Whistleblower bounty: This isnt your fathers SEC

Digital revolution forces white collar agency to keep up with the times

Back in the pre-Internet days, we business reporters really had to work for our stories. It was considered a necessary skill to know how to look up and buy - yes buy - public reports filed with the SEC by companies.

We had to go to the library to do story research, look up newspapers from other cities and microfilm of real estate or legal documents. What wasnt free in the library cost a bundle to obtain, from such companies as Lexis-Nexis or Bloomberg. Newspapers werent about to pay for pricey subscriptions to make life easier on reporters. It put all the power into the hands of sources. When, as a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in the early 90s, I would ask former Denver SEC chief Bob Davenport if a particular company was being investigated, I would have to interpret his impish grins as yes or maybe and frowns as no.

Everythings the opposite today. What took days to research now takes minutes on a search engine. When a company files a quarterly or annual report, it is freely available on the SECs website. Now Congress has taken it even further with the SECs new whistleblower rules, passed in May in relation to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Tipsters who report factual information that leads to a fine of more than $1 million if any money is actually collected can earn a payout of 10- to 30 percent of the proceeds. All of this is being administered through the use of digital media.

This is a piece of the modernization of the SEC, said Julie Lutz, associate regional director of the SECs Denver office. Its more of an Internet-based thing than ever before. It gives us a greater reach. We are doing business in a different way.

It seemed remarkable to me to even see Lutz speak at a panel hosted by the Perkins Coie law firm in Denver. I mean, an SEC official, giving out information and insight like anyone else, shoulder to shoulder with Matthew Kirsch, chief of the Colorado U.S. Attorneys Office economic crime section; M. Sean Radcliffe, VP of IHS Inc.; Perkins partner and former Chicagofederal prosecutor T. Markus Funk; Pravin Rao, also a Perkins partner and former state and federal prosecutor and Jason Day, a corporate counselor and partner with Perkins Coie. You wouldnt have seen that in the old days. Lutz said the new openness and modernization was initiated by former SEC chief Mary Shapiro.

To earn a whistleblower bounty, a tipster must provide original information about a possible federal securities law violation that has occurred, is ongoing or is about to occur, Funk said. This could mean any securities law violation, from organized and systemic fraud to bribery in a foreign country involving a U.S. company. And believe this or not: If you are caught up in propagating the fraud, you can blow the whistle on yourself, provided that you arent convicted of a felony. Your whistleblower proceeds are deducted from any fines you pay. I didnt make that part up; Congress did.

The SECs whistleblower portal has a welcome video from the chief of the Office of the Whistleblower and a form to fill out your tip, either online or by printing out a PDF and mailing it in. If you do it anonymously, you have to be represented by a lawyer. This is truly power of the people.

Companies are ramping up their own anonymous tip lines administered by third-party companies to protect themselves. The SEC wants tipsters to report to their own company in addition to the SEC and has a rule that keeps the tipsters place in line. The whistleblower rule allows companies 120 days to investigate the tip and then address the matter with the SEC.

Self-reporting is going to be big, IHSs Radcliffe said. We have to reach out to the various agencies and ask, how do we do this right?

However its done, it will be using the power of digital in this age of new media.

Media siloing and what it means to the business professional marketing services

The far flung media world is reforming. Digital media revolutionized traditional media with zillions of websites, i.e. self-publishing platforms and brought social media into the fore. Goods are now sold more digitally than through traditional paper advertising and professional service providers have followed the trend into self-publishing and content marketing and branding through thought leadership.

Now all these widespread media sites are starting to silo, says Luke Beatty. Whos Luke Beatty? He spoke at this years Rocky Mountain Growth Conference for the Denver chapter of the Association For Corporate Growth. Beatty, a former school teacher who interned for free for two summers and worked long hours at a Silicon Valley search engine company, founded Associated Content in 2004 because he thought there was plenty of infrastructure and bandwidth on the Internet but little content. He hired legions of poorly paid freelance writers to write sometimes decent, sometimes shoddy stories and then resold it to sites starved for something to post. After building it up to 18 million unique visits per month, he sold the Internet content producer to Yahoo for $100 million in 2010.

Beatty, who still works for Yahoo, appears to be right. News Corp. gave up on Myspace, selling it for $35 million after paying $580 million for it in 2005. It leaves Facebook with its $70 billion market value and 157 million users as the king of the social networks and I dont think the me too social networking efforts by Google and Yahoo will put a dent in Facebooks user base.

Also, during the last year, AOL pared its 100 different media sites down to 20. Have you ever heard of PopEater, DIY, Lemondrop, Truveo and Fanhouse? Me either. AOL thought the 100 sites were just a jumbled bloated mass of sites that didnt make much sense to have under one roof. Now those sites and their content and advertisers will be folded into AOL sites such as Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Stylelist.

The digital revolution changed the media business for good. But some things dont change: That being the tendency for businesses to coalesce after they get scattered by technology or social forces. I liken it to the analogy used by former Colorado Securities Commissioner Philip Feigin, who described the shutting down of shady penny stock brokerage firms only to see them reform later, to hitting a blob of mercury with a hammer. Eventually the blob reforms.

Advertisers will ultimately pay more for website ads as a result of this consolidation. The silo sites will have more unique visitors because they are providing more pages and content and gadgets and videos under one roof. People will spend more time on the silos and have fewer bookmarks, something you see happening with Facebook right now. It will consolidate buying choices for businesses looking to advertise digitally. More power will gather in the large sites hands.

If these sites can charge more, they will make enough money to, ahem, put out a decent journalistic effort. They might even, shockingly, care about traditional journalistic tenets such as accuracy, fairness and perspective. Heck they might even know the difference between tenet and tenant. Maybe I shouldnt go that far.

Steve Forbes: US economy hits headwinds

Cites monetary, administrative and regulatory policies in addition to health care

The current US attempt at economic recovery is the worst Steve Forbes has ever seen because of a series of four headwinds inhibiting it, according to the former presidential candidate.

Speaking to a sold-out key note luncheon of the Association For Corporate Growths Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference, Forbes said that despite the estimate that the US economy should create 3.5 million jobs this year, the worlds leading economy is like a car going 45 mph when it is capable of reaching 75.

In the 1970s the economy experienced three recessions but the bounce backs were quick. The same was true with a couple 1980s recessions. Not true this time, the editor-in-chief of Forbes Magazine said, and its because of economic headwinds, as he called them: Monetary, administrative and regulatory policies combined with the health care crisis.

Displaying his mastery of the humorous sound bite, Malcolm Stevenson Steve Forbes relied on well-practiced arguments that he used during his presidential primary runs in 1996 and 2000: a stronger dollar, a flat tax, less governmental regulation, lower government spending, personalized Social Security and his call for a form of gold standard. Hes thrown in his solutions to health care reform, which, predictably, rely on capitalism and free markets to implement.

Heres a few takes from his speech, including the quips:

Monetary policy is too loose The Fed has been on a bender since the beginning of the last decade. QE2 should be scrapped. You cannot get a sustained recovery with a weak dollar. It leads to a flight of capital. Wealth is created not by governments but by you doing business with each otherWhen you change the value of money its disruptive. It hurts the economy. We should have learned that from the 70s. Were almost in a trade war with China over this thing.

Best quip: If printing money was so good, Zimbabwe and Argentina would rule the world. You could not have had a housing bubble without the liquidity that hangs out there.

