Message to Garcia

It’s called “Message to Garcia.”. I first read this as required reading as a young plebe at the Naval Academy. To say it initially went over my head would be accurate. It took a couple readings and some military “guidance” before I got it, but I have never let go of it. Many years later, I find it more inspiring than ever. Enjoy reading this story, take from what you will, apply what you can…just imagine a world of Rowan-like people. Or a community. Or a workplace.

MESSAGE TO GARCIA

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.  When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents.  Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba – no one knew where.  No mail or telegraph could reach him.  The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly.

What to do!

Someone said to the President, “There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.”

Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia.  How “the fellow by name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and having delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college in the land.  It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing – “carry a message to Garcia!”

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.

No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man – the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant. You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office -six clerks are within your call. Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Corregio.”
Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task?
On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of the following questions:
Who was he?
Which encyclopedia?
Where is the encyclopedia?
Was I hired for that?
Don’t you mean Bismarck?
What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?
Is he dead?
Is there any hurry?
Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?
What do you want to know for?
And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him find Garcia – and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.

Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Corregio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself.
And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure socialism so far into the future.

If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce” Saturday night holds many a worker in his place.

Advertise for a stenographer, and nine times out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate – and do not think it necessary to. Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

“You see that bookkeeper,” said the foreman to me in a large factory.
“Yes, what about him?”
“Well, he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him to town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and, on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street, would forget what he had been sent for.”
Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “down-trodden denizen of the sweat shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power. Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, this sorting is done finer – but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best-those who can carry a message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to anyone else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress, him. He can not give orders, and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it yourself.” Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled No. 9 boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in your pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold the line in dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.

Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds – the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and, having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes.

I have carried a dinner-pail and worked for a day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on strike for higher wages.

Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks will be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village – in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed, and needed badly – the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

Web first or digital first?

Image via Wikipedia

Time to dabble in a question that some might contend is purely semantics.  To them, I disagree and offer the following as my rationale.

Chuck Peters (@cpetersia) shared a post from Dan Conover (@xarker) with some fantastic commentary and insight into the new media.  It is a good investment of time and I applaud Dan for his effort (hey, it’s a lengthy post, full of ripe mental fruit, so he deserves KUDOS for the time it took to put it together).  Early on in the post, the question of transforming from a print-first paradigm to web-first.  I bet Dan has a few spears thrown at him, but he was spot on with his take…except for one upon which I wanted to expound.  Before I start, I offer credit to Dan for answering the question in the language as it was posed to him.

Print-first to web-first is “tricky” as Dan notes.  Is web-first, though, really where the new media needs to be headed?  Put it this way: all that question really addresses is how media companies can retool themselves to fully adopt and succeed in a realm that has existed for over 2 decades.  Dwell upon that for a minute.  We are not talking about media companies creating new frontiers or even positioning themselves to rapidly exploit new frontiers as they might emerge.  No, this is just how do they catch up our internal organization and processes in order to utilize the web (which is usually seen by media as a highly branded, strongly controlled presence).  Play along with me on this and turn the clock forward a bit (pick your own time frame).  If we define the web by way of the general behavior of packaged pieces of content on strongly branded, pre-existing, media-owned sites, imagine a future where consumption of content is not tied to that definition.  The consumer is out there with a variety of tools that allow them to get at content in a more ubiquitous nature and target specific content items based on semantic grounds vice engaging by way of brands.  Just imagine that!  Uh, stop imagining and look around you – RSS, feeds, social networking, etc.  Sure, this might just be about individual and organization definitions of “web” and I will concede that point at the risk of sounding Clinton-esque.  A strict adherence to web-first may just end up painting some media companies into a new corner.  Retool yourself so well and so rigidly and it is conceivable that a media company could find themselves as ill-prepared to leverage new engagement environments as they are to engage the web now.  Web-first is okay for now, but the gold standard will be to ensure that the creation of content is primarily a digital-first mindset with the most package agnostic characteristics possible.  Commit to that and you can chase web-first as your calling card all day long.  Then, when the “web” (in its current relatively static sense) is eclipsed, the only large adjustments needed should be on the packaging end of things.

