Diamonds In My Own Backyard

The good thing about a blog is that, in an otherwise mundane week for news, you can write about other things that you think are more important.

The two things that piqued my interest this week more than Miss California, the president's commencement speech at Arizona State University, or the blowout scoring in the NBA playoffs were items I found right in my blogroll.

First up - Jason Campbell, hereby known as "Dr. Jay".

YOU NEED TO SEND THIS BROTHER A CONGRATULATORY EMAIL IF YOU ARE READING THIS!

Jason has ascended to that rarest of academic heights by being awarded his PhD about a week ago. I don't know how many black men will earn doctorates in 2009, but I do know that the number of ALL blacks achieving this educational milestone in 2006 is somewhere around 1,650 - so it would be safe to say that this years crop is a pretty small number.

A long time ago, back when I was in college, I used to think about becoming an English professor, but spending the amount of time that I did in the department getting my bachelor's degree cured me of that notion. The men, none of whom were black or Indian or anything other than WASPs and Jews, seemed to be from another planet. Although there were a few PhD's in my neighborhood growing up, and we lived near a college campus, there was something about these men at my alma mater, men who seemed to be overly cloistered from the world, that caused my desire to wane.

So it is with a sense of awe and nostalgia that I salute Dr. Campbell, who has persevered in spite of the long odds against the completion of his entire program of study. I hope the toolbox he brings to the table culturally as well as intellectually will inspire young black men contemplating a life of scholarship the way I was that there is life after the dissertation.

The second thing that caught my eye this week is a profound statement about the direction in which our media, and by extension our society, is headed that was on The Flack last week. The Flack really isn't a political blog, but Peter Himler, a veteran New York public relations professional, reveals so much about the massive effort that is at work in the advertising world practically around the clock in an attempt to control and predict our behavior in order that others may profit from our malleability that I just had to include his blog on my list.

One of his latest posts talks about the latest thing in marketing is something he calls "journalism 2.0" in his article "Forget Journalists. It's The Algorithm" :

It involves the confluence of three big digital drivers: advertising, algorithms and content creation:

"...former MySpace Chairman Richard Rosenblatt has spent the past three years refining a set of algorithms that it uses as a guide for mass-producing content that it publishes on its many Web properties."

As I understand it, Mr. Rosenblatt's company, Demand Media, creates content, not based on a journalistic assessment of what's news or newsworthy, but instead on an algorithm that matches (and attempts to monetize) consumer and advertising demand for a given topic.

If I were you, I would be afraid of anything like this. Very afraid. Maybe you aren't willing to admit how limited your mind is, but I am. If the only information I could ever get was only the information I wanted, how could I learn anything new?

To paraphrase motivational speaker Earl Nightingale, these two bloggers I've spotlighted tonight are just some of the "diamonds in my own backyard."

Obama Begins PR Blitz For Recovery Bill

The byline on today's Washington Post op-ed article titled The Action Americans Need states simply "the writer is president of the United States."

I liked the understated style of the piece, Mr. President. Everything from the direct, declarative title, to the use of only your name, "Barack Obama", to the logical way one paragraph progressed smoothly into the next.

With your radio addresses, weekly podcasts, yesterday's TV interview blitz, next week's planned prime-time news conference and a subsequent address from the Oval Office to the American public, it looks like you have become a one man public relations effort in your bid to get your economic recovery bill passed.

Today's plainly worded seven hundred and sixty seven word missive in the Post, with a straightforward message that keys on the need for a sense of urgency to drive any action the government plans to take to get our nation’s economy on track, is not the kind of thing that would tax you, President Obama - we all know you are well versed at expressing yourself through your keyboard.

We often think of our presidents as hands off executives, who have someone on their staff to do just about everything but chew their food for them.

But the language you used, the repetitive cadence near the end that mimics your speaking style, and the fact that this is the same thing you have been saying for the last two weeks suggest to me that you probably whipped this article out in an hour or so, which is about the amount of time it took me to write this piece, although you probably had a little editorial input from your chief speechwriter.

There are a lot of the same words and phrases in here that we’ve been hearing over and over - "crisis", "jobs", "savings", "homes", "renewable energy", "health care", "education", "energy independence", "health care" and "partisan gridlock" - the same issues you campaigned on, and the same issues you’ve been talking about everywhere there's been a live microphone in the last few days, which is why I don’t think it took you too long to write this yourself.

It's a great effort, and the buzzwords are nice, Mr. President, but you are going to have to expand your narrative a little wider. Maybe you can trot out a team of economists. Not the Nobel Prize winners, but the ones who teach econ to college freshman, the kind who can do question and answer sessions with the media that will bridge some of the gap between what the American public doesn't understand about your plan and what you believes it will accomplish.

If you were to speak to the American people on Monday intimately, in specific detail, and without reservation, the way you did when you delivered your "race" speech in Philadelphia during the Democratic primary campaign, it would be a great help to your cause and our futures.

If you were to expand the narrative this way, instead of merely rebutting the reactions and the spin of the Republicans who are against your stimulus bill, it would significantly reduce the potency of the "us versus them" dynamic that is currently threatening to curtail widespread support for your proposals. More importantly, it would help you to step outside of the box the press corp want to put your presidency into already, a group which may be more dangerous than your political opposition.

Turning your one man public relations endeavor into a group effort will go a long way towards getting the kind of public support you need to get your stragglers in Congress on board.