The government spends money like drunken sailors The federal government has to be cut back. A 17 percent flat tax should be implemented on individuals and corporations alike, with families of four earning $46,000 and under exempt from taxes. Do away with scheduled depreciation and let companies write off capital expenses in one year. States should lower tax burdens to encourage investment and economic growth. Do away with the death tax.

Best quip: Stimulus comes from you. It takes resources from you and puts it through the political sausage factory and spits it out again. Its inefficient and burdens the economy. Thats why the Tea Party rose up. People are starting to get it.

Stop overregulating Forbes didnt say how to prevent another Enron, but he would do away with Sarbanes Oxley regulation on public companies. Companies should find it easier to file IPOs but dont because they fear lawsuits. The FDA has made it more difficult for companies to get drugs and other products approved, inhibiting investment.

Capitalism can fix health care Open up health care for competition, Forbes said. He notes that nationwide insurance shopping is illegal. By creating high-risk pools, people would be encouraged to take better care of themselves through preventative measures. Businesses should be allowed to band together and form insurance buying pools or networks. Food is more basic than health care but you dont have the government taking over the farms, he added.

Best quip: Health care is a crazy system. You cant show up and ask what it costs. They look at you like a lunatic. Whats it to you? they ask.

How content creation might be able to help your business

The traditional way of businesses to communicate their messages to customers is through advertising. That is the old model: Buy space in media that has aggregated millions of eyeballs and use the power of repetition to hammer your message into the gross unconsciousness.

It worked, and for huge companies with big ad budgets marketing to a mass consumer audience, it still does. However, new media - defined by web sites, digital applications, interactive social networking and email marketing is biting off huge chunks of the ad dollar. The new world is about building communities and relationships between vendor and customer and vice versa. The glue that binds those communities is content. Thats where the term content marketing emerged from.

If you write a blog, email newsletter or update your website or Facebook and Twitter consistently, you are engaging in content marketing. Hopefully, your content is convincing enough to cause someone important to you to follow you. What happens if you enlarge on this idea of content marketing? How far can it go?

Pretty far. Mark Glaser on the PBS MediaShift website writes about a web application and design company that has built a large media site that garners a lot of attention. Called OWNI, the slick French site features content lots of politics and social commentary - that has very little to do with the business side of the operation, called 22Mars. OWNI is a non-profit. 22Mars is for profit and benefits from OWNI by the large audience it gathers by giving its content, produced by a staff of journalists, away.

The novel thing about the site is that it doesnt have any advertising, nor does it charge a subscription. It actually encourages others to repost its content, about half of it created by its staff of 15 journalists. The company is planning on invading the US market and is seeking venture investment. It is also raising a Series C $1.5 million Euro for the French site, which has 1.5 million unique visitors a month.

Nicolas Kayser-Bril, director of data journalism at OWNI, told MediaShift, We decided to become a real media [outlet], a real website, still with this strong community of bloggers behind it. In the summer of 2010, we realized that OWNI had become a real media [outlet], ran stories, and really had a big impact in the traditional media sphere. We hadn't really planned to become one. This changed the way the company was organized. At first we had been more of a showroom for what we're doing, and today it's more of a lab where journalists are free to innovate and do what they want.

With that experience, we continue to run our service company, selling website development and applications. We specialize in providing apps and social media platforms. Half of our sales today have to do with social media, and the other half has to do with data visualization, crowdsourcing apps and running innovative journalistic products. We serve all kinds of institutions and NGOs that have a story to tell but don't know how to do it online. We build the tools for them to do so.

22Mars is for-profit, and we did not spin off OWNI as a non-profit organization from an accounting perspective. The website does not have to make a profit in the sense that we don't make money from the website. No subscriptions and no hidden advertisements. The value the website provides is in gaining expertise online that we can then share and sell to clients.

I dont think single operators and small to mid-sized companies need to jump into the media. I think they need to produce relevant content that interests and intrigues their target audience of clients and influential referral services. I just wanted to show how expanding on the idea of content marketing can work.

Write a guest column that will get published by the media

Your do-it-yourself guide

With all of the exciting things happening in new media video sharing, social media, using the geo-satellite positioning on PDAs for commercial applications I still believe that old media will survive in niches and writing for business still has a good future.

Im all for other forms of communicating, such as doing your own video and using it for viral marketing, but few of us have the technology know-how to make that happen in a quality way without significant expense. If you write your own material, you can use it on your web site, post it on blogs, link it everywhere and distribute it to established media sites, which are increasingly using contributed material, but theres a catch. It has to be good stuff.

Heres how to make your stuff good enough to publish:

When coming up with your idea, apply the literary Occams razor: What would be a compelling read? Heres the test for reader and writer: I will read this if I have to read this. Its not something I can skip and be up-to-date. Because if it is something the reader can skip, guess what will happen?

1. Understand what editors know, the news elements that determine what gets published and featured. They are, in order of importance: Newsworthiness; celebrity; controversy; human interest story; commentary or industry analysis and last, instructional, or how-to material. I realize that this piece is a how-to article, the first Ive ever done. That means that I have the lowest chance of being published.

1. Use plain language and shorter declarative sentences. Know your audience. If it is a general business audience, you cant assume they have industry knowledge. Steinbeck wrote in long, complicated sentences. You are not Steinbeck and neither am I. Avoid industry jargon and buzz words. By using a buzz word without meaningful context, you alienate your audience. If a reader does not understand your words, he or she will stop reading your article.

1. Use Associated Press style. Most editors will reject your piece outright if it does not come close to AP style, still the dominant guide for spelling, punctuation, grammar and usage. You can buy an AP style book at the book store. Especially irritating and common style gaffes: Random capitalization, courtesy titles, double-spacing after periods and misuse of commas, especially after conjunctions.

1. To be an expert, you cant be a pitcher. You have to realize that every reader is skeptical of your motives. They will tune you out immediately upon encountering self-serving or self-promotional language. Remember that even though you are seeking customers, they want to buy your services, not be sold to.

1. Solve a problem common to your industry. Although many experts dont feel comfortable giving up their secrets, its better to show your stuff. Theres always more to share when they pick up the phone. After all, youre the expert.

1. Make it short. If you have incredible, engrossing material, its ok to write 1,200 words. But most subjects need to be covered in 800 words or so. Remember that every time an online reader is forced to click on a new page, figure you will lose 50 percent of your audience.

1. Develop a relationship with the editor. This isnt easy. Editors are busy people. But if you can get to a point where a key editor in an important publication for your niche is willing to guide you, go for it. Your material will be better and obtain better treatment from the publication. Every editor has different tastes. There are no universal rules. As an illustration of that, heres some guidance from AdWeek editor Robert Klara, whom Ive worked with in the past:

Rejection Hurts! Want to avoid it? Then heed The Big Five. (We are not kidding.)

1) Your opinion piece must contain an opinion!

Successful essays are driven by a clearly defined thesis, expressed near the top of the piece. Far and away, the writers failure to take a position on a given topic or issue is the No. 1 reason why most manuscripts dont make it.

2) Do not submit a how-to story.

Opinion pieces argue an authors viewpoint; they are not step-by-step guides to running a business. If your piece kicks off with, Ten things you can do or Five common mistakes to avoid, its time to hit the delete key and start over.

3) Do not tell readers what they already know.

Remember: Our readers are just as intelligent as you are. Dont insult them by reiterating bland conventional wisdom, clichs, or the business truisms we all learned in Marketing 101. Your essay should turn heads with a fresh, provocative perspective.

