Dana Blankenhorn

The Lesson of Patch

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 34 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Local news is local. Local news is a local business. Every place is unique.

Those people who ignore these facts always get it in the end. Tim Armstrong has gotten it in the end with Patch. He deserves to see it end his career.

But that doesn't mean local news isn't a great business. Just the opposite.

One of my fonder memories from my days at the Atlanta Business Chronicle was attending a local launch party for USA Today. Stacks of the first issue were handed out, and I still have mine. Al Neuharth spoke by satellite. Many hors' d'oerves were consumed, many beers were drunk. And the crowd at my party laughed their asses off, because the product seemed so lame.

Health Reform Explained by Mark Twain

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 33 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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The Obama Administration has sought a way to explain health reform to people for years, without much success.

Turns out their answer lay in the words of a man who has been dead for over 100 years.

In his “Autobiography,” the first part of which was finally published last year, Mark Twain wrote this:

“Consider the wisdom and righteousness of the old-time custom – the paying of the physician by the year. Consider what a safeguard it was, for both the physician's livelihood and self-respect, and the family's health. The physician had a regular and assured income, and that was an advantage to him; the family were safe from his invasions when nothing was the matter, and goodness knows that was an advantage to the family.”

The English Badger Cull

by Robin Blankenhorn

One of the biggest issues that has come up in urban wildlife recently is in the United Kingdom. The simple facts are that farmers have found that the local badgers are spreading Bovine Tuberculosis(TB) to their cows.

On the surface the whole thing looks very straightforward. The Badgers are in essence killing the cows and each cow costs a farmer about 10,000 pounds each.

So to protect the farmers livelihood, and any meat or milk that is produced, the government has taken the step to authorize a culling of the Badgers.

Newspaper Armageddon And What Comes Next

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 32 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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As I've noted before, when I was a journalism student at Northwestern University, 35 years ago now, I engaged in debates with my teachers about the coming of the online world.

They were upset about it. I was optimistic. I insisted the news business could adapt to a cheaper means of delivering more product, and the result would be more jobs for journalists. They insisted the world was coming to an end.

We were both right.

I deliberately sought a career in the new media, and from the time I joined Newsbytes, in 1985, I looked for new means through which to get news to people and make a living. I tried an online newsletter as early as 1989. My Interactive Age Daily was the first online publication to launch alongside a print counterpart, in 1994. I treated what became A-Clue.com, from which this blog post descends, as an online newsletter starting in 1997.

The Secret of Aladdin's Cave

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 31 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Money that isn't working doesn't exist.

The world of fiction is filled with stories like that of Aladdin's Cave, where an innocent comes upon a huge stash of loot and becomes wealthy.

But here's the big secret of money, teased out over a long career covering business, finance and history.

The value of that money while it was in the stash? Nothing. The value of money sitting in a cave? Also nothing.

Some Unsaid Thoughts on Global Warming/Cooling

by Robin Blankenhorn

With Global Climate Change come more problems with animals, and what we should be focused on is how we act around them now.

I found an article by James Watson on The Guardian yesterdaythat put this point well..

He was talking about things that I have been telling people, friends, family, and even people I meet.

Let me paraphrase:.

Animals react in ways that they have learned over the course of thousands of years. If we do one thing to try and help save human lives, sometimes, what we end up doing is actually hurting animals that we are trying to save.