Listen, weathermen.  Local tee-vee news reporters.  I've been there.  I was a journalist for 20 years. I know how you feel.

Yes, I had a hurricane once.  And it....it...turned into a tropical storm.

Worse than loosing my goldfish in fourth grade.  No big headlines, front page bylines.  Crushing!

But you see, like me and the goldfish, you've just got to let Irene go.

You cannot give artificial respiration to a goldfish, and you cannot breath hot air and hype into a tropical storm and convert it into a Cat Five hurricane. 

That's right, I tried the former.  When I was ten. But you?  You're adults.  And you tried it on Irene.  And you're supposed to be journalists. 

Here is what that means:

Journalists have a public trust.  Your job is to gather as many relevant facts as you can, and assemble them in a format that people can rely on. 

As Walter Lippman wrote 80 years ago:  "make a picture of reality upon which men can act."

So it is fine to go full throttle when a storm looks truly awful and harmful.

But when it moves from a Cat Two to a Cat One and then to a tropical storm, and you've out there in the rain trying to make it look just as horrible as you possibly can, you are not performing a public service.  You are building public distrust.

We're not dumb.

(Those of us who are were actually at the shore with surfboards.)

We know when you've told us there is a flooding danger there is a flooding danger.

You don't have to find the deepest puddle in the road -- about ankle deep -- and act like you're Helen Hunt in Twister.

If you don't have real visuals, you can't screw up your face like an angry cartoon toaster and make them appear.  (There is no blue screen behind you now where they can pipe in outtakes of a worse storm.)

And, I mean, wow, you so did not have visuals. 

There weren't even fallen tree branches.  Water under the boardwalk at Atlantic City?  You had to shoot those puddles really close.   A normal n'oreaster looks worse.

Perhaps my favorite part of the local newscast was the caffeinated  WCBS blond meteorologist wannabe guy, shirtsleeves rolled up very carefully to simulate hard work.  He was interviewing the composed, sober and rational head of NOAA about the storm surge.

"I've been trying to explain to people and have them understand that this storm surge is so serious because it is formed by the low pressure area that (wildly gesturing) allows the water to rise up against the lower pressure and slam the shoreline eight feet higher than normal!  Can you help me with that, to make people understand?"

Serious scientist at NOAA

"Uh, the low pressure doesn't really play much of a role in the storm surge...."

"But there will be a storm surge..."

"Yes...."

"Okay, let's concentrate on that storm surge....(panning away from NOAA guy)..... people look at all these flashing bright colors on the screen right now....this is where the problems are...."

And so on. And on. And on.

His frantic exclusive prediction was that the eye of the hurricane (which had broken up by then) would reach "landfall" at Manhattan at noon.   Right.

Then he went to the "spaghetti bands" -- the superimposed predictions of where the path would fall, each of a different color.

"Now some of these show the storm passing to the west of us, some to the east of us, but these right here are the ones we want to look at because this is our storm...."

Dude.  We're right here in the room with you.  We can hear everything you can say. You are on television. 

We know you loved the storm.  We know it was your storm.  They were my goldfish.  I had a hurricane too.  Trust me, we have to let them go.

This is not to belittle the damage done by the storm.  With the saturated ground and the heavy downpour, the usual spots will flood -- and also a level up from that will flood. 

But you hyped this one horribly media folks.  That may mean disappointment to you in the short term.

For the rest of us, it means even more distrust in a news media that has lost all bearings and attachment to true journalism.

If you still don't get it?

You're supposed to help us out with your best reasoned assessment of matters, not scare the crap out of us needlessly in order to grab a half point rating.

You had a public trust to serve.  You did not.

Well, maybe I am overstating it... I get carried away....I think journalism is a public trust and perhaps I....

Oops, this just in. 

With the storm long gone on his stretch of beach, WNBC reporter says "Angry seas are still roiling behind us now....." at what looks like a slightly damp day down the shore.  I've been surfishing in a lot worse, out in boats without discomfort.

Geez, did you just say something like,  "the seas were angry that day my friends"?