4) Deliver the goodsbut skip the sales pitch.

If youre a consultant or expert for hire, our readers will recognize as much. By all means, dazzle them with your brilliance, but dont sell to them. If your topic is the importance of hiring a consultant like you, its time for another topic.

5) We look for (and publish) good writing.

Your story need not rouse the Pulitzer committee, but we look for writers who have a unique, colorful style that says, in effect: Im worth listening to. Avoid trade jargon. And write from scratch: We can spot a retooled PowerPoint presentation a mile away.

Many of you have been asked, and in some cases required to write an article for your company or a blog or even a media outlet. I hope this will help you succeed, get published, share your intelligence and prove that you are worth hiring.

A journalistic dinosaur hopes writing, ethics survive the death of J-school

Some very significant developments have taken place in the New Media world since I last wrote this column. For me, the University of Colorado deciding to shut down the school of journalism is the most telling.

School administrators arent exactly sure what the new school of media will be up in Boulder, but one dean said future graduates should be flexible, agile, and able to adapt quickly to change. The mobile-digital journalists of tomorrow need to be business thinkers, computational thinkers, creative thinkers and critical thinkers all at once.

CU isnt going this alone. Thirty other schools across the nation are making the same move. There just arent any jobs for the journalism graduates in newspapers anymore. Professors, at the risk of losing their cushy tenured positions, are scrambling to learn this new media stuff. Just as the media is blending, from print into quick and easy digital photos to simpler video, so must the schools blend their curricula.

Are there worries about this switch? Sure, I have some. As a person who spent the bulk of my career working for newspapers, I think a lot of reporters and editors share my opinion that I learned very little about journalism in class beyond a few crude basics. Most of my education was from working on school newspapers and my education continued on the job. Two things stand out from that valuable background: The ability to write and journalistic ethics.

I worry that while typing text characters are more prevalent in the digital age, the craft of writing will lose something. Newspapers such as the San Francisco Chronicle have been running content from Associated Content, which is one of the four or five large content farms that produce stories for web sites. (See Why the San Fran Chronicle Is Running Demand Media Content, in AdAge.)

On PBSs MediaShift site, this writer described her work for one of the content farms, pumping out three short stories per week.

"I was completely aware that I was writing crap," she said. "I was like, 'I hope to God people don't read my advice on how to make gin at home because they'll probably poison themselves. Never trust anything you read on eHow.com," she said, referring to one of Demand Media's high-traffic websites, on which most of her clips appeared.

One of the reasons why I dont call my little New Media column a blog is because I dont write it every day, or every week and sometimes not every month. It just wouldnt be that interesting. It all comes back to that old notion of how the information explosion has led to an implosion of meaning. An interviewer once asked Saul Bellow how he keeps up with a six-inch thick New York Times and all of the other media, and he answered, Im not sure all that information is any good.

The other thing I worry about with the new media school is any lack of instruction in ethics. New Media brings in a whole other set of ethical questions with it, such as the ethics of writing a popular blog and being paid money to mention key words, or the ethics of hiding paid links in editorial copy. New media also has more ability to alter images and edit videotape, and to blatantly ignore copyrights. In the newspaper business, we had a well-defined set of professional ethics and legal precedents to guide us. We knew the difference between slander and false light, between public and private persons and how to strive to present both sides of a story and how to fact-check.

Im not certain that the new media does. I hope the new media schools show them how.

-30-

Note from Keith DuBay: Because this column concerns itself with New Media and its ramifications, I thought I'd publish this column that I worked on with CRG Partners. Neil Heyside and Michael Epstein point out that while newspapers might have done some downsizing, they are still way behind the times in creating efficient production and putting their money where the best return is. It was originally published in PBS/Media Shift national site, which can be accessed here: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/07/the-case-for-turning-around-print-media-companies195.html

If media re-deploys and re-invests, media has a future, even print

Accidental owners wrestling with an outdated industry

By Michael Epstein and Neil Heyside

The media & publishing industry print publishing in particular - doesnt have to show up to its own funeral.

Theres still opportunity to enable profitable, desirable businesses. Were not suggesting that a recent uptick in advertising sales is a sign that publishers can go back to the old days of 25 percent net profit margins. Media companies had been so profitable for so long that eventually, both owners and banks that were the beneficiaries of the cash flow stemming from overleveraged franchises and left them needing reinvestment capital.

Lets forget for a moment that the change brought by digital evolution has chased off some print dollars, perhaps for good. The ugly truth that no one seems to want to face is that 1) many media companies need better and more efficient management techniques and 2) many of these same organizations are starved for capital investment and innovation.

It is the perfect time to bring change into such companies to allow them to create efficiencies that fund their own sorely needed capital investment. Many industries would kill for a 15 percent net return, and media companies, print included, can easily sustain that into the foreseeable future.

The problem of accidental ownership: The split between management and owners

Few industries can withstand economic downturns. It is our view that while revenues for cable, network television and radio are off, they will return to traditional levels once the economy recovers. The fastest return will be felt in online media.

Print publishing is another matter. Newspaper Association of America statistics show that newspaper ad revenues have fallen for 13 quarters in a row as of 1Q 2010, or off 46 percent from four years ago. Moodys recently came out with a prediction that the 22 percent decline in 2009 will be followed by a 10 to 15 percent drop this year, with a possible slight increase in 2011. While local newspaper ad revenues are growing, national print advertising that departed for from digital media and Internet-based direct marketing will never return.

This has led to serious concerns at major print media outlets. During the last year alone, numerous print-based media organizations have emerged from bankruptcy or out-of-court restructuring; largely the deals amounted to converting debt to equity. Diverse debt holders such as GE Capital, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch & Co. and opportunistic debt investors Angelo Gordon and Fortress Investment Group now rest uneasily at the head of the table in boardrooms in the major media print industry.

Still, the losses in ad revenue are slowing down and theres some optimism in the business. Management wants to reinvest capital in their businesses, believing that an improved economic environment is the answer to their problems. Management tells its new ownership it has cut costs to the bone. The accidental owners, on the other hand, the banks and private equity groups, are not keen or structurally capable so as to reinvest in these businesses. Theyre also not as convinced of the belief that the companies have been made as efficient as possible.

How can media companies generate investment capital where none exists?

Many U.S. print publishers have downsized their workforces in accordance with their revenue losses, but they havent changed the way they operate. Its the same inefficient, outdated model that they operated in the past. If the industry is upside down already, how does it generate investment capital where none exists?

The traditional way of a magazine or newspaper to make change happen is to re-launch the publication with a new look and content, but it isnt much more than cosmetic. Because of the lack of investment in technology sales management technology, digital and newsroom technology, accounting technology publications dont have the information in their hands to make decisions about resource management and where or what to invest in to improve results.

Weve taken more than 800 publications through this process and found operational efficiencies worth nearly $200 million annually in the United Kingdom and the U.S.

These efficiencies have been as a resultof not only reducing capacity, but also changing the way people work and changing the way they think. In most cases, the organization has used a significant percentage of these benefits to re-invest in the business, investment that otherwise wouldn't have been forthcoming.