I submit digital first is the higher, more necessary and most useful science in this discussion.  For those who feel this was just a matter of semantics…thanks for agreeing with me!

Do what he say!

WSJ goes even further…charging for mobile content, too.  I’m in one of those moods and just could resist injecting some commentary by way of a visual:

Hypocritical Sensitivity?

For those that don’t know my background, I am a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel, a veteran of multiple combat tours/wars and a strong supporter of the military family.  That support includes a hyper-awareness of the sacrifice the entire military family endures, particularly in instances of a military member being killed.  Unless you have struggled through the vastly emotional process of leading the affairs for a military funeral and have personally gone down on bended knee to hand a carefully and precisely folded American flag to the parents of a brave young American killed in action and look into their eyes as they search for answers, you have, at best, only minimal understanding of the sacrifices.  I’ve voluntarily fulfilled that duty many times and, in one instance, for a fallen Marine who I personally knew when he was in high school student and whose parents I knew very well on a personal basis.  Yes, that’s his grave (Section 61, site 8423, Arlington National Cemetery) and his former girlfriend in the photo.  The sanctity and utter respect surrounding every facet of those gut-wrenching stories deserves collective and profound respect.  I don’t care if you support the war, hate this administration, hate that administration, or just want to make your voice heard…it is nothing short of basic human decency to respect the sacrifice.

I know I’m way off my normal topic range, but there is a reason and it was brought about by two unrelated war events recently. I’ll warn you right now this is loaded with opinion and conviction.  Take it at face value, but please don’t be surprised if you think it too laudatory of military service or critical of media work in a combat zone.  Trust me – I never once needed a reporter or photographer to accomplish any of the missions I was assigned.

The first event was the dissemination of a photo by Julie Jacobson, an AP embed photographer (“sight-seer” in grunt talk).  The photo is of Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard, USMC, moments after he had been mortally wounded by an RPG round in Afghanistan.  As someone who has been there and done that in uniform a few times, I’m only shocked at the total lack of respect displayed towards the wishes of LCpl Bernard’s family.  They specifically requested the photo not be published out of respect for their son.  The photo was published immediately after LCpl Bernard’s funeral with the quip-ish rationale of “journalistic duty.”  Heck, it went out on their automated feeds like it was a picture of some high school band at a Labor Day parade.  The AP didn’t violate any standing rules for embedded media in a U.S. combat zone, but they definitely decided to look down their nose at having compassion for a family grieving over the loss of their son.  I can deal with that…I’ve definitely seen a whole lot worse than one photograph, a disrespected fallen warrior and a family hurt by others’ professional gains from the situation.  I can live with the fact the photo is out in the wild now.  It is part of history, a glimpse at the pain of war, a snapshot into the sacrifice made by the young to fulfill the strategies of the older.  I get all that.  The sacrifice made by LCpl. Bernard is exactly why people like Julie Jacobson and the AP have such wide and unfettered freedoms.

So…on to the second event.  Stephen Farrell was recently freed in Afghanistan by British commandos after being captured by the Taliban.  There were a few thin and unconfirmed stories about this up through his rescue, but it has now been publicly acknowledged that the mainstream media collectively put a blackout on the situation out of fear of endangering the captives lives.  How convenient.  Let me explain something about the expectations one should have in a place like Afghanistan or Iraq.  A foreigner of any sort, uniform or not, is  fair game.  Oddly enough, I am glad on only one count this capture didn’t get the same media attention that would be given if a U.S. service member was captured.  It avoided making the rescue messier for the commandos.  Nothing else and nothing more.  Yep, the only bright spot I see in how it was handled by the media is that it quite possibly made things easier for the guys in uniform (who were, after all, the guys who had to go in after Farrell after he got in way over his head, do the real dirty work and pull this guy’s backside out).  Good for the Brits once again – it was always a joy to work with/near them and those  lads were spot on as usual with getting the job done.  As for Farrell getting out alive, that’s nice and all that, but it came at the cost of his interpreter and a commando.  I would very much like to assume Farrell will be making the effort to personally thank the commando’s family for their son’s service and for helping save his life.

