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Mr. Murdoch Goes to War
Rupert Murdoch wants his Wall Street Journal to displace The New York Times as the world's paper of record. His ambitions could be good news for the newspaper industry— or another nail in the coffin of serious journalism.
|DAY OF INFAMY: Rupert Murdoch delivers his first address to the Wall Street Journal newsroom
(Photo credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Rupert Murdoch entered the ninth-floor newsroom in Lower Manhattan with a bouncy, rolling gait that seemed much too sprightly, given the seismic waves of dread it spread in all directions. It was late in the afternoon of December 13, 2007, a date that will live in infamy for a certain generation of American newsmen. Lawyers were still putting the final touches on the $5 billion deal that would make Dow Jones & Company and its crown jewel, The Wall Street Journal, the newest subsidiaries of Murdoch's improbably vast News Corp-oration. The global-media buccaneer, the rapacious philistine from Down Under, had come to personally stake his claim to "the daily diary of the American dream."
The Age of Murdoch (September 2003)
Many see him as a power-mad, rapacious right-wing vulgarian. What really drives him, though, is not ideology but a cool concern for the bottom line—and the belief that the media should be treated like any other business, not as a semi-sacred public trust. Rupert Murdoch has seen the future, and it is him. By James Fallows
Video: "Rupert Murdoch: The Last Hope for Journalism?"
James Bennet and Mark Bowden discuss Murdoch's reign at the Journal and reflect on the past and future of the newspaper business.
No one could find a podium, so four green-and-white boxes of printer paper were pushed together as a platform, and Murdoch stepped up with a microphone in hand to address his mostly appalled new employees. With his thin hair dyed rusty brown and brushed straight back off the wide dome of his forehead, and modish wire-framed glasses over small, heavy-lidded eyes, his face was all too familiar, its deeply creased cheeks sagging in a fine cascade of syncline folds to the crisp knot of his blue silk tie.
"Naturally, this is a day of great excitement for us. Maybe it's more a day of nervousness for a lot of you," he said, a slight Aussie flavor turning the last word to yew-ah. No doubt Murdoch felt the tremors of dread. No doubt he appreciated them; they were a form of homage.
But nervousness was way too cute. The mood was grim. A great frigate of high-minded journalism had just struck its colors to the Tabloid Pirate. The once-mighty, staid, studiously gray, independent Wall Street Journal was now a first cousin to Fox ("Fair and Balanced") News, Bart Simpson, the London daily Sun's Page Three titty displays, and the deliberately outrageous New York Post. (Within months, the two U.S. newspapers would be hawked together on the streets of New York as a $1 package deal.)
"But I hope it's also a day of excitement, because it is a new day in the history of this company," Murdoch said, stressing the words new day. "We've come here to expand it, to develop it, and, where possible, to improve all of its products."
Newspapers are in a sad way in America. Readership continues to fall. Advertisers are deserting them for newer forms of media. Revenues are plummeting, as the costs of printing and distribution mount catastrophically. Faced with declining profit margins, investors are fleeing. Knight Ridder, once the largest newpaper chain in America, has gone out of business. Stalwart family owners such as Dow Jones's Bancrofts are selling out. Reporters and editors are being bought out or laid off in droves, and not just at small regional papers. The once-fat Los Angeles Times has been dismantling itself. The New York Times and The Washington Post are trimming their staffs. In the eyes of many media experts, print journalism, that stubborn 15th-century technology, appears at long last to be on its deathbed.
Except that Murdoch is investing in it. We've come here to expand, he said. He has announced his intention for the remade Journal not just to supplant The New York Times as the nation's preeminent daily newspaper but to become the first truly global daily. This would be music to the ears of any newsroom, so hope mingled with the professional dread in Murdoch's audience that afternoon. He may be awful, but he is rich and awful, smart and awful, powerful and awful, and while he may well be crazy to still believe in the future of print, he is determined and crazy. Murdoch might be the last person The Journal would have chosen as its savior, but newspapers may well be down to last hopes.
What does he see that others do not? What is his vision for one of America's most venerated dailies? Can he really grow TheJournal in such a hostile economic climate? And if he succeeds, might The Wall Street Journal as we know it, and as millions of readers have loved it, cease to exist?
Murdoch has little patience for ceremony, and his words that takeover day in December were brief and to the point—pledges to make a "great papah" a "bettah papah," assurances that "we do know and understand the tremendous values of Dow Jones and particularly of TheWall Street Journal, and the very high bar-ah that you've set yourselves," and optimistic talk about how the global economy, and the tremendous "desiah for information" that comes with it, offers TheJournal the chance to become "the preeminent source of financial information and comment in the world."
After some polite applause, Murdoch introduced Robert Thomson, a lanky, stooped, Ichabod Crane–like figure in a black suit and skinny black tie, who, as Murdoch put it, "will be the publisher, with the editors all reporting to him." Murdoch explained that Thomson, a veteran of the rival Financial Times who had been editing TheTimes of London for him for almost six years, would have no "business responsibilities" as publisher, which meant that he was the paper's de facto new editor.
Thus crumbled, with Murdoch's first words as the new owner, the hopeful wall that had been erected with fanfare while the sale was going through to shield the paper's editorial content from the flamboyant magnate's meddling.
The paper's former top editor, Marcus Brauchli, was just a few paces away, his arms folded across his chest—a slight, amiable, balding man who had emerged victorious from a tumultuous management struggle the previous year, only to find himself presiding over someone else's newspaper. His rise from the ranks of reporter had been so rapid that his nickname was "The Rocket." Feelings about Brauchli (pronounced Brock-li) contained the usual mix of admiration and envy that adheres to anyone who achieves remarkable success in a large organization, but overnight all jealousy had been replaced with hope. The weight of TheJournal's proud traditions were draped across his slender shoulders. He was the newsroom's champion, whose proven shrewdness and ambition would now be deployed in their defense. And he seemed ideally suited to the task, given that he had been good friends with Thomson for years. If anyone could skillfully navigate the treacherous waters ahead, it was Brauchli.
He would resign in four months.
Rupert Murdoch is, by most accounts, a delightful man. Born to wealth that he has manifestly multiplied, he is a man who lives a globe-trotting lifestyle, a man who need never carry his own bags or stand in line at a security checkpoint at an airport, a man who moves through a string of fabulous residences; it would be easy to assume that he is a coddled, petulant creature of privilege. Yet Murdoch often flies commercial, carries his own bags, prefers a regular hotel room to a suite, uses taxis, and shops everywhere for bargains. Bruce Dover, in his book, China Adventures, tells the story of how Murdoch, on the night of the formal handover of power in Hong Kong to the Chinese government, found himself by a series of accidents alone on foot in Kowloon, lost, trying to find his way back to his hotel with neither money nor cell phone. He wandered for hours, melting in stifling humidity, unable to make himself understood, and when he did finally find his hotel, he was barred from entering by guards who were unimpressed with his protestations in English and his lack of an invitation or an ID. Dover, one of his executives, was at long last summoned to the outer gate to investigate the stubborn imprecations of a damp, walletless old man. Dover found Murdoch actually cheerful, or at least "in surprisingly good humor."
"What an adventure!" the tycoon said.
Like the great Whitman, Murdoch is large, dizzyingly so, with enterprises that span the globe and broaden the frontiers of information and entertainment technology, and like Whitman, he contains striking contradictions. He is a bare-knuckled, union-crushing capitalist who has had more success than anyone wooing the ruling Communists in China. He is a Thatcherite conservative whose New York tabloid has endorsed Barack Obama. He is a 77-year-old who lives the life of a young man, with a Chinese-born wife (his third) who is almost four decades his junior and two small daughters to complement his four middle-aged children. He is a global-media baron, a titan in his field, whose empire now includes 20th Century Fox, Fox TV, Fox News, Fox Business Network, HarperCollins, The Times and Sunday Times of London, The Sun, the New York Post, The Weekly Standard, Dow Jones, BSkyB television, National Geographic Channel, MySpace, etc., etc. But Murdoch still sees himself as a stubborn outsider, a freethinking cultural marauder come to rattle the halls of power—a kind of Aussie Bart Simpson writ large. And nothing gets his juices flowing faster than a chance to disturb any establishment, be it Britain's labor unions (he broke their stranglehold on London newspapers), the BBC (which he has successfully challenged with BSkyB), the dominant American TV networks (which he has taken on with his Fox channels), or CNN (which his Fox News Channel surpassed as the leading all-news cable channel, after CNN's Ted Turner famously promised to squish Murdoch "like a bug").
Murdoch is given credit for great business acumen, but he is less a pioneer and visionary than a wealthy and aggressive collector. He has vast resources and is constantly adding and subtracting companies to and from his empire. He identifies potential markets, and then, like a rich art buyer writing big checks for the work of artists who have already achieved critical recognition, he buys into companies that have demonstrated promise in reaching those markets. He doesn't have a record of consistent success; some of his biggest newspapers lose money, including the New York Post and The Times of London. What he has are the resources to absorb failure.
When it comes to running a newspaper, this combination of traits—buccaneering and collecting—makes Murdoch a throwback to the great journalism pirates, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, who reigned during the days when most major cities had multiple dailies duking it out on street corners for readers. Back then, the name of the game was street sales, and the way to outsell the other rags was to have something hot that they did not. Reporters vied to get out in front of a story, to be one step ahead of everyone else. The more sensational the scoop, the more copies you sold. Reporters weren't so much writers as hustlers and con men. The very idea of serious social reform—or, perish the thought, literature!—was laughable. Reporting was about scooping the competition. Stories were to be written clearly and concisely. Sentences were short and simple, language plain. Editors prized the breaking front-page story that could be told without "jumping"—without forcing the reader to turn to an inside page.
