Endless Knots

Samuelson: "Women are men without money"

I'm sure there are plenty of people sharpening their keystrokes finding fault with this statement ("women are not men!" "plenty of women have money!" "women and men are never to be equated!" "men ARE NOT women!" and so forth) but...

There is great "economy" in this statement which cropped up in the NY Times obit for Paul Samuelson, a bit of a quipster, apparently:

When women began complaining about career and salary inequities, for example, he said in their defense, “Women are men without money.”

And kudos to Michael Weinstein for a very comprehensive review of Samuelson's life and thinking. Obits are one of the best sources of education, in my opinion, gateways to tiny, you-must-be-kidding/all-in-the-family fun facts, like this one: Larry Summers is Samuelson's nephew (which of course only makes Samuelson's comment more intriguing, viz. this). Cut my teeth as a reporter writing obits and still cannot open the daily paper (or click to one of my fave dailies) without looking at them first.

Leftovers, thanks to McKinsey

Here's what worries me. Will Condé-Nast also take down Epicurious as a result of dropping Gourmet into the dispose-all? I'm not the only one worried. Just googled "what happens to epicurious now that gourmet is closing" and found two readers of the NY Times blog, Media Decoder, asking the same thing (see Chiara G's and Katherine's comments). Cooks know what I'm talking about: how do we survive if we can't look up recipes that we've made for a zillion years? This just in: CNN.com is reporting that the treasure trove of great recipes will remain up.

Media watchers knew that McKinsey was waving its steel over Condé-Nast's publications (if you're reading here, you most likely read or sub to one of them, everything from The New Yorker to Wired) but no one predicted that Gourmet would be de-boned completely. As recently as last week, The Times was predicting 25% cuts at the Condé-Nast pubs.

However, a recent publication from McKinsey quotes John Quelch, a Harvard Business School professor on the value of increased advertising in a downturn: "'Companies that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.'" Naturally, McK has a model for this: "For each targeted group of customers, it measures 'Reach' (the number of customer contacts), 'Cost' (cost per contact or per thousand contacts), and 'Quality' (the contact quality of the channel or medium). Managers who have optimized their marketing mix using the RCQ model have seen advertising effectiveness increase by up to 15 percent." 

Not the algorithm Gourmet managed to employ. Ad revenues fell 50% in the downturn. So the writing should have been on the wall but who looks at the wall when the next issue is on its way out?

I suppose McKinsey made a lot of money on this consulting contract, which brings me to my final thought for the moment: the hallowed consulting firm used to be known most for its strategy work, helping companies navigate rough waters. Cost-watching is of course a fundamental part of any good strategy but is that all? And, is The New Yorker next on the list? 

Cutting budgets? Telecommuters offer help

According to a survey by Citrix Online, which makes software for telecommuters, "[t]wenty-one percent of workers would take a 5 percent cut in pay if they could work from home, even if it were for only 1 to 2 days per week:

When asked what they like most about telecommuting, employees cited having more control over schedules, even more than saving time and money on transportation. Female entrepreneurs were 50 percent more likely than their male counterparts to allow working from home.

Design-a-rupee

Sharpen your pixels, designers. There's a contest to come up with a symbol for the Indian Rupee like $ or € or £ or ¥, all of which amazingly are on my iPhone keyboard. Having said that, I have to also say that I have no idea how to find the link to the Washington Post article I'm reading at the moment using only my iPhone. Title = "for India's Rupee, a New Identity," by Rama Lakshmi, Wash Post, May 16, 2009.

What Ian's saying about The Globe

Ian Lamont, managing editor of The Industry Standard, has a sharp eye for what works online and what doesn't. Even as its company struggles to avoid capsizing completely, hard workers at the Boston Globe are trying new things. Ian says their latest, the renovation of their community forums, tacks precisely in the wrong direction: "Boston Globe relaunched forums, but they're doing it all wrong."

Key points, with which I agree: big hairy topic categories are old-fashioned, become extinct quickly, and are too all-pervasive for people to use them. Further, untended forums, i.e. without some kind of gentle prodding from bloggers (or moderators) generally dwindle to nothingness quickly. In the event "Director of Community Publishing Teresa M. Hanafin and her team miss the message," Ian republishes his thinking in his post.

Great observations, Ian.

Paper Cuts - ouch, someone's keeping track

For those following the Blog Rally to help the Boston Globe and the life-threatening diseases plaguing the newspaper industry, try this with your morning coffee: Erica Smith, who does multimedia and print design for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, provides a public-service project on her own time/dime, Paper Cuts. She's tracking the dwindling numbers of newspaper employees through pink slips and buyouts. (Thanks, Erica.)

The running total for the first 99 days of 2009? 8091 or approximately 82 jobs per day. That would mean about 30,000 jobs by the end of the year, excluding jobs that dissolve after someone leaves but is not replaced.

Paper Cuts' total "does include all newspaper jobs, from editor to ad rep, reporter to marketing, copy editor to pressman, design to carrier, and anyone else who works for a newspaper."

OK, you say, what's the news here, Jessica? We all know that the newspapers could be spokespeople for some miraculous diet drug, would that newspapers were people and they wanted to shrink.