I know these two events are not like comparing apples.  Underneath both events, though, is an element of concern and compassion – ignored in once instance and the driving force in another.  War is an ugly line of work.  Once you drill past the hyperbole, the rhetoric of politics and the superficial opinions of the inexperienced, it comes down to individuals in the most horrific circumstances.  Some find the courage at a young age to strap on the armor of a modern-day knight to do their country’s bidding, like LCpl. Bernard.  Some enter into that arena for sake of their civilian profession, like Stephen Farrell.  Either way, they are both in roughly the same situation of their own accord.  Each becomes a player in an event that warrant coverage.  Both DO NOT, however, receive the same handling.

Sorry, no big conclusion…I didn’t bury the headline down here.  As you might have figured out if you read this whole post, I am just a bit conflicted about these two events.  I’m not throwing the hypocrisy or double standard flag in the air.  Yet.  Hopefully the good folks at the Poynter Institute will take care of that as I have heard rumored.

Roll Tide for $10/month?

Image by smile4camera via Flickr

   I made a promise to myself to not spend anymore time lamenting the pay wall issue, but the Alabama Daily launching the the TideSportsExtra.com site makes me want to illustrate a point.  For $10 a month or $59.95 per year, you get “photos, blogs, video and extensive coverage, the site will offer an unparalleled fan experience.”  Somehow, the Alabama Daily believes they have a monopoly on pictures, videos, blogs and stories on Alabama sports.  I fail to see how you can demand a ransom unless you actually have a hostage!  So…let’s see if this prospective “hostage” can escape.

Generic Alabama sports sites:
- http://www.rolltide.com/
- http://www.al.com/sports/
- http://msn.foxsports.com/cfb/team/alabama-crimson-tide-football
- http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/teams/aad

Alabama football sites:
- http://www.rolltide.com/sports/m-footbl/alab-m-footbl-body.html
- http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/
- http://bamaonline.com/
- http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/clubhouse?teamId=333
- http://www.bamapride.com/
- http://ncaafootball.fanhouse.com/teams/alabama-crimson_tide/

I guess 5 minutes is enough Googling, cutting and pasting to make the point.  C’mon, $10 a month?  I’m not even remotely interested in Alabama sports or even Alabama football, so starting from a dead stop I was able to find more sources of content in 5 minutes than I could read in a day.  Gee, I feel awfully free, unencumbered and potentially informed.

If you don’t actually have a hostage, don’t demand a ransom.  

” We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business.” – Scott McClellan

P.S.  Look closely at that photo – AALABALMAA?  Should have gone for “RETARDS”. Oh, somebody please explain the backwards “B” for me. Sheez!

J-school reboot?

 

Image via Wikipedia

Some probably know I have no formal training or education in journalism (did the grammar and headline burying give it away?), so I tend to feel less comfortable talking to journalist-specific topics.  I have the luxury today of stepping out of my comfort zone thanks to a crafty piece of writing from Guy Berger (@guyberger).

 

The rhetorical premise behind Guy’s post was whether journalism schools should be a mirror of the industry’s requirements or a enablers of change for the industry.  I cannot do Guy’s words justice and I really do encourage you to read his article.

Guy does close by asking,

“Anyone out there agree that journalism education needs re-booting?”

As I mentioned, I probably wouldn’t know a j-school if it hit me, but my answer is a resounding “YES.”  Guy isn’t just stirring things up for fun – this guy understands that the media customer is already on the other side of the fence.  He participated in a book panel and provided input, of which I wanted to share a couple sentence.

