I once had a career producing media. When I began, I did some work that was for public consumption such as television commercials and print advertising. Later, once I moved to Chicago, almost everything I did was corporate communications.

In addition to film and video, I did a lot of live events. Live corporate events in that era included everything from showing some slides at a board of directors meeting to an arena event for thousands of chanting, stomping sales reps. At the large events we’d often execute Broadway scale musical numbers, complete with orchestra, chorus lines and lyrics written to include the company’s products and people.

Unlike Broadway, where the cast and crew have dozens of performances to work out the kinks before opening night, we’d have, at best, one full dress rehearsal. And, unlike Broadway, if anything went wrong in our performances it often meant instant career death for the unlucky corporate person assigned responsibility for that year’s sales meeting.

To mitigate the risk inherent in a live event, one of the regular features of medium to large corporate shows was an appearance, performance or presentation by a well known celebrity, actor, performer or singer.

The upside of this was that I got the chance to meet and interact with a lot of A and B list celebrities of that time. The downside was that many, actually most, of the A and B list celebrities of that time were, to be kind, not their public persona. That reality, that gap between the popular culture version of the celebrities and the reality of the celebrities who I interacted with in order to execute the shows, was a cold slap in the face to a kid raised on television, magazines and newspapers.

Time after time I was confronted with the ugly side of fame. The narcissism, the megalomania, the egos the size of the arenas were so rampant that I soon gave up any hope of ever meeting any popular singer, musician, actor or celebrity who wasn’t a Class A, King Sized jerk.

I began to dread any show that included a marquee name.

I hit bottom when I had the misfortune of working with one of the most recognizable, most celebrated performers in the world, a hero of millions around the globe, who turned out to be one of the worst of the worst in person.

I was, at that point, beyond hope, terminally cynical about all things celebrity.

And then came Harry Morgan.

Harry Morgan was the second actor to play the colonel on the long-running hit television series M*A*S*H. Like just about everyone else with a pulse and a television, I watched M*A*S*H faithfully and knew Mr. Morgan only as Colonel Sherman Tecumseh Potter, M.D., the affable regular-Army, supposed commander of the crazy crew on the television series.

Due to my celebrity track record, when I met Mr. Morgan, I fully expected him to be just as much of a jerk as almost every other star and minor celebrity I’d worked with prior. Instead, Harry Morgan turned out to be just as much of a gentleman, just as affable and every bit as funny as he was playing the role of Col. Potter.

I honestly can’t remember the client or the details of the tour we did together, but I do remember vividly that Mr. Morgan, who only played a doctor on TV, cured me of the disease of preconceived notions.

I subsequently had the very good fortune of working and touring with celebrities and stars who turned out to be both personable, genuinely good people and a lot of fun to hang out with backstage.

Thanks Harry. May you rest in peace.

Harry Morgan 1915 – 2011

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A good compilation of Mr. Yon’s blog posts plus some original material from the relevant period of his war reporting in Iraq. The story is worthy, but the book is fatally flawed by a lack of professional editing. Mr. Yon’s war reporting deserves 10 stars, but the book, as a book, does not.

Michael Yon is unsurpassed in current-generation, in person, ground-truth war reporting. His honest perspectives on the day-to-day lives of the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen (and women) are comparable only to the previous generations’ Ernie Pyle and Joe Galloway.

Mr. Yon has done his best to leverage the modern day’s blog and social media channels to get his message out, and is perhaps the world’s best known example of an independent, consumer supported, front line reporter. He is independent, works for no news agency, and is entirely economically supported via donations and book sales.

If you haven’t read his blog or his Facebook stream, they are worth the time. They are probably the only unfiltered information you will ever see about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. By unfiltered I do not mean entirely objective. Mr. Yon has a point of view and he is very honest about reflecting that point of view in his messages. That honesty is what makes his reporting real, believable and, ultimately, valuable.

He has not been immune to being used by the media, the military, the politicians and others seeking to leverage gain. Even so, the net-net of what you gain from his raw dispatches from the field more than offset the spin-machine manifestations of his material.

* Blog: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
(You will struggle to find a way to read his blog posts/reports from beginning to end. The blog site is not reflective of current-era content management system (CMS) capability so it’s nearly impossible to read things in a chronological order. Again, Mr. Yon’s work deserves better.)

* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelYonFanPa…
* Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/Michael_Yon

All of this adds up to an extraordinary person who has made amazing sacrifices to bring back stories and photos from wars and trouble spots all over the world, but especially Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are all in his debt for his efforts.

Having said all of that, Mr. Yon desperately needs a professional editor. His books are primarily compilations of his blog posts and are mostly direct copy and paste efforts. Consequently, they suffer from misspellings, grammar errors, reptition/duplication and other things you expect in a blog post pounded out while under fire at the front lines but don’t expect to find in a professional level book. Mr. Yon’s writing and photography deserve better.

As a writer, Mr. Yon shows continuing development since his early days, and has found his voice.

As a photographer, Mr. Yon demonstrates the power and capability of modern camera equipment. By that I mean that he has been able to bring back good, solid imagery, even from his initial efforts. He continues to improve as a shooter and his hard work and dedication in learning this new medium are obvious in the improvement he has shown over the years.

Summary:
* As a war reporter: Among the best – ever – from any era.
* As a writer: Good, with a mature and capable voice. Very much needs a professional editor for his books.
* As a photographer: Still a work in progress. The camera is not yet a fully formed tool in Mr. Yon’s hands, a tool that he can use as a medium of expression as he can his writing. He’s been moving through the stages of learning what all the controls are for, but even then his camera gear has been capable of bringing back amazing imagery. He’s at the point where he can capture a shot. As a shooter, that is different from creating a photograph as a means of expression. I believe he will continue to evolve and grow and will eventually develop an eye as a shooter, as he has developed a voice as a writer. Endless kudos to Mr. Yon for taking the gear into battle and capturing the shots.

Again, we are all in his debt for his efforts.

Regardless of how you feel about any of the conflicts, countries, regions or religions Mr. Yon covers, you will be hard pressed to find a more open and direct channel into what is actually happening there. Other information sources bring you the remains of multiple layers of filter, skew and spin. Mr. Yon brings you the ground truth.

View all my reviews

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903639404576513981361991242.html?mod=ITP_marketplace_4

I thought about the conversation or email that must have solicited this image back from the media library people: “Need 4 column photo for Deere & Company” Somebody down there dutifully ran a keyword search for “Deere & Company,” perhaps even including “tractor,” and this is what they picked from the results.

The media library sent the photo up to editorial and it got inserted and then at least one editor reviewed the layout, clicked on “approved,” and out it went to the world.

The Wall Street Journal’s perception of Deere & Company, agriculture and the Midwest, all nicely summed up in a photo.

How very quaint.

As the story states, Deere & Company is the world’s largest manufacturer of farm machinery by sales.

Deere & Company is currently projecting a full-year net income of $2.7 billion. That’s billion with a B and that’s net income, meaning revenue minus costs, also known as profit. They had revenues of $8.37 billion last quarter alone and reported revenues of $26 billion in 2010. That same year, 2010, Deere & Company ranked 107th on the Fortune 500 list.

In 1837 John Deere was a one-man show operating out of a blacksmith shop. Today, it is a very big company, employing over 55,000 people and selling more than $26 billion dollars in products and services worldwide.

Their current top of the line wheeled farm tractor is a 9630.

This particular example, a used 2009 model with 2,014 hours of operation, will set you back $234,900.

You can build a quote for a new one here: http://www.deere.com/servlet/ProdCatProduct?tM=FR&pNbr=9630_RW

So, we’ve got a $26 billion dollar company that sells quarter million dollar tractors, and what photo does the WSJ pick to illustrate its products and market?

This one:

I’ll pause here for snickers and guffaws from those who grew up around farms.

To those of you who are not from agricultural states, the hilarity of this image may escape you.

The reasons the photo is so inappropriate include, but are not limited to:

1. The tractor is an antique. I’m not a John Deere aficionado, so I can’t be sure of the exact model, but it looks like a 4020 era tractor to me. The 4020 was introduced in 1963.
2. There are farmhands in the photo. In the late 1800s, around 80% of the U.S. workforce was employed in agriculture. Currently, agriculture employment is less than 2% of the economy. Almost nobody works down on the farm anymore, especially baling hay.
3. They are using a small square baler. And, it’s not even a John Deere baler. Since nobody works down on the farm anymore, most farmers use large round or large square balers and handle the resulting bales with tractors. Small balers are rare, and if you find them, they include a mechanism to throw the bales up into an enclosed hay rack or they drop the bales onto the field for later mechanized collection. As to the brand, John Deere sells a full range of balers, including small square balers.
4. They are using a flatbed hay rack. As illustrated in the photo, this requires two guys on the hay rack to stack the bales. Meanwhile, back at the barn, there are three or four guys offloading a hay rack onto an elevator and up into the hay loft, where the bales are manually stacked to the ceiling. Yes, it’s a very hot job up in the hay loft on a muggy August afternoon. In total, that’s a crew of five to six, not including the farmer on the tractor. See point #2.