Here's the scoopy part: Journalism school applications are up! Significantly! According to Lauren Streib's Forbes article, Journalism Bust, J-School boom, "Columbia, Stanford and NYU applications increased 38%, 20% and 6%, respectively, from the previous year. Same thing at state schools. The University of Colorado (up 11%), University of North Carolina (up 14%) and University of Maryland (up 25%) all saw gains."

And, ready for this? "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2016 the number of positions for entry-level reporters and news anchors will increase 2%, while those for experienced writers and editors will grow 10%. Expect trade publications, freelance work and digital media to supply the bulk of the jobs."

Did I not hear The Globe landing in the driveway?

Those of us living in the Greater Boston Globe area learned yesterday that the most familiar of sounds, the morning paper tossed into the driveway (or dropped on the front step or brushing our apartment doors) may soon be permanently silenced.

Yesterday's banner headline so stunned me that I couldn't even compose a post: "Times Co. threatens to shut Globe; seeks $20m in cuts from unions." Later that day, The Times columnist Nicholas Kristof posted this update to Twitter: "Who would have ever, ever imagined that the Boston Globe might not survive? It's a grim time for a journalist."

Yes, very grim. When the NY Times Company bought the Boston Globe back in 1993, some forward thinkers feared what was then perceived as the worst: that The Times management would turn the Globe into a regional paper.

And indeed not many years passed before that proved mostly true (though there remains, almost against all odds, some fantastic "Global" reporting going on). Foreign bureaus were closed and the non-New England news seemed to increasingly bear the label of a news service, often The New York Times News Service.

Another yes: all print media are suffering yadda yadda. But as others are saying, a newspaper is not just a business. It's a way to keep a society honest through investigative reporting, informed through plain old good journalism, and together through speaking with an unmistakable voice.

There are ways to solve this, New York Times Company, that fall outside the traditional means, axing everything in sight or demolishing the whole thing. We've already lost many of our best Boston reporters.

Thinking caps on, please. Fast. Yesterday's story gives the unions 30 days to make concessions. Make that 29 days. The response to yesterday's news is reflected in an article today and in the hundreds of comments on the Globe site itself.

A lot more than a newspaper is at stake.

A tale of two Pauls

Something's been going on around the country--and in other countries too--where instead of people behaving in predictable ways as the economy has worsened, they're choosing to use their creativity in service of humanity. The media loves this and there are segments on nearly all the news programs about people stepping outside the bounds and "making a difference," as the NBC Nightly News calls its now-regular segment.

My friend Paul Levy, who's shown up a time or two before here, has found himself in the limelight as a result of the choices he's made as head of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where revenues are off $20 million this year, which translates into 600 jobs. Paul's written plenty about this on his blog; if you click over there, you'll be able to follow the whole story.

Because of his approach to "running a hospital," he took the problem to the people and naturally they responded. After a series of town meetings where Paul laid out the problem, the hospital opened an online forum where people could anonymously post suggestions. They got tons (detailed data on his blog about all of this).

Long/short, through voluntary salary reductions from the top to deep in the organization and some other cuts, like suspension of 401(k) matches and removing payments for people's beloved Blackberrys, they've whittled down the number of jobs at risk to about 140, maybe fewer (I'm losing track a bit).

Enough of the story. Point is that the national press caught on and last night, the hospital was featured on that very NBC segment, Making a Difference, and tonight, it was featured on PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer as part of a longer piece reported by Paul Solman. Afterward, Paul S. asked Paul L. to record a bit more, a six or so minute piece where the hospital guy tells the TV guy how the whole wonderful thing came down and how anyone else could replicate what he'd done in four easy moves: be transparent; provide a forum for participation; be respectful; and explain decisions logically, in plain, straightforward language that people can understand.

Every bit of this is worth your seeing and reading, every bit. Please spread the word.

[Special note to those who know my strange life on trains where I meet all manner of people: A couple of years ago, I was getting off the train in New York when I realized Paul Solman was right behind me. Although we hadn't crossed paths since we both had written for the long-gone Boston After Dark in the deep dark past, I cheerily introduced myself. One thing led to another and next I knew, we were sharing a cab, Paul on his way to visit his 93-year-old father still living in the apartment where Paul had grown up on the Lower East Side, just a few blocks from where my grandfather had lived, and me on my way to my jewels in Brooklyn, aka daughters and son-in-law.]

Another one of those random acts

Told to me by a good friend who's struggling:

She went to the dentist for a filling that she'd been putting off because, of course, the price tag on such things is about the same as a couple of good tires. While there, the dentist said, "Gee, you're way overdue for your X-rays," which the woman knew because of the, you know, same aforementioned problem. "I mean you're, like, two years overdue." Sorry, said my friend, no way can I afford that.

Drill, drill, drill, slurp, slurp, and then she heard the dentist whisper to the technician. "Take her X-rays but don't put it on her bill." And thus another person bent the rules to help out someone in need. Very very nice.

Kamensky: "Using czars and commissions to govern"

Encouraging everyone to click right on over to John Kamensky's post, "Using czars and commissions to govern." John, who's a Senior Fellow at the IBM Center for the Business of Government, has been keeping tabs on new thinking in government for a long time.

We first met in 1993 when we were advising Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government, where John served as deputy director.

In the post I'm referencing here, John talks about the use of alternative appointments, such as czars, and organizations, like commissions, to cut through some of the government morass - and shines a little light on (disclosing self-interest) OrgScope and its use to track recovery funds, as per a couple of posts here over the past few days. Thanks, John!