Entries from January 2010 ↓

Every fall and spring, i interact with 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds. Their parents are often younger than me. 

These kids are often immature. They’ve got crazy excuses (ultimate Frisbee, debutante balls, family reunions) to get out of tests. They e-mail begging for Ds. They send me goofy e-mails. They’ll grow up eventually, i know.


But right now, millions are watching a kid like them grow up on national television. Garrett Gilbert appeared to have no chance. But he’s coming on strong in the fourth quarter, replacing Texas senior QB Colt McCoy, injured in the opening drive of the national championship game.


Sure this Gilbert kid has an NFL dad, but he’s still 18 years old. And no matter the outcome (as i type, Texas is trailing 24-21), Garrett Gilbert is managing to mature in the space of a few hours. 

This happens with my students over the course of a semester, or maybe three or four. Either way, it’s a delight to watch.

And i guess not a lot else would have happened. i don’t recall ever making a huge fuss about her birthday, turning 40 (i’d have been 5) or 50 (me, 15). Today, she’d be 86 (me, 51, tho that’ll change in a couple of months). If you’re reading this, take note that i was my mom’s oldest of three children. Back in the day.


Betty Fish was a stitch. She had great sayings for her kids. “Kiss my feet” was an all-around slam. “People in jail are wantin’ out” was the response to “i want….”. 


She was the only one of four children in her Gordonsville, Tenn., family to graduate from high school, then she went to Nashville to attend business school. She was working as a keypunch operator at General Shoe Co. when she met my dad and eventually married him. i was born, someone had to go to work, so they moved back to my dad’s family farm in Iowa. It was colder there, for sure.


Mom was a great reader, a liberal in the Al Gore mold (his family is from the same county she’s from) and a feminist, encouraging me to work and get a career. i know from the clothes she kept and the pictures i’ve seen that she always looked lovely and dressed wonderfully in her working days. 


i owe my mother more than i can say here. i know i disappointed her in some ways, marrying at 20 (tho she later saw the good in this), dressing like a slob most of the time. But i think she liked following my journalism career and adventures (except for maybe the motorcycles). 


Mom died too young, at 73, in 1997, of cancer. Every day, i wish she were still here.

This should be a big week (and maybe month) for new reading/watching technology.

At least two new e-readers will be announced to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Sony’s Reader at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 

Plastic Logic is introducing the long-awaited Que. The Skiff will be sold (and wired) by Sprint with content cooperation from Hearst Corp. Both are billed as larger and sleeker than the other e-readers, with touchscreens.


Meanwhile, Apple plans an announcement later this month that many believe will be a new tablet computer that will include a touchscreen and video. As David Carr mentions in his New York Times column today, Microsoft and HTC also appear to be developing tablets. But Freescale apparently will get there first this week with its $200 tablet device.

Ironically, back in the early and mid-90s, the late newspaper company Knight-Ridder funded a Boulder laboratory that predicted the tablet and its use for news (check out the vid above! priceless!). The technology just wasn’t there at the time.


Now, the technology is beyond what Knight-Ridder imagined – millions interact with friends known and unknown via facebook, twitter, etc. We post and view videos on everything from guitar instruction to humor on youtube. The ability of consumers to create their own product now competes with newsrooms, which once experienced a bit of a content monopoly. The music moguls, too, suffered when Apple’s iPod and iTunes took over.


David Bennahum tweeted yesterday that the new technology may threaten television most of all. He makes a great point, as does Bono in his Sunday Times op-ed, where he questions whether consumers will be willing to continue paying for video content as it becomes more easily downloadable.

Meanwhile, advertising remains a question in the world of media. Warren Berger posits that the era of advertising is ending in his great book on design, Glimmer. Instead, businesses are looking for ways to interact with consumers, instead of simply broadcast one-way messages to them.



What does all this mean for content and content producers? 


One of my questions as a journalist and one interesting in politics is this: Who will provide content that brings community together instead of polarizing different sides, that answers difficult, complex questions, that points out potentially unpopular concepts/ideas? 


Other questions: Are consumers willing to settle for mediocre content as long as it’s free? Will creators be willing to produce quality content for free or for goodwill offerings?



As always, i don’t have answers. Just questions i’m mulling.