This is how Murdoch understands journalism—as content, a word he uses all the time, rather than as a form of literature or public service, and as a commodity whose value largely derives from its instant retail malleability. A short, crisp scoop that dramatically advances a major developing story—Obama's poll numbers down! Britney back in rehab! Steinbrenner to fire another manager!—can be neatly packaged for a dizzying variety of media: print, radio, TV, the Internet, or even cell-phone screens. It doesn't matter much to a fully integrated media conglomerate like News Corporation how its customers choose to access this content, as long as the transaction pays. Business and financial news is ideally suited to this kind of cross-seeding, since markets are now global and customers are tuned in all day, every day. One of the first strong messages Journal reporters and editors received from their new owners was that Murdoch wants scoops. He wants his reporters out in front of every competitor on the planet.
This means that, at a time when every big newspaper is tinkering with futuristic business models, Murdoch is doing so with both feet planted firmly in the past. His strategy for success in 2008 is to behave as though the year is 1908. So while his competitors retrench, Murdoch is going to war—by challenging The New York Times, in particular, to an old-fashioned newspaper battle. Except this time the stakes aren't nickels in Times Square, but dominance in America, and the world.
It's a war he could well lose. For print journalists, the good news about Murdoch is that he believes the old Gutenberg technology still has legs, and that he is willing to back that belief with capital. But any 21st-century newspaper war is going to be fought in large part on the Web, and when it comes to new media, Murdoch's record is mixed at best. From the 1990s on, he has repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to establish a foothold on the Internet. There was Delphi, an early player in the online industry, which he abandoned a few years after purchasing it. There was PointCast, a venture featuring something called "push" technology that Murdoch flirted with before it sank as quickly as it surfaced. Today he has staked his claim with MySpace, and he is actively seeking to broaden that beachhead by shopping around for a proven performer he can buy. He has flirted both with keeping The Journal's content behind a firewall (where it remains at the moment) and with offering it for free, which indicates that he hasn't cracked the central problem of Internet publication: How do you make it pay?
It's also a war he could abandon if it doesn't seem to be going his way. As his Internet ventures suggest, Murdoch has a history of moving aggressively into new territory, only to retreat just as quickly. He has built his media empire not only by identifying proven properties and investing in them, but also by ruthlessly discarding those that fail to measure up to his expectations. He can be a fickle patron, because his enthusiasm for a project is grounded not in a deeply held belief or commitment, but in the bottom line. And some speculate that he may ultimately value Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal less for their own sakes than for what their brand names bring to his other properties, particularly his just-launched Fox Business Network, although Dow Jones has a contract with CNBC that will not expire until 2012.
For his new employees in that ninth-floor newsroom, though, the real danger might be that he could win the war—because Murdoch's definition of success could mean that to save The Journal, he has to kill the newspaper as they have known it.
The old days of freewheeling newspaper competition ended with the advent of telecommunications. It was a gradual process, but by the middle of the last century, television and radio were delivering breaking news instantly and universally, eliminating one of the most compelling reasons to buy a newspaper. The print product still had a huge audience, but not large enough for most cities to profitably support more than one or two newspapers. The larger cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami, Atlanta—still supported two or three, but usually only one newspaper "of record" and two or three scrappy tabloids that still relied on street sales, or were targeted to specific regions, like Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, or to specific slices of the readership, like The Wall Street Journal. The Journal didn't try to compete head-to-head with The New York Times. Instead, it effectively sold itself as a mandatory "second read" for a certain class of New Yorker, and eventually a certain class of reader all over the United States.
In those fat and happy days, the glory days of "serious" American journalism, the concepts of objectivity and editorial independence grew into a kind of public religion. The old yellow era of Hearst and Pulitzer, publishers who threw their weight around vigorously and would even instigate a shooting war if it boosted circulation, had given way to a time of more-genteel ownership, often the Ivy League–educated sons and daughters of the press barons. Even the name Pulitzer was expropriated; it became an annual award given to the best examples of serious journalism, and in most newsrooms became a far more coveted goal than increased circulation. There was a high wall, we were assured, between the business side of the newspaper and its editorial staff, and newsrooms were increasingly peopled by a new generation of white-collar journalists, gentlemen (and ladies) of the Fourth Estate, arbiters of style, taste, and decency, who took upon themselves the tasks of keeping government honest and educating the public. (In my 20-plus years as a newspaper reporter, I was always amused when skeptics suggested that I wrote just what the newspaper's owner told me to write. If only they knew how mightily the newsroom looked down its nose at the business side of the operation.)
This vision of a newspaper, one that prevailed at the highest levels of the craft for decades, ensured that the paper was not just a propaganda mill, the house organ of some rich man or political party, but a community of street-smart shoe-leather scholars who worked as the eyes, ears, and conscience of their city. This was the world of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, of David Halberstam's and Neil Sheehan's courageous reporting from Vietnam, and of countless other public-spirited examples of a responsible, serious journalism.
Even literary ambition began to creep into the pages of the great newspapers. At the best ones, when the material justified it, reporters were encouraged to write creatively and at length. A certain kind of reporter—and I was one—competed against others not so much for scoops, but for recognition, prizes, and tenured positions at papers where the rarefied work of "serious" journalism was underwritten. Mine was The Philadelphia Inquirer, where my byline read not "staff reporter" or "staff correspondent" but "staff writer," and which we writers called, in its heyday, "the greatest care-and-feeding system for journalism ever invented."
In this elevated climate, The Wall Street Journal was held in unique regard. Its disdain for street sales was defining. In appearance, it was defiantly dull and predictable. Its uniform gray vertical columns suggested the pinstripes on a banker's worsted suit. In its use of small line drawings instead of photographs, in its refusal to chase the same stories as everyone else, in its quirkiness and uncompromising complexity, The Journal broadcast its refusal to pander to readers. Every day the front page featured two "leders" and the incomparable "a-hed." These were long, ambitious, exceedingly well-written stories. A leder took a business or trend story and dug deeply into personalities and issues, whether it was a probe of backdated stock options for business executives by James Bandler and three other Journal writers, or Geeta Anand's moving narrative about the crisis at a biotech company that had been asked to provide an experimental drug for a dying child. The a-hed was a quirky profile or narrative, usually brilliantly reported, a master class in feature writing: Carrie Dolan on fainting goats, Barry Newman on a man who has a doctorate in bug gunk, or Tony Horwitz on going to work in a slaughterhouse. Breaking news, no matter how shocking, was relegated to a brisk summary in two regular columns. This was a serious newspaper for serious readers, and it became the favored daily of the financial and business classes, men and women too busy making money to worry about the more sensational stories of the day.
When journalists worry about the decline of newspapers, this sort of seriousness is what they fear is being lost. The Internet is in many ways a superior medium for journalism. It costs virtually nothing, in contrast to multimillion-dollar printing presses, giant rolls of paper and tankers of ink, and fleets of delivery trucks, to say nothing of the thousands of laborers needed to operate the equipment and distribute the product. But while the Web is rapidly destroying the business model that sustained all of the above, it has yet to develop institutions capable of replacing print newspapers as vehicles for great in-depth journalism, or conscious of themselves as upholding a public trust. Instead, the Web gives voice to opinionated, unedited millions. In the digital world, ignorance and crudity share the platform with rigor and taste; the independent journalist shares the platform with spinmeisters and con artists. Cable television and satellite radio have taken broadcast journalism in the same direction, crowding out the once-dominant networks, which strove for the ideal of objectivity, with new channels that all but advertise their politics. When all news is spun, we live in a world of propaganda.
The worst part of this is, the public doesn't seem to care.
Neither does Rupert Murdoch. The Australian mogul has never embraced the religion of modern American journalism. He scorns the pursuit of Pulitzers and sees the high-end work it rewards as journalists writing stories to impress other journalists. And he doesn't buy the ideal of objectivity. He sees it as pretense—or hypocrisy—because he perceives a distinct liberal skew to the established journalistic powers. In Murdoch's view, the public is best served not by objectivity, which he regards as impossible, but by "balance."
"It's very hard to be neutral," he told an audience at Georgetown University last April. "The fact is that CNN has always been extremely liberal, and never had a Republican or conservative voice on it. We would say that the difference is that we [at Fox] have equal voices from both sides. The more voices the better, and let's have them from all sides."
He rejects the idea that the media should be dominated by a few respected, independent voices; he embraces instead a din of competing voices and interests. He is a Jeffersonian, a believer in a lively free market of ideas (except, of course, where it doesn't suit his interests—notably in China, where he's willing to make nice with the oppressive regime), and he scoffs at those who see danger in his acquisitiveness, at those who worry about the ever-widening reach of his media empire. A young woman at the Georgetown event complained to him directly.
"As a citizen, I'm scared," she said. "Please convince me that this is not a threat to democracy."
"Is all media in one hand bad for democracy? Absolutely," Murdoch said. "We are a tiny fraction of the media landscape. There are millions of voices out there. We certainly don't have any monopolistic effect. Everything I have done in my life has been to create competition … We want to give people choices. The more choices, the better it is. To think that the media is concentrating is ignoring the facts. It is being fragmented in a thousand ways. I would agree with you that that's good. It doesn't suit my business, but …"
The audience laughed. He had disarmed them.
