I could not be more excited or more proud.

It's the project I've been dropping hints about in this space for months. Given the trailblazing nature of our venture, I never knew exactly how much I should say or write about what we were doing before we were actually ready to do it. My big fear, of course, was that someone else or some other group would get a jump start on us in organizing the community of users whose participation is critical to our early success.

But thanks to a high-profile launch at today's well-attended conference and blog posts by two of those present (here and here) ReelChanges site registrations are already taking off. In fact, we could not be off to a better start. I feel like ten thousand pounds have been lifted off my shoulders. I may even start returning social phone calls again soon.

The demo was well-attended. I could almost see the wheels turning in some of their heads as they were stimulated by what they saw and by what ReelChanges could mean for them and for journalism.

It was also an incredible relief to finally be able to "show our work" after so many months.

So, what have we created?

A unique new online non-profit-based business model that we believe has the power to help preserve and positively transform the business and practice of journalism by modernizing the profession for the digital interconnected age.

On a technical level, our basic goal, what I originally set out to do, was to figure out how we could use the exact same web-based, digital technologies that are destroying the old business model that financed the creation of high-quality journalism to construct a new business model capable of taking its place. So that is what our ReelChanges team has done. Version 1.00 anyway. And in the process, we also discovered something quite remarkable. We could get the job done, in fact the very best way to get the job done, would involve substantially reducing and redefining the role of traditional media industry gatekeepers such as publishers, network owners and advertisers. Put simply, what ReelChanges enables is shifting more of the power in the journalism industry where it rightfully belongs: into the hands of those who produce the journalism.

Several people deserve special thanks. ReelChanges board member Andy Hertzfeld continues to generously provide critical advice and leadership in the development of our user interface. Filmmaker Yoav Potash has helped guide our efforts from day one. My close friend Dick Alexander's support has been instrumental. And, of course, there is the entire dev team affiliated with the always remarkable Texity , Inc. in Pune, India, Chicago and Canada led by Swati Jalnapurkar, as well as the rest of our board and all our other volunteers and supporters, all of whom we'll eventually find a way to honor on the site. We have an incredibly diverse, talented and hard-working team that is full of creative, dedicated whip smart people who put in long, 12 and 15 hour days when needed. You know who you are. I could not be more deeply proud of every one of you or more grateful. The best things users find when they visit ReelChanges.org came from this wonderful team.

Two other heartfelt notes of thanks.

The first, to Tom Murphy, the founder and editor of Redwood Age, who graciously jumped to my assistance when my laptop lost its connection to the Internet right before my demo. Tom quickly installed the flash player needed for the demo and lent me his computer for the demo. I am not sure what I would have done without him. He also has a great, smartly targeted website and the same general focus and philosophy as mine, that quality always wins in the end.

And finally, a grateful word to a remarkably kind and generous new friend, J.D. Lasica. J.D. wrote one of the first blog posts about my demo. He has also been a key supporter of ReelChanges since the moment he first heard about our project. He even offered to provide free hosting services for us through his groundbreaking and highly-respected Ourmedia.org. J.D. is also one of the forces behind Bid4Vid, an innovative new venture with many of the same goals as ReelChanges, including helping create jobs for journalists and filmmakers, although with a different strategy. It was wonderful to meet J.D. in person at the demo. He's someone I have admired for a long time and, if you just look over his site, is clearly a lot more than just brilliant.

So please, help us spread the word: ReelChanges.org is open for business. Let's see if we can change the world one film at a time.

What an incredible talent. We won't see his likes again.

As I explained in a column some years ago, the federal government's current spectrum allocation policies, which were established decades ago, have long since become technologically obsolete and completely unnecessary for the purposes that were originally intended and that were narrowly permitted under the Constitution, namely, to prevent signal interference that would otherwise have made commercial broadcasting impossible. That was true at one time. But it has not been true for many years, perhaps decades now. If Google puts up its dukes and really fights this fight it is hard to see how the U.S. Supreme Court will have any rational choice other than to throw out the fed's current rule-making authority in the spectrum allocation business in favor of requiring the FCC to enact regulations that permit spread spectrum or spectrum sensing technologies that enable anyone to use the airwaves without hurting anyone else and, most importantly, without government permission. In the end, it's a free speech issue. If the federal government does not have to restrict the use of the airwaves to enable broadcasting then why on earth should it do so?

