two-wheeled gear in the Upper Valley.  And not just the hot-shots I saw this morning at 6:30am riding like the peleton at the Tour de France.  It was the regular folks, on upright bikes peddling like mad to reach the top of the hill. 

Or me scootering with kids after dinner, popsicles and ice creams in-hand, as we attempted to out-do one another in little tricks and turns on the asphalt.

Or watching Papelbon close out a 5-0 game for the Boston Red Sox against the Arizona Diamondbacks with fastball after fastball.

Or reading to Jacob and Noah tonight without a care about the time.  A few extra pages of "Asterix and Obelix" or "Harry Potter" would not matter.  There was no homework to complete, no school schedule to meet. 

Or, finally, the cool breeze coming throughout the house.  Every window is open.  The children are asleep.  The woods are silent but alive with green. 

Summer time is also unstructured time, when the clock fades just that little bit.  It ticks but does not tock.  The insistent rhythms from the rest of year -- gotta do, gotta go -- fade just enough. 

Summer time.  The light remains, and we find new time to play, frolic, and enjoy.

Now, it's not all good.  As the Boss reminds us...

The girls in their summer clothes
In the cool of the evening light
The girls in their summer clothes,
pass me by

This summer, my family will celebrate the 90th birthday of one of our dear friends, a man who remembers when vacationers to Maine traveled there by steamer, not car. 

No season is not perfect, but in these woods of northern New England, Summer provides a bit of heaven that kinda-oughta be preserved, if only to be released in the darkest winter days.

Newspaper, What Newspaper? (Print Journalism in the Age of the iPhone)

As I understand it, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and a few other leading newspapers routinely prepare obituaries in advance of the death of individuals whose passing will be Page One news.

Over the past few years, newspaper journalism has found itself in a similarly odd situation, as it writes stories on the decline in newspaper circulation, the consolidation of newspaper publishers, and the ever-tightening noose around some of the giants in American newspaper publishing.

As this print journalism water empties out of sink, it's become something of a curiosity for me to observe publishers react to this fast-changing environment.  Most newspaper publishers fail to understand what's happening or underestimate the severity of the change.  At the same time, it's hard to find newspaper publishers who either change their behavior dramatically or leverage their existing assets (which are significant and can be re-tooled) to adopt to the future which arrived yesterday.  To be certain, giant newspaper publishers like the Washington Post and the New York Times took the plunge years ago to diversify their business lines and develop Internet-ready versions of their venerable grey pages.  My interests rest on the small to medium-sized publishers, with daily circulations of approximately 10,000 to 75,000. 

Or, to put it locally, how could and should newspapers ranging in size from the Valley News to the Union Leader re-purpose themselves to an age where content comes from the cloud?

It might begin by realizing the vulnerabilities of local news publishing, starting with the basics of printing and delivering a paper every morning.  With US personal computer penetration at more than 950 per 1000 people, and the number of US cellphone subscribers exceeding 250M, it seems reasonable to suggest that nearly everyone in the market of a local news publisher has an email address or device by which to get news.  Investing in printing press, the people to run it, and the energy costs of delivery for one newspaper per household seems completely unnecessary and expensive

It's also not clear that classified advertising will last either.  Craigslist is famously devouring the newspaper classified business in major urban areas, and looks now to advance on medium sized markets (including sites in Vermont and New Hampshire).  Some communities even utilize their town-based list-serves as alternatives.  People routinely sell, give away, or market their services on the Lyme listserve everyday.  Items sell in a matter of minutes, and this is with a population of less than 2,000 people, of whom only several hundred are reported to be listserve members.

It's also not clear that local publishers need to break news in print and in the early  morning anymore.  Leave that task to the online version and instead think about the print version as leisurely compendium to the hard news operation that appears later in the day. 

What local newspaper publishers offer, however, remains compelling.  Let's start with high-quality writing and photography of the local geography.  In these markets, people want to see their neighbors and read about their neighborhood.  It's getting harder for these publishers to retain good writers and photographers, but those outlets who do benefit significantly. 

The issue of geography should be not be overlooked.  I'd argue that on the national level, geography appears less important than ever in distinguishing the major publications.  If the Times, Post, and Wall Street Journal each cover national business, politics, sports, and culture, does it really matter where they are based?  In those markets and in this Internet age, personality seems to matter more in creating and building a news operation than location.  Ergo, Fox News, Huffington Post, Rush, or Drudge. Local newspapers distinguish themselves by resisting this trend, particularly in communities who value social capital significantly.