"Fair and Balanced"—the slogan of his right-leaning, flag-waving Fox News Channel—is an international joke, but Murdoch can embrace that slogan with a straight face because he means something particular by it. He means that its distinctively conservative tilt balances out the big liberal powers that dominate the media landscape.
The same worldview promises to shape his war on TheNew York Times. It would be hard to imagine Murdoch coloring TheJournal's crisply intelligent editorial pages any more conservative than they already are. But he can expand the number of pages devoted to opinion, as he has already done, and he can build TheJournal into a more general newspaper, broadening its coverage into the arts, religion, education, sports, and politics—areas where TheTimes is the dominant tastemaker and trendsetter. Murdoch sees TheTimes not just as a paper with primarily liberal politics but as a bastion of cultural elitism that wields a disproportionate influence over all aspects of American life. He wants his Journal to reflect another point of view, and to give people another choice.
What is the Murdochian point of view? It is not so easy to predict. His interests are dizzyingly diverse and famously open to change. He is a social liberal and a strong advocate of unfettered international trade. Other than that, he tends to be conservative, but he is also influenced by personalities, and has reportedly cozied up to the Clintons and warmed to Barack Obama. His various newspapers have staked a variety of public positions that are at least occasionally at odds with Murdoch's own—TheTimes of London, for instance, has been consistently critical of the repressive Communist regime in China, despite its owner's blatant and well-documented kowtowing.
He may well choose to take such a hands-off approach to The Journal's editorial product, if only to avoid trampling its eminent reputation, but no matter how scrupulously Murdoch avoids turning it into his global mouthpiece, it will be nearly impossible for him to avoid the appearance of doing so. His tentacles are so many and so long, it is not unusual for TheJournal to carry, in a single issue, three or four headlines touching upon its owner's dealings and interests—everything from new film and television releases to News Corporation's various global acquisition efforts. The Journal won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for its reporting on how the rapid economic growth in China has caused great troubles for the Chinese government and its people. These were stories that would not have pleased the Communist rulers Murdoch has been assiduously courting for decades. (Most of the staff of this prize-winning China bureau signed a petition urging the Bancroft family not to sell to Murdoch, arguing that his ownership would directly undercut their credibility, if not their professional freedom.)
At least some industry observers are willing to give Murdoch the benefit of the doubt on this.
"I think he has enough sense not to trash what makes the newspaper so valuable," said Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute. "He has owned TheTimes of London for more than 20 years, and it is still a serious newspaper."
Serious, perhaps, but few Londoners would argue that the newspaper is anything like what it once was. Robert Block, a veteran Journal reporter who now covers the space beat for the Orlando Sentinel, worked for TheTimes in the late 1990s—more than a decade after Murdoch effectively dragged it from its pinnacle as the leading British newspaper and turned it into a hustling tabloid engaged in an incessant battle for sensational scoops. As a correspondent in South Africa, Block ran headlong into the consequences of that transformation. His editor insisted one day that he get an unsupervised interview with a 10-year-old boy at the center of an international custody dispute. Every newspaper in London was gunning for the story. Block knew where the boy was, outside Johannesburg, and knew that his parents were not at home.
"Do you have kids?" he asked his editor.
"Yes," the man said.
"How would you feel if a reporter came after your child without approaching you first?"
"Look," he recalls his editor saying. "It's not your fucking kid and it's not my fucking kid. Now go do your fucking job."
Block refused, and quit. He joined The Wall Street Journal precisely because it was a newspaper whose values and priorities ran the opposite way. It wasn't just the paper's commitment to in-depth journalism, it was the commitment to finding unusual, unexpected stories, to giving readers not what they wanted every morning but stories they had never heard about before, and would hear about nowhere else—"You know, stories where you peel back the skin on something and really look underneath," he said. Block fell in love with the paper and stayed for nearly 11 years. Last October, when it became apparent that Murdoch's effort to buy Dow Jones would prevail, he grabbed a parachute and leapt, taking a job with the Sentinel. It was the equivalent of a power hitter for the New York Yankees opting to play for his scrappy hometown minor-league team.
"I knew that with his coming, there would inevitably be a clash of cultures," Block said. "Murdoch is nothing if not consistent. I knew that his coming and the changes he would bring would cause a certain amount of pain. At my age and stage of my career, I just knew it was something that I did not want to go through."
Murdoch is a panderer. Like most businessmen, he wants to figure out what his customers want and then deliver it. The salvation of The Wall Street Journal may well be that its highly educated readership wants precisely what the paper has been offering for more than a half century. But at the very least, it's clear that Murdoch intends to give that tradition a good working over.
In interviews before and after he bought Dow Jones, Murdoch complained about the length of Journal articles, and said he was not enamored of its a-heds and leders. Robert Thomson reiterated those points in his initial conference calls and meetings with the newspaper's far-flung staff, insisting that the fierce competition for these page-one slots would no longer be the only mark of excellence at the paper. He has echoed his boss's call for shorter stories and a more aggressively competitive approach, even as he has reassured staffers that he and Murdoch both respect and admire The Journal's traditions—positions that appear contradictory.
"Rupert clearly likes the Wall Street Journal brand," Block said. "But he doesn't like the things that made the brand what it was. It is clear that the long-form journalism that made so many of us want to join the newspaper just doesn't matter that much to Rupert."
What matters is winning the war—against The New York Times, and against everyone else. In his first months as the new boss, Thomson held several meetings with his top underlings during which he opened that day's issue of the Financial Times and circled the news items that TheJournal had missed. (One editor noted, "You don't have to do something like that very often for it to make a big impression.") At a session in Washington, Thomson irritated the bureau by repeatedly comparing TheJournal unfavorably with the FT, which his staffers regard as a far less impressive product—and which is, in fact, the very model of a business and financial newspaper that scorns the ambitious, in-depth story in favor of the scoop.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with a newspaper filled with actual news, but the best papers do not define what is news exactly the same way every other outlet does. This is particularly true of TheJournal, which institutionalized zigging when everyone else zagged. Reporters at TheJournal have always produced news stories off their beats, but they also pursued stories that other outlets did not, and the way to get ahead was to score with a leder or an a-hed on page one. Journal reporters tend to be a little bit more like M.B.A.s than scribes at other newspapers, and amid the competition to see who could score more of the ambitious and quirky page-one stories, some reporters actually kept spreadsheets of their performance. But this wasn't just a meaningless in-house contest; it was part of a long-running journalistic tour de force.
"Regular readers of The Journal were able to get a real sense of what was happening in the business world by reading those in-depth stories," said Gene Roberts, the much-heralded retired editor and reporter who once helmed The Philadelphia Inquirer. "They often gave you a sense of sea changes in society and the economy. It was why The Journal always had a strong readership not just in the big cities, but in fly-over country. They were consistently well reported, well written, well edited, and they were trustworthy and fascinating. They offered the kind of deep information that smart investors could make use of. It was a formula that worked for a long time, and it didn't stop working."
Under Thomson, though, the leder is shrinking and clearly endangered. The a-hed seems to sink lower and lower on the front page every day, like a setting sun.
"But it's still there," said Kate Kelly, who covers investment banking for the paper and who turned down a job offer from The New York Times last year just as Murdoch purchased TheJournal. She received an encouraging phone call from the new owner after she decided to stay, something she doubts would have happened under Dow Jones ownership.
And she's right that the long narrative story has so far survived. Yaroslav Trofimov's April yarn about dolphin teeth being used as currency in the Solomon Islands was in the finest tradition of the eccentric a-hed, and reporter Kevin Helliker's February saga of Toby Phalen Young, a middle-aged, respected Missouri wife and mother who fell in love with a convicted murderer 20 years her junior and helped him escape from prison, started in a box above the fold on page one and jumped to two full inside pages. The reporter said, "I encountered nothing but enthusiasm."
But the enthusiasm here was for a story, no matter how legitimate and well done, that contained undeniably sensational elements—a forbidden love affair, a prison escape, a respected community member's bizarre fall from grace. It had "feature film" written all over it; indeed, the movie rights have been sold. There isn't a newspaper in the country that wouldn't have wanted the story. But it's hardly typical of the more obscure subject matter that traditionally defined TheJournal's most prized offerings. And the old Journal didn't take its cues from what other newspapers would want.
Beating other papers at their own game is exactly what the new ownership seems to prize. In a conference call to the paper's Washington bureau in April, Thomson pointed enthusiastically to a page-one political story by the reporter Monica Langley. Headlined "He's Back," the article detailed the increasing influence of Bill Clinton on the presidential campaign of his wife, Hillary. The new publisher-editor described it as "perfect in every way." But Thomson's Washington-bureau audience was merely whelmed. True, the Langley piece was timely, it came on the heels of a resurgence in Hillary's campaign, and what it lacked in access it made up for in provocative analysis. In other words, it was the kind of story The New York Times would have loved to have. But the old Journal would not have cared, or at least not that much.