Just hire George Costanza as your storm guy, shove a mic in his hand and have him save a whale choking on Kramer's golf ball.

More entertaining and just as informative. 

Yes, yes.  I'm taking the hurricane seriously.  No, no, I'm not saying Irene should be discounted.

In fact I am offering this as a public service so that you can match the seriousness of the hurricane with the antics of our news media.

So here it is:

Anderson Cooper Hurricane Warning Scale

Category One:

Ball cap, knee deep in water for no good earthly reason.  

Action: Make some popcorn, you have time. 

Category Two:
 
Same shot, no cap, wet tee shirt, hair rippling slightly.

Action: Go to store, buy more water.

Category Three:
 
At shore, braced against wind, tee ripped at chest, mic noise. Water at thigh. Hair blowing like marsh grass.

Action: Check generator, get out blue tarp.

Category Four:
 
Same shot,  hoodie up.  Shirt like tattered flag.  Branches, hub caps snap by in background. Shouting into mic. Pointing finger desperately toward direction of wind.

Action: Check boat, outboard.

Category Five:

No shirt.  Whitie tighties.  Water beads on bare chest. Snorkel, diving mask around neck.  Survival knife clenched in teeth.  Cows, pigs, Helen Hunt, sound man, tumble by airborne in background.

Action:  Too late now sucker, you've spent all your time watching Anderson Cooper.  Head to roof, look for chopper.

Yup.  Stole it from Colbert's "truthiness," sorta. 

"Newsiness" occurs when writers and broadcasters give the impression they are reporting the news when in fact they are not expressing anything new, actionable or important.

This state of affairs always has been present in the news business, but was once limited to awkward moments when one had to say something at deadline even though news had not actually happened.  Example: It's election night, but your first edition closes at 6 pm before the polls do. 

So you write something like, "Voters under cloudy skies went to the polls in (heavy, moderate, light) numbers yesterday to determine who would lead the City of Philadelphia for the next four years."

Fair enough.  You need to acknowledge there was an election last night even if you really have nothing to say.  And there were always the "dog days of summer."  Desperate editors still assign reporters to see if they can fry an egg on the sidewalk.

But what was once awkward and infrequent is now mainstream and accepted. Cable news and the blogosphere are so demanding of instant information that the default parameter is to say or write anything that even vaguely resembles a news-like object.


Saturday Night Live may have captured this decades ago with its "Francisco Franco is still dead today" parody of the last lingering days of the former dictator of Spain.  Day after day, he lay on his death bed and day after day, network news reported that -- until he died -- without anything new to say. 

Now you see Francisco Franco-is-still-dead reporting every day, all day on cable.  There are news events of course but in between, the 24/7 news cycle maw feeds on "newsiness." 

Headlines blare out about the months-old weak economy as if it were a breaking-news school fire.  The market isn't falling.  It's plummeting.  Until it is not.  Then it is soaring. Graphics are ginned up that show a 1.7 % drop look like the end of the White Cliffs of Dover.  MSNBC does card and egg tricks.  CNN calculates what it would cost in tuition to attend Hogwarts.

In such an atmosphere, "news" people benefit less from cutting through the crap and more from artfully creating it.

This leads to a situation where the craft of the business no longer concerns cutting through the spin -- but contributing to it.  Analytic capabilities are either ignored or punished. They're a buzz kill.  (We'll see how Don Lemon does at CNN dissing the silliness there.)

Our current state of affairs?

Round the clock coverage of whether Obama (substitute Bush, Clinton as you prefer) should go on vacation.  Ever. 

Worse are the lost opportunities.

Case in point this past Sunday?

Maria Bartiroma is asked whether she places any credence in Michelle Bachman's campaign promise to bring back $2 a gallon gasoline in the first quarter of her presidency.

Lots of responses here that could keep you impartial but give people a real picture of the world. 

But....Maria....who has a press agent named "Sunshine".... says....."I don't know, perhaps, who knows."


I don't know a real journalist who would give an answer like that if they were water boarded.

I have seen this happen so many times -- and seen it work so many times -- I feel I am an expert.