At the same time, in this Internet age, local news publishers seem to miss the opportunity match their prowess for local reporting with local advertising.  As a platform, the local newspaper does a terrible job of connecting directly with consumers, and it seems odd that few publishers have turned to micro-advertising like Google's Adwords to develop an online presence that connects the auto dealer in Town X with the newspapers subscribers with prescribed circumference of its location.  Something of the same could occur via SMS to the cellphones of shoppers.  Tell me what the local sports store has on sale today, and I'd be happy to travel there.  What local businesses often need, I think, is a way to reach local customers directly. Proximity matters, especially in rural communities, and newspapers need to ask if their current advertising business really works anymore and what they could really do to make it effective.

The bottomline, I'd suggest, is that the newspaper as we know it will become more scarce and vulnerable in the next ten years, particularly as buildout of truly high-speed (4 Mps) broadband occurs, energy prices continue to rise, and devices like the iPhone become ubiquitous.  Whether existing newspublishers adopt depends as much on their tolerance for future risk, as it does on their ability to realize present-day risk.

Political Reading Roundup, Summer 2008

For anyone curious to learn why Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination (and what happened to Hillary Clinton's campaign), it's re-assuring to know that plenty of good analysis and solid reporting exists about the fast-moving political events of the past week.  I'd recommend these stories for anyone interested in quick digest about what happened, and what mattered, over the last 18 months.  First, this story in the Wall Street Journal, followed by the New York Times, and then the Washington Post.

From where I stand, newspaper journalism seems essential to American democracy.  Beyond the need for a platform for exposing wrong-doing a la Watergate, newspaper journalists serve democracy with the luxury of time and space (barely) to write words -- in some cases, many words -- about what is happening and why it matters.

Never mind that the print media gets it wrong, or sometimes seems herdlike instead of independent.  Print journalists get to write.  They don't have to condense complicated issues into 30 seconds of airtime, whether via video or radio.  Print journalists get to write.  And writing, I'd maintain, serves democracy very well.  Instead of slogans or clever advertising, writing gives us nuance, detail, and context.

True enough, democracy also depends on the spoken word -- the debate, speech, or verbal repartee.  Every Sunday morning, four important television networks will televise a program for at least 30 minutes that simply showcases the importance of the verbal argument to politics. 

I'd argue, however, that at the end of the day, whether it's print journalism or verbal parry, the health of American democracy depends very heavily on the quality and availability of a significant number of words that can be considered, chewed, and debated.  American democracy is not simply a thumbs-up or thumbs-down proposition.  It's an exercise of intellect, nuance, and emotion in the constrained boundaries of time, and the availability of enough words (spoken or written) helps citizens and political leaders meet their responsibility.

So, in that context, when it seems like newspapers are failing and blogs are flailing, when it's hard to tell old media from new media, what are the best sources for political news and insight in the summer of 2008? 

Let me start with "The Page" by Mark Halperin.  Mark used to be the Political Director of ABC News, but with the emergence of the Internet, he began to write a daily post known as The Note on abcnews.com that quickly became must-reading among the Beltway literati.  He now publishes "The Page" in conjunction with CNN and Time magazine and I highly recommend it.  Halperin's site combines writing and editing, especially the latter.  Without relying on flashy graphics or layouts (watch the Wordpress re-directs as you access the site), Halperin instead seems to focus on judgment to post the most important and significant political news of the moment on his site.  Halperin occasionally writes his own pieces on the site, but more often than note, his touch is editorial, promoting the significant news reported elsewhere, and connecting the dots between that story and the current political scene.

For instance, during the Obama-Clinton race, Halperin kept a running tally of the day's superdelegate declarations.  Over the course of the months of late March, April, and May, readers of the Page got a very clear sense that one-by-one, superdelegates were choosing Obama despite Clinton's surge at the end of the primary calendar.

I'm also a big fan of three podcasts on politics -- KCRW's "Left, Right, and Center," the analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks on PBS's "Lehrer Newshour," and The New Yorker's political podcast known as "The Campaign Trail."

