The Media Equation: 24-Hour Newspaper People, By DAVID CARR, New York Times, January 15, 2007
Very funny and dead-on piece passed on to me by elder brother, the guy who's been pushing me on religious freedom (reciprocity is Benedict's newer term) for a long time (and beginning to win, if you noted my reference on Hewitt's show last week).
Sean has helped me a lot in insulating myself from the day-to-day fiddling with the blog (especially managing comments, which I had killed a long time ago, resurrecting them with his hiring). He also handles the "odd jobs," meaning the visitors and readers I would instinctively tell to f--k off because... You know... They should really just f--k off. Sean handles them very well, reflecting his preacher past. He's gotten the vast majority off the ledge, with very few jumpers.
Sean also handles a lot of requests very adeptly, which is an enormous relief, because I get dozens and dozens of requests and offers every day, and the reality is that if I spend more than a minute (maybe 2) on any of them, my day would be shot (and my marriage).
So, for me, the blog's gotten down to a reasonably manageable deal: I just output as the spirit and material move me (with lotsa wonderful feeds from a core group of about 200 or so readers, the best of which (hint,hint) give me the URL, plus excerpts, plus their own analysis of why I'd be interested. The worst ones just send attached files and announce they'd like my detailed analysis--like some teacher or boss giving me an assignment!
They're bad because attachments are hard on the Treo (I don't condemn all senders, because sometimes it's the only way to get the stuff and sometimes I'm asking for it), it's just the people with the imperious tones who act like I naturally owe them something.
Then there are those who've seen me on TV or heard me on the radio briefly and they've scanned a few blog entries and maybe read a review or two of the books (but not the books themselves) and they send me 16 super-long detailed questions (most of which I've dealt with ad nauseum elsewhere but they want this private grilling session/tutorial from me personally because "I'm not quite convinced you're not totally wrong and perhaps even an evil historical force who must be stopped!.
Those people, I love to answer with "f--k off," but I usually tell them no work assignments until they read both books and come back with specific questions. Why? I'm way too busy with just those people who've read both books, are easy to interact with, and boost my thinking. Plus, those readers ask questions that push me as opposed to force me into regurgitating exercises for the lazy/cheap types who want it spoon fed.
Others who piss me off regularly are those who lecture me incessantly like a lost soul who's clearly a great thinker and influential thought leader--except I transgress them on this one pet point or generalized partisan mindset, which they simply never shut up about, so convinced are they that the fate/outome of this one element/approach/party (and I do mean both) determines all. Why these people bother with me, the horizontal thinker who generalizes and synthesizes from many, many sources, all the time emphasizing no great hierarchies but rather sequencing, I'll never know. But these people are hard to shut down, they are just so desperate to convert you.
Naturally, you suffer the self-important jerks who can't make their own web presence happen enough, so they spend their time trashing yours. I described this phenom in DC terms in New Map, but it exists in spades online, because you have a lot of aspirational experts desperate for acclaim and unwillingly to put in the career that's required.
Balancing all that, though, are the far larger groups of polite readers trying to learn more, avocational types who treat you with more respect than your real-world peers, wonderful de facto research assistants who teach you something new and valuable every week (some almost daily), fellow bloggers who both praise and criticize with supreme intellectual honesty and elevate your material or turn your head with their own original stuff, and all those mil and intell personnel who give great feedback from the field, pats on the back, and very useful unanticipated dope. Finally, there are a small universe of people who connect to me from all over the world, like some grad student this morning from Serbia born with cerebral palsy who just read BFA and wanted to connect personally.
So all in all, worth the effort and time, so long as you can budget in the required help. For me, it took a long time and many iterations to find Jenn Posda (agent for everything besides books and articles) and Sean Meade (webmaster), but now that those relationships are solid and thriving, I wouldn't dream of giving up the blog, and I see it as anything but a drain. I can't tell you how many public and private sector venues I regularly step into where the blog has already created a profound intellectual intimacy. Then there's the quotes and sourcing in other media, plus the appearances and interviews created (that part is really taking off because most MSM producers are Echo Boomer 20-somethings who scour the web).
The same is rapidly becoming true for Steve DeAngelis. Both of us see the blogs as huge biz assets in thought leadership, which is almost as important to our company (Enterra Solutions) as raising money and winning contracts and hiring people. How so? Visioneering is essential to leading great change and defining new markets. If you can't do that, you won't get money and you won't win clients and it's harder to attract top talent--simple as that.
Finally, the blog, which I've been doing in various alternative forms going back to the "Emily Updates" emails I sent out on my daughter's battle with cancer back in the mid-90s, is just a huge filing system for me, or a content management system for data collection that I've done going back to the early 1980s (clipping thousands of articles as just a visioneering exercise drill). Putting everything online in a searchable database is just so damn cool, I'd blog for that alone.
And I really do blog for just that alone, which keeps me more personal and idiosyncratic and less corporate than so many blogs are becoming. Then again, I just couldn't blog as anybody other than myself, with no pseudonyms or masks.
To me, that more personal tone suits my emerging passion (natural, given my age) for raising the next generation of strategic thinkers. I was stunned at how--when I was in school--there was nothing to read of any practical basis for learning about my chosen field in advance except theory textbooks (almost useless and often wildly divergent from reality--as I have discovered) and memoirs by retired giants (which is like reading long-term cancer survivor studies and trying to relate that ancient history to the treatment you're getting right now).
Finally finally, the blog is ego-feeding in a great way (which is why so many people do them and find them so gratifying) that sustains the huge ego requirements associated with being a grand strategist/visionary (show me the shy, wishy-washy visionary, and I'll show you somebody nobody knows about). Sure, it'd be cool to be obscure, then die young, and have your stuff celebrated throughout time.
My problem with that approach is: 1) I enjoy my life too much, and 2) the failure rate on that approach (waiting for my "genius" to be discovered) is phenomenally high, primarily because a mismatch between ego and influence/accomplishments usually drives thinkers to self-destructive behavior/personality evolution and plenty of mental disease. There are--quite frankly--a lot of great minds out there who simply can't manage the human interaction side without prohibitive mental health cost.
So the blog does these things for me on that score: by publishing my inner dialogue, 1) I entice others down the same relatively successful (and healthy, by my count) path, 2) I keep my own ego up (ego maintenance and modulation is a crucial enabling task in this work as you have to be simultaneously inspring and thrilling and larger-than-life but also approachable, self-deprecating enough to be funny (a huge asset), and open to real-time learning (know why my brief is so good? I aggressively incorporate criticisms), and 3) I reveal inner logic as it develops, allowing influences to penetrate my thinking real-time, keeping my thinking relatively nimble and young (staving off the strategic Alzheimer's I fear).
To sum up, great article that really got me thinking in Vol. III terms.
My thanks, as always, to brother Jerome.
Thursday, January 18, 2007 at 12:59PM 