So, men, listen up.

Should you or your girl friend,  estranged wife, ex-wife, surly father-in-law, kid brother or handicapped sister be approached by twenty thugs, terrorists or bad cops armed with fully automatic weapons, grenades, helicopters and ballistic protective vests...follow me if you want to live.

Grab your significant other and a single hand-gun, and run into an old industrial warehouse.  A barn will do in a rural setting.  So will your house if you are in the burbs.

The thugs will fan out surrounding your position.

If you are holed up in your house, now is the time to place all crystal and fine china in a vault.

The thugs will open up on full automatic as they walk slowly toward you.

This will mostly punch holes in the barn and destroy all wall hangings and appliances in the house.

One of the thugs will look at another thug with a satisfied smile.  None of the thugs will reload.

This is when you jump up and shoot half of them with your pistol.

Then you run.  You grab the hand of your ex-wife, present girlfriend, kid brother or sullen father-in-law first.

You run like hell out the back door, which the thugs did not think to cover.

In a clearing, you make  a stand and wipe out most of the remaining ten thugs, but the ninth thug, usually the best friend or lieutenant  of the number one thug, gets the drop on you.

Wait until he cocks his gun, aims it at your head and says clearly and distinctly, "No, you don't deserve to  die fast."

This is a sure sign that as he is slowly strangling you, or placing a cage of scorpions around your head, your ex wife, present girlfriend, kid brother or father-in-law has picked up one of the bad guy's weapons.

Up until this point, they may have been Quakers or vegans who let spiders out of the house.  But they say, 'Well, maybe just this once" and drill the number nine bad guy in the back.

They then find out they kind of like this and, having never touched an automatic weapon before, lay down effective suppressive fire, killing all the other bad guys except the tenth, worst guy.

The worst guy runs out of ammo after firing 5,000 rounds through his 100 round magazine.  You run out of ammo after firing 1,000 rounds through your 30 round magazine.

Fortunately, both of your are martial arts champions.

You soon subdue him but you choose not to kill him.

 (You may be tempted to kill him, but you have a flashback involving "the war" or the death of a favorite childhood pet and realize violence is no good.)

In one last treacherous gesture, he attempts to kill you but is undone by his own greed.  

If he is a drug lord, he steps on a rotten plank and falls into a meth cooker.  If he is a terrorist, he pulls out a knife and unwittingly triggers the bomb he has strapped to himself.

If he is a corrupt policeman, he successfully gets his ankle carry gun out and fires at you but your father-in-law dives in slow motion between you and the bullet.  With his last breath, he says you weren't a pussy after all, or at least not as big a one as he thought you were.

If it was your girlfriend, ex-wife, estranged wife or kid brother who took the bullet, they are only wounded and tell you they really love you. Lots.

You now pursue the villain -- who runs gun in hand into the field of fire of an honest swat team and is killled.  Ironically and in slow mo.

Credits up.  You get the girl.  Or your kid brother likes you again.

Note:  This does not work with zombies.    "Zombieland" provides decent enough rules with no further work on my part.

And let me be clear about biases from the start.

Some of the journalism I discuss here does indeed carry those ironic little quote marks.

They are there in the same sense I would say let's go watch "wrestling" right before I tuned to a professional bout where chairs are thrown and guys wear viking horns into the ring.

Let's start with the basics, with the real deal.

Journalists report facts.  The simplest version of good, plain journalism is that something happened. The Yanks beat the Red Sox 4 to 3.  The local city council voted 12 to 4 to approve a zoning permit.

So the intent is to get the facts right, and to inform.

Another layer atop that is also the need to do this clearly and in an entertaining and an appropriately attention commanding  manner.   Even A.J. Liebling, who invented the field of media criticism, acknowledged there is a slight wink and a con to even the best journalism.

Key word here?  A little.  

As in there may be a little wine in the best sauces that top fish and poultry.   Add too much wine, though, and you are serving drinks, not nourishment and that is kinda the worn road a lot of the wayward press has followed.

There is a point at which intention means everything.