Publications need fewer people doing the right things to make them more efficient. Here are a few examples:

• Newsrooms need to be reinvented and reinvigorated as a lack of investment has often resulted in poor quality of management and antiquated leadership skills in newsrooms. There are still too many editors and rewriters and not enough writers and copy clerks. Every editorial staff position needs to undergo an accountability analysis so that management knows where to employ dollars to retain and improve quality. For example, local newspapers dont need to produce content that is national by nature, a practice still prevalent in many feature sections.
• New technology to make newsrooms more efficient is introduced continuously, for example PDAs and cell phones that can take camera-ready digital photographs and transmit them remotely. Print publications have also been slow to embrace both enterprise resource management systems to improve the quality and flow of information to management as well as customer relationship management systems to optimize the sales force.

• Based on Day-In-The-Life studies, the sales force of many print publications are only spending 30- to 35 percent of the available time on value-added sales activities. Sales people still find themselves undertaking a lot of non-added value administrative work that if the organization changed the way it worked and the way it is structured, would generate significant additional sales capacity. This additional sales capacity can now be focused on revenue driven activities such as digital initiatives and securing new & lapsed customers.

• Publishers historically needed those 25 percent margins to pay for the cost of printing and circulation but no longer need that capacity, which should be outsourced. You cant just run a $100 million press for yourself anymore.

Aligning key stake holders in concepts that can support the new business model

All media companies we even include the trade show industry here would benefit from understanding two concepts. First, you need to understand the cost of quality in content creation. This is traditionally a subjective conversation that needs to be turned into a more objective one in order to become more effective. Companies need to undergo an analytical process, the outputs of which allow the organization to fully understand where they are spending their money and what are they getting in return in terms of value.

The second key concept is that the organization needs to optimize its sales force across both print and digital platforms. The old media model was based on inbound order taking and today, many media sales forces that had forgotten how to sell are struggling with the fact that media is now an outbound sale. Organization structures have to be based around activity and performance, with sales management systems and processes that require employees to have more accountability.

Despite the protestations of management, there are more optimization opportunities in media companies to be had to revitalize the companies. In our experience in the UK, half of the savings the companies created were reinvested in the business; in digital, in better content and more efficient technology. One company needed $2.5 million to improve its digital product. The owners said no. But the company found the savings on the print side and moved it to digital, which the owner then matched.

Weve met with a dozen stakeholders involved with major media companies as we roll out this process who believe that theres still a significant amount of opportunity that can be generated from their portfolio companies where management says weve taken out every dollar of cost we can. This capacity can then be redeployed and reinvested. All the parties need is better information and an objective collaboration and the time to do it is now.

About the authors:

As part of New York-based CRG Partners, Michael J. Epstein (michael.epstein@crgpartners.com) specializes in turnaround, crisis management and financial advisory services activities in both middle market and large transactions, while Neil Heyside (neil.heyside@crgpartners.com) has more than 20 years of experience in process improvement, change management and operational reengineering in the U.K., U.S., Europe and South Africa. CRG Partners was named Turnaround Consulting Firm of the Year by M&A Advisor. They can be reached at 212.370.5550.

This cant go on, can it?

How broadband and technology are improving the fossil fuel problem

Pasadena, Calif. It is a peaceful Sunday morning in this pretty little hamlet ofLos Angeles. My friends and I head out for breakfast and pass near the local Starbucks location. Huge SUVs crowd the parking lot and the drive-through line. Large Mercedes and BMWs are there too, the ones that cost $70,000 and up. Oversized pick-up trucks too.

My first thought was, Are people too lazy to make their own coffee? And my second thought was now I know where all the oil in the world is going; out the tailpipes of gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks in Southern California.

But its not just SoCal that is consuming oil and the gasoline derived from it. Check out the Starbucks at Hamden Avenue and I-25 on any day. Its nearly identical to the one in Pasadena. Same huge vehicles, same line of cars waiting in the drive-through lane, burning up gas at 15 miles per gallon.

About 250 million vehicles consume gasoline in the United States. Peak oil was reportedly reached in 2005, so were on the downswing now. I agree with the experts who have said that oil is far too valuable a commodity to waste on automobiles. The future will bring new electric power technology, better engines and more powerful hybrid automobiles, but nearly all the cars in force today are gas guzzlers.

High-speed Internet access has made working from home a viable alternative. Im not just saying that because I work from home and dont have to endure the mind-numbing, soul-sapping aggravating daily commute to an office that doesnt need to be as big and consume so much electricity and natural gas. As a writer, my profession is one that involves working largely alone, with a few conference calls thrown in for every assignment.

The necessary tools are inexpensive, from the computer to the scanner to the cell phone with unlimited minutes and long distance service. Free conference calls are available on the Internet. My large work desk was a gift from a client who didnt need it any more. My media database has some 500,000 names and 300,000 outlets. I can access it from any browser, just like any other important software tool people use these days.

Ive noticed that even people who work together in the same office would rather email each other than talk face-to-face. Much time in the office is wasted with small talk. Ive also noticed that when my clients are on a heavy deadline, they work extra hours at night or on weekends in order to be alone to get things done.

According to the American Electronics Association, as much as 1.35 billion gallons of gas could be saved annually if every U.S. worker who was able worked from home 1.6 days a week. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that this would account for a 26 billion pound reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.

Im all for team-building. Its important to meet and get face time, but not every day. Almost all important news necessary to be a successful business person is accessible on the Internet. Give people measurable work with deadlines and let them go do their jobs. Its up to the home office worker to control his or her environment, ship off the kids, close the door and concentrate. Some people cant do that; I understand but the more who do can use fewer resources on this planet. Make offices smaller, with a focus on housing meeting places; the central computers and their intranets; and some flex offices.

One recent survey estimated that out of 135 million Americans working, 45 million worked from home at least a day per year and 26 million a day per month. Surveys from 2001 estimated that about 10 million worked from home. So were making progress. Its hard to say whether the trend is linked to more people out of work and doing consulting or contract work.

There still are years of fossil fuels left to exploit; after all weve just reached the peak, but we should change our ways before we cant use oil for more valuable purposes. The digital revolution has given us some tools to make things better. We should use them.

We might even have to brew our own coffee.

When Old Media assimilates New Media

Thats the dream of all Old Media, isnt it? Use the Web and digital technology to enhance your business rather than let it destroy you, as newspapers and maybe magazines have?

The lines between Old and New Media crossed my mind as I listened to Jerre Stead, CEO of IHS Corp. at the April meeting of the Association For Corporate Growth. It was the best speech weve heard in two years. Stead is a classic CEO; leadership oozing from his pores. He was chairman of what used to be known as Information Handling Systems since 2000 and took over as CEO when the company went public in 2006. His messages were to trust employees, sell information versus data and to convince the IRS to record employee training as a capitalized expense in building a companys overall value because people are the only sustainable investible asset.

IHS is one of the worlds largest information gatherers and resellers. So is the New York Times but why is that company suffering and IHS seeing its revenue rise yearly? Last year they did nearly a billion dollars with net income of $135 million, thank you. This for a company that was in the $300 million revenue range just a decade ago.

Much of IHSs growth has come from acquisition, but their profitability comes from the business model. IHS gathers information about professional standards and other critical data in four main areas: energy, product lifecycle, security and environment. It deals in such areas as aerospace, defense, government, construction, electronics, chemicals, manufacturing and oil and gas. One of its latest products uses its oil and gas databases to predict how badly an oncoming hurricane will affect the energy markets if it hits a certain area. Another product helps offshore drillers rebuild their rigs with professional construction standards.