In a time when cellphones are becoming the mass communications device of the masses, this realm is increasingly important to look at. And what becomes complicated is that the “traditional” mass communication roles now become merged with private interpersonal communications in the uses to which these new technologies are put. Audience expectations of the roles of mass media are arguably changing under this meshing of one-to-many with one-to-one and many-to-one communications.

Go back and read those sentences again, please.  That really takes the mirror v. change agent a different and, in my opinion, mostly relevant direction: the audience.  Oh yeah, those dreaded readers and customers?  If that’s your reaction, I submit that Guy’s words fell on deaf ears.  The fact is that he is spot on.

There is no question the audience expectations are out in front of the industry.  When and where the audience and their expectations got out in front of journalism is a fruitless debate.  What is of concern is the audience expects content, in context (their context, not some editor’s choice of context), in real-time and from whatever device they choose.  Journalism by the inch and line, however comfortable, convenient and profitable (decreasingly) it might be argued to be, is dying. 

J-schools are where the bounds of innovation towards atomization of content, technology-enabled/driven networking and customized delivery and consumption must be pushed.  By now, at least one person is rolling their eyes and chuckling about the paucity of proven business models, whether pay walls are the way to go, and concerns about the trustworthiness of all this new-fangled stuff.  News flash for you – at no time in the future are you going to wake up to a neatly packaged print article that describes a totally packaged answered to all that.  The answers are going to be small, dispersed and  available only to those who are truly willing to hit the reboot switch (repeatedly).  Where else is better suited for those reboots than the beginning of the industry pipeline, the journalism schools?

Fear. Addiction. Paranoia. Blindness. Time for a check-up?

This is based on an Idea Lab article by Dan Pacheco, “How Fear, Brand Addiction and Paranoia Block Innovation.”  Take a few minute and read it – you will find it relatively objective and not so nearly focused on newspapers as you might first suspect.  Go ahead…read it.  Here some mood music for you, too.

 

I thought Dan’s post challenging to all the sub-cultures, egos and personas that exist in our lives; those that loath change; those that refuse to relenquish any ounces of Draconian control; those that just don’t know how to change; those that see change as an indictment on the past; etc.

I couldn’t help but try to mentally grade our progress and, more importantly in my mind, our readiness to make bigger, wider and more dramatic changes going forward.  I know some won’t visit the article link above, so here’s the recap of the criteria:

1) Fear.  Dan is verbose in his description and his real focus is on clutching to formerly successful paradigms.  Mine is simpler: accept those paradigms as dead or dying.  Publicly declare yourself to be a Young Turk of the new age of media.  Commit to crossing the Rubicon.

2) Brand addiction.  Dan’s focus is on newspapers’ focus on the existing customers, not their potential customers. We actually know this – we’ve heard it, discussed it.  We have to facilitate communities, not build them…they already exist.  Just imagine what a supreme failure the Cash for Clunkers program would be if we all viewed the value of our vehicles like some view the value of their products.  Kill off the weak and let the rut begin.

3) Paranoia.  I actually thought Dan missed a huge point on this one.  Media companies should have a decent balance in the community’s “trust bank.”  The media company should represent a trusted source and that alone is an extremely powerful position from which to operate.  It might be a scary proposition for some, but Sun Tzu nailed it when he said, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

4) Business blindness.  Dan’s point is simple and needs no commentary: don’t forget the revenue stream when it comes to innovation. 

Once again, this was a good article and one I encourage everyone to consider as a basis for personal and organizational introspection.

 

Photo flap reinforces my point

   The evolving (degenerating?) debate over pay walls and concerns about news organizations giving away content for free continues to rage.  By this time, most nearly all directly involved are generally on one side of the fence or the other.  Those headed towards a pay wall are considering home-brewed solutions and some believe there is some monetary value to gained from a collective approach (the “ViewPass” scheme for one).