So, as a photo of a bygone era that almost perfectly captures my memories of baling hay as a kid, yes, this photo is almost optimum (I baled a lot more hay than straw).

However, as a photo to represent a $26 billion dollar global behemoth, not so much.

I think the folks at the Wall Street Journal would profit from a group field trip out to learn where meat comes from and what modern agriculture looks like.

I compiled my thoughts on the primary challenges the United States faces in the coming decade, and ways to overcome them, here: http://www.hackneys.com/docs/facingthefuture.pdf

The primary focus in this collection is on domestic challenges, although some geopolitical issues are addressed.

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As part of our effort to reintegrate into American society and its culture, we’re spending part of our summer in the air conditioned retreat of the Paramount, a faithfully restored theater originally built in 1915 to host vaudeville as the Majestic and transformed in 1930 into a Baroque Revival movie palace, its present form.

The theater provides a retreat from both the heat and day-to-day reality into the bygone eras of Hollywood and foreign film classics. The films are replete with villains and heroes defined by art direction, staging and dialog that shorthands races, roles, conflicts, attitudes and passions into nifty set-piece scenes. This foreshortening of life’s challenges and irresolvable conflicts into tightly packaged, neatly wrapped, emotionally digestible, bite sized chunks contrasts with later eras’ films that showcased, if not celebrated, the irredeemable flaws of humanity on individual, societal, planetary and galactic scales. This latter film genre, while undoubtedly more accurate and reflective of the true nature of life, is much more challenging material, and over time often leads to a retreat into the simpler, soft-focus, one-way pursuit of the nostalgia of a “simpler time.”

As tempting as the seductive, simple packaging of human and national characteristics in film classics can be, they can also serve as a useful lens through which to view our modern world. For instance, this weekend’s fare included the celebrated artistic convergence of producer / director Elia Kazan and a troupe of talented actors, writers, composers, cinematographers, art directors and production professionals: 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire and 1954’s On The Waterfront.

Since I often retain an outside-looking-in perspective on the U.S., I sometimes derive different views of cultural artifacts than others around me here in the United States. Consequently, the primary roles in the two films, viewed back-to-back as a double feature, couldn’t help but jump out at me as parallels of the roles the United States is often cast in by the various countries on the geopolitical scene where we’ve spent time during the last decade.

The world’s rapidly developing economies, such as Brazil and Russia, as well as the merely developing nations, often see the U.S. as Father Barry, the righteous priest, constantly goading others to do the right thing, as he defines it. At best, the developing nations  emphasize Father Barry’s courageous stand for virtue, freedom, honesty and integrity. At worst, they note that their labors in brutal conditions enable Father Barry’s institution its power, position and wealth.

Western Europe often casts the United States as Stanley Kowalski, the crude brute, ruled by his adolescent emotions, too immature for his physical strength, capable of little beyond browbeating, manipulation and abuse. Unequipped to rise beyond his commonness, he surrounds himself with equally low-life immigrants and rejects the only example of higher breeding, culture and lofty education he encounters.

Bombastic socialists, such as Hugo Chavez, popularize the identity of America as Johnny Friendly, the corrupt mob boss who rules his domain with an iron fist, brutally subjugating the masses through intimidation, economic marginalization, violence and death, while he and his henchmen wallow in wealth and power.

Other nations in Latin America are more nuanced in their casting of America as mobster. The rest of the region puts the United States in the role of The Boss of Bosses, who makes but a brief cameo appearance as the puppeteer behind the Johnny Friendlys of the world. In their view, America as The Boss of Bosses silently and mysteriously pulls the strings that control economies, rainfall and whether or not you have a flat tire on the way to work today through the omniscient, omnipresent and omni-powerful CIA.

