Murdoch Drags the Wall Street Journal Down to His Level

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Such a sad, sad sight to see.

Defending News Corp against criticism of its illegal phone hacking and police bribing activities, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece that included this classic line:

Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news?

I am deeply offended by this piece on several levels.

  • Murdoch has built a fortune with yellow journalism. By buying up and controlling so many media outlets, he has brought journalism standards down worldwide. Not convinced? Roger Ebert explains the impact Murdoch had on the Chicago Sun-Times during his ownership.
  • Murdoch has insulted the intelligence of half the American public and conned the other half with his so-called “fair and balanced” news network, Fox News. The network not only promotes tasteless and sensationalist news stories, but it clearly promotes Murdoch’s conservative viewpoint, often with misstatements, half truths, and quotes taken out of context.
  • In the opinion piece from which the above quote was taken, Murdoch seems to suggest that his company’s news gathering techniques are protected under the First Amendment. In other words free speech allows journalists to collect news by whatever means are available to them. The legality of their actions simply doesn’t matter. Of course, Murdoch is also free to define “news” any way he sees fit.

In my opinion, there is no single news organization that has done more harm to America than Fox News. It oozes hate and mistrust, it pits Americans against each other and their elected political leaders. It makes news out of scandal — except this one, of course — and ignores or misrepresents the real issues that Americans need to know about.

Murdoch is responsible for this.

Fortunately, those Americans who haven’t been sucked into the half-truths spewed by FOX News have other sources of information: NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. Well, scratch that last one.

The above-referenced opinion piece is the first example — at least the first I’ve seen — of where the Wall Street Journal is being used as a Murdoch disinformation tool. Not only has the Journal’s business reporting suffered, but it’s now becoming Fox-ified.

In the Journal piece, the unnamed author says this about its competing media outlets:

The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw.

Why shouldn’t it be? News Corp has done more damage to the news industry than any other organization. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m enjoying the schadenfreude, too.

Want another point of view on this Journal opinion piece? Read what Felix Salmon says on Reuters.

Drying Cherries

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Up close and personal with a whole lot of trees — and fruit.

One of the things that has been keeping me very busy — at least lately — this summer is my work as a cherry drying pilot.

What It’s All About

In brief: During the last three or so weeks that cherries are on the trees, if they get wet, they can become damaged — usually splitting or developing mold. Growers who don’t want to lose their crop hire helicopter pilots to stand by during cherry season. After a rain, they call us out to hover over trees. The downwash from our rotor blades shakes the branches, thus shaking off accumulated water.

There’s a lot more I can say about this, but I don’t think it’s necessary. As I mentioned here, the work can be dangerous and requires good flying skills. (There was an accident in an orchard just the other day that was likely caused by a failure to respect density altitude in a heavy helicopter. Both occupants survived uninjured; the helicopter didn’t.) It’s not for low-time pilots. And it’s a crappy way to build time — I was here 6 weeks before I was called out to fly at all and, now seven weeks in, I’ve only flown about 9 hours.

Oh, and did I mention how incredibly tedious the work is?

Some Snapshots

Anyway, yesterday I was called out twice to dry. There was a 15-acre orchard that I had to dry twice and a 40-acre orchard that I dried just once. Add that acreage together and you get 70 acres of cherry trees.

For my second call out, I mounted my GoPro “nosecam” on the helicopter. I actually have video from that viewpoint of both orchards I dried on that call. It’s not very exciting stuff. As I type this, I’m debating on whether to throw a few minutes’ worth into a video to share. I wouldn’t want to put anyone to sleep.

I did, however, pull out a few still images as photos to share here.

Cherry Drying
This is a typical view down an aisle of cherry trees. I fly very low.

Orchard and Rain
Here’s a shot as I approached the 40-acre orchard block. You’re looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of trees. It was still raining lightly as I flew up. I took the opportunity to land near the orchard and pull my door off. When the sun comes out, it gets very hot in the cockpit — especially when you’re wearing a Nomex flight suit and helmet.

Cherry Drying
Here’s another drying shot. These trees are younger than the ones in the smaller orchard and were heavy with fruit, which you may be able to see in this shot. The sun was out for much of this dry, so time was of the essence.

Serious Business

Cherry drying is serious business. My client is paying me good money to sit around and wait for the rain. When the rain comes, it’s my job to quickly and effectively dry his trees. If I fail to do my job, my client can lose his entire crop. That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fruit, the difference between a profitable year and a year living on credit.

It’s a huge responsibility that I take very seriously.

The next time you eat fresh US-grown cherries, think about the folks in the production chain that put those cherries on your plate. I might be one of them.

Blog for Your Readers, Not for Yourself

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It simply isn’t fair to expect your blog’s visitors to jump through hoops to see your content or share their comments.

Yesterday, I followed a link to a Web site I often visit and read a blog post I wanted to comment on. I filled in the form and was faced with a series of options, all of which would eventually require me to set up an account with the blogger’s current choice of comment platform: Livefyre. I didn’t want an account on yet another commenting platform, so I simply didn’t leave a comment.