Both "Left, Right, and Center" and "Shields and Brooks" are examples of old media sidling-up to new media formats.  "Left, Right, and Center" is a public radio program originating out of Santa Monica, CA for at least ten years.  Capably hosted by former Clinton staffer, Matt Miller, "Left, Right, and Center" also includes Tony Blankley (Newt Gingrich's former press chief), Robert Scheer of the San Francisco Chronicle, and the hot new media maven herself, Arianna Huffington.  Although Huffington has been away from the show for a while of late (see my comments below on the interesting divide between Arianna Huffington the person and Arianna the persona), this quartet has been civilly debating political matters great and small for a long time.  Think of it as the McLaughlin Report, only from outside the Beltway and replete with qualities like intelligence, consideration, and moderation, all of which the McLaughlin Report avoids in favor of ego.

The same can be said of the podcast available from PBS's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer." Every Friday, David Brooks from the New York Times and columnist Mark Shields use about 12-15 minutes of television time to debate the past week's political events. Brooks has become one of the best writers, and thinkers, on political issues in the country, and a rarity on the Right: a conservative with a brain.  Shields is equally well-informed and considered -- a campaign staffer to Bobby Kennedy in 1968, Edmund Muskie in 1972, and Mo Udall in 1976.  Like "Left, Right, and Center," these two commentators get enough time on the broadcast to be thoughtful.  They discuss.  They don't diatribe.

It's no surprise that the New Yorker's newest podcast, The Campaign Trail, also avoids the trap offered by 30 seconds of instanpundit.  Hosted by Dorothy Wickenden, the magazine's executive editor, the podcast also includes longtime writer Hendrick Hertzberg and Ryan Lizza, the magazine's Washington correspondent.  Wickenden has long been a major force in American news magazine journalism, but finally here we readers (and now listeners) get a chance to see her quick mind at work.  Like Business Week's podcast with editor John Byrne, it's also a rare chance at an inside-listen between top reporters and their editor. 

Finally, there's Politico.  Founded by Robert Allbritton, Frederick Ryan, John Harris, and Jim VandeHei, Politico is both a printed publication and hot-hot-hot Internet read.  Unlike Drudge or even the Huffington Post, however, Politico's internet edition comes with brains.  Ben Smith's blog on the '08 race seemed to be updated every hour, with just the right sentence or two explaining why that particular bit of news mattered. Roger Simon's thoughtful essays on the dynamics of the campaign -- note this gem from early April, reading the entrails of the Clinton campaign as it began to fall apart but before everyone else had figured it out -- are must reading.  It's wonderful having an entire publication devoted to national politics. 

Those of us who live in northern New England also benefit from reading "Vermont Daily Briefing," a blog written by a real writer and author, Philip Baruth, who has three novels to his credit along with ten years of radio commentary on Vermont Public Radio.  Baruth is also creating a new role for himself in the Green Mountain State: political activist.  This past month, Baruth won a race to become a delegate for Obama at the national convention.  Imagine if a writer actually held office?  The good news is that Baruth's sharp eye (and even sharper keyboard) doesn't focus on Vermont politics only.  He's got a keen bead on the Clintons, among many other national political figures.

So, here's the critique in the roundup: The Huffington Post.  Anyone who has followed Arianna Huffington's career knows she is 1) smart, 2) articulate, 3) ambitious, 4) good-looking, 5) a risk-taker, and 6) not from the heartland of America. 

Born in Greece, educated in England (no less than Cambridge University), Huffington has created the kind of life for herself that can only occur in place like America with its wonderful tolerance and support for re-invention.  She's an entrepreneur's entrepreneur, and that's meant as a genuine compliment.

The problem is, her latest creation, The Huffington Post, deserves few compliments.  Oh, sure, it's a great place to go on the Internet if a reader wants the left-wing version of Fox News (e.g., big, booming headlines, all of which scream Obama-friendly, progressive news that must-be-read-now). 

Initially the Huffington Post did real journalism, being the only outlet to chase the New York Times Iraq scandal involving Judith Miller, Valerie Plame, and frankly most of the Bush White House.  Huffington connected the dots between Plame's outing, Miller's poor, Pennsylvania-Avenue-fed reporting, and the desire by the Bush administration to cover-up their incompetence for going to war with Iraq.  It was gutsy stuff, and the kind of work which suggested that Arianna Huffington had found her home at last.

Unfortunately, since that break-through journalism, the Huffington Post has deteriorated into something more like a British Broad Street tabloid than a serious Internet journal. 

Visit any day and find -- in addition to the big-type headlines -- a whole slew of really important stories, including (as I write) links to stories that claim Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian, a pregnant man, Rupert Everett's view on the state of British soldiers, and....oh...what is...this?.....another link to Arianna Huffington's latest appearance on American television.

