Prediction and suggestion

Prediction: That This American Life will ultimately come out of this Mike Daisey fiasco looking better for having so seriously addressed a problem most media organizations sweep under the rug.

Suggestion: Embracing the same logic that the public wants to support organizations that do the adult thing when confronted with a mistake, President Obama should take direct responsibility for high gas prices in 2012 - even though the responsibility isn't really (or even practically at all) his. By declaring that he's big enough and mature enough to accept responsibility for a bad thing, he'll look so vastly different, better, more elevated than whomever his GOP opponent will be - and especially in comparison to the spineless Mitt Romney. Congress is historically unpopular because of partisanship - this isn't just some Brooksian-centrist fantasy voter we're talking about, but one who, like most adults, thinks the worst of her elected officials these days.

And anyway, if you want to blame Obama for high gas prices, you're going to do it whether or not he accepts responsibility. It's not clear who he'd lose by saying "I take full responsibility for not keeping your gas prices as low as possible, because I believe we have more urgent priorities and we all have to confront challenges like this together." But I think there are people on the fence, part of the original Obama coalition who've been feeling disenchanted lately, who expected him to be the kind of West Wing President this would be typical of.

Let's thank the kids (and maybe pay em)

As March Madness gets ready to begin, let's just take a moment to reflect on two fundamental truths: this is the best month in sports, entirely because it's happening to young people who've done nothing more than work hard for years on something they believe in; and, for that reason, they deserve some compensation.

Maybe it cheapens the proceedings somehow, though I doubt it - but a whole lot of people are about to make a whole lot of money based on the hard work of a handful of hustling, talented teenagers and 20-year-olds in the next month and a half, so why shouldn't the kids get a piece? Isn't to do otherwise the very definition of exploitation (if not harsher terms I don't want to muddy the waters with)?

So thank you, Nation's Young People, for your imminent contribution to national happiness. Not just on the court, of course, but in your quantity of inappropriate celebrations of sporting prowess, however they manifest themselves over the next 40 days! Go forth, drain some 30-footers, be they with a basketball or beer bong, and let's all have a good March!

The 11:10 Larkspur - San Francisco

In a few moments, the commuter ferry will leave the coastal suburban haven of Larkspur and plow out into the cold blue San Francisco Bay. As it leaves Marin County, it passes within a few meters of the infamous San Quentin prison, recently the site of a day of action by local Occupy protesters, and daily the locus of uncountable acts of violence and humiliation. Drifting swiftly and comfortably by the floodlights, high stone walls, barbed wire fencing and barracks housing, how many of the passengers aboard this ferry are thinking about what separates them from their countrymen mere meters to port? How many have tried to connect to the (protected, naturally) SQSP wifi network that comes briefly into range? The few packets their device sends to a router somewhere on the outskirts of the prison are probably the most contact they'll ever have with the inside of one of the country's most notorious correctional facilities.

Like the Alcatraz prison island that our ferry passes to starboard a few minutes later, San Quentin represents both an uncomfortable reminder of the price society exacts for criminal behavior and an object of fascination on the horizon. Most communities keep their prisons far out of sight, the only glimpse of their existence a vaguely ridiculous highway sign encouraging drivers not to pick up hitchhikers. San Francisco, however, has two maximum-security prisons within an easy glance across the Bay; one has even become a tourist attraction, with hundreds of prisoners a day pretending to lock themselves behind bars that once held Al Capone captive.

How many people have ridden this ferry and later in life found themselves watching it through the narrow windows of San Quentin? There must have been at least one such person, but the demographics of Marin being what they are, this is unlikely to have described many people. What are their names? What did they do, or were accused of having done, that got them sent away? When they see the ferry, their regular seat filled by some blissfully-unaware 1%er listening to This American Life on his iPhone 4 headphones, does it inspire anger, sadness, regret, indifference?

{End,Beginning} of an Era

They've been five of the most fascinating years of my life, but on Friday, March 2nd I'll swipe my badge through Google's front doors for the last time. No more will I be privy to the deep, dark secrets of the Chocolate Factory; my inbox will be free of dogfood debugging statements, stack traces in place of hot new features and thousands of auto-generated emails letting me know at 3:35am that one of my logging jobs is failing.


Even the logging failure emails, I'll miss. Being connected to the beating heart of the technological now is thrilling, and no matter how religiously I read techmeme and the Google News Technology section, that zeitgeist will no longer be a part of my life.


Which is something I'm excited about, actually. Working for a technology-platform provider, while insanely interesting, keeps one necessarily at arm's-length from specific uses of that platform, which I'm keenly interested in exploring. Google News hosts thousands, millions of articles - I've spent the last five years obsessing over them in the aggregate, and now it's time to write a few of my own. To focus on the micro rather than the macro.


So for the next few months, before Irina and I leave for Belarus, my intention is to write as much as possible, in order to exercise the muscle that I'll rely on daily while abroad. I suppose I'll start running again - building one muscle is easier if others aren't atrophying - and maybe drop a few of the Google Fifteen. I don't quite know what I'll write about, but I need as much practice at finding the story in a single blade of grass as I do at writing five paragraphs on something fascinating. By finding subjects in familiar objects, the things I habitually ignore and gloss over in my now-daily life, I hope to develop some semblance of a reportorial instinct.