"It is preposterous to think that we would want to dilute our core competency," Thomson told a group of the paper's editors and reporters in a conference call this spring. But many at the paper fear that this is exactly what he is doing. Since Murdoch took over the paper, general-news items have proliferated. The What's News columns on page one, which formerly offered simply an executive briefing of the day's business and general news and effectively advertised The Journal's nonchalance about mainstream preoccupations, today has become a table of contents, each item referencing by page number a fuller story inside. So far, these stories are unimpressive—often just a brief compilation of wire-service reporting. In a world where many readers already know the news before they pick up the newpaper—and where The Journal's Web site, the natural place to emphasize breaking news, remains sequestered for the most part behind a subscribers-only firewall—this practice doesn't seem to make much sense.
It does, however, reflect classic Murdochian principles, and Murdoch does seem to have a sense for what sells. He apparently intends to expand the Journal staff to add meat to that broadened coverage, which would mean more stories like those found everywhere else. But even if aping the competition increased the newspaper's readership—and it is hard to see how it would—it would also destroy what made TheJournal great. In addition to stressing more breaking, general-news stories, Thomson has made clear that he intends to "clarify reporting lines," which is taken to mean that he plans to thin the ranks of the mid-level editors who were the newspaper's line of defense against sloppiness and error. It is worth noting that the number of corrections in the first quarter of this year, under Murdoch's reign, has risen by more than 25 percent compared with the first quarter of 2007, an increase that the company says reflects an increase in the number of stories the new Journal is running.
"People are running around frightened and confused," said one longtime Journal reporter. "The push is toward news, news, news. It feels like Murdoch wants to make us more like every other newspaper in the country."
"Murdoch says he wants to turn it into something more like The New York Times, but I suspect it will end up looking more like USA Today," said Roberts.
Another longtime Journal reporter remembers that a former editor in chief, Paul Steiger, used to warn reporters who complained about the paper's hidebound ways, "It could be worse—we could be owned by Rupert Murdoch."
Let me say one thing," Murdoch told his new staff on the day he took over the paper. "As we go forwahd, you will probably find, aaaaah, an evah-increasing concentration on globalization, the whole world, and digitization. But in spite of that, for many, many years to come, The Wall Street Journal will be a key frontispiece to everything we do. So thank you very, very much."
If the new owner's comments were jovial and enthusiastic, Thomson's follow-up sent a chill through the newsroom.
"The world is changing exponentially," he said. "While it's right to be respectful of the past, these days it is certainly fatal to be bound by history. He who stands still will be overrun."
Their audience was of roughly three minds, according to a Journal staffer who dissected the newsroom's mood for me. There were those who were already making plans to leave, or knew they would jump ship at the first decent opportunity. He called this group "the Extremists"; it included reporters like the Pulitzer-winning Bandler, who recently left for Fortune magazine. Then there were those who knew that the takeover could spell disaster for the kind of journalism they loved, but who were reluctant to believe that Murdoch would really dismantle something so admirable and successful. He called this group "the Hopefuls."
"And then there was the third portion of the room," he said. "This is a big group. These are the people who see the tribulations of the industry, who felt sure that if nothing had changed there would be certain cutbacks and layoffs in TheJournal's future, who were feeling the general dread that all newsrooms in America feel right now. And they thought, Here's an owner who is going to invest! My job is secure! He'll beef up the paper, and even if this means we may become more like Fox News, it's worth it because we will still have the opportunity to do great work. These are the people who believed that Marcus Brauchli would save them. This is the group that I call 'Naive.'"
At the end of that session, with his typical insouciance, Murdoch again took the mike, to conclude the show.
"Well, I think that's all we have to say," he said. "So you better get back to work and make sure you're not scooped tomorrow."


text:
I hope you enjoy your watermelon, fireworks and parades this Independence Day. I'm sort of burned out on the holiday.
Somehow or another I got corralled into proofreading a history textbook chapter on the American Revolution. Whether because of political correctness, a desire to give the material a contemporary feel or just plain sloppy research, the authors conducted a Boston Massacre of the facts. I assure you that:
- Thomas Paine stirred up the colonists with a pamphlet called "Common Sense," not "Well, Duh!"
- The Intolerable Acts were not what you have to endure during the early weeks of "American Idol."
- The "Don't Tread On Me" flag did not have "...unless you're wearing the latest Air Jordans" in fine print.
- As the organizer of the first Committee of Correspondence, Samuel Adams never used the abbreviation ROFLMPWO (Rolling On Floor Laughing My Powdered Wig Off).
- The Stamp Act Congress was organized to deal with oppressive taxes imposed by the British, not to choose between "young Elvis" and "fat Elvis."
- The Patriots and the Loyalists (ignore any remaining references to "the Patriots Versus the Steelers"!) argued over many things, but whether the Liberty Bell sounded better on vinyl or in digital format was not one of them.
- Despite its appeal to urban audiences, there was no "Midnight Low-Ride of Paul Revere." And it is only 21st century imprecision that would begin a poem "On the 18th of April in 75-ish..."
- The famous "shot heard round the world" was met with cheers, not a half-hearted NRA observation of "Yeah, but if they'd had a higher-capacity magazine..."
- When Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap, he called it "macaroni," not "gluten free."
- Patrick Henry indeed declared "Give me liberty or give me death," not "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
- Thomas Jefferson realized that government derives power from the consent of the governed - not from Ben Franklin's cockamamie kite!
- The leaders of the Revolution were keenly concerned about "natural rights" - not "genetically modified rights."
- When John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence large enough for King George III to read it across the Atlantic, it met with the approval of his peers - not an outburst of "John Hancock? What kind of Independence Day autograph is that??? I was hoping for Will Smith."
- No evidence exists that Betsy Ross organized an early needle exchange program.
- The Minutemen were brave colonial soldiers, not "pizza delivery guys with a really ambitious business model."
- Naval hero John Paul Jones did not think the nation's founding should be marked as "Co-Dependence Day," so he did not utter the words, "I have not yet begun to enable."
- Valley Forge was the scene of valiant sacrifice, not the composition of the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
- George Washington was declared Father of Our Country because of his selfless leadership skills, not a DNA test and a sleazy private investigator named Mike.
One of my friends has the unenviable task of proofreading the chapter on World War II. My only advice is, if the section on Gen. Douglas MacArthur's retreat from the Philippines has him promising, "I shall re-gift," get ready for a really long ordeal.
Danny welcomes reader e-mail responses at email@example.com and visits to his Facebook fan page "Tyree's Tyrades".
I hope you enjoy your watermelon, fireworks and parades this Independence Day. I'm sort of burned out on the holiday.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I like those days.
Then, other days, it flares back up, and he's stuck in bed on his side and that's no fun for anyone. There is a lot of sweating and discomfort, and flipping from side to back to side, and there are lots of pillows and teeth brushings in bed.
It sucks, actually.
We had a good day, despite all of this, the other day. Followed by a really bad couple of days.
Thank God for grace. If we didn't have grace with each other, I'm sure we wouldn't be able to keep going, because this is really hard, and it won't leave us alone and we're so tired.
The other night, I slept in the guest room. It was sad. I didn't want to be alone. But the muscle spasms wouldn't stop and I couldn't sleep, so Michael insisted I go.
I begged for mercy as I finally fell asleep on my tear-drenched pillow. I was pretty much out of hope. But, I eventually did fall asleep.
In my dream, Michael was standing in the doorway of the guest bedroom (which is upstairs), telling me it would be okay. I felt comforted in my dream, but then when I woke up, it actually made me feel worse, because I know that's never going to happen.
He'll never stand in a doorway. He'll probably never even see the upstairs of our house. He'll never be able to scoop me up, and carry me and hold me. He can tell me it's going to be okay. He can give me a pep talk, and pray for me, and be strong for me emotionally and spiritually, when I'm spent.
But not if it's not for grace.
Because, he's not perfect, he's human. And I'm not perfect, I'm human.
And this big, huge thing in our marriage also isn't perfect, but it's not human, so we can't even reason with it, or bargain with it.
It's concrete. It doesn't budge.
So, we must.
I cried so many tears over the last few days because I just wanted so badly to be rescued. I want that man standing in the doorway, surprising me with his strength, to scoop me up and save me.
I get so tired of saving myself.
The thing about being married to someone who sometimes literally can't move toward me, is that even when I don't want to/don't think I can/I'm sick of doing it myself, I have to be the one to move.
I have a choice. I can move away from him, or I can move toward him.
Often times, I don't get this right on the first try. And all I do is make things worse. I hate it when I do that.
To the other wives in this situation, make the right choice. Move toward him.
Husbands, remember that your wife wants to be rescued. She understands what you can and what you can't do. Rescue her in the way that you can. It means so much.
John Eldredge describes this need that we as women have, so well:
"I wasn't mean; I wasn't evil. I was nice. And let me tell you, a hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs. She needs a lover and a warrior, not a Really Nice Guy."
― John Eldredge, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul
This morning, I told Michael about my dream. I don't usually tell him about those dreams, because I can't say the words without tears and I can't stand to see tears well up in his eyes. But, I told him, then I laid down next to him and we held on.
Now, as I write, and process, I'm reminded of a Susan Ashton song from the 1990s. This song was on one of the first "Christian" CDs I owned as a new Christian teenager. I've always loved it.
