Reason to not follow the America's Cup No. 474

I honestly have lost track of all the back and forth and couldn't care less anymore. (Article on latest two lawsuits.)

I am starting to think that while it's good for most things to change and for sailing to become more popular, this is not the case for the America's Cup. In the quest to making sailing and the Cup more popular it's just turned into a circus. And those who didn't understand it before now just find the whole thing plain silly.

It's all kind of sad. I used to follow this event with great glee when I was younger. I even convinced my mother to drive me to Newport for a day to view Intrepid and Courageous sitting at the dock.

The quaint days when it was raced in September by amateurs (or mostly amateurs) on Rhode Island Sound look very appealing to me.

Where's the wind?

This is a bit off topic but I was struck by an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. (Article is behind a pay firewall.)

In short, it's about wind energy which I think has great possibilities. Lo and behold, power companies that use wind energy are faced with a problem those of us who sail have known forever -- it's hard to predict when it will be windy.

A cold front blew through West Texas on Feb. 26, temporarily lifting wind production. When it subsided, wind speeds dropped, turbines slowed and productivity dropped by 80% to 300 megawatts from about 1,700.

The situation was exacerbated by greater-than-expected energy demand and by lower availability of some fossil-fuel units. To get the system back in balance, the grid operator declared an emergency and tapped big customers who had agreed to be cut in exchange for cash payments.

The problem "showed us we need much better wind forecasting tools," said Kent Saathoff, vice president of system operations at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a quasipublic, nonprofit corporation that operates most of the state's high-voltage transmission system.

It's good to know there are others who face this same problem although it's probably a more important problem for power companies than it is for sailors.

Broccoli and french fries

I've always been a huge fan of Rob Curley's ever since I read a Fast Company feature on him about how he's helped enlighten newspapers in Kansas, Florida and now Washington about how to improve their products. (Read full article here.)

And while Rob is viewed as an Internet geek (which is good) his real value is that he points out some obvious truths that many people just don't want to hear. In other words, print what people want to read. This made me realize the main challenge facing newspapers and magazines today isn't technology but the fact that many just don't give the readers what they want. The only thing technology has done is speed up the process and point out the flaws.

I bring this up because Rob has a recent post using food as an analogy about how newspapers should think about news. (Read post here.)

He also agrees with my point of view -- that Sam Zell actually makes a lot of sense and people better start listening.

I know this is probably going to make me a little unpopular — or maybe that’s more unpopular — with some of the traditional journalism folks out there, but I actually agree with a lot of the things that Sam Zell has been saying lately.

We need to become more relevant to our audience. We have to make ourselves indispensable to our readers. We shouldn’t let a false sense of self-importance get in the way of trying to make news organizations matter to most folks again. Zell is absolutely correct on these points.

Remembering William F. Buckley, Jr.

I was about as unaligned with his political views as one could possibly be but had the privilege of working with him on several occasions as well as sharing a wine-laden lunch that I will never forget.

And despite our differing views I found him to be extremely tolerant of what I thought. This is in stark contrast to today's climate where if you disagree with someone you're viewed to be a person with serious moral or intellectual deficiencies.

When I heard of his passing today I recalled the several times he wrote articles for Yachting where I was editor at the time. When he first called to pitch a story about a sailing trip to the Med I at first thought it was a prank. (I'm sure this must happen to many people like him.) I agreed to the article and several weeks later he brought his laptop to our office, added a few key sentences based on some back issues in our library and then printed out the article. (While he was very much ahead of his time in terms of word processing I was struck but how un productive it was to print the article out and have us re-key it.) Nevertheless, the article made it to print.

However, it didn't happen without a stern rebuke. During the final editing process one word was changed and Buckley called up all steamed that we had completely ruined the story. It didn't seem like that big a deal at the time but seeing that I was at a disadvantage arguing about words with William F. Buckley I apologized in a letter back to him. Several days later he faxed back the letter with a note saying that the whole argument was stupid and let's forget about it.

This all led to a lunch at his house in Stamford that was one of the most fascinating I've ever had. Fearful he would discover my left-wing tendencies I tried to steer the conversation to just sailing and only sailing. Still, after copious amounts of wine and with photos of Nixon, Kissinger and Reagan hanging over my head he did discover my views and while I am absolutely positive I had no influence on him I was duly impressed about how tolerant and gracious he was about my opinions.

After lunch and more wine I realized I needed to crawl home and sleep all this off. He, on the other hand, wandered off to his study to complete a speech he was writing for an appearance at Yale that evening.

Why a byline strike?

Reporters at the Honolulu Advertiser recently conducted a byline strike to protest their lack of a contract. (Full report here.)

I've never understood the logic of doing this. It's commonly done and for the life of me can't figure out why this will convince management to pay reporters more. That's because I have a strong suspicion that readers don't care who the writer is. In some cases they might recognize the name of the reporter. In virtually none, I am willing to bet, does the byline add any value.

Instead, how about withholding something management or the readers find of value? How about the crossword puzzle, the comics or the school lunch schedule. Leave those out and I promise you will get the reader's attention.

Why journalists are in serious trouble

Mark Potts posted this a while back but I have to admit that I am one of those who thought the same thing he did when I saw this exchange between Sam Zell and a journalist at the Orlando Sentinel. (Read full post here.)

There's nothing I can really add to Mark's post other than agree with it and hope to bring it more attention.

If you watch the video of Zell muttering "fuck you" after responding to an Orlando Sentinel photog's insistent questions about journalistic quality and think, "Right on, Sam," you're a Recovering Journalist.

If you don't, you're still stuck in denial, a state of mind that has no idea that journalism is a business, doesn't get that it matters (far) more what readers think about stories than what journalists think of them, pines for the extremely bygone days when newspapers dominated the news universe—and is walking straight off a cliff clinging firmly to all of those romantic, noble but no longer realistic notions. Buh-bye. Nice working with you. You're toast.

Too many sites to check

While I've long believed that sites such as Facebook will prove successful in some sort of fashion, I've also long felt that there are too many such sites and eventually they will have to figure out a way for all of them to work with each other or there will be consolidation.

The news that Facebook now accepts news feeds from other sites is a step in that direction. (Full report here.) However, note that Facebook isn't allowing other sites to capture its updates.

Still on my wish list -- a way for Facebook and other sites to give me multiple personas. In my real life I act differently in different settings and share different info. At work I don't share pictures of my vacation but I do have photos of my children on my desk. Facebook, and other sites, are one big pile of everything and includes information from one persona I may not want to share with others. In a perfect world I would have three personas: work, family and friends. With each bit of info I add I would be able to designate if it's for one of those three personas or all three.