"One of the illusions is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of the year." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment." Henry David Thoreau

"Seize this very minute! What you can do, or think you can do, begin it!" Goethe

Today's image: Tormet Way by Paulo A. Lopes. Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

All That's Fit to Tweet: According to HubSpot 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008. This from HubSpot's State of the Twittersphere - Q4 2008 here. You'll find some interesting media folks on Twitter, the early adopters, expect more of the cool kids to catch up next year. Birds of a feather: Tweetree - Birds in a tree. Sidebar: HubSpot's Twitter Grader program ranked me 2,014 out of 803,262 Twitter folk graded.

Bravos & kudos: Chicago radio star Fred Winston. The Fred Winston Holiday Spectacular broadcast on WGN radio was a tasty holiday treat. Bonus: Just in time for New Years, get your very own copy of the famous Fred Winston's Chili recipe here. Bonus too: Check out Winston's uber-cool photos each paired with killer quotation, it don't get much better, all on his blog here.

Congrats & cheers: Darlene Love and all involved in the digital short via SNL - Christmas for the Jews Song [Video here]. Amazon enjoyed their best holiday sales season in 14 years - nearly 73 items ordered per second on December 15th, the season's peak sales day. George Johns writes about the real game-changing players, the gifted creatives and says "it's not our fault that there are no finance action figures." Read George's entire post here.

Have an amazing week. Make something happen!

"Work usually follows will." Louis Pasteur

"What is strength without a double share of wisdom? Strength's not made to rule, but to subserve, where wisdom bears command." John Milton

"It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen." Herodotus

Today's image: Going by Gail Johnson. Amazing shot. Thanks for sharing.

Catch them doing something right: Chicago's first tribe of wireless gets high marks from radio programming ace Matt Dubiel for something they didn't even do...yet. Read Matt's post here.

IWM: The annual Media Person of the Year award goes to Arianna Huffington. Read more incl comments here. Kudos to Patrick Phillips.

Congrats & cheers: Second-generation broadcaster Kevin Metheny joins Tribune as programming chief at WGN radio. Kevin is a gifted leader certain to make a lasting, positive difference at WGN and Tribune.

Image:
Hugh MacLeod

Thanks Hugh!







"Trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle." Michelangelo

The State of the News Media 2007, the annual report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ is a part of the Pew Research Center) mentions seven new major trends...

1. News organizations need to do more to think through the implications of this new era of shrinking ambitions.
2. The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model.
3. The key question is whether the investment community sees the news business as a declining industry or an emerging one in transition.
4. There are growing questions about whether the dominant ownership model of the last generation, the public corporation, is suited to the transition newsrooms must now make.
5. The Argument Culture is giving way to something new, The Answer Culture.
6. Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics.
7. While journalists are becoming more serious about the Web, no clear models of how to do journalism online really exists yet, and some qualities are still only marginally explored.

You may access the full report here. Congrats and kudos to Amy Mitchell, Tom Rosenstiel and all involved in the project.

Fish stinks at the head first: From the Overview text of the PEJ report...

"The character of the next era, far from inevitable, will likely depend heavily on the quality of leadership in the newsroom and boardroom. If history is a guide, (be it Adolph Ochs, Ted Turner, or Google) it will require renegades and risk-takers to break from the conventional path and create new directions."

Renegades and risk-takers are exactly what we need.

Sam Zell may just be the perfect guy to buy Tribune. Thomas S. Mulligan has done a good job of reporting on the possible Zell-Tribune hookup via LAT - Zell's past may hint at plan for Tribune here. (Mulligan mentions the Barron's article wherein Zell claimed to have pocketed $1.3 billion on his $70 mil investment in Randy Michaels' Jacor. Should Sam prevail would he spin off Trib's broadcasting assets to Randy? Might be a good fit for the broadcast portfolio of Oak Hill Capital Partners. Plus Randy's deep understanding of radio, his passion for talk, and his rare appreciation for big stations with lots of moving parts would be serious advantages for WGN. And...what a great first move back into the radio biz.)

Hot, very hot: Proof positive you don't need a big marketing budget to have a big hit. Behold. Twitter. Related: Twitter blog.

The smell of burning cash: Ogg & Barnes calculate the burn rate and time left for the pay radio guys. XM $129.8 mil per month/10.8 months. Sirius $123 mil per month/8.4 months. Read their analysis here.

Bonus: WORDCOUNT

Bonus 2: SXSW Web Awards Finalists