So, you'll pardon the cheesiness of the 90s with me, right? Because here it is, in all its YouTube glory:
You Move Me
by Susan Ashton
This is how it seems to me
Life is only therapy
Real expensive
And no guarantee
So I lie here on the couch
With my heart hanging out
Frozen solid with fear
Like a rock in the ground
Oh but you move me
You give me courage I didn't
Know I had
You move me on
I can't go with you
And stay where I am
So you move me on
Here is how love was to me
I could look and not see
Going through the emotions
Not knowin' what they mean
And it scared me so much
That I just wouldn't budge
I might have stayed there forever
If not for your touch
Oh but you move me
Out of myself and into the fire
You move me
Now I'm burning with love
And with hope and desire
How you move me
You go whistling in the dark
Making light of it
Making light of it
And I follow with my heart
Laughing all the way
Oh 'cause you move me
You get me dancing and you
Make me sing
You move me
Now I'm taking delight
In every little thing
How you move me
So, let's be brave. Let's move toward each other. Let's give and receive grace. Let's rescue and be rescued. And hold on tight. Because the bad day won't last forever. And when it is over, we want to be closer to each other, not further apart.


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The Power of One
Guest Post by Nightprowlkitty from Docudharma
Crossposted at Docudharma, Daily Kos, My Left Wing, Open Left, The Sanctuary, and They gave us a republic...
If you wish to repost this essay you can download a .txt file of the html here (right click and save). Permission granted.
Give Bush and Cheney a fair trial -- something they have not bothered with since they stole office.
It's funny how the powers that be in the media and government are running around with their big fat excuses as to why we can't hold these criminals accountable for their crimes. It all boils down to "It's too hard!!!"
It's too hard. It would affect too many people. It would interfere with the crucial work of restoring our economy. Blah blah blah. Not one of these folks say, however, that no crime has been committed, no law has been broken. No one says that.
I find that stunning. We all know, at least those of us who have been paying attention, that Bush and his crew of crooks have broken the law over and over again.
And Cheney says "What you gonna do about it?" And Cheney says "oh, the Dems knew about this and approved it, hell they wanted us to be even tougher than we were!"
And we should believe Cheney ... why?
I don't want speculation any more. I want the truth, the facts, what really happened. Only a special prosecutor can get that information, someone who is inured to the politics of Washington D.C. by being given the independent power to investigate.
What I like about this petition is that it shows the power of the individual citizen. This is not a grassroots effort decided by committee. A couple of folks got together and came up with the text and others jumped in to work further on it and spread it around.
The power of the individual citizen.
I am extremely annoyed at the argument that we citizens are somehow childlike creatures who don't know all the real problems of our country and so we shouldn't cry and whine about our "pet issues" when the government knows so much more about what is important and should be made a priority.
We ARE the government. The only people who will take back power as citizens, are citizens! That's us.
To me, Obama's election is a signal that we can now start taking back that individual power, our individual rights. It's not for Obama or any elected representative to tell me what I should make a priority. I get to decide that for myself. They'll do their jobs, and I'll do mine.
The measure of our success with this petititon will be the resistance from the powers that be, the Dems, the Repubs, Obama, the media. The more we read about how this is not a good idea, getting a special prosecutor, the more we'll know we have them on the run.
Many of us have sent this petition to friends and family, whether they be politically agreeable to us or not. One by one people will sign. This isn't "organized" grassroots and it's netroots only insofar as the structure.
To me, this is about the power of each indviidual citizen, not resting happy with the decisions of our elected representatives but standing up for what we feel is right and making our voices heard.
We need to know the truth about the crimes committed in our names. We need to have every American citizen aware of what has been done so there can be no denials or excuses.
At this time, the only line between tyranny and freedom is an informed citizenry. By signing this petition and working to make it known we will not accept anything less than full accountability for torture being done in our name, we are exercising our power, not the power one step removed of the three branches of government.
We have power collectively and we also have power individually. I think the citizenry of this country are going to be tested enormously as we have to let our representatives know we are not asking for favors on our "pet causes" but taking our government back, of, by and for the people.


text:
Alec Baldwin donates $25,000 to save sports program at NY school
Alec Baldwin wants to make sure students at a central New York school have the opportunity to get outside and play ball.
Local media outlets report that the actor was in the Syracuse area this past weekend to help a local high school's fundraising campaign save its modified sports program.
The star of "30 Rock" attended an event held Sunday in the gym at West Genesee High School, where one of his nephews plays sports. Baldwin's mother and two sisters live in the Syracuse area.
Baldwin grew up on Long Island, where his father was a high school football and baseball coach.
He donated $25,000 to save modified sports at West Genesee this school year and is helping raise money for next year's programs.


text:
A brain training computer game developed by British neuroscientists has been shown to improve the memory of patients in the very earliest stages of dementia and could help such patients avert some symptoms of cognitive decline.
Researchers who developed the "game show"-like app and tested its effects on cognition and motivation in a small trial found that patients who played the game over a period of a month had around a 40 percent improvement in their memory scores.
"We hope to extend these findings in future studies of healthy ageing and mild Alzheimer's disease," said George Savulich, who led the study at Cambridge University.
Dementia is a huge global health problem. The World Health Organization says some 47.5 million people had dementia in 2015, and that number is rising rapidly as life expectancy increases and societies age.
The condition is incurable and there are few drugs that can alleviate the symptoms – which include declining memory, thinking, behavior, navigational and spatial skills and the gradual loss of ability to perform everyday tasks.
Publishing his results in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, Savulich said that as well as improving their memory scores in the game, patients who played it retained more complex visual information than those who didn't.
Independent experts said the study's findings were encouraging, but that the app needed be tested against other forms of brain training in trials involving more people.
"While this type of brain training will not ultimately be able to prevent or cure memory diseases like dementia, (it is) a promising way to improve early memory symptoms of the disease," said Tara Spires-Jones of the University of Edinburgh.
Source: Reuters


text:
Harry goes to Muggle school
Keeping Harry Potter out of the classroom is about as impossible as suppressing Fred and George Weasley, the mischievous twins brimming with high jinks in J.K. Rowling's popular series.
So what do teachers do when students come back to school in September still immersed in the final book of the Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"? And how have the books had an impact on education?
Susannah Richards, associate professor of education at Eastern Connecticut State University, urged her students — future teachers — to attend some of the midnight happenings that sprouted up around the release of the book so they will have something to talk about with the students this fall when they convene in the classroom.
"A bunch of them said, 'I hadn't considered that perspective — this could help me with my students next year,' " Richards said.
And while the books may not be used too often by teachers in a formal curriculum, being acquainted with the series can only be a plus, given its popularity and the book reports that focus on the magical world of Harry Potter.
However, Richards doesn't recommend encouraging students to write about the books or to have teachers piggyback on the interest.
Instead, she advises educators to just let the children enjoy them, and keep their fascination with Harry Potter separate from classroom work.
"We have a tendency at times to overanalyze things, which kind of takes the fun out of things. If you've already found something and developed a passion for it, you don't need it torn apart and dissected," Richards said. "Wouldn't it be a horrible thing to be a sixth-grader and read all the Harry Potter books and then be told you have to write about them when you didn't want to?"
But it's not surprising educators have seen the intrinsic value of Harry Potter carry into the classroom, instilling good reading skills, as Jean Wierzbinski, principal of Sayles Elementary School in Sprague, has observed.
"You're getting into higher-level thinking, not just who, what, where and why," Wierzbinki said. "There's a higher level of analogies and pulling things together, which is great."
The books, she said, tie into some of the strategies educators use in reading, such as making connections. So if students are reading a Harry Potter book independently, they can use it to make connections to an instructional book they are reading in class.
One feature of the Harry Potter books educators should appreciate is the highly visual aspect of Rowling's environments.
Visualization, Wierzbinski said, is another hallmark of a good reader, and the ability to visualize also increases comprehension.
And teaching moments happen in the Potter books through the characters who attend Hogwarts. Children can identify with what some of the Hogwarts students go through — and absorb the lessons Rowling instills in the series.
Procrastination is a big one, with Ron and Harry often finding themselves at the mercy of their more academic friend, Hermione, to help them with their homework.
"I remember in one of the books, Hermione gives Harry a book that whenever he opens it, it gives him a friendly motto on getting his homework done," said Robert Maynard Jr., an 11-year-old Potter fan from Colchester.
He recited the catchy phrase from memory: "Once you've dotted all your I's and crossed your T's, you can do whatever you please."
"That's always an important thing to remember," Robert said.
Norwich (Conn.) Bulletin
Reach Sharma Howard at email@example.com.


text:
May 2016: Massive Surge in Luxury Real Estate Demand in Georgina
Continuing the conclusions from last month's report, higher-end and luxurious properties have played a consistent role in Georgina's Spring Market....Read more
May 2016: Slowing growth in price of homes for sale in Georgina
It appears as though the market has settled on a "new normal" average price for homes in Georgina, in the...Read more
May 2016: Steady Growth in Real Estate Sales Volume in Georgina
Homes for sale in Keswick continued to lead the way in regards to transaction volume for the month of May,...Read more
10% of $500,000 - down payment regulation & Georgina Real Estate.