And it feels to me as if a good 90 percent of the video and web news sources said ten years ago, "You know, fuck it, the viewers don't care, and the 'fourth estate stuff' is bullshit....

"I'm covering politics and government like professional wrestling.  This is not really journalism anymore, I am a kind of second rate actor and.....whoa, did you see Clinton throw that chair at Newt. He's down! No, no, he is up, the Comeback Kid is up! Here comes Monica over the rings...Hillary too!

Thus did we have the press in slapshoes and paint face chase after stained blue dresses.  And killer sharks off the Florida coast!  Right before 9/11 and the economic slide of our nation.

So if that sounds particularly liberal, I do not intend it to be.  Fox News certainly has perfected the professional wrestling model of news, but MSNBC and progressives there have given tit for tat.  CNBC is now the business version of ESPN, with the same wide-eyed lack of perspective on meaning and context.

Even poor Wolf Blitzer, vaguely aware that something has happened to the business beyond him, blinks and is confused about what is a news fact and what is an Entertainment Tonight gossip line.

So what should you be looking for?

That's the wrong question really. Try this instead:

How should you be looking for it?

In these complex days, it is rare that "urgent" news is important.  Market crashes, invasions, tsunamis, yes.  Not much else really from a public policy standpoint.

What passes for urgent news these days is more likely warmed over exclusives that play with emotional pictures and impact designed to keep you glued to the popping eyes of the news anchor and the plunging  neckline of the reporter in the field. (See popular meme/email: "News Anchor or Porn Star" quiz.)

You already are genetically arranged to react to this "urgent" delivery.  You are programmed to listen to negatives -- to warnings.

So if CNBC says the market has plunged by "500 points!" once, it is better for them to say it four times.  And call it the "biggest drop in five months!!!"

By all means don't say, "The market is off four percent today amid uncertain trading" and let it lay there.

The urgent is the enemy of the important.  But it is the king of your attention.

 While we are urgently waiting to see if Bill Clinton is being impeached or there really are killer sharks off the coast of Florida, while all our concern and energy is attuned to crazies disrupting the dignity of military funerals, and Obama birth certificates, and Michelle and Sarah antics, real stuff happens.

And it is virtually unseen and not understood by most of us.

This is not some grand conspiracy theory.  It is how we are wired and how the media market is incented to behave.

How do we change that?

We get the media and the politicians we deserve.  We vote for each, one with our money and the other with our votes (and money.)

The best sources of journalism for me are those with the best intent.  And the best intent for a journalistic organization is the goal set out by Walter Lippmann early last century.  He set a higher goal than traditional "news."  He aimed for the truth.

And what was his version of the truth?  As good as I have ever heard it said:


“... the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.”


So the next time you are listening to the "news" -- or more rarely these days, reading it -- apply that test to your news provider. 


Is the reporter or broadcaster really trying to give you something actionable?  Something you can really make a decision on?


Or are they spinning an idealogy, or just grabbing your attention for the sheer "urgent" moment that provides the fire of ratings but sheds just smoke and smudge, no light, on what to actually do about it. 

 

It is true that chimpanzees use sticks and straw tools to retrieve termites for food. This amazes biologists. It puzzles Jack Russell Terriers.  

Why grow opposable thumbs, perform difficult tasks and give up a cool set of front legs when you can  train slow-witted hominids to do the work for you.

Maisie the JRT is nearly sixteen years old now, more than 100 in dog years. If  it is true that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, it does not work the other way around. Maisers teaches me new ones every week.  I fail regularly.  She is patient.

It started the other way around, of course. 

First, she learned that etiquette required an outdoors toilette.   Soon, she would walk to the door when she wanted to be let out. Then, she learned that when she ran to the door, the hominids ran too -- thinking the call of nature was immediate.  Not long after, she ran to the door full tilt, causing me to run to let her out.  She looked at the open door, looked at me. 
Then she moved three feet to the left and stood in front of the refrigerator door. She fixed the fridge with the same intense stare she gave the back door.  I did nothing.  She looked up at me until she caught my eyes.  Then she looked at the fridge door. Back to my eyes, then to the fridge door. Her head actually moves toward the fridge in such moments.  It is a quick short jerk.   An indicator.  Almost a friendly crib for a slow friend. 