Up til now, the big money has all been behind allowing the federal government to allocate spectrum that just a few huge companies can then control. Google and its high-tech allies, including, in this case, Microsoft, have the financial resources to prevail against against the big telcos and media companies in the federal courts and, if needed, in Congress. So kudos to Google for taking the first step in what could be a long but very worthwhile legal battle. If Google pushes the spread spectrum/spectrum sharing issue in the courts the only way they and the American public can lose is if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to shred constitutional protections for free speech and freedom of the press.

I just realized that my email address book was one of the items not saved after my hard drive crash on Thursday. I was able to resurrect about a dozen addresses from memory, but the rest, 15 years worth maybe, are gone. Lost little electrons on a now inoperable encrypted hard drive. What a strange feeling. Anyway, if you are a friend or contact, even if you have recently been in touch with me via email, please do me a favor and send me an email asap, empty is fine, so I can add you back to my address book. It's a drag, but considering the stuff I did save, it could have been much worse. I know many of you check in here from time to time, so please do help me keep in touch.

Anyway, I was blown away, really quite impressed, and totally surprised to end up buying a Hewlett Packard PC, my first ever HP-PC. If my experience is common, I suspect it means HP will continue to gain market share.

I've owned pretty much every brand of PC, starting with an IBM, then one called Leading Edge, a Compaq, some clones, and at least two Sony's, one of which was a pretty decent machine. But I never bought an HP which, for a variety of reasons, always seemed like an uncompelling alternative. In fact, back in 2001 I even panned the inept way HP merchandised their products.

This time around, I checked out all the usual suspects, DELL, Gateway, even ACER, both online and at the store. In both venues one thing was clear: HP's more diverse and versatile product line stood head and shoulders above the competition. I haven't paid much attention to this beat since around 2000-1 when I covered it pretty extensively for CNBC.com. But it seems pretty clear to me that in the time that has passed HP has leapfrogged the field.

I was dazzled by the choices and price points available at Fry's. HP had a computer for every niche. And when I visited HP's website it was much more user-friendly, intuitive and helpful than either Dell, Gateway or Acer's. Flat out, the HP site did a much better job of quickly matching my needs with the right product at a great price. When I got stuck at one point I pushed a "call me" button on the site and about a minute later my phone rang with an HP salesperson on the other end, smart, who was able to rapidly guide me through the rest of the transaction. Even better, she already had my partial order in front of her when she called so closing the deal was a breeze.

As I say, I don't cover tech stocks these days. And I have not looked all that closely at the company's detailed financials other than noticing what looks like a pretty reasonable current and forward P/E. But, for what it's worth, after I bought my new HP computer, I bought some of the company's stock, too. HP is definitely back.

Memo to bloggers everywhere, on both the Left and the Right:

Please, let's all drop the misleading and unhelpful acronym "MSM" from our shared vocabularies as bloggers and use the term "Corporate-Owned News Media" or "CONM" (pronounced "CON-UM") instead.

Here's why:

The term "mainstream media" carries a connotation that the views expressed within are part of some mainstream. I understand the history of the term. That it was meant to describe what "most" members of a particular professional group were doing. But as a term "MSM" has outlived its usefulness and is, in the context of current events, misleading and far too generous.

Rhetorically speaking, if the MSM represents some part of the "mainstream," then that would put its critics, again, rhetorically speaking, somewhere in the fringes, I would suppose.

But, in our cacophonous diversity, we bloggers are the mainstream.