There's an old saying among circles in commercial real estate that goes something like this: If you want to live...Read more
Neighbourhood Open House:
Sometimes You have to think outside the box, You need to think outside the Open House There are a few...Read more
Walkability in Uptown Keswick
Late in 2015 I wrote this article about why neighbourhood walkability is going to play a large role in the...Read more
Walkability in Jackson's Point
Late in 2015 I wrote this article about why neighbourhood walkability is going to play a large role in the...Read more
Helping Grow Greener Communities: Sustainable Real Estate
via Scott Carter - University of Guelph Green business is alive at The University of Guelph's College of Business and...Read more
March 2016 Georgina Real Estate Market Report
Click here to download the full report in .pdf form I've been kind enough to include a Georgina MLS Neighbourhood...Read more
From changes in Ontario's Electronic Commerce Act that enable new home buyers to sign their Agreements of Purchase and Sale...Read more
Land Transfer Tax
Buyers in most areas will have to add Land Transfer Taxes to their closing costs Land transfer taxes are a...Read more
Making an Offer
When it comes time to make an offer, your Real Estate Sales Representative can provide current market information which will...Read more
Mortgage Terms and Fees
Mortgage Term Over the course of your amortization period, you may have many different mortgages. The term is simply the...Read more
Mortgage Types
Conventional and High Ratio Mortgages To qualify for a conventional mortgage, you simply have to have a 20% down payment...Read more


text:
Extended Breastfeeding and the Law
Elizabeth N. Baldwin
from Breastfeeding Abstracts, February 2001, Volume 20, Number 3, pp. 19-20.
Misinformation about breastfeeding affects everyone in our society, including lawyers, judges, psychologists, and social workers. While there is no harm in breastfeeding past infancy and allowing a child to wean naturally, many professionals in social service agencies and family law courts are quite shocked to learn just how long a child may breastfeed. Lacking accurate information, these officials may overreact and conclude that breastfeeding a child of two, three, or four is somehow improper. As more mothers nurse longer, healthcare and lactation professionals need to be aware of legal issues surrounding extended breastfeeding, so that they can educate their counterparts in the legal and social service systems.
Breastfeeding and the Courts
The issue of extended breastfeeding has been raised numerous times in United States courts, in both social service agency and family law cases. There are older reports of family law cases in which the court's custody decision was affected by the belief that the child should have been weaned at an earlier age.1 However, a more recent custody case recognized that it was not inappropriate to breastfeed past infancy and discounted the father's claims that it was detrimental to the child 's development.2 It is not uncommon for fathers to raise questions about extended breastfeeding to gain leverage in custody decisions, even fathers who were supportive of long-term breastfeeding prior to the divorce. This tactic has been shown to work. After all, what do judges know about breastfeeding!
Social service agencies have looked at the issue of extended breastfeeding numerous times over the past ten years, but not one social service agency has upheld any finding that extended breastfeeding constitutes abuse or neglect, or is in any way harmful to the child. In only two situations has a child been removed from the home. Several years ago, a social service agency in Colorado removed a five-year-old child because the mother was still breastfeeding, but the court ordered the child to be immediately returned to his family. Last year, in Illinois, a child was removed from the mother 's custody to foster care for over six months because a judge issued an initial finding that the child was at risk of serious emotional harm because of not being weaned. This case received a great deal of publicity. Though the case is still in the process of being resolved, the child has been returned to his mother, and the judge has vacated the finding of neglect.
In 1992, in a highly publicized case in New York State, a mother claimed that she had lost custody of her child for a year because she was breastfeeding at age three. This mother had reported experiences of sexual arousal during breastfeeding, and authorities removed the child from the home, for fear that this mother might sexually abuse this child. Later, the social service agency in New York that took this action issued a formal statement, saying that there was more to this case than could be disclosed to the press, due to confidentiality laws. The statement also added that extended breastfeeding or even arousal during breastfeeding were not reasons for removing a child from a mother's custody. Over the next few years, other social service agencies have also investigated cases related to extended breastfeeding, but have not removed children from their homes. These cases have been closed once officials received accurate information about extended breastfeeding and natural weaning. Breastfeeding, at any age, is not abuse or neglect.
Information about Weaning
Mothers who allow their child to wean naturally are being responsive to the child's need. Contrary to the suspicions of those in our society who view breastfeeding as somehow being a sexual act, mothers who nurse older children are not satisfying pathological needs of their own.
Mothers who have breastfed past infancy rarely expected to nurse for so long, but they continue because it is so important to their child. At one time children all over the world were breastfed until they weaned naturally. It is only in our modern society that extended breastfeeding has fallen so far out of fashion that it is viewed as an abnormal act.
Breastfeeding experts do not advocate a specific age for weaning, as this is a personal decision for each mother and child. Authorities do suggest that it is best to let children wean naturally. For instance, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all babies be breastfed for at least one year, or as long as mutually desirable.3 In support of this recommendation, the AAP's statement cites a study that discusses the age of weaning among American women who practice extended breastfeeding. Weaning ages in the study extend through age 6.4
Many people are surprised to learn that experts consider 4 or 5 years to be the average age of weaning worldwide.5 Research by Dr. Katherine Dettwyler, anthropologist at Texas A&M University, argues that the natural weaning age for human beings falls between 2.5 and 6 years of age.6 An informal survey conducted by Dr. Dettwyler indicated that many more women in the United States are nursing children past infancy, and she has reports of children as old as ten years old still breastfeeding. So many women are breastfeeding past infancy that two books on the subject have chapters on nursing past age four (MOTHERING YOUR NURSING TODDLER, by Norma Jane Bumgarner, and The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning, by Kathleen Huggins).7, 8 Many people, however, are not familiar with the idea of extended breastfeeding, since older nursing children do not nurse frequently or urgently, and most mothers nursing an older child do not do so openly in public. They may not even admit to their doctors that they are still breastfeeding. It is ironic that our society does not seem to object to children sucking their fingers, pacifiers, or bottles past infancy, but many are outraged when a child who can walk and talk is still breastfeeding. Because our culture tends to view the breast as sexual, it can be hard for people to realize that breastfeeding is the natural way to nurture children.
More and more experts and professionals are encouraging extended breastfeeding, as there is substantial evidence that health benefits continue and increase the longer the child breastfeeds. The current recommendations of the World Health Organization and UNICEF are for all mothers to breastfeed until age 2 or beyond. Studies have shown that the antibodies and immunities in a mother's milk are more concentrated the longer she nurses, to make up for the fact that the child does not nurse as often. Recent studies also indicate that extended periods of breastfeeding offer mothers protection against breast cancer.9, 10
Children who nurse past infancy have their own developmental timetables. Many nurse for only a few minutes at bedtime, upon waking, or at nap time. Some may go days or even weeks without asking to nurse. Some wean only to resume nursing when stressful events occur in their lives, such as the birth of a sibling. When little ones get sick, most mothers find that the amount of nursing increases. Breastfeeding is primarily for comfort as children pass their first birthday, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some people may assume that if a child is nursing past infancy, it must be influenced by the mother 's desires or wishes. To the contrary, the child is the one who determines if breastfeeding is going to continue. It is well known in the field of lactation that it is very difficult to make a child breastfeed.
The Professional's Responsibility
Health professionals, social service workers, and judges and lawyers in the field of family law need to become informed about extended breastfeeding. The good intentions of a poorly informed professional can result in a false report of abuse, or even a child being placed in foster care needlessly. Personal feelings or beliefs about breastfeeding should not be allowed to affect professional judgment. Unfortunately, women have been reported to social service agencies for extended breastfeeding by the very professionals from whom they sought help. Several years ago in Florida, a mental health professional reported a client to social services for allowing a five-year-old child to try breastfeeding again after he had weaned. The father was attempting to use this incident as a weapon against the mother in a family law situation. The therapist unwittingly went along with the father's concern, and reported that the mother-child relationship was dysfunctional. When caseworkers at the social service agency learned more about extended breastfeeding and weaning, the case was closed.
If a mother is reported to a social service agency for extended breastfeeding, or if the issue arises in a divorce or family law case, health professionals can assist by providing accurate information about the issue to everyone involved. Most of the time this sharing of information resolves the situation. If it does not, direct testimony from an expert may be needed to resolve the case in the mother's favor.
Elizabeth N. Baldwin is an attorney, certified family mediator, and La Leche League Leader in Miami, Florida. Her practice concentrates primarily on family law cases where extended breastfeeding and mother-child separation are at issue. Ms. Baldwin is a member of La Leche League's Professional Advisory Board, Legal Advisory Council.
1. Shunk v. Walker, 589 A. 2d 1303 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1991); Friendshuh v. Headlough, 504 N. W. 2d 104 (S. D. 1993); In the Matter of the Marriage of Holcomb, 888 P. 2d 1046 (Or. Ct. App. 1995).
2. Hoplamazian v. Hoplamazian, 740 So. 2d 1100 (Ala. App. 1999)
3. American Academy of Pediatrics Work Group on Breastfeeding. Breastfeeding and the use of human milk. Pediatrics 1997; 1000:1035-39.
4. Sugarman, M. and K. A. Kendall-Tackett. Weaning ages in a sample of American women who practice extended breastfeeding. Clin Pediatr 1995; 34:642-47.
5. Lawrence, R. A. and R. M. Lawrence. Breastfeeding:A Guide for the Medical Profession. St. Louis: Mosby, 1999.
6. Dettwyler, K. A. A time to wean. BREASTFEEDING ABSTRACTS 1994; 14:3-4.
7. Bumgarner, N. J. MOTHERING YOUR NURSING TODDLER. Schaumburg: La Leche League International, 2000.
8. Huggins, K. and L. Ziedrich. The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning. Boston: Harvard Common Press, 1994.
9. Layde, P. M. et al. The independent associations of parity, age at first full- term pregnancy, and duration of breastfeeding with the risk of breast cancer. J Clin Epidemiol 1989; 42:966-72.