I should note a few things here. It was this same blog and blogger that was using Disqus, another commenting platform, a few years back. I wanted to comment and set up a Disqus account. Since then, Disqus has become relatively popular and I use the account a few times a week.

(It wasn’t always like that. I distinctly remember the hassle that followed my Disqus account setup when the system kept sending me email messages every time someone else commented on a post I’d commented on. It took a lot of digging to figure out how to turn off that feature — which I’d never turned on. As for Livefyre, it seemed impossible to post a comment yesterday without giving Livefyre permission to post on my behalf on Twitter or Facebook or use my e-mail address for some other purpose I didn’t want but had no choice but to authorize.)

Of course, I still don’t understand why a blogger doesn’t simply use the commenting feature that’s part of a WordPress installation. That’s what I use here. It’s pretty straightforward: enter your name, e-mail address, website (optional), and comment. If the comment passes muster with my spam prevention software, it’s held for moderation by me. If I approve it, it appears. If I don’t, it’s trashed. I could, of course, require each and every commenter to open an account on this blog, but I really don’t think it’s necessary to make them take that extra step. It’s bad enough that they may have to wait for their comment to appear.

And that brings up the topic of this post: requiring blog readers to do something special just for you so they can see or interact with your blog’s content. I’m talking about requiring an account on an obscure commenting system just because you like it. Or inserting content that depends on a specific plugin or Web browser to view. Or requiring someone to create an account or log in just to read a post. (Don’t get me started on paywalls.)

It’s just not right.

Face it: there are tens of thousands of blogs out there and, if you’re an average blogger, half of them are going to be better than yours. Why would you make your blog readers do something special just to read/reply to your blog? Do you really think it’s fair to have them jump through hoops just for you?

I don’t.

If you’re a serious blogger with content you want to share with the biggest possible audience, stop putting up roadblocks or hurdles for readers. Make content easy to find and read. And yes, that does mean not splitting posts into multiple parts, forcing readers to click through multiple pages to read one post. It also means not littering your blog with obnoxious and distracting ads that make it difficult to find content among blinking, flashing, or animated trash. And content that requires plugins to see is likely to be seen only by the few people who have those plugins or are willing to install them.

If you want feedback from blog readers in the form of comments that can start valuable conversations and build a blog community, stop making it difficult for them to post a comment. Not everyone is happy about setting up accounts all over the Web — especially accounts with third party services that might use contact information for their own purposes.

So who do you blog for? Yourself? Or your readers? Look at your blog from their perspective. Is your content worth the bother of jumping through the hoops you’ve set up for readers?

If there’s any question, maybe it’s time to rethink your priorities. It just might help get your blog a bigger audience and the kind of reader interaction that sets good blogs apart from the rest of the pack.

Phoenix Dust Storm Time-Lapse

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Excellent footage of a desert phenomenon.

No, this isn’t one of mine. But it offers two excellent views of a larger-than-usual dust storm bearing down on Phoenix, AZ.

These storms are nasty. Although they can occur a few times during early “monsoon” season, they’re not usually as big as this one.

[Edit Note: The original title of this post referred to this as a “sandstorm,” although it was properly identified as a “dust storm” within the post. I’ve since fixed the title.]

A New Look

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This site was long overdue for a facelift.

Last night, on impulse, I switched this site’s theme from a highly modified version of iNove to WordPress’s brand-new Twenty Eleven. Unless I’ve had an impulse to change it again since writing this, you’re probably looking at it right now.

The site was long overdue for the change. A while back, in an effort to show off more of my photos, I’d added a plugin to pull thumbnail images from my photo gallery and arrange them as clickable links in the header. I realized belatedly that this seriously slowed down the loading of the site. Some people even commented about it. Something had to be done.

There are several reasons it took so long to make the change:

  • I couldn’t find a theme I liked. Really. I have a terrible time imagining how I could modify a theme to meet my own needs.
  • Most themes I liked either looked too “bloggy” or too “magaziney.” I couldn’t find one in between that I could imagine changing.
  • I couldn’t find a theme that had built-in support for mobile devices.
  • I didn’t have the time to sit down and do the work necessary to make major modifications to a theme.
  • I actually liked the way my site looked with its current setup.

But after upgrading the site to WordPress 3.2, I noticed a brand new theme: Twenty Eleven. Like its predecessor, Twenty Ten, it had clean lines and a lot of built-in features. It also had the benefit of being created by the makers of WordPress, so I knew it would be compatible and show off WordPress features. Working with it would give me a good opportunity to dive into theme customization again. Even though I didn’t have time to play with it right away, there would be plenty of opportunities to tweak it over the coming weeks and months.

And if there’s something I really enjoy doing, it’s tweaking a WordPress theme to suit my needs.

So yesterday, I made the switch. And this morning, I dumped a few of my own images into the random header folder to personalize it enough for prime time.

I’ll be modifying it as time goes on. Would love to know what you think and am open to suggestions for changes. Use the comments link — well, “Reply” link right now; it’s on my list to change — to share your thoughts.