Hardly a day goes by on the Huffington Post without a link appearing that promotes Ms. Huffington in some flattering way.  Perhaps it's just Arianna being Arianna.  No doubt Ms. Huffington is a very complicated person - witness her marriage to uber-rightwinger, bi-sexual, former Congressman Michale Huffington -- but over time, the act and the Huffington Post itself has grown old.  Instead of big type and screaming headlines (and those ridiculous celeb-bloggers), Ms. Huffington would do better to return to the quiet of radio.  On "Left, Right, and Center" her comments are lucid and insightful; on The Huffington Post, it's like watching a good band undone by smoke bombs and "Hello Cleveland."

That's it.  No mention of a million other possible sites -- from The Fix, to Daily Kos, to Blue Hampshire.  Hey...a guy's gotta get back to work and regular life, right?

The Open Water Swim in search of a New Politics

The routine works likes this: come Memorial Day weekend, regardless of the air temperature or water conditions, I don a wetsuit and enter a frigid lake in either  New Hampshire or Vermont for the first open swim of the season.  The experience is almost always the same: bracing.  And I mean bracing.  Gone is the nice 72-degree water of the Dartmouth indoor pool.  It's just me, a shortie-wetsuit bought from BJ's, and a cap or two on my head. 

On entering the water, my breath immediately seizes, and my hands chill.  What?  Can this really work?  But over the years, I've learned that within about ten minutes or so, I will become pretty warm.  Sure, the extremities suffer a bit, but by-and-large, I emerge some 30 minutes later feeling exhilarated and ready for a great season ahead of open water swimming.

My last open water swim of the season occurs around the first day of Fall.  So, between the end of May and the end of September, this incredibly special time of year arrives, and while much of it involves training for triathlons, the real secret is that this time of year revolves around open water swimming.  There are no lap lanes in open water swimming, and no clocks telling splits.  It's just me, the water, and the weather. 

It's very real and authentic.  The slap-slap-slap as water smacks my forehead while I  swim against the wind.  The hesitation in my stroke as a wave crests while I'm taking  a breath.  The unexpected, oogie feeling as my hand hits a dead fish.

Truthfully, there is something incredibly beautiful about swimming in northern New England lakes.  Maybe it's the way the light hits the water, or the cleanliness of the water itself.  Last year I remember swimming and seeing a bald eagle out of the corner of my eye.  I have swim at 6am and 7pm, and all times in between, and each time offers something magical that's hard to put into words.   

While swimming across Post Pond in Lyme, NH, this afternoon, I thought about all of this beauty and truth amidst the spectacle which took place yesterday with DNC in my old stomping grounds at the Marriott Hotel in Woodley Park in Washington, DC.

The back-and-forth undertaken there seemed, frankly, so completely out-of-touch with the politics that concerns most people today.  At a time when gas costs $4+ per gallon, when food costs are out-of-sight, and when the Iraq conflict seems unending, it's hard to believe that this technical dispute merits the time and attention devoted to it.  As I understand it, very clear rules about the primary process were adopted and agreed upon by every major candidate prior to the campaign. 

But instead of adhering to those agreements, at least one candidate decided that an enormous amount of time, energy, and political capital ought to be focused on undoing the political Pre-Nup.  It's this kind of political calculation that, frankly, we need to abandon.  The other main candidate in the race has campaigned vigorously on the need for a new kind of politics.

There's more than rhetoric behind Senator Obama's call (there, I said his name).  It's a understanding, from someone who has not spent the last 16 years in Washington, DC, that the rest of us who live outside the Beltway want practical solutions to the real-world problems which face us.  The fight this weekend in the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee perfectly captures a politics that prefers distractions to solutions. Will it help someone get health care?  Outside the spin zone of cable TV, the answer is obvious: no, of course not. 

We're waiting a similar truth-teller in New Hampshire.  Here in the Granite State, Governor Lynch has a lot of fine qualities, but his fairy-tale embrace of a constitutional amendment on educational funding hardly qualifies as the kind of new politics we need in the Granite State.  Where is the politician in New Hampshire who articulates what the state of our public education ought to be in the 21st century in order to be competitive globally, and who is willing to articulate the public investment model which will fund what we need to meet that vision?

At the start of each Summer, I return to the open water for long swims and find that  there's no dodging the truth in the open, deep lakes of Northern New England.  Let's hope more politicians find themselves seeking that kind of politics, instead of the politics which favors clinging to the sides of swimming pool in fear.