10. Newcomb, P. A. et al. Lactation and a reduced risk of premenopausal breast cancer. New Engl J Med 1994; 332:81-87.


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I Am In A Room
I sit in a room that is silent.
Yes, there are cringes and twinges of floorboards
and pipe songs and even the echo of someone upstairs,
but the cosmos is always ringing a little.
It is silent.
My mind makes its war in the room –
plastering memories along the molding of the floor
and hanging dead hopes from the high ceilings
and using the walls to buttress itself as it catapolts
its knives and leers and cocky little smiles,
knowing that I on the couch could have done better.
There is no noise in the room;
I am breaking.
The ground is a minefield.
I cannot move from this spot for fear I shall explode
one of its tricky little pitfalls,
and trip the explosion it's loaded in my brain
with the fire of one toe placed wrongly.
It's not a dance.
It's not a limp.
I do not move.
I am silent.
I breathe.
The one defiance against death,
this slow, meaningless rise and fall
that is the only assertion that I still am
within this tired, still un-noise.
I make no sounds.
But I make change with the room.
A dollar-fifty oxygen,
a 23-year exhale.
Or something like that.
The math's never really made sense
and I am too quiet to ask.
Maybe I am being shortchanged.
I really don't know.
I am in a room.
And the room and I are silent.
The cosmos is ringing.
But this room has no door.


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The eye's have it!
If you haven't noticed, there is a theme to my most recent blogs. The relationship between ourselves and our technology is changing!
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- Written by Dan Fisher
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- Comments: DISQUS_COMMENTS
If you haven't noticed, there is a theme to my most recent blogs. The relationship between ourselves and our technology is changing! You have read about neural interfaces, the headsets that capture your brainwaves and convert them into basic commands on the computer. This amazing technology is improving daily. Disappearing keyboards was the topic of my most recent blog, detailing how input is being delivered through a variety of technologies and methods.
Enter Tobii an international company that focuses (no pun intended) on the eyes. Using technology in a similar context as face recognition technology, Tobii tracks and takes commands from the eye.
Stephen Hawking, world-renowned theoretical physicist with ALS (Lou Gehrig Disease), has been using eye-tracking technology to communicate for years. Of course, there was a cost to be ahead of your time; but today, Tobii, even though it is expensive costing about $10,000 per device for the PC Eye version, can have a tremendous life enriching impact for an individual who can't move their hands. Now they can surf the net just by looking around.
The application of this technology continues to advance and is becoming available at a lower cost. Tobii has released a version called Gaze with the implications pertain to productivity improvements. The device works with Microsoft Windows 8 operating system. Using Gaze, a call center operator can select the call answer tile that has been programmed using Windows 8. The call center operator simply looks at the tile and taps the mouse, keyboard, or touch pad... that's right, no movement of the cursor required, just a tap. Gaze knows what tile you are looking by tracking your eye. A tap becomes a mouse click, but you did not move the mouse, Gaze did. Booya! Call answered.
Using this technology in a call center environment can significantly reduce the number of key strokes and mouse moves by the millions per month, reducing fatigue and increasing productivity significantly.
What next? How about a keypad at the check-out counter that you just have to look at to enter your pin! How secure is that?! You long no longer have to be concerned about shoulder surfing pin grabbers!
Tagged under Retail Banking, Technology, Blogs, Beyond the Bank, Customers,


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- February 13, 2013
Three competitive races with six candidates vying for the Longboat Key Town Commission are a sign of community engagement. It's healthy.
Likewise, the outcomes of the three races will be important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is they will send a message to Longboat Key taxpayers, residents and voters. Taxpayers and commissioners alike will know, definitively, for the first time in two years which direction voters want the town to go.
In truth, you can argue the town's sitting commission doesn't exactly reflect the will of the voters. Three of the seven current commissioners were appointed to their seats — Commissioners Pat Zunz, Terry Gans and Phill Younger. And Commissioner Jack Duncan has run unopposed twice. You can interpret Duncan's victory as a testament to his effectiveness.
Indeed, unless a commissioner errs, Longboat voters have shown a willingness to let incumbents run unopposed. Certainly, former Mayor Hal Lenobel comes to mind. In more than a decade on the commission, he encountered only one opponent, Phill Younger, in 2010, with Lenobel winning that race as well.
So it is good for Longboat Key voters to have choices, particularly as the town continues to move through a generational change and toward a new age. To paraphrase the old advertising line: This is not your father's Longboat Key any more.
Indeed, it's not. And as we sense from conversations among many Longboaters, there is an overwhelming desire for the town government to take the necessary steps to create a framework and foundation that will allow Longboat Key to remain one of Florida's premier, high-value residential resort communities — in tune with the consumers of the 21st century. Longboaters want the Key to "up its game."
Who best to lead that transition? That is one question on which to base your vote.
But we'll add a second question, one that, in spite of his prickliness, former Longboat Key Commission Al Green said he often used when judging Town Commission candidates: Which candidate do you think will perform best in those tough, unpredictable situations that inevitably arise? Which candidate has the wisdom to do what's right and best?
And let's not forget the other test. We like to invoke the wisdom of economist Arthur Laffer. As he contends, in the end, every election is a referendum on the incumbent's performance. It is indeed.
Given all of the above as the backdrop, we offer some observations and comments and our recommendations on the six candidates in this year's town elections:
AT-LARGE (one-year term)
Terry Gans (incumbent) / Irwin Pastor
If you remain stuck on old news and hold grudges, you are likely to judge these two candidates on which side they stood in the Longboat Key Club and Resort expansion dispute. In short, Gans supported it; Pastor opposed it.
Pastor, in fact, did more than oppose it. He was and is vice president of the Islandside Property Owners Coalition, the group that was the most strident and organized opponent to the Key Club's proposal. Or, depending on your point of view, Pastor was vice president of the coalition that argued in public hearings and showed in the courts the Town Commission wrongly adjudicated the Key Club's application, overstepping the bounds of the town codes.
There is much more to these two candidates than the Key Club dispute, however. And they should be judged on those merits.
In his one year of serving in the seat vacated by Commissioner Lenobel, Gans has shown a strong understanding of the nuances of the issues confronting the Town Commission. This comes from Gans being an engaged and interested citizen; for the past few years he has been a fixture in the audience at Town Commission and planning board meetings. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone outside of the town commissioners and town managers who is more attuned than Gans and on top of such issues as the town budget, beach renourishment, town attorney replacement, zoning codes, union pensions, you name it. Gans is a student of the town.
Here are other Gans attributes: He has an ability to cut to the quick of an issue and apply straight-forward common sense to resolving them. If you have read any of his op-ed contributions to this paper, he demonstrates clear thinking.
On this next point, it's a toss-up between Gans and Pastor: They are equally passionate about Longboat Key and fostering a bright future here. They want to make Longboat Key better.
Gans has been a positive contributor to problem solving on the commission. He has commission experience over Pastor. But those who know Pastor know that problem solving — taking struggling companies and rebuilding them, or creating startups and growing them — has been the hallmark of an impressive career.
Pastors' two primary business ventures were that of CEO of the Pepsi-Cola Buffalo Bottling Corp. in Buffalo, N.Y., and South Jersey Distributors Corp., a beer distributor based in Pleasantville, N.J. In addition, he served as founder and CEO of five other companies; and CEO or board chairman of three not-for-profit associations, including founder of the Buffalo Niagara Sports Foundation. Pastor has repeatedly tried to convey in public forums that he has spent nearly 50 years of his business career negotiating to bring sides together to move forward. He is big on making deals from which all parties walk away satisfied.
To be sure, Pastor would bring an astute business perspective and wisdom to the Town Commission. He is qualified.
But here's what voters need to think about: Pastor hasn't been involved in town government until the Key Club dispute. In forums, he acknowledged not being on top of details on some town issues.
And there's the obvious question some residents ask: Would he be a shill for IPOC. On this, Pastor is insistent he is his own man. Pastor says he served IPOC as the peacemaker-negotiator between IPOC and Loeb Partners, a buffer between IPOC's combative president, Bob White, and Loeb's tough CEO, Joseph Lesser.
If you accept the regimen that elections are referenda on incumbents, we would argue Gans has shown he is and would be a good commissioner. At the same time, so would Pastor. This is a tough call.
Recommendation: Gans has earned the one year left on the term. We encourage Pastor to stay involved and run again. He has a lot to offer Longboat Key.
AT-LARGE (two-year term)
Gene Jaleski / Phill Younger (incumbent)
Phill Younger is one of the best analytical thinkers and one of the smartest members of the Town Commission.
While he was among the group of commissioners who voted in favor of the Key Club expansion application, Younger has a breadth of contributions that shows he is an independent thinker and willing to challenge the status quo. This has been especially so on the town's finances and beach strategy. Longboat taxpayers should feel comfortable having Younger watch over town spending.
For all of Younger's attributes, you could say the same about his opponent, Gene Jaleski. He is always analyzing town issues. And he, more than anyone on Longboat Key and longer than anyone on Longboat Key, has urged the Town Commission to challenge the status quo on just about every major issue. We all know his trigger points: cellular service and beach renourishment topping the list. Like Younger, he is well versed on virtually every issue that confronts the Town Commission.
But Longboat Key taxpayers have already experienced what happens when Jaleski sits at the dais. He gets marginalized.
