DadTalk

What Was I Thinking?

Because I’ve just launched WriteThru.com, which offers free webinars to media professionals seeking to enhance their technology skills, I’m going to cross-post my “explainer” here on DadTalk. Please feel free to spread the word about WriteThru … I can use the help!

I LEFT THE LOS ANGELES TIMES knowing an economic storm was coming, but I had no idea just how hard the media world would be hit. I figured there would be layoffs at newspapers beyond those of the late 1980s and early 1990s, but then mistakenly hoped that the market would stabilize.

Today, I find it heartbreaking to see so many hard-working colleagues and friends suddenly wondering how to pick up the pieces of their damaged careers. PaperCuts counts nearly 16,000 newspaper jobs lost in the United States in 2008 alone and nearly 9,000 more so far this year. And by all accounts, TV, radio and magazine employees all have been equally pummeled.

But I do not believe that professional journalism will die. Hints of what might emerge are seeping through. Think ProPublica. Think VoiceofSanDiego. Consider the possibilities of electronic ink/paper. I don’t know exactly what form this golden era of journalism will materialize, but I do know that many of the journalists who are losing their jobs today will help launch this renaissance.

Tough Times for All

These are tough times for most all of us. I can now honestly say I know dozens upon dozens of friends and family who are now unemployed or are about to become so. (My own situation is not so great, either, but that’s for another post. )

It’s important to recognize how the greed of a few has hurt us all. Over the last two decades, the idea of wealth has shifted in several meaningful ways:

1. Banking and investment had become the dominant form of economic growth in the United States. During this period, our best and brightest were diverted from economically and socially more important activities – such as science and health research – to firms that made money for the sake of making money.
2. Greed became not only fashionable, but expected. Dollar-minded parents pushed kids into careers they did not want, which was captured in this New York Times article. The message to many young Americans: wealth + granite countertops equal happiness.
3. Keeping up with the Joneses translated into buying and improving homes far beyond ones means. I had a neighbor who mocked my slowly decaying home in Upland, California. I told him I could not afford huge upgrades. He responded by telling me to refinance. By now, my former neighbor is probably upside down in his mortgage, while several of my other neighbors have recently foreclosed.

The point here is simple: many of my hardworking friends and families are now victims of those who indulged in excessive lifestyles: new cars every year, bigger and bigger houses, gouging of assets from corporations, etc.

My friends and family did not deserve to be punished because others were greedy. It isn’t right. And it bothers me. A lot.

That Glimmer of Economic Hope Is Only for Analysts and Pundits

We all want to believe that the economic situation is improving. The stock market has climbed back up in the last few weeks. Housing sales seem to be improving. Factory orders were up a bit. My neighbors are more optimistic today than they were a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, the specter of a “dead cat bounce” lurks gloomily above the marginally “up” numbers.

While home sales may have increased somewhat, so what? The numbers were so low to begin with, the uptick is laughable. Besides, huge price cuts forced by foreclosures, pent-up buyer demand and a federal tax credit for new home buyers may provide only temporary sales fuel. But as long as home prices are collapsing, it’s premature to call the bottom of the housing collapse.

Webinar Let’s Meet to Discuss Building a Blog

I’ve never been much of a joiner. Most of my life I’ve avoided cliques, fraternities, religion, political parties, etc.

If there is one group, though, that I’ve always identified with, it’s been journalists. I feel at home when walking around a newsroom, even if I don’t work there. I’ve tried to move on, but I still feel the ups and mostly downs the industry has faced of late.

It’s been particularly painful watching friends losing their jobs. It frustrating to watch highly-skilled, hard-working individuals wondering how to find a job in today’s nasty employment environment as the technological world around them has changed.

While I may not have the answers to journalism’s bigger issues, I do know how to help individuals. At the moment, providing an educational forum seems like the best place to start.

So at 10:30 a.m. (Pacific Daylight Time) on Monday, I’m offering journalists, and of course my readers, a free webinar on how to create a blog. Future courses will tackle topics like free office software, how to find journalism jobs and how to easily record video.

If you feel like donating, to help defray the costs, who am I to stop you?

If you’re interested, click on the link to sign up for a Blog Fundamentals webinar.

Thanks.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Boy, it's been a busy week. I read two books to Lael's class. I chaperoned Seth's trip to the zoo. My brother and his family is in town. Work has kept me hopping.

Life should get back to normal soon, but until then, weeee.

Freak Yourself Out By Reading This Story

It’s the Economy, Girlfriend is all about women upset about losing their high-rolling lifestyles as the economy tanks. Example:

Some women in the group said the men in their lives had gone from being aloof and unattainable to unattractively needy and clinging. Others complained of being ignored — one, who called herself A.P., wrote on the blog that three weeks had passed without her boyfriend “asking a single question” about her life. Another wrote, fearfully, that her beau had told her to make a list of their favorite New York restaurants before the bad market forced a move to the Midwest.

