Recently in Quotable Category

Craig Newmark is one of those people gutsy enough to "wing it" as a major college commencement speaker.

From the coverage I've read of his "change the world" speech to UC Berkeley graduates on Tuesday, he passed on at least one big idea, which likely will be ignored by most of the graduates, and several rules to live by that, while not novel, are worthy goals for people of any stage of life.

The big idea:

"It's the boring stuff, the stuff we take for granted, that's actually the important stuff."

He's been quoted as saying he's "all about boring" and I think I get what he means, but I'd love to see him blog on "in praise of boring."

The rules to live by:

"Live and let live."

"Treat people like you want to be treated."

"Give the other person a break now and then."

"Include everybody."

"Guys you are not as funny as you think you are."

"Articulate what your company or non profit is about in 45 seconds."

"Focus on the things that can be done."

Homilies maybe, but not bad.

See his thoughts (he posted some photos, too) and more coverage here and here. Of course, a few didn't get it.

Photo from UC Berkeley News Center.

Surely in an era of desperation and experimentation, the wacky idea of actually respecting your audience has to be worth a try by someone.

-- Aaron Swartz in "How to Fix News"

The three things he found that engaged him about a news story are pretty good tests, I think, for excellence in journalism.

Barry Diller on media consolidation:

"The conglomerates are like the Rothschilds funding both sides in the Napoleonic wars, They are on both sides of virtually every transaction."

-- Forbes "Landscape of Giants," May 8, 2008

"We focus our strategies on delivering fundamental services better than anyone else. Technology changes. Competitors change. But 10 years from now, nobody's going to say to us, We love what you do, but it's too fast.' Or It's too reliable,' or too cheap.'"

-- Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com, Wired.

There really is a lesson here, no matter how much journalists don't want to hear it. A business model needs to support good journalism, but good journalism is not a business model.

-- David Sullivan writing on the death of the Albuquerque Tribune.

(via Doug Fisher)

What? Angry Journalist sees future in much-maligned industry for J-School grads?

Call it optimism tempered by realism, Yoda teaches careers in journalism.

Bryan Murley pointed me to a great piece on his Innovation in College Media blog by Kiyoshi Martinez, founder of Angry Journalist.

The piece is aimed at journalists trying to enter the work force and it's good advice, damned good advice.

As I was reading it, however, I was thinking this is fantastic advice for students contemplating journalism as a major, a sort of this is what you are getting into and can look forward if this is the path you choose my little one.

And then it occurred it me it, this is great reading for people already working in journalism, this is what you haven't thought about recently in terms of personal marketing and how journalism is changing.

Some tidbits:

"You ought to be able to explain why you're taking the job you're taking, why you're making the investment you're making, or whatever it may be. And if it can't stand applying pencil to paper, you'd better think it through some more. And if you can't write an intelligent answer to those questions, don't do it."

You might think you know journalism. It's writing articles for a newspaper. Or shooting photographs. Or designing pages. Or maybe even that new media stuff people keep mentioning. Wrong. Those are skills.

With Google and Wikipedia you no longer have any excuse to be stupid. Ever. Have a question or curious about something? Type it into Google.

You might think you're too young in your career to build a brand. Wrong. You need to start developing it now. Literally, your employer is purchasing your skills over someone else.

Stop blaming others. Maybe you wanted to start blogging for your college paper, but they're too incompetent, lazy or slow to let that happen. Same goes for video. Or soundslides. So, you're sitting around and doing nothing now. Screw them. Do it yourself.

Get a good idea about the publication's strategy and vision -- and not the bullshit one that they'll spin you. What have they actually done?

If all you love is newspaper journalism, then you take the risk of it not loving you back.

I think there's soemthing in it for journalists of any season. There's more.

Stewart Brand recaps a talk by futurist Paul Saffo, a Stanford University professor who has spent more than 20 years looking at technological change and it practical impacts. Saffe spoke at a Jan. 11, 2008, seminar put on by The Long Now Foundation.

He outlined eight rules for forecasting the future. But what I liked was his closer. He had a photograph from a San Francisco cafe that had this tapped to a tip jar beside the cash register: "If you fear change leave it in here."

Saffo's eight rules of effective forecasting:

Rule: Wild cards sensitize us to surprise.

Rule: Change is never linear.

Rule: Look for indicators- things that don't fit.

Rule: Look back twice as far.

Rule: Cherish failure. Preferably other people's.

Rule: Be indifferent.

Rule: Assume you are wrong. And forecast often.

Rule: Embrace uncertainty.

(Steward Brand: Remember him ... among his many firsts is this one I spotted in his bio and hadn't heard before: first use of the term "personal computer" in a book, 1974. Seriously ahead of his time for decades!)

Photo via Mark & Marie Finnern's flickr photos

In their current configurations, newspaper companies are screwed. They would begin to help themselves by acknowledging and starting to deal with this.

-- Henry Blodget, stock analyst reduced to journalist

Blackfive.net on Glenn Reynolds' prodigious blogging in action:

... it has long been surmised that he chains law students to banks of computers like galley slaves and then blends up puppy smoothies to power his superhuman output capacity. Not true, he is actually a collection of Cray supercomputers housed in a remarkably affable and convincing human transport. Since this was the most self-referential event in history I sat next to Glenn and watched him take and upload some pics in reality and then watched them appear on my laptop at the same time, he did this while simultaneously conducting a video interview and cooking a chicken dinner.

(via Reynolds' Instapundit.com)

If you're in a newsroom and the editor doesn't say that change is needed, you should leave

-- Melanie Sill, late of the Raleigh News & Observer and now editor of the Sacramento Bee.

(via Howard Weaver)