So if the digital media revolution has devastated traditional media, how come IHS is thriving, I asked Stead in the Q&A period after his presentation? His simple answer was that 90 percent of our information is subscriber-based. We look at the Internet as a way to distribute information and make it more available for our clients.

So there you have it. Why didnt the newspaper industry protect its product when the Internet came? Why didnt they put up pay subscriber walls as IHS did? Its because they were arrogant and lazy and thought the Internet was going to do their work for them. Newspapers sold their content for cheap to Yahoo and other distributors and the making news a commodity ended up maiming the newspaper industry.

For IHS, the Internet is simply a cool way to conveniently distribute its content to its customers. Its not a threat because IHS assimilated the technology to make it work within its business plan, and make it work in better ways than ever. Too bad traditional media missed the boat. A lot of good people got hurt for the arrogance of an industry that had been little challenged for a century.

Interview with author Karen Essex

Other than being funny, smart, pretty and successful, historical novelist Karen Essex doesn't have too much going for her. Okay, the New Orleans natives idea of camping is a two-star hotel. But let's not hold that against her. A former model shes 59 - shes a self-made woman who up and moved to Hollywood to produce and later write because she believed in herself. Here's the official bio on Essex, whose latest book, Dracula in Love, will be published by Doubleday in August:

She wrote the national and international best-selling novel, Leonardos Swans (Doubleday 2006), about the rivalries among the powerful women painted by the great master when he was employed by the Duke of Milan. Continuing in the theme of womens influence upon culture and art, her latest novel, Stealing Athena, chronicles the story of the controversial Elgin Marbles from the points of view of two women, Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin, and Aspasia, mistress to Pericles.

Essex has also written two acclaimed biographical novels about the queen of Egypt, Kleopatra and Pharaoh, published in 2001 and 2002, which she adapted into a screenplay for Warner Bros. She also adapted Anne Rices novel The Mummy or Ramses the Damned into a screenplay for Titanic director James Cameron and 20th Century Fox, and has written a screenplay about Kamehameha, the first king of Hawaii, for Columbia/Tristar. She has written a dance movie for Jennifer Lopez Entertainment and Paramount Pictures, and continues to develop a variety of film projects.

For all her novels, Essex does painstaking research. She is known for retelling history through the eyes of women, something that puts her in the feminist mold, a stereotype that definitely does not define her, being a person who detests assumptions in general. She uses her website and social media to promote her books, like all authors do today. New Media thought it would be interesting to check in with Essex and ask her how the digital world has affected one of the world's oldest professions: writing.

DuBay: You Twitter. Is it a waste of time?

Essex: If I thought it was a waste of time, I wouldnt do it. I am completely impatient with people who Twitter every detail of their lives. I keep mine strictly to issues about writing and publishing. So I dont twitter pun intended - away all my time online. By feeding my Twitter posts to my Facebook page, Im reaching two social networks with one computer stroke.

DuBay: Would Leonardo Da Vinci do Twitter updates as he painted The Last Supper?

Essex: Absolutely not because he was a secretive man. He was extremely conscious about how he spent his time. He had so many constraints because he had to satisfy his patrons. The ways he was able to spend his free time were precious to him. He even chastised himself for needing sleep.

DuBay: What do you think of Google?

Essex: Its fantastic. I love being able to plug in a few key words and getting some kind of answer right away. What I do not like about Google is I feel they are spying on the world recording all our personal data and using it to manipulate us to buy certain products. Thats why I phased out my own Google account.

DuBay: Has New Media hurt or helped the book industry and you in particular?

Essex: For the book industry, we dont know yet. Publishers are excited about being able to deliver books electronically but also fear it because of loss of revenue. Theres a fear about publishing industry going the way music has gone. Personally I dont think that will happen. No one in the world wants to cuddle up with a compact disc while listening to music, while everyone wants to do it with a book. The e-book is another way to deliver a book into someones hands. Personally I do not fear it. A woman told me, I just downloaded every one of your books onto my Kindle. She probably wouldnt have gone into Barnes & Noble and bought all four books.

The advent of social networking has changed the writers life in both positive and negative ways. Its opened a channel to our readers. If you enjoy communicating with your readers, its terrific. But it also puts a burden on writers. It can be enormously time-consuming. Given the fact that writers can market books through their own websites and social networking, now the publisher can put that burden on the writer. When one is writing, that is a period of isolation. Its difficult to be a happening social networker when youre supposed to be this writer in a state of creating.

DuBay: Whats the future of books?

Essex: The future of books is the past of books. I take the historical view. In theAlexandria Library under Cleopatra, everything was written on papyrus. Later the printing press changed everything. The advent of electronic media is changing the medium. But we have never lived without storytellers and stories and my Pollyannaish view is that its all good. Stories will continue to be told, and sold.

DuBay: So whats the big deal about art?

Essex: Im paralyzed by a question that big. Why do we breathe? I can tell you what inspired me to write two books that center around works of art. The art that is created and the art that survives is indelibly linked to whom is in power at the moment. If you look at this question in my own books, Stealing Athena is about the Parthenon, which was only created by the power of Athens and the vision of Pericles, its most powerful leader. It was only disassembled because Lord Elgin wanted to compete with Napoleon for possessing the worlds greatest antiquity. Leonardo was commissioned to paint by the church and the power brokers of the Italian Renaissance. His greatest works did not survive some of the battles. Theres no way you can disconnect power from art.

DuBay: Is there a formal philosophy that appeals to you?

Essex: I am a neo-Platonist. Socrates was definitely a mystical philosopher. Im quite interested in mysticism and the mysteries of the world. Thats why quantum theory really appeals to me. Its a dialogue that closes the gap between spirituality and science.

DuBay: Out of all your books, do you have a favorite character or are they all your children?

Essex: They are all my children. I dont like to play favorites. But everybody knows I have a particular fondness for Caesar because that character just appeared on my page. I had no choice but to write from his point of view. I love him for what he did because of the manner in which he conquered so many disparate tribes in central and western Europe. We can say Caesar created Europe and we can thank him for that.

DuBay: Whats living in L.A. like, being close to the movie business?

Essex: Thats a complicated question for me because Ive been involved in the movie business since the early 80s. L.A. is very much a company town. Its like Detroit and cars. When Im deeply involved in a film project, I love being here. When Im not, the place is abhorrent to me. I cant imagine anyone who would want to be here if they werent in the film industry.

DuBay: As promised, your favorite joke.Whats a Southern girls idea of foreplay?

Essex: Im drunk.

Interview with author, editor, cancer survivor Robert Schwab

True to his feisty Chicago nature, Bob Schwab will argue with you; not just when he feels passionate about something: He feels passionate about everything. The man, though, has a heart of gold, something I learned when working with him a couple years at ColoradoBiz. Schwab is in a fight for his life. He finished his sixth round of chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer after Thanksgiving. The cancer returned to his lung after a brief absence from earlier treatments and several major surgeries. In his blog, he writes that his chances for surviving this disease are not good.

A poet/journalist for nearly 40 years, Schwab has worked in Chicago, Austin and Bryan/College Station, Texas, Washington D.C., and Denver, Colorado. He is the Denver Literary Examiner for Examiner.com. He is selling poems from his website, and comments on politics, literature, business and life on his blog, Schwab on Anything. He was editor of ColoradoBiz magazine for six years from 2000 until 2007. He wrote a column on small business, Schwab on Small Business, for The Denver Post and was deputy business editor and night city editor at The Post for seven years before that. He was born and raised in Chicago. He has never lived on a coast. He coauthored a book called Lynched by Corporate America, with Herman Malone.