And what we object to, in growing numbers, are media, the news media in particular, that pollutes the vital public information streams on which our democracy depends, or manipulates the electoral process with propagandistic Big Lie techniques that lead to the sort of ineffective, counterproductive social policies that have brought our great nation low. The term Corporate-Owned News Media, "CONM," is a far more apt descriptor of this increasingly apparent underlying socio-political-economic malignancy.

What's more, the term "CONM" also far more accurately focuses attention on the underlying source of the most problematic issues currently attributed to the MSM, including by more explicitly identifying the at least reasonable suspicion that hidden corporate agendas can play a role in advancing the public disinformation campaigns we so frequently see.

For these reasons and more henceforth I'm going to stop using the term "MSM" and instead use "CONM," with a short explanation the first time I use it in each post. I hope others will consider doing so as well.

Sample use:

After watching the CONM continue to repetitively rebroadcast excerpts of the speeches of Rev. Jeremiah Wright today, over, and over and over again, in an obvious effort to smear Senator Obama by association, calling FOX and CNN and the rest of their ilk part of the American "mainstream" is a kindness I can no longer stomach. Their corporate agendas are showing. The least we can do is call them on it.

"We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change. That is one option.

Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time."

This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."

It's the cheapest trick in the book.

I don't know about you. But I know I am not terribly interested in what someone who knows Obama has said or done unless Obama himself is involved in some direct way.

An off-the-record comment made by an unpaid foreign policy adviser?

A former contributor who may be a real estate hustler?

Controversial passages from sermons made by his local charismatic minister?

If there was a real story in any of these items it would have been to surface the comments that were made or actions taken, determine if Obama agreed or participated, and if he didn't to then file the story in the "no-story" circular file. That is what a responsible journalist would do. Instead, we get a barrage of "when did he stop beating his wife?" stories that continue to run long after the relevant exonerating information is known. These repetitive stories accomplish nothing, other than tarring Obama in the most unfair fashion, by associating him with comments or actions for which he bears absolutely no direct personal responsibility.

To be fair, Senator Clinton should also not be held responsible for stupid comments made by her supporters, such as the recent dust-up over comments made by former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. In some cases, stories like these are just byproducts of the old journalistic "gotcha" formula. In other cases they are pretty obvious plants, part of an attempt to kill with a thousand cuts. But either way, editors would be wise to think about whether they're really worth the ink. Some better ideas for stories: asking the candidates about say, a foreign policy, or an economic policy, maybe?

Over the last few days, Obama has been typically patient in answering questions about these associations. But at some point in time I hope he, or someone, stands up and points out, with the appropriate traces of indignity, just how ugly and un-American guilt by association really is. Journalists who participate in it are reckless and irresponsible. Asserting guilt by association is just plain sleazy.

Lane Kenworthy (Consider the Evidence) March 9, 2008 The Best Inequality Graph

Income inequality in the United States has been rising since the 1970s. What is the most effective way to succinctly convey this fact?

Here is my choice (a pdf version is available here)

The chart shows average inflation-adjusted incomes of the poorest 20%, middle 60%, and top 1% of households since the 1970s. The incomes include government transfers and subtract taxes. For the bulk of American households, incomes have increased moderately or minimally. For those at the top, by contrast, they have soared.

Read the Rest

From 1947 to 1973 [i.e., the quarter-century after WWII that looks to many people, in retrospect, like a "golden age" of continuous economic growth, increasingly pervasive affluence, and decreasing income inequality in all western societies--JW], incomes at each of these three levels grew at an annual rate of about 2.7%. That was approximately the same as - actually slightly faster than - the rate of growth of the economy as a whole; GDP per capita during that period grew at a rate of 2.5% per year.

Since 1973 incomes in the middle and lower portion of the distribution have increased much less rapidly: 0.8% per year at the 60th percentile, 0.5% per year at the 40th, and just 0.3% per year at the 20th. Is this because the economy as a whole has failed to grow? No. The annual growth rate of per capita GDP since 1973 has been 1.9%. Instead, it's because most of that economic growth has gone to those at the top of the distribution.