To a great extent, Jaleski's best contribution to the town and its taxpayers is to do what he does best — coax, nudge and cajole those in charge to think harder, be smarter and constantly look for the better way; to watchdog and bulldog the sitting commissioners.
Recommendation: Younger.
Jim Brown / Larry Grossman
This race is similar to that of Phill Younger and Gene Jaleski — the experienced incumbent, Brown, versus the coaxer, the challenger, the idea man who hasn't quite been able to prove yet to the voters that he could move the town forward in a meaningful way, Grossman.
Mayor Brown, understandably, is the bull's eye for those who don't want to forget the Key Club dispute. He has the big title.
And he's not afraid to be blunt-spoken about the way he feels. Sometimes he gets passionate, with a boldface, capital "P," if you get our drift.
But that's all right. If voters put aside the Key Club and think about all that Brown has taken on and had thrown at him in the past two years as mayor, it's a wonder the guy hasn't said: "Here, take this job and shove it." To wit:
The departure of Bruce St. Denis and hiring of David Bullock; the controversy over former planning Director Monica Simpson and the late Police Chief Al Hogle; the death of Hogle; the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort dispute; the employee pensions; beach erosion on the north end; Publix redevelopment; and, of course, the aftermath of the Key Club lawsuits.
Knowing what's ahead for the Key, Mayor Brown, architect and planner, has a clear vision of what direction the town needs to go. He has proven himself to be an action-oriented leader.
Recommendation: Keep Brown. And urge the commission to tap into Grossman's planning expertise as it embarks on rewriting the town's zoning codes.
If history is a guide, voter turnout in the March 12 Town Commission election should be 40% or more. That would be nice; even better if it is higher.
The last time voter turnout in a town election exceeded 40% was in 2010, when six candidates were vying for three Town Commission seats.
Longboat Key's registered voters total 6,413.
Registered | Votes | %
2008: Bob Siekman-Gene Jaleski
6,410 | 2,688 | 41.9%
2009: Gene Jaleski-Randy Clair
6,502 | 2,688 | 41.3%
2010: David Brenner-Peter O'Connor, Hal Lenobel-Phill Younger, Lynn Larsen-Lee Rothenberg
6,329 | 2,991 | 47.2%
2011: Beach bonds, charter change
6,296 | 1,176 | 18.6%
2012: David Brenner-Ray Rajewski
6,413 | 2,334 | 36.4%
Terry Gans (incumbent)
Irwin Pastor
Gene Jaleski
Phill Younger (incumbent)
Jim Brown (incumbent)
Larry K. Grossman
All Longboat Key voters can cast votes for all three races.


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Today's Items:
13 More Months
The debt ceiling debate has been only a show for the gullible masses. The House has voted for 13 months of unlimited debt increases. In response, the CBO director stated that the growing federal debt could produce a fiscal crisis… Ya think? Needless to say, don't expect any fiscal responsibility from the Senate or Obama. In addition, one can expect things to get very desperate as the debt increases and interest rates skyrocket.
Bundesbank Changes Schedule
After a measly 5 tons of the 300 tons held by the U.S. were delivered in 2013, eyebrows and concerns were raised as to whether the U.S. actually had the gold in question. Now, Bundesbank, to save their backsides, has altered the repatriation schedule; so that, 150 tons are to be delivered by the end of 2015. Unfortunately, the U.S. cannot deliver what it very likely does not have.
China's Golden Year
Please take a look at this info-graphic that describes that China's gold market exploded with a 28% drop in the gold price in 2013. They produced 37 tons of gold coins and Chinese buying represented 15% of global coin demand. In April, China will likely report that they will have 5,000 tons of physical gold reserves as opposed to the U.S.'s very questionable 8100 tons in gold reserves.
Obama's Surgeon General
With Obama's choice of Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, expect a mandatory warning label on every gun that says "This product is hazardous to everyone's health." This is because Vivek Murthy is an anti-gun activist. Great! Advocates for Obamawreck and gun control laws rolled up into one disgusting package.
DHS Sniper Rounds
The Department of Homeland Insecurity is buying more bullets with a solicitation of 141,000 rounds of sniper ammunition. Okay, just what the hell kind of justification are these bastards going to come up with that one? They need it to arm meter maids with more than the expensive hollow points they have already purchased?
Fighting Over Food
One would think, after Katrina and Sandy, that people would have a small amount of emergency food on hand in case of an emergency. But no, Atlanta residents ransacked a neighborhood grocery store in frantic preparation for the latest snowstorm. Unfortunately, the old saying that you can lead a horse to water sadly holds true for many people and there may be no way to wake them ahead of the impending chaos that will soon hit.
Finally, please prepare now for the escalating economic and social unrest. Good Day!
All content contained on the Hyper Report, and attached videos is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. 'Hyper Report' assumes all information to be truthful and reliable; however, the content on this site is provided without any warranty, express or implied. No material here constitutes "Investment advice" nor is it a recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument, including but not limited to stocks, commodities, corporation, options, bonds, futures, or intrinsically valueless Federal Reserve Notes. Any actions you, the reader/listener, take as a consequence of any analysis, opinion, or advertisement on this site/video is your sole responsibility.


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Woman accused of trying to shoot Minnesota trooper outside Moorhead charged with attempted murder
MOORHEAD, Minn. -- A woman accused of trying to shoot a Minnesota State Patrol trooper in the head near Moorhead faces felony charges of attempted murder, receiving stolen property and being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to a Clay...
MOORHEAD, Minn. - A woman accused of trying to shoot a Minnesota State Patrol trooper in the head near Moorhead faces felony charges of attempted murder, receiving stolen property and being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to a Clay County District Court filing made Thursday, March 8.
Melody Victoria Gray, 30, of Milwaukee, Wis., who was shot in the arm by Trooper Mark Peterson during the incident Monday, March 5, was hospitalized at Essentia Health in Fargo for treatment of her wound. Clay County Jail staff said Gray was still at Essentia Thursday afternoon.
Prosecutors are recommending that a judge set her bail at $1 million without conditions, and $600,000 with requirements to stay in Minnesota and other conditions, court documents said.
Gray also has a warrant for her arrest from Wisconsin for kidnapping and being a felon in possession of a firearm, court documents said. Her criminal history includes convictions for possession with intent to sell cocaine and felony possession of marijuana.
About 10:10 a.m. Monday, Trooper Peterson stopped to help Gray and her male passenger, Domonique Maurice Crayton, 29, also of Milwaukee, who were in a car that had slid into the median of Interstate 94 a few miles east of Moorhead.
The car, which was westbound before the crash, came to a stop facing east against the median barrier, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
Peterson activated his squad car camera to capture video and audio, court documents said. In checking Gray and Crayton's identification and the vehicle identification number, Peterson learned the car had been reported stolen in Germantown, Wis., and he positioned his squad car to prevent the disabled car from driving away. Peterson then asked Crayton to get out of the car, the BCA said.
As Peterson tried to handcuff Crayton, Gray got out of the driver's seat and, with her right arm extended, pointed a 9mm handgun at the trooper's head and appeared to pull the trigger, court documents said.
The gun, however, did not fire. The trooper then pulled himself and Crayton away toward the back of the car, and put Crayton to the ground, court documents said.
Meanwhile, Gray tried to manipulate the handgun to chamber a round and raised the gun again toward the trooper. The trooper then fired his gun and hit her in the right arm, court documents said.
Gray then dropped the gun, ran across I-94 and north into a field, court documents and the BCA said. A snowplow clearing the westbound lanes stopped about 50 yards past the incident scene.
Trooper Peterson handcuffed Crayton and left him on his stomach behind the car. Peterson then ran to the snowplow and recovered a gun, which was under the plow, the BCA said.
Meanwhile, Gray collapsed in the field. Other officers from the State Patrol, Clay County Sheriff's Office, and Fargo and Dilworth police departments arrived and took Gray into custody, the BCA said.
Gray was given medical attention until an ambulance arrived, and she was taken to Essentia for treatment. Peterson was not injured, the BCA said.
The shooting was captured on squad car video, but there was no body camera video, the BCA said.
Crayton appeared in court Wednesday, March 7, on felony charges of first-degree damage to property and receiving stolen property (a motor vehicle), as well as misdemeanor counts of giving a peace officer false information and obstructing the legal process.
Crayton is also being sought by Milwaukee County, Wis., authorities on a warrant for felony charges of kidnapping, human trafficking, second-degree sexual assault and possession of a firearm by a felon.
Bail tied to his Milwaukee County warrant was set at $100,000. For the Clay County charges, bail was set at $50,000 without conditions or $30,000 with conditions. He was being held Thursday at the Clay County Jail.
Gray's first court appearance has not yet been scheduled. Court records did not list attorneys for her or Crayton to represent them on the Clay County charges.


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Caleb Hart and The Royal Youths performs live in concert at Canada Day Victoria 2019 on the Main Stage on the lawns of the BC Legislature in Victoria, BC on Monday, July 1, 2019. Event presented by the City of Victoria, Coast Capital Savings and Atomique Productions.
Darren Ho Media was there and took photos and videos.
To view photos from the show, you can find them at Darren Ho Media's Facebook page HERE.
Visit Darren Ho Media's Facebook page HERE or Darren Ho Videos on YouTube HERE for more videos and photos from the local music scene in Victoria, BC.