"Hire execs who love the product." Dave Winer

"Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it." Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm." Winston Churchill

Today's image: Banksy. Cans Festival Leake Street SE1 by pomphorhynchus. Amazing. Thank you for sharing.

Good to be back. So much to catch up on. Let's get started.

Dave Winer inspired this post. Should you not be aware of Dave, please do get to know him. He was instrumental in bringing us game-changing breakthroughs including blogging, RSS and podcasting. He's an original thinker, a person not afraid of dealing in that most rare and refreshing of attitudes, he dares to offer unvarnished thought. You may find his blog, Scripting News, here. Longtime readers will recall the header of this blog once contained Dave's wise counsel "People come back to places that send them away." That has never been more true or relevant than it is today.

Recently Dave wrote: "Every crop of entrepreneurs thinks it's different. They never are, but they have to learn that for themselves. One thing they do over and over is hire execs who don't love the product. It's as if the guy who ran professional football didn't like football." My sense is Dave is spot-on in this observation. Read Dave's entire post, Hire execs who love the product, here.

Seems to me too many of those working in broadcast today don't truly love the product. Should we somehow be given the ability to Mirandize the majority of broadcast leadership, have them raise a hand and give us the straight dope under oath, my sense is our finding would be there ain't a lot of love. These guys are not happy, not having fun, not excited about the industry as it is today and not close to convincingly enthusiastic regarding the road ahead. Can't totally blame them. It's not the job they signed up for. Moreover, 2009 is turning out to be yet another one of those years that they would prefer we all just agree to forget. More on this leadership issue later.

Today, let us choose to learn rather than forget.

Here now the lessons of a media company about one hundred and thirty years old that put down one of it's most prized assets earlier this year. The Rocky Mountain News printed it's final edition on February 27, 2009.

At that ending, John Temple was the editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News. Now he presents us with an exceptional gift - lessons learned from the end of an institution. Here are his ten lessons. I strongly recommend you visit his blog, watch his video and read his entire presentation delivered earlier today at the UC Berkeley Media Technology Summit at Google. [Speakers list]

1. Know what business you're in.
2. Know your customers.
3. Know your competition.
4. Know your goal.
5. Have a strategy and be committed to pursuing it.
6. Measure, measure, measure.
7. Keep new ventures free from the rules of the old.
8. Let the people running a new venture do what's best for their business, regardless of the potential impact on the old.
9. To compete in a new medium, you have to understand it.
10. Invest in R&D.

Bravos, John. Well done. Thanks for sharing. This gentleman loved his product, loved his job, of that there can be no doubt. His leading by example, his generous offering of learning, is simply exemplary. You may find John's post, including video, slides and the text of his presentation, here.

Thanks, again, to Dave Winer for the inspiration and to NYU rock star Jay Rosen for his tip on John's wonderful gift of learning.

Your comments are always welcome.

More tomorrow. Thank you for stopping by.

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