   It’s gotten so bad, there are even dweeby IT folks like myself weighing in here on this blog, on Twitter and our company Yammer.  Some excerpts:

• Twitter (@mgcoleman, 7/29): Schenectady paper (Daily Gazette) reverts back (backwards?) to paywall for content.  http://tinyurl.com/m9nv4s.
• C3 Roadies blog on ViewPass being just another pay wall…nothing more, nothing less (6/9): http://c3it.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/viewpass-just-another-paywall/
• C3 Roadies blog publicly calls being able to control the the supply of news & content a falacy (5/29): http://c3it.wordpress.com/?p=143
• C3 Roadies blog on why Murdoch has it wrong (5/8): http://c3it.wordpress.com/?p=139

   Today I read through an article (http://open.salon.com/blog/future_of_journalism/2009/07/29/photog_thrilled_to_get_peanuts_from_time) about a photographer getting $30 for a stock photo that was used as a Time Magazine front cover photo (http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/2009/1101090427_400.jpg).  We all know Time got the better of the deal, the photog could’ve (under a commission) received greater compensation, etc., etc., etc..  The article rapidly shifts to the topic of online content and the 4th paragraph from the end really caught my attention both as a well-versed statement of fact and being supportive of my strong position to date:

If Time hadn’t found Lam’s stock photo of coins in a jar for $30, or $125, it would have found a similar photo for a similar price. If news consumers can’t get their news online for free from their favorite news organization, they’ll find it for free somewhere else.

“…they’ll find it for free somewhere else.”  Amen.

 

Nice idea…glad you thought of it!

Imagine publicly discussing an emerging IT service and having a competitor lift and launch that idea ahead of you.  That is a nightmare and something that might have once caused lawyers to line up.  In the end, though, you would possibly been better served by keeping your mouth shut, which is probably what the folks at Justin.tv wish they had done about 10 days ago.  Here are the details.

So now the genie is out of the bottle and in the wild.  Livestream pillages the idea from and then launches Twitcam ahead of CamTweet by Justin.tv.  The central hub to all of this hub-bub is, of course, Twitter. 

My take-aways from this:
- you are better off investing your time implementing a potentially good idea than hyping it  (for the record, Justin.tv will always be the proverbial second guy to invent the wheel)
- once again, the power of modular, open API technology causes traditional thought to take a step back (remember we are only talking a matter of days from hearing an idea to launching ahead of the guys who put forth the idea – wow!)

 

Toy? Fad? Time and circumstances will tell.

I was sparked to throw this together after getting a short message from Tom Altman about a tweet he spotted from @mattyoungblut.  Here is the text of the message:

Never really used Twitter for my news until today. Been following the Parkersburg tragedy. Awful.

In case you are not locally tuned in to Iowa news, a storied football coach, mentor and community pillar, Ed Thomas, was murdered this morning in the high school weight room.  Let’s just say it has left the collective community of those who knew him or knew of him utterly stunned.  So, it is basically big news around here today.  Everyone media outlet from here to about a 300 miles radius has descended on the story and, in many cases, the town of Parkersburg, leaving no shortage of coverage outlets.  It is interesting that a relatively new user to Twitter is using it to follow what will probably be one of the dominant stories for the week.  Roll back just a few weeks and remember how Twitter was employed as a information tool inside and outside of Iran.  All the way from the international stage to regional/local news, it seems Twitter has overcome some nay-saying “experts” and their dismissal of it as just a toy or a fad.  It appears possible it might not have been Twitter that needed to grow up, but us as a community of users.

It is eerily similar to the debate that existed in the early 90’s about that silly “www” stuff and commentary about home computers.  Yeah, remember how that stuff has turned out so far?

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp

“But what… is it good for?”
- IBM executive Robert Lloyd, speaking in 1968 about the microprocessor

“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
- Editor in charge of business books, Prentice Hall, 1957