DuBay: What was your favorite job?
Schwab: Being editor of ColoradoBiz magazine for six years. I was running the whole editorial show. I would assign stories and make sure they said what needed to be said in them in terms of the coverage of biz. My second favorite was working two years in the Cox Washington bureau. It was probably the most interesting thing to do because reporting in Washington is a high-level, high-powered task.

KD: Would you want a do-over in any area of your life?
RS: Yeah, both of my marriages.

KD: Are you more interested in politics, history or art/literature?
RS: Writing and literature because it includes journalism and journalism includes politics. Literature was one of my beginnings. I studied American lit in college and intended to be a writer of poems and short stories and perhaps novels. Im still interested in it but didnt have much success. I did publish one nonfiction book and Im working on a second book. Im publishing poems in a new media way for sale. Im using my own blog to write about small business journalism and the political implications of small business journalism. Its the way individuals in the writing game have to go about doing things now. The Internet allowed writers to self-publish, given the collapse of the publishing industry in general.

KD: What happened to the newspaper industry?
RS: Advertisers lost faith in the newspaper industry as being a prime venue for mass market advertising. Thats a mistake because newspapers that survive this consolidation will be an efficient mass market advertising venue. Theyll have to incorporate the Web into their business models far better than the way theyre doing it now. Writers are going to have to establish themselves on the Web. It leads people to the print products. Print products are going to survive that way. Newspapers have to stop giving their product away because you cant run a business that way.

KD: Whats going to happen to the printed word?
RS: The printed word is going to survive. There are too many people who like to read. The act of reading the printed product is an organic act. Words are in front of them in a far more focused way than you read on the web or the television screen. Its an organic product where you absorb the words to your brain. Thats the best way to learn material. Learning is the key to advancement in anything we do.

KD: What personal value do you think is most important?
RS: Your openness to other people. Human beings have to be open to other human beings in order to make this life worth hanging out in. Your relationships with people are the most important things anybody has.

KD: What peeves you most about people?
RS: Probably the thing that peeves me most about myself, close mindedness. Im not quite as guilty as some who feel they are superior or intellectually superior or more wealthy than others. I dont like people who write off other people for no good reason.

Interview with fund manager, philanthropist Peter Kellner, who would bring US-style capitalism to Arab world

Fund manager and philanthropist Peter Kellner headlines the December 1st meeting of the Denver Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth. In our interview with him he directly talks about what drives him, why Arabs can be entrepreneurs and which state has the best skiing.

Peter Kellner is co-founder and managing director of Uhuru Capital Management, a fund of funds that provides a significant allocation of its profits to social enterprises engaged in sustainable economic development. He is also chairman and founder of Richmond Management, a firm with venture capital investments in technology and communications in the U.S. China and India. Richmond has interests in hedge funds and private equity firms globally, and has provided seed funds to leading investment firms in the US, China, Hungary and India.

Kellnerwas elected as a Young Global Leader in 2009 by the World Economic Forum. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations; Crown Fellow, The Aspen Institute; Member, Pacific Council on International Policy (PCIP); Member, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS); and Member, North America Council of Ashoka. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and was a Fulbright Scholar to Hungary after college. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

DuBay: What drives you to get up in the morning each day?

Kellner: I like interacting with people who are working to change the social landscape around them for the better. Consider Charles Best of DonorsChoose.org, an Ashoka Fellow, who enables teachers with better tools and environments and in doing so enables students to achieve. He makes an impactful, concrete difference daily and it is scaling across the nation. Charles isnt looking for your vote, but hes the kind of citizen you want acting in your midst.

DuBay: Your Endeavor non-profit organization, which is designed to foster entrepreneurship, has opened an office in Jordan. Arab nations have one of the lowest levels of (non-religious) education in the world and produce fewer patents combined than Italy by itself, let alone the tech leading countries. How is this region going to be a hotbed for free enterprise?

Kellner: When we launched in South America, people said there were no entrepreneurs in Latin America.In 6 years, we found entrepreneurs exiting businesses for $500 million. In Jordan, we selected two entrepreneurs last month I think are home runs one would never have imagined in Amman and Palestine.One may become the CVS of the Middle East and the other the leading teacher training company in the Middle East.Before last month, people could have said no one like Amjad Aryan of Pharmacy 1 or Amin Amin of CADER existed. The difference is Endeavor went looking and they are there. Entrepreneurship is a human condition and you will find them in Amman just as you will find them in Palo Alto.

DuBay: According to Forbes, Uhurus fund managers receive the usual 2% management fee plus 20% of profits. Uhuru gets 1% of assets annually plus 10% of overall gains over a T-bill benchmark. Assuming the 1% just covers overhead, the philanthropic benefit will come out of the 10% carry. Why do you think this model of blended social investing is best?

Kellner: I dont believe in other people subsidizing my mission; they deserve the expected return. Our model has our allocation to social entrepreneurship coming from managements profits, not the investors. This requires that anyone who signs up to work with Uhuru has to buy into the mission.

DuBay: What should people in Colorado be focusing on in their own businesses right now?

Kellner: In any economic environment you should identify your best people and not stop investing in them. This is especially true in challenged conditions like the present.

DuBay: We see youre a member of the Aspen Institute. Hows your skiing form? Better on powder (West) or ice (East)?

Kellner: Weve had a home in Aspen since 1989 and I have had some great years of powder. It doesnt get any better than Colorado.

Extra: Peter Kellner on Forbes.com

Peter Kellner has been a venture capitalist and a private equity guy, and, soon, hell launch a fund of hedge funds, but while his brain is in finance his heart is somewhere else: Changing the world. As co-founder of Endeavor, a non-profit that helps small and medium-sized companies in emerging nations perform better, he helped build an organization that has aided 330 entrepreneurs who now employ 86,000 people. I sat down with him a couple of days ago after he spoke to Pamela Hartigans class on social entrepreneurship at Columbia University to find out about Endeavors latest expansions. Heres why the organization is setting up an office in Jordan.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/globespotting/archives/2008/09/peter_kellner_o.html

NewMedia interviews author, motivational speaker Fawn Germer

Fawn Germer is coming back - to Denver. She is the bestselling author of business books, Finding the UP in the Downturn and Mustang Sallies; a Pulitzer-nominated journalist and former writer for The Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report and the Rocky Mountain News. She will speak at the Celebrating Womenin Corporate GrowthBreakfast at the Rocky Mountain Corporate Growth Conference on March 17-18, 2010. Her other books are Hard Won Wisdom and The NEW Woman Rules.

Fawn Germer and I worked at the Rocky Mountain News together back in the 1990s. She was a reporter and editor at the News from 1989 to 1997. While I never dreamed she would become an author and speaker-in-demand, I can tell you that she was never a shrinking violet. If Fawn walked into the then vast newsroom, youd know it. To say that she was loud and laughed more than anyone is an understatement. She always had a good time. Success didnt always come easy for her, however. It took her two years and constant rejection before she found a publisher. Some of her darkest days occurred when she left journalism to write her first book and found out that her publisher, Penguin, cancelled the promotional tour just after Sept. 11, 2001.

A short time ago, Fawn found me on Facebook and we started talking again about our new lives. Shes a fountain of positive thinking.Her Denver appearance figures to be one of the highlights of the gathering because Germer is a dynamic motivational speaker. Fawn is also participating in a Linked-In newsgroup about personal and professional growth, for ACG members only. You can read her terrific and inspiring blog here.