The dashed lines in the chart show what incomes at the 60th, 40th, and 20th percentiles would have looked like had they grown at the same 1.9%-per-year pace as the economy since 1973. The difference is striking. Incomes for a very large swath of the American population would be much higher - $15,000 to $30,000 higher - if economic growth since the mid-1970s had been distributed more equally.

One local fable shattered by these data is the prevalent myth that stock options did a lot to close the income gap over the last few decades. More recently, we're even hearing worried claims from area CEOs and even members of our local congressional delegation (Democrats!) that our middle class will suffer the most, and in very great numbers, if the recent long overdue federal reform mandating stock option expensing by corporations is not repealed. Reviewing the data, though, it looks like it must have been a pretty thin slice of the middle class that scooped up all those stock options despite some pretty misleading and self-serving claims.

The news comes just a few weeks after this blog was picked up by the Blogburst syndicate, which is yielding upwards of 2000 headline impressions a day in affiliated publications such as Reuters and the Chicago Sun Times. Originally, this whole blogging thing started out for me as just an outlet for thoughts and ideas I could not publish elsewhere. But lately, more and more it's beginning to feel like an engine that's starting to turn over. The timing of all this is very welcome, though, particularly given the announcement about a revolutionary new non-profit media-related venture that I plan to make in this space in just a few days. More on that shortly.

So how should Senator Obama respond? First, by NOT taking the bait and firing back tit for tat. Focusing on Clinton's refusal to release her income tax records, for example, or taking other similar potshots at her, however well deserved, just pulls Obama and his campaign down into the gutter with Clinton.

Obama should stick to his original game plan, the one that worked so well in South Carolina, and focus his counter-attack not on Clinton per se, but instead on her tactics. More specifically, Obama should talk about what fear has done to this country. He should explain how all that works, how fear leads to a willingness to believe the worst about a situation, our options and even ourselves. And he should talk more about that hope stuff he seems to know something about, how hope can lift us up and help us see what's best about a situation and how it can help us envision a better world and unite us more sufficiently to realize common aspirations. And finally, he should also offer more detailed and specific examples of the exact types of practical social progress that a coalition built on hope could achieve in this country.

Clinton has picked up the sword of fear. Obama can choose to fight fire with fire and everything burns. Or he can continue to develop an inspiring new language of hope that reminds America, in very specific terms, that fear is the easiest and most dangerous of political weapons. Obama needs to mount a Rooseveltian cusade against fear itself. And, in the process, he will also remind America what is now obvious to those of us who have been paying close attention: Clinton will say or do pretty much anything to get elected. What Obama needs to do now is to find a way to rise above those tired old political tactics like a big balloon. Hope is the answer.

New York Times

February 29, 2008
New Clinton Ad Prompts Reply From Obama
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

WACO, Tex. — Playing on anxieties about national security, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has produced a “red phone moment” advertisement that suggests she would be better able to respond to a crisis than Senator Barack Obama.

“It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep,” says a narrator as threatening music surges over dark black-and-white images.

There’s a world crisis and the White House phone is ringing. “Your vote will decide who answers that call,” the narrator says. “Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military — someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.”

It ends with a photo of Mrs. Clinton wearing glasses and picking up the phone.

Mr. Obama, responding to the ad during a stop in Houston, said it raised “a perfectly legitimate question.”

But, he said: “We’ve seen these ads before. They’re the kind that play on people’s fears to try to scare up votes.”

What's even worse than the ads, however, was Senator Clinton's politically tone-deaf response when Senator Obama called her on her obvious attempt to use fear to motivate voters.

“My opponent says it’s fear mongering to talk about national security and the fact that we’re at war,” Senator Clinton told a crowd at the historic stockyards in Fort Worth, according to the Political Swamp blog. “Well, I don’t think people in Texas scare all that easily.”

Her response is so patronizing it made me cringe. But beyond that, it also makes me want to ask: "Where has she been?"