So sure. What else could I do. 

There are variations on this theme. The scamper to the back door can mean she really needs to go outside.  It can mean the fridge.  Now it can mean that she wants me to go to bed.  She goes to the back door, sees I am up and have momentum -- and then she scampers up the stairs.
Many times, she has it right. Lights out and I follow her up. She can't make the jump up onto the bed anymore, but she has a fix for that as well.  She stands near the bed, looking backward over her shoulder. When I approach and she feels my hands, she then jumps up...and I fly her up to her nest for the night.

Lost in the S&P downgrade, the market plunge, the riots in London and the debt crisis in Italy is this simple fact of market economics:

We can unlock billions in untapped revenue for individuals, even the poor, by repealing Luddite laws against the sale of body organs.

Most of us have organ surpluses now -- a holdover from when we lived on the savannas and needed to run for our lives.  We needed two kidneys and two lungs to do that.

We no longer do and in fact probably would have let market forces properly set the number of organs we really need if it were not for regulators who thwart the individual's right to choose and exercize control over the most personal decisions of our lives.

 For example, you now have two perfectly good kidneys.  You need one. That means you have a valuable commodity you would under a free market consider selling were it not for government interference.

At the same time, market forces have created fire sale conditions and prices in great destination tourist countries like Spain, Greece and now apparently Italy.


You want to travel there but you can't take advantage of the market dip in those countries because you have no money.


But if it is acknowledged that your body has surplus organ value, you can take that trip, you can take advantage of the market and answer the pull of market forces to these now bankrupt countries.  By then spending your organ money there, you stimulate those economies--which in turn results in higher prices for your organs. 



Some will suggest that the planning and recovery period from an organ transplant mean that organs are not a very liquid "currency," so to speak.  But this is where science and finance come together.

You would not actually have to have your kidney removed, merely pledge that you will.  In financial terms, you sell an option on your kidney and the buyer of the option may exercize a right within a certain time period to buy the kidney at full price.  In the mean time, you have money that you will spend to stimulate the economy.

You might also choose to mortgage your kidney, placing it as collateral for a loan that you pay back over a 30 year period. These organ mortgages of course could be traded as derivatives.

There are other organs and other approaches of course.  Kidneys are just the first logical step.

The numbers I am looking at show that if all middle class Americans would sell just one kidney, they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement until their death.

The beauty of the market force economy here  is that selling an organ not only provides the seller revenue, it also shortens the period of time spent in retirement and cuts social services costs such as Medicare and Medicaid because fewer people qualify for such programs from an actuarial longevity projection standpoint factor. 


It should be noted that my financials to this point are rough.  I'll grant that.  Some organ  numbers may need to be rounded up.

For example, the economic lift of a middle class organ owner is sufficient with one kidney.  The poor, starting from a lower economic, may have to sell more kidneys on a more frequent basis in order to reach sustainable economic independence.


But in the long run, the numbers lift the economy, cut social services and I dare say may finally win the War on Poverty. 

You can call John Chambers and David Beers and S&P Ratings anything you want.  I call Beers and Chambers the good guys and I am thankful that the good guys are back in charge of at least one part of  S&P. 

You should be too. 

In Cormac McCarthy’s post apocalyptic novel, “The Road,” the man’s young son looks up from a world of ash and carnage and says, “We’re the good guys, right Dad?” And the father says in fact, yes, they are, and the world needs good guys.

We are not in an apocalyptic era, but there is enough drifting ash in the air to make it hard to find the good guys.  I am happy that two of them showed up. 

Here’s who they are.  

Chambers and Beers are not your typical Wall Street analysts.  They are slightly tweedy, a tad academic.  Chambers reads Joyce.  Beers sports a soup strainer walrus mustache. 

They are about as un-Wall Streetie as you can get and that’s always been fine with them and the dozens of other “lifers” at S&P Ratings.  The analysts on the Street don’t particularly like the lifers at S&P and most certainly they are cut from a different cloth.