Islamists portray the United States as Stella Kowalski, debauched and decadent, wife of Satan himself, ready and willing to bring forth further generations of depraved, bestial, godless Stanleys to further pollute the world. Stella, unable to resist the sinful allure of Stanley’s Satan, legitimizes all that is unclean and unholy and therefore has no place in a sanctified realm.

China and other nations, tribes and individuals vested in the current century’s geopolitical realities place the United States solidly in the starring role of Blanche DuBois. Blanche, born into unimaginable wealth, power and prestige, joined her forbears in squandering her remaining wealth. Relevant only in her own fantasy world, trapped in addiction and unable to face reality, she ends in a downward spiral of decay, denial and collapse.

People who view the United States in a positive light, and there are many more of them out there than the two dominant world-view narratives extant in America allow to be known, tend to cast the United States as Terry Malloy. Sure, Terry is simple minded, and he’s made some mistakes by choosing the wrong friends and being overly loyal to people he thought he could trust; but, then again, his is loyal and he is trusting and he is a guy who is willing to fight for, and lay his life on the line for, what he believes in. In fact, if Terry believes in you, he’ll lay his life on the line for you as well. Terrys are very rare on the geopolitical scene.

If Americans picked a role for the United States, they might pick good-hearted Harold “Mitch” Mitchell, who perhaps too late realizes he can’t go it alone and needs a partner, narrowly avoids being hoodwinked by a wily deceiver, but in the end stands up for his values and rejects his suitor as unworthy. That would be a fairly subtle reading of the role as applied to the United States, and Mitch is difficult to see as purely heroic.

Consequently, most Americans would probably also pick Terry Malloy, the closest role to purely heroic outside of the courageous, saintly Edie Doyle.

In the Hollywood ending to the movie On The Waterfront, Terry Malloy rises from his pummeling by Johnny Friendly’s gang, shakes off his injuries and triumphantly leads the newly independent dockworkers into a fresh, cleansed-of-past-sins era (cue swelling music in the Leonard Bernstein score).

In Budd Schulberg’s original screenplay and his subsequent novel version of the story, Terry Malloy is brutally murdered by the mob, the realpolitik power of the docks.

Only time will tell what role best suits the United States. And which ending will apply.

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A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

Cast (in credits order) verified as complete 

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On The Waterfront (1954)

Cast (in credits order) verified as complete 

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Sources:

Paramount Theater
History: http://www.austintheatre.org/site/PageNavigator/venues/paramount/history
Films: http://www.austintheatre.org/site/PageNavigator/shows_events/films

A Streetcar Named Desire
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044081/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Streetcar_Named_Desire_(1951_film)

On The Waterfront
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047296/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_waterfront

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First, in a story in MSN Money: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/FindDealsOnline/big-discounts-on-little-pleasures.aspx

Second, in a story on FoxNews: http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2010/04/16/rv-travel-beginners/

The Fox story included a link to our Travel web site, www.HackneysTravel.com, which was nice of them to include. I haven’t checked the traffic levels on the site yet to see if they spiked or not.

I’m going to admit this right up front: I’m terrible at marketing myself.

Even though I get paid very well by others for consulting services advising them how to market themselves, and that advice has been very successful, I’m not good at applying those techniques and strategies to myself.

Not a small part of my reticence  it is having witnessed people who are very talented at self-promotion succeed even though they lacked talent, ability and ethics.

Given that fact, you might understand how painfully difficult it is for me to join what I perceive as a negative modern trend of endless and ubiquitous self-promotion.

But these numbers struck me.

Today I learned that there were a total of 560,626 book titles published in 2008 (275,232 long run, 285,394 on-demand).

My book, How the World Works, was one of the books out of the 560,626 titles that won a national award.

When it happened, I wasn’t fully aware of the magnitude of the situation. It has more impact on me now when viewed in this context.

I guess this means I should dig the medal out of the awards ceremony envelope stuffed in the corner and treat it with more respect…

Source: Bowker

I promise not to reveal any plot twists or surprise endings. However, I will say that there was only one plot twist that I found truly surprising, and that is indicative of my feelings about the book as a whole.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’ve always found Mr. Brown’s thriller writing to be workmanlike, the product of a studious journeyman rather than the output of an accomplished master of the genre.