Keith DuBay: You used to be a journalist. Miss it?

Fawn Germer: Never. I did it. It was the only thing I wanted to do with my life and I did it. US News and World report wanted me to go to Tallahassee and cover the presidential election in 2000 and I didnt want to do it. If I couldnt get excited about one of the closest presidential elections ever, I knew I was through.

DuBay: What did you learn about defeat before your book finally got published and began selling?

Germer: That your greatest success comes from how you handle your obstacles. The trick is identifying an obstacle and surging forward. Weak people see obstacles and stop. Strong people see obstacles and stay focused on their goals. It was such a difficult path for me. It felt like the universe was telling me to turn around. But after getting through my battle, I learned I can get through anything. Its just anther obstacle.

DuBay: Whats the most common thing that people do to sabotage themselves?

Germer: They play mean tapes in their heads. We will say meaner things to ourselves than we will say to complete strangers or people we cant stand. Well put down our physical appearance, our abilities, second-guess decisions that we make; all of that minimizes our ability to succeed. Everybody has the same self-esteem issues but the most successful among us can put that self-esteem negativity in check.

DuBay: Is it harder for women in business? Lord knows its easy for us men.

Germer: Definitely. They still havent got their place at the table. Youve got 15 women CEOs in the Fortune 500 and its been about that number for a very long time. Its worse when you look at the Fortune 1000. And in this recession, women are being downsized and laid off at a rate of 3-1 for men. We know its harder because of institutional bias but there are legions of men who have opened up and committed to helping us succeed. A lot of them have daughters and wives and they dont want them to be held back.

DuBay: Your most recentbook, Finding The Up in the Downturn is about taking advantage of the situation to start a new venture, spread your wings. We didnt expect you to write Finding Down in the Downturn, but really, wheres the opportunity?

Germer: We have our greatest opportunity to succeed when everyone else is giving up. The window is wide open. My second book was much better than the first but it didnt make it on Oprah because everyone else was back in the game. When my first book published in 2001, authors had given up and no one was filling the vacuum.Business leasesare cheap, people are wholesaling materials, labor is cheap. There are lots of things you can take advantage of. Leadership is dying for ideas that work. The thing Ive learned by mingling with so many senior executives is who you know is much more important than what you know. Its more important that when you leave the cocktail party that you know someone watches Greys Anatomy, or that you like the same football team, than it is to know what their job is because then theyre personally invested in you.

DuBay: You speak a lot to groups. Whats your view of business associations in general and how could they improve?

Germer: The thing I like about ACG (Association For Corporate Growth) is that it goes wide and it goes deep. It does it differently from a lot of other groups. A lot of them have been helpful to give out information and guidance but the most important thing an association can do is give people a place to meet and network. A good association is where people dont feel a need to put on the pretense and show off. Theres a lot that people can learn from each other. It can take days at a conference for the masks to come off but the good ones are where the masks are already off.

DuBay: What are your best memories of Denver?

Germer: I had ridden my bike on my first double century, over 200 miles in one day. We started at Lookout Mountain at 4 a.m. and had the M at the school of mines shining in the moonlight. We rode up over Berthoud Pass, through Grand Lake, over Trail Ridge Road and back through Boulder. We were coming back through the Rocky Flats area. There was a sunset I will never forget. It was so stunning. I realized I had done it and had a little further to go. We kept going until day was replaced by night and saw the M lit up and I knew I had made it. That was a powerful, wonderful memory.

My second great memory was when Promise Keepers were meeting on Folsom Field. A number of my colleagues as well as high-profile women in the community chipped in to hire a banner company to fly banners over the field. We stood on the side of Flagstaff Mountain with binoculars looking at the banners, such as, Only weak men fear strong women. Every time a new banner came out wed hear the men in the stadium boo loudly.

DuBay: What did you learn most here?
Germer: That your most difficult moments happen for a reason. And that you can never give up.

DuBay: Will you take me to dinner?
Germer: Yes. Gladly.

Death of a magazine saleswoman
Has the sales force, like the clients, traipsed off to Google?

I didnt spend that much time in magazines but when contemplating the current distressed state of the magazine industry, my mind drifts back to the images of glamour magazines once enjoyed. A lot of the glamour centered on the hip, aggressive super saleswomen.

The magazine model is pretty simple, especially in specialty publishing. You come up with a content and ad concept that will reach a target audience, buy or build a circulation base, bring on a publisher who can whip up the sales effort, then hire a good editor and some low-paid writers for content. Then you brought on the accomplished, professional sales force that made most of the money in the deal, besides the publisher and owner. They could cold-call and meet the rejection head-on and do it all again the next day.

Im not sure why magazine publishing in particular employed almost entirely women for the sales force. You seldom saw men selling ads and making the good money; unfair, perhaps but life isnt fair anyway. Most of the men worked on the editorial and production sides and none of us ever set fashion standards. These 30s and 40s ladies drove the engine and as their selling abilities were paying my salary, I was grateful.

Yes they were attractive and yes they always dressed in the latest styles. Hiring attractive people just made it all more glamorous and probably appealed to the women in our business as much as the men. A sexist system? Id like to think of it more in terms of a successful business that attracted a lot of talented people.

The pinnacle of the magazine publishing is the Conde Nast Corp., with lots of big name titles, international reach and swank offices in Lower Manhattan. Even the editors enjoyed car service, two-martini lunches and travel budgets. Conde Nast recently announced that it will cut spending by 25 percent in 2010. According to Media Industry Newsletter, titles that have been hit hard by the recession include Gourmet (ad pages down 43 percent through October); fashion mag W, which is down 46 percent and men's fashion magazine Details, which is down 36 percent.

The magazine industry is already looking back to the good ol days of 1999, the run-up to the dot-com crash. Even though it was called the Dot Com boom, advertising was still on paper and the magazines cleaned up. Since then, according to Ad Age, the number of ad pages the three major business titles - BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune - booked for the first half of the year has fallen by 64 percent. Not only are magazines slim books of their former selves, there is widespread belief that when the recession ends that the advertising wont return.

Conde Nast announced it was Gourmet magazine, Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. Last year, six newspaper companies, two magazine publishers and two yellow-pages publishers out of the Media 100 top companies filed for bankruptcy. Overall revenues for the Media 100 were up for 2008 0.8 percent, the lowest gain since they began keeping stats in 1981. So far this year the Media 100 revenues are down 4.3 percent, pointing to the worst year ever.

The magazine industry isnt alone in seeing its business model torn apart. Television, radio and of course newspapers are treading the same treacherous path. Business-to-business advertisers are finding targeted, efficient and measurable ways to reach the select group that comprises their customers. I call this the self-publishing phenomenon. People are writing articles for their websites (and others), distributing emails, newsletters and connecting through social media. Brand advertising is still important for business-to-consumer businesses, but consulting and accounting firms are buying fewer ads in Fortune to build overall awareness.

So, sigh, these sales pros are leaving the magazine business and perhaps draining a bit of the glamour from it. Theyre not going the way of Willy Loman. In Arthur Millers classic, The Death of a Salesman, the character committed suicide after he lost his job. No, these people are too much on the ball and their sales skills are transferrable.

