"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself." Charlie Chaplin

Reading, again, Richard Saul Wurman - InformationAnxiety2. So much good thinking, highly recommended...

"My expertise has always been my ignorance, my admission and acceptance of not knowing. My work comes from questions, not from answers." Amazon info here

Liz Hoggard covers a panel at the International Ad Festival in Cannes ("Is making drama an answer to the advertising crisis?") via The Observer here (thanks to Jeff Jarvis for the pointer). Jeff's very own take on the state of advertising, and a good one, is here.

I'm probably one of the last but I'm over slashdot and a confirmed digg convert - liking their redesign a lot, digg v3 is tight. Bravo and congrats to Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson, Daniel Burka and the entire digg team. And from digg this morning...

Microsoft says Google is for girls. Check out your url at the Microsoft adCenter Labs here

From Edward Wasserman writing in the Miami Herald...

"...Pruning news staffs has become a managerial routine, and shedding higher-earning -- meaning, longer-serving -- employees a mark of fiscal prudence. They're getting six months', maybe a year's pay, and they're gone. So are their Rolodexes, their intuition, the stories they did or meant to do and their deep familiarity with their communities.

With the growth in journalism positions concentrated in the burgeoning Internet sector -- where the focus on attracting the youth demographic is at its most intense -- the new jobs that are opening up are likely to be filled by people a generation or more younger than those being shown the door at old media operations.

...It made me realize that managing generational change is a delicate matter of achieving a balance of memory and energy, the seasoned and the fresh, certainty and skepticism. It's a matter not of lowering costs, but of carefully calibrating a newsroom culture. And it's a challenge that, I'm afraid, is being blown."

Read "Newsrooms becoming prematurely young" here

Claude Hall writes...

"Someday soon, someone is going to mention KHJ and not mention Ron Jacobs. Someone is going to mention WABC and not mention Rick Sklar. Someone is going to mention WDRC and not mention Charlie Parker or Bertha Porter. Someone is going to mention KILT and give the credit for the success of the station to JohnnySomebody instead of Bill Young. Will there be any protests? I wonder if anyone will really care. Except me." Hey Claude, you can count on a bunch of us to join you, we got your back on this one. A significant number of folk care about preserving the real history and celebrating the real stars of the wireless show biz dodge. Read Claude's weekly column and ongoing serial fiction here

Which reminds me. Someone told me RCS had "invented" computerized playlists. Give me a break. The first time I used a computerized playlist was 1970. Working for Turnpike Broadcasting, a division of DCI (Dawson Communications Inc), headed by the always amazing Lynn Christian and his programming wizard Charlie Whittaker (inventor of the CBS Young Sound). One of the nation's first FM broadcast groups - way ahead of our time (way too much in fact).

Kudos to Alan Patricof for having the smarts to invest, via his Greycroft Partners, in Rafat's very cool enterprise. Congrats to Rafat & Company. More here

Congrats to Eddie Fritts. He has opened shop (Fritts Group) and joining him are Kathy Ramsey and John Lively. Eddie has also signed CBS, News Corp and Vonage as clients. All the best to you Eddie!

Chris Anderson, author of one of this summer's must reads (The Long Tail), gets the I Want Media interview treatment here. Bravo Patrick - well done!

Thank you Amazon! One can finally pre-order the long awaited Beautiful Evidence by Tufte
here

Startup 2.0, building a profitable enterprise in nothing flat...The challenge: One Week, 500 Dollars, An Awesome Product. Follow the story beginning here. Cool idea, good luck guys.

Michael Copps, FCC commish at Supernova2006...on net neutrality and other matters...

"As the FCC grapples with these issues, the commission needs more input from small and medium sized enterprises, as well as the large high tech firms. Decisions without you are most often decisions against you." Check out all of the session notes here.