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have demonstrated exactly how easily the American people can be scared and how powerful fear is when used as a political weapon. The war in Iraq, the attack on our civil liberties, the attack on gay rights, the loss of other freedoms, even the very re-election of GWB, were all products of the GOP's well-oiled fear machine.

Senator Obama, on the other hand, confidently says Clinton's gambit won't work -- and I think he has that right. He seems to understand what Clinton does not: that we are all just sick and tired of being afraid. We want a different, better, more uplifting type of national leadership, leadership focused on what we can hope for, what we should strive for and what we can accomplish as a nation, rather than a leadership this is all about why we should be afraid.

Senator Clinton's approach is woefully out of touch with the mood of the country -- and clearly out of touch with the mood of the Democratic Party. Sadly, it appears Hillary will go out, at least if there is any justice she will go out, playing a fear card that is likely to backfire. It also raises the question many of my friends have been asking for weeks now, which is: "If Hillary is really ready to be president on Day One, why wasn't she ready on Day One to run a better campaign?"

Don't get me wrong. I am sure NAFTA can and should be improved. It would certainly be fair for the Democratic presidential candidates to call for improving NAFTA. No problem there. What's alarming, though, and potentially damaging, is all the heated anti-trade rhetoric emerging from the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates as they angle for support from John Edwards voters in these last few crucial do or die primaries. Unfortunately, this latest stage of the competition has left both candidates sounding like protectionists (note to presidential candidates: protectionism has very few fans in places such as Silicon Valley).

As they compete for support in Ohio, Obama and Clinton risk losing the support they'll need to put California in the win column in the general election. Clinton's proposal to impose a moratorium on trade agreements, for example, throws the anti-NAFTAs some red meat at the cost, if implemented, of increasing instability in critical world markets that are vital to the economic health of Silicon Valley. At the same time, Obama's repeated strong assurances that he never, ever, ever supported NAFTA creates the impression that the Senator from Illinois, who has a very thin economic policy resume, may not even support the basic idea of free trade. It also raises the question of whether there was, or is, any version of NAFTA that could gain his support. After all, even the most ardent NAFTA critics usually can envision some circumstances under which they would permit the residents of poor nations to sell stuff to the most prosperous economy in the world.

Let's be clear about this. Companies in Silicon Valley need continued access to global markets to succeed. It's a life or death issue for them. What's more, the leaders of these companies could play a decisive role in determining whether California's electoral votes go to the Democratic nominee, be it Obama or Clinton, or to the GOP's John McCain. These influential, wealthy -- and mostly progressive -- business leaders want a president who champions the development of global markets. They want a president who understands what those growing international markets make possible, including higher environmental, labor and human rights standards over time and the economic integration that enhances global cooperation and, ultimately, the prospects for peace. They also want a president who talks honestly about the way the global economy works, someone unafraid to describe the perils inherent in retreating from those markets, as well as the difficulty of using external pressure to impose environmental or labor standards on trading partners and the need to develop new ways to encourage progress in those areas.

On trade issues, however, Senators Clinton and Obama are beginning to sound a lot like Ross Perot. If this keeps up, industry leaders here in Silicon Valley may soon gravitate to John McCain.

Along with many others, I started pushing for this morally imperative move more than a decade ago.

Stanford's decision to finally do the right thing comes so late as to be a permanent embarrassment. Let's remember that it comes after Harvard and many other top colleges made similar changes in policy and after a U.S. Senator, a Republican at that, indicated he might hold hearings on the students-last endowment management policies at institutions such as Stanford. Facing competitive pressures for the best students, and a possible Senate hearing that would have been highly embarrassing, Stanford finally caved in and did what it should have done decades ago.

In each of the essays I've written on this topic I asked a variation on the following question: "How much money does Stanford, and similar private schools, feel they need to have in their endowments before they will be willing to spend some of that money to provide free educational opportunities to the needy students whose faces are used on their fund raising brochures?"

Apparently the correct answer was $17.1 billion.