Whats their place in New Media? Much of the ad money that is being spent in the digital world is on Google. eMarketer predicts that $12 billion will be spent on search advertising in 2009 (half of all digital media spending) and Google dominates that market. Maybe the ladies and their designer outfits are headed to Google, leaving some wistfully recalling the glamour days of magazines.

A conversation withStephen Baker on New Media: Using our clicks to predict our behavior

Sept 8, 2009 - Ive known Stephen Baker since 1985, when we worked at the now-defunct El Paso Herald-Post. Always fluent in Spanish, he was picked up by BusinessWeek to cover events from Mexico City. From there he had assignments in Paris and now New York for the magazine, which is up for sale.

Baker stays on top of the New Media world via hisBlogspotting blog in BusinessWeek. He was Twittering back when the rest of us thought twitter meant to utter a succession of light chirping or tremulous sounds or to tremble with nervous agitation. A couple years ago Houghton Mifflin signed him to pen The Numerati, which details how a phalanx of mathematicians are using our digital behavior (Internet, credit cards, shopping discount cards etc.) to predict how we will buy, vote and even live in the future.

Baker is an interesting man who lives a fascinating life. You can follow him at http://thenumerati.net/. He recently stopped by Denver on his way back from a conference in Aspen on data. That...doesnt sound interesting at all, but trythis interview on for size:

Keith DuBay: Hows the book doing?

Stephen Baker: Its doing very well. Its been picked up in 15 foreign markets. The paperback is out and Im getting a lot of attention and speaking offers. Its especially important for it to do very well because my future at BusinessWeek is up in the air right now. My focus is more on writing books than on the magazine side.

KD: You said in your book, Without sound oversight, were liable to get the worst of both worlds a surveillance society that still fails to make us safe. Isnt that a given?

Baker: Its not just the government thats going to be watching us. Its also private industry. I was most concerned about the government. It needs to respect certain civil liberties. The problem is if you have an authoritarian government to use the fear of people to justify heightened surveillance. Then you get the worst of both worlds. Its going to be machines that are picking us out and humans judging what machines pick out. There are a lot of false positives. Humans are going to have to use their own judgment to see who to arrest, etc.

KD: Are people predictable?

Baker: Individuals are not predictable. Groups are predictable. These algorithms that The Numerati come up with are designed to understand us as members of groups, but not in the traditional white-black-rich-poor categories. There are groups that have similar behaviors. Numerati who have a lot of money, like Google, can afford to make mistakes a lot of the time and still afford to give us valuable information.

KD: Whats the future of media?

Baker: The future of media/advertising is the next five years are going to be hugely chaotic. Were going to come up with a way to inform and entertain ourselves and pay the people who inform and entertain us, but it may not be the same people who are getting paid today. We have professional newsgatherers now with mortgages and theyre raising their families from advertising dollars. And thats not a sure thing in the next five years.

I think we'll have plenty of great coverage of things people are passionate about: sports, entertainment and tech gizmos, for example. Sites will continue to rake in advertising revenue in those areas. The trouble comes from the fragmentation. Historically, the press has served a full meal, including everything from brussel sprouts to bon bons.The bon bons, like sports, have subsidized the veggies--the coverage of local government, law, labor markets, etc.

Now that the popular stuff can stand by itself, from blogs to ESPN, the challenge will be to build businesses for professional-caliber reporting in the other areas. I don't know how we're going to do this. There will be experiments in grassroots reporting, but it will be a struggle. So during the next five years, I see lots of turbulence, lots of news going unreported, and loads of unreliable or biased reports. It'll be a zoo, and lots of journalists will have to find other work.

KD: Will you miss the views of Manhattan from your office?

Baker: Yes I will. Ill miss my office view. Ill miss walking around Rockefeller Center. Ill be lonely if I leave BusinessWeek because I work with 150 people there I like and admire and Ill miss them.

KD: Whats your next book about?

Baker: Im working on a proposal. It will have something to do with what well have to know, what well have to keep between our ears but Im not exactly sure.

No pot of gold at the end of the social media rainbow

Aug. 13, 2009 - As this is a new media column and social media is a part of new media, you might expect me to be one of the legions of self-styled experts who espouses social media as the be-all end-all for businesses.

Im not. I keep one foot on and one foot off the bandwagon.

Sites such as Linked-In, Facebook and Twitter are ways to use technology to make their virtual communities better, more interesting and useful.

Social media is good for families, especially big ones. Its wonderful for finding old friends youve lost touch with, or former colleagues. Laid-off workers use social media to stay in touch, until the shock ends at least. Its good for celebrities who want to keep themselves on the minds of their adoring fans. Social media is good for writers who want to sell books and keep their fans updated on how the book is progressing. Business networking sites such as Linked-In are valuable for meeting potential business leads or finding a job or finding good talent. I belong to a newsgroup on Linked-In and find it valuable as an intellectual community.

When it comes to business, my other foot is way off the bandwagon. Im doing a virtual splits here. As Robert Strohmeyer of PC World says, Beware the social media charlatan. The only ones making money off of social media are the small army of social media consultants going around saying that business has to be in social media. It sure isnt Twitter or Facebook that are making money. Strohmeyer writes,

Combine a rapidly growing trend of social media adoption with an economy that has forced hundreds of thousands of workers to reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs, and you've got the perfect recipe for consultant overload. Since nobody seems to know what the hell's going on with Twitter anyway, nearly anyone can pass themselves off as an expert on the subject. So suddenly all those poseurs who might otherwise have bilked the hapless with offers of life coaching services or Feng Shui consulting have jumped on the social networking bandwagon. You can hardly swing a stick on the sidewalk nowadays without smacking one of these guys in the head.

I wish I had written that paragraph. Im constantly being prompted to be a fan of some business. Why? Cant I just head to their web site and get current on what theyre doing? The only business Facebook sites Ive seen arent worth visiting, carrying a few regurgitated articles that were published somewhere else. Who needs the repetition?

People want to follow their own interests. They dont want to be customers or fans of some business. People resent being sold something all the time. The minute you try to monetize social media, the followers start tuning you out.

Facebook was pretty cool for awhile, but even the social part of it is getting old, especially the prospect of spending valuable time learning that someone just fed the dog or went shopping.

Social media is a communist. Business is a fascist authoritarian. Politically, the twain shall never meet. As my client, Kent McSparran, told his people when EKS&H was pondering social media and worrying that the company wouldnt be able to control what was published there, Thats the point, you dont have control of social media.

On a social site, you wont be controlling your social media, only participating in the discussion.
Your business website should be accomplishing what Twitter or Facebook can do for you. If it doesnt have things such as forums and customer service discussions, maybe its time to rethink your site.

Stephen Baker, author of The Numerati and Business Weeks Blogspotting blog, argues that Dell Computer uses social media to answer customer service questions and generally support its brand. The idea is that if you're successful in building a community at the site (and most companies fail) those people help each other and the brand. My question is why cant companies accomplish that on its own site in a responsive and innovative manner, something more immediate than the old FAQ?

When it comes to career and business, Im a cloud guy. We carry our cloud of contacts, experiences, expertise, relationships, everything, with us along the way. We dont just work at one place all our lives and dont do just one little job. Social media can be a part of that i.e. the networking and reconnecting part and the sum of all that reflects our value of our skills to a business. But thats all on a personal level and worthless to a business enterprise.

And the next time you hear someone say that social media is the big new thing for business, find out if that person is one of those social media consultants you cant swing a stick on a sidewalk without hitting.