Dana Blankenhorn

How the Web Killed the Media

The great tragedy of our time, the tragedy that led to Trump, is content’s loss of control over its own business models.

When I began writing the weekly newsletter that became this blog, 20 years ago, the threat of this loss was a primary theme. I asked newspapers and magazines “how hungry are you?” suggesting that if they turned advertisers into business partners, and earned commissions on sales, they could prosper on this medium.

Advertising is just a means to an end. Newspapers sell space for ads, and ads start readers down a sales funnel. Sales are what the buyers of advertisements want. If online publishers could deliver sales, I thought, they would earn all their business partners’ marketing budget.

I saw even then how the Internet could deliver a store’s entire experience, from advertising, through marketing and sales, through the transaction to service and support. It was the publishing opportunity of a lifetime.

No One Took It

Too Much Cash

The current danger to the U.S. economy can be summed up in three words.

Too much cash.

A healthy economy has a balance of good investment ideas on the one hand, and cash seeking investment on the other hand, along with enough demand to soak up new supplies resulting from that investment. Right now, there’s just too much cash sitting around. And the Republican Party, which should know better, is anxious to create tons more with a tax “reform” bill which, its advocates say, will take trillions of dollars of demand out of the economy and put trillions of dollars into the hands of investors.

This is supposed to boost the recovery. Uh, no.

It’s easy to see how we have too much cash. Google parent Alphabet, for instance, has $100 billion of cash on its books, and Apple has $250 billion. Advocates of a tax cut insist that allowing repatriation of these funds, when held offshore, will deliver cash to investors, who will then invest it.

There’s no assurance of that. Why assume investors will find places for excess cash when the geniuses at Google can’t?

Monsters Within Us

My father’s soul left his body 18 years ago, in October of 1999.

Frederick H. Blankenhorn was a World War II veteran, a small businessman, and he gave me many, many gifts.

He was incredibly intelligent. He filled my room with books. He gave me my first typewriter, the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten because my handwriting sucks.

My dad married my mom in 1951 and was still with her on the day he died. He provided for his family, first with a TV repair shop, later with a locksmith shop. He raised four kids, and none has suffered a divorce. None of us has gotten the U.S. into a war in Iraq based on lies.

My dad could be funny, he was incredibly charming to strangers, and he had a sense of adventure. He worked very hard, and made lemons out of life’s lemonade, buying the lock shop through the Small Business Administration after he fell through a false roof, breaking his once beautiful body.

Oh. He was also a monster.

The Coming Crash, and The Way Out

To read the people on my Twitter feed, 2017 has been the worst year ever.

If someone you love has been killed by a drone, or a cop, if their home was flooded by Harvey or Irma, if your community was destroyed by Maria, if your life was ruined by the California wildfires, then, yes, this has been a horrible, terrible, no good and very, very bad year.

But despite Trump, despite everything, this has been (so far) a pretty good year. For the economy. That matters. A lot. When you have a job and money in your pocket, you’re going to forgive a lot of bullshit, and focus on other things.