I’m sure you noticed the word blog. If you really want to freak yourself out, go read it here, but I thought you might like a sample:

Thanks to the recession, I now have a completely devoted BF, which is exactly what I wanted. So I should be happy, right? Wrong. I’m bored and can’t stop thinking about my perpetually unattainable Euro ex-boyfriend who is recession proof courtesy of an offshore trust account. To be honest, I’m only with my BF because I just don’t have the heart to change my Facebook status from “in a relationship” to “I ain’t saying I’m a gold digger, but I ain’t messin’ with no broke banker.”

Enough said.

Late Hanukkah Stuff

Wow, I think this is the longest I’ve ever gone without posting. Mostly, I’ve just been busy as a work-at-home dad. Here’s a typical day during the holidays:

• Read the news
• Feed the kids breakfast
• Lael, do you need to go potty? (she’s in training this week.)
• Edit an e-mail for work
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Quiet the kids down
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Start some laundry
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Stop some fighting
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Work on the website
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Quiet the kids down
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Laundry
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Make the kids lunch
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Take a work phone call
• Lael, do you need to go potty?
• Laundry
• Lael, do you need to go potty?

During the eight days of Hanukkah, the kids couldn’t wait until nightfall for candle lighting and gifts. You can see the Menorah Lael made out of nuts glued onto a ceramic tile to the left.

The Hidden Price America Will Pay for Wall Street’s Debacle

Graduates of top universities sought their fortunes in banking, rather than in careers like medicine, engineering or teaching.

– The New York Times

As I read through the onslaught of financial wreckage stories, this one quote sums up all that is wrong with our society. After all, it’s easy to forget one key fact: a lot of people got rich during the enormous housing/banking/finance bubble that is now ruining the lives of others.

Most of the focus has been on hedge funds, billionaire investors and corporate chiefs. But as The New York Times points out, much of the artificial wealth generated by the largest investment bubble in history actually went to Wall Street employees. In fact, $1 out of every $4 in pay or bonuses in New York went to someone in the financial industry:

For Dow Kim, 2006 was a very good year. While his salary at Merrill Lynch was $350,000, his total compensation was 100 times that — $35 million. …

In all, Merrill handed out $5 billion to $6 billion in bonuses that year. A 20-something analyst with a base salary of $130,000 collected a bonus of $250,000. And a 30-something trader with a $180,000 salary got $5 million.

So its no wonder that anyone in college during the last decade was drawn to the financial industry. Who wants to be an engineer when it means working for a tired old manufacturing company that only pays $150,000 a year with little or no bonus?

Who wants to spend all their time on theoretical math at a university in which it takes years to earn tenure and a salary over $75,000? Why would anyone in their right mind become a doctor, which requires endless hours of thankless studying, only to be rewarded with reams of red tape, huge student loans and low pay – relatively speaking – to boot?

While everyone bemoans the credit market freeze, the drop in home values, the disintegration of several top U.S. industries and the subsequent loss in world standing, there is perhaps a larger cost that everyone has missed: an entire generation of creative, smart – and unfortunately morally challenged – Americans was drawn in by the golden light shining down from Wall Streets skyscrapers like moths to a lamp. Now, the light has been turned off and the moths are fluttering about aimlessly.

This misuse of intellectual capital may cause more damage to America’s future than the trillions of dollars now being used to resuscitate our economy.

Why I’m Writing Less

When I first started this blog in the Spring of 2004, I never found myself at a loss for words. Lately, though, I’ve had a hard time posting.

Part of the problem is directly related to the annual flu from hell. Not sure if this time it is one flu, or several viruses working their way through our family, but being sick definitely has made it tougher to post over the last month or so.

Part of the problem is being busy with work and home life. I haven’t had as much energy left for writing as I’d like.

But I suspect the biggest problem is with myself. My fingers have been resisting the keyboard as I try to absorb all that is going on in the world, and my life.

Although it’s probably kind of stupid, for the first time ever, negative news has gotten under my skin:

• Families losing their homes – it really, really troubles me;
• A financial crisis of epic proportions;
• People losing their jobs;
• Terrorists cruelly killing hundreds in India and thousands around the world.

The list goes on and on. It’s odd that it bothers me so much considering I’ve been reading, writing or editing news since I was a teen.

On the personal front, I also have found it difficult to write. Don’t worry, all is fine with me, my wife and our kids. It’s not that kind of problem. It more has to do with a personal crisis of confidence both career- and self-worth wise.

Blog, Real Worlds Merge

So for the last week or so, I’ve been looking at a handful of software vendors for a project at work. I finally get it down to one.

With a couple questions in mind, I called up the owner, who is based in Indiana. I tease the guy that he doesn’t have a very Indiana accent, which he tells me is French.

A bit later in the conversation, he mentioned he lives in Bloomington, Indiana. The first words in my head are, “No, it can’t be….”

I go to my blog, click on the sidebar where I have a link to 4213 Miles, which is about this young mother who married a nice man from, where else, France.

Double checking the hubbies name on the site, I ask, “You’re not Cedric, are you?”

“Yep.”

So there you have it. I randomly call a number in Indiana and meet the husband of a blogger who is incredibly nice and has posted very sweet comments on my site.

How do you like that?