Are there any tricks or techniques you know of to help build reporting and writing muscles? Please leave them in the comments, or send me an email (if you have my email address :)

On No-Brainers

"Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?" - Paul Krugman, Oligarchy, American Style


Most Americans agree we should tax the wealthy. The evidence from economics is overwhelming: they can afford it, we need the money, having such a distorted income distribution is bad for the democracy we say we care about. So why do the people who say otherwise get taken seriously without having any real evidence?


Laziness among reporters really can't be the explanation: most reporters work their asses off. They hustle getting stories, getting clicks, reading and writing about what's going on day in and day out. They're some of the most informed people I've ever met.


It's not fear of controversy, either. The media loves controversy, because when people are talking about you they're talking about you which means reading you which means seeing the ads that pay your salary. FOX News has demonstrated pretty clearly that you make more money by taking a stand than you do by refusing to. And why would it be bad for business to take up with the more popular side of the debate?


I really don't believe it's fear of losing advertisers. Those folks want their ads to be seen, that's their entire occupation. They've never shied away from advertising heavily to conservatives, precisely because doing so makes them money. They'd make money from a well-run, popular liberal outlet; in fact, many probably already do.


Are businesses and advertisers afraid of what would happen if people were exposed to a default consensus that skewed to the left? Perhaps, but they don't seem thrilled with the direction a conservative consensus is taking us. These are (allegedly) pragmatic businesspeople, they know the costs of ignoring the environment and their bottom line is getting hammered by the recession. Granted they love their tax breaks, but their love for the GOP isn't infinite.


So why is the default consensus that raising taxes on the rich is, at best, controversial (instead of a no-brainer)? I think it's ultimately about a very human logical fallacy: if two people I know to be opposed to each other tell me something, I know that they both have an incentive to lie and so I'll just assume the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But that only helps me find the truth if both sides are wrong.

Occupy Storify

#occupythenews - http://storify.com/storify/occupied-storified

Xavier Damman (@xdamman), Storify Technology is not enough. People who can make sense of all these voices.

In the house: Deborah Petersen (@DeboraPetersen), SJ Mercury News/BA News Group How we use socme to deliver to our readers. Love Storify; also use FB but don't find it "as timely"; love tumblr. Trying to use G+, much better for biz reporters than general audience b/c of population of users on it.

Tasneem Raja (@tasneemraja), Mother Jones How mojo uses storify to cover #ows. "Game-changer" for us. Storify is like real-time notebook for reporters; what would have stayed in their pages is now available to anybody. Problem w/OWS: leaderless, planned/executed on the fly, independently, tons of cities in real-time, no pr flacks (ok not a problem), tons of journos on ground...storify helps you do journalism "asynchronously". Surprised how much I've been talking on the phone to our reporters.

Angela Woodall (@angelawoodall), Oakland Tribune Storify allows us to use their words (meaning subjects of reporting who previously saw bias in reporting). Standards are same for us in Storify as in print.

Ellen Cushing (@elcush), EBExpress

Susan Mernit (@susanmernit), Oakland Local Pros who publish 3-5 stories/day plus huge outpouring of community writers. Printed occupy page

Carly Schwartz (@carlicita), HuffPo SF

Ian Hill (@ianhillmedia), KQED Why are you involved in socmed X? You just are, and can struggle to justify that to managers who don't get it. 18 newscasts a day! News orgs in this area? WORK WITH THESE STARTUPS! Nobody in the country has better access to cooler tech companies to partner with!

How do you verify? You just do, if something in the pit of your stomach feels wrong, don't do it. You have to do some; twitter is great but call the guy at the Port and ask him to confirm. There's no substitute for experience.

"Hello, I'm Andrew Fitzgerald, from Twitter; quick question..."

A Serious Proposal

Here's the Democratic plan to save America from fiscal ruin. Unlike Paul Ryan's plan, it adds up, doesn't make insane assumptions about < 3% unemployment, and would be good public policy to boot:

1. Institute a carbon tax. Would raise a ton of money and help fight climate change, while making American energy policy more rational (since it prices an externality) and making American clean energy companies more viable.

2. Allow the government to negotiate prescription drug prices. RX prices are one of the costliest parts of Medicare/Medicaid, and the only reason the government can't negotiate for better prices is because drug companies have expensive lobbyists.

3. End the Bush tax cuts. This would cut the projected future deficit in half at once, and return us to the fiscal insanity of the last decade in which we balanced the budget and created a ton of jobs, while shifting a small portion of the burden for paying for government back to the people who can afford to pay for it.

4. Cut defense spending dramatically. We don't need to spend more than every other country on earth combined, and yet we (almost) do. That's absurd, insane, wasteful and encourages all kinds of abuse, fraud and waste in the defense industry.

So, media: you now have a Democratic plan that is at least as "serious" and "bold" as the Ryan plan, but that actually addresses a variety of other long-term challenges we face, and on top of which probably saves more money while not impoverishing seniors. Feel free to report on it.