To give credit where credit is due, he absolutely has figured out the formula for commercial success, and I, for one, am not going to denigrate him for making the choice to pursue that path rather than die penniless on a park bench in fruitless pursuit of artistic purity.

His current work, The Lost Symbol, will undoubtedly be a large commercial success and be made into another blockbuster movie. The upside is that discounted sales of the book may increase brick-and-mortar retail book store foot traffic and online referred book activity, thus driving sales of other titles. And in today’s publishing market, that would be a very good thing for all involved.

However, no amount of marketing millions will change The Lost Symbol into the thriller it could have been with one simple change. Merely by deleting somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of its content, The Lost Symbol would be a much better book.

What 30 to 50 percent of the content should be deleted? It is the same 30 to 50 percent of unrelated content that ruined the later titles of Tom Clancy, another thriller writer who lost his way.

There seems to be a law of the universe at work here that states, “Once a writer earns a few million and begins to believe the accolades of their fans and the brilliance claimed in their publisher’s press releases, the writer feels entitled to preach rather than teach, cajole rather than captivate and provide indoctrination rather than insight.”

What Mr. Clancy and Mr. Brown share in this regard is they are no longer writing books to entertain and perhaps, just a little, educate; they are writing books to advance a very specific agenda. While topics such as social politics, sexual politics or belief systems have long provided conceptual and foundational elements of drama and storytelling; they are best used, and by far most effective, when they are used as plot and character development elements, not topics of shrill and unrelenting browbeating.

No matter how much I or anyone else may agree or disagree with the subject of Mr. Clancy’s, Mr. Brown’s or any other thriller writer’s latest pet cause, the inevitable result of filling a large portion of a thriller novel with material that is more about advancing that cause than advancing the plot is a much weaker work and a diminishment of the genre as a whole. The purpose of a thriller is to thrill, not to indoctrinate.

While it is almost certain that authors who pass over the tipping point of believing they are uniquely suited to lead the masses towards enlightenment regarding their particular cause du jour do so in good faith; they are, when viewed objectively, much more likely to slip into the category of the Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. That’s a title most people would shun, since it is shared with another writer of novels and plays, the PhD. and thought leader, Paul Joseph Goebbels.

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The interview is here: http://www.truckcampermagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=841&Itemid=34

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The show’s theme is to “discuss the social ramifications of media.” Sounds like an interesting premise for a show and I’m sure it played well in host and creator Bob Mann’s proposal to the XMPR programming buyer.

Unfortunately, the actual product serves as an all too accurate reflection of the state of what passes for journalism, and the academics behind that profession, in modern day America.

The poster-child segment for the state of the profession also had a promising title “Media Portrayal of Arabs,” an interview with Laila Al-Qatami, spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

During this segment it was revealed that Mr. Mann did not know that Iran was not an Arab country. Nor did he know that Turkey was not an Arab country.

Mr. Mann holds a bachelor’s degree in political science, a masters degree in communications, has been a college professor since 1988 and holds forth on American media and its coverage of world events on his satellite radio show. He is regarded as an expert in media and journalism, and lists history as one of his personal passions.

Mr. Mann didn’t know that Iran, once seat of the Persian empire, which enslaved Arabs for centuries and Turkey, once seat of the Ottoman empire, which also enslaved Arabs for centuries, were not Arab countries.

In a prior segment of the same Let’s Consider The Source show we listened to, an international reporter for the New York Times was ebullient in his praise and respect for Mr. Mann and his credentials.

So we had an international reporter for the New York Times, the Gray Lady, the flagship media source for United States journalism, the reference source for All That Is Truth, worshipful before a radio host/college professor/expert who didn’t know the most basic thing about the Middle East, its cultures and its people.

It was my nominee for this week’s example of The Blind Leading the Blind.

(And it gets worse. Ms. Al-Qatami said “you know” 13 times and “umm” or “ahhh” more than 60 times in the segment. If anyone could use an articulate spokesperson in the United States, it is the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.)

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To become more informed about the Middle East than Mr. Mann in the ten minutes it will take you to read it, click here: http://hackneys.com/blog/2009/07/06/lessons-from-saddam/

 
Sources:

• Bob Mann resume: http://faculty.caldwell.edu/rmann/
• Let’s Consider The Source web site: http://bobmannmedia.com/Pages/LCTS.html