The pitch to rating analysts from the late Leo O’Neill of S&P always went something like this:

“You can walk across the street and earn a million dollars a year, work nights, weekends  and try to remember when you last saw your kids, or you can stay here, earn decent enough money, be home on the weekends,  do good work, and have a life.”

I was skeptical of that when I walked in the door in 1992 to become vice president of publishing and wondered whether I could work there for long.  I had arrived freighted with a certain set of standards acquired during a 20 year career as an investigative reporter during which I had written stories that lead directly to the arrest of more than 20 white collar criminals in the government and corporate world and felony convictions of two major American corporations. 

The concept of paid ratings seemed like a joke to me and It was not long before the first test.  At the governance board of the insurance rating division, analysts had deadlocked on whether to upgrade or downgrade a well-known firm.  The insurance company of course was keen for a better rating and had paid S&P anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 to get one. 

So I figured what followed would be short and simple.  Everyone knows whose side of the bread is buttered in such a deal.   The vice president of marketing even got a vote on the matter, and I settled back into my chair as he rose to speak, thinking to my self exactly how I would phrase my resignation letter after finding my next job. 

“No upgrade,” the marketing guy said. “It’s not in the numbers and as a firm we have nothing if we don’t have trust and credibility.”

There was a rumbling of agreement and the 11 member governance board rejected the upgrade in about 90 seconds.  

It was like that in the 1990s.  Leo O’Neill, the president of S&P then, established   a collegial, peer-driven culture.  Committees of up to seven analysts would meet to consider a rating and the discussions and arguments could go on for hours.  It was horribly inefficient. The analysts were overly introspective.  Many times, sessions seemed like faculty caucuses or accounting trivia clubs.  

Yet there was a focus always on the balance sheets of the companies, never on what it meant to S&P revenues.  The analytical culture reigned, not the accountants, and the firm returned solid 40 percent margins to its parent McGraw Hill.  

This was when the good guys ran the company.  They were slow, too slow for my journalistic reflexes.  

But they were not producing exposes.  They were providing fair and accurate ratings. And study after study showed that on balance, the system worked.  The ratings historically expressed reality. 

Never was I fan of “paid” ratings but in my nine years there, my antennae never caught a whiff of fraud.  The paradox was that to have value, the rating needed to be valid -- not a Better Business Bureau happy face sticker.   S&P in effect shot its way into the insurance rating business by issuing tougher ratings than Best’s  And in Japan, the firm lead the way in downgrading many Japanese banks that had been overrated for years, even though that hurt the rating business there in the short to mid-term. 

In a way, it’s disappointing.  I’m a good journalist, a published author and a decent writer.  Such a book I could write about corrupt rating agencies taking bribes under the table.  It just didn’t happen. 

 I left at the end of 2000 just as structured finance was on the rise and throwing jet fuel on the ratings business.  Leo O’Neill died of cancer, tragically, before he could transition the leadership.  

What happened to cause S&P to so badly miss the structured financial ratings of the collateral debt and mortgage obligations? 


 I was not present, but feel I’ve a good idea from the casual stories over the years. 

The culture and the leadership changed. Old ways were disdained.  A lot of the lifers left or were encouraged to leave. They were not fast enough guns in a new age more akin to investment banking.  Even when I was still there, McGraw Hill was looking for 60 percent margins, not just 40.  There was a move toward far less introspection, just production.   

The “miss” on mortgages can never be excused or forgotten.

But Beers and Chambers were not a part of the structured mess.  They are old school S&P, the sons of Leo O’Neill  in spirit and like dozens of other good rating analysts were thrown into the same cauldron as the mortgage raters. 

I should say also that they are not friends of mine and I have not seen them or communicated with them in at least 12 years.   

I do know that they are ethical, expert and devoted to their work.   

Argue with them all you want  on methodology and technique. 

But honor them for their integrity and courage.   

Those qualities are in short supply right now.  


At a time when we needed it, two good men stood up and took the heat to say what they believe is important and true.