Economic Development 2.0

“If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley.” – Paul Graham in his essay “How To Be Silicon Valley”

In many ways, the notion of “imported innovation” is the core tenet of our local economic development strategy.  We strive to identify companies who will move here or we struggle to keep existing companies here, but we do little to help generate innovation and entrepreneurship.

This is odd as Buffalo has a rich history of innovative entrepreneurs who powered the growth of Buffalo and WNY at the turn of the last century.  At some point, we seem to have lost our way, we lost our network effect.

The reason Buffalo struggles to innovate is related to the lack of innovators, a self-perpetuating problem.  We lack a thriving community of innovative and energetic entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks.  There is no center of the city which fosters shared ideas and creative entrepreneurial energy.  Sure, we have a couple of areas in the city chasing the Richard Florida model of huddling hipsters and creatives into small alcoves to create an economic impact, but there is no effort to create an Artspace-like environment for business.

In cities where innovation thrives, you’ll find strong academic universities surrounded by an urban area populated by entrepreneurs with access to capital investors who are willing to fund risky ideas. You need a confluence of wealth and energy to create a network effect.

Chairman Emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology, Irving Wladawsky-Berger had this to say about innovation and network effects:

Throughout history, certain cities and the regions around them have been the major centers of innovation in a variety of different fields as a result of their unique accumulation of talent and wealth. Innovation is very susceptible to network effects – that is, the more talented people you have in close proximity, the more their ideas and their work influence each other and stimulate them to innovate. While talent is necessary to becoming an innovation hub, it is not sufficient. You need wealth, in order to support the talented people and bring their work to market. You also need an open culture that values a diversity of ideas and experiences.

So, we lack a thriving urban area which creates shared energy.  We lack access to innovation capital as most of our local wealth is inherited and descended from the casino capitalism tree (those interested in collecting wealth for the sake of collecting it).  Our talent base is drained each year as they migrate to greener pastures.  Most importantly, we lack people willing to invest in what Keynes called the “real economy”, the economy of production capital, long-term investment and job creation.

So, how do we overcome all of these factors?  The answer from the likes of BNE/BNP and most IDA’s is to keep paying a vig to companies like Geico and Yahoo! to set up shop in our fair region and bless us with midlevel jobs.  Those jobs are designed to create wealth for plutocrats in other regions of the country.  While this strategy has merit as a force multiplier for the local economy, it’s shouldn’t be the primary driver of economic development, it should be a tactic in a wider strategy.

I’d posit that we need to build our own network effect.  No longer should we look to the local “business leaders” for handouts and capital.  We rebuild our culture of innovation from the ashes of closed steel mills and shuttered auto factories.  Looking to ourselves to fund a new wave of innovation, a rising tide of locals who want to build a better future for themselves and their neighbors.  To give this city back the entrepreneurial roar that was heard around the world at the turn of the last century.

We start with a community wide venture capital investment fund.  One in which we all pay what we can to fund the next wave of companies that will employ our friends, neighbors and our children.  Let’s stop looking for someone else to save us when the answer is right in our own wallets.

What follows is a skeleton idea that emerged from discussions with a dozen or so young emerging entrepreneurs over the last couple of weeks (our own pocket network effect).  We figured if we want to empower entrepreneurship, we should start by asking others to help us create the vision.  Which is why we need your help.

Not every idea needs a $500,000-$10,000,000 initial investment.  Most need seed funding for basic salaries, access to technology and office space, time, mentorship and community.  A good example of what this would look like is a community funded version of Y-Combinator.

Y Combinator does seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started.

Some companies may need no more than seed funding. Others will go through several rounds. There is no right answer; how much funding you need depends on the kind of company you start.

At Y Combinator, our goal is to get you through the first phase. This usually means: get you to the point where you’ve built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.  We make small investments (rarely more than $20,000) in return for small stakes in the companies we fund (usually 2-10%).

Y Combinator has a novel approach to seed funding: we fund startups in batches. There are two each year, one from January through March and one from June through August. During each cycle we fund multiple startups.

We estimate that we’ll need live/work space and an initial funding stream of $2,000,000 to fund 8-10 companies at a maximum of $20,000 in the first year.  Ideally, we want to raise money from the community, in small denominations.  We want everyone invested in the idea of creating innovation and the companies which will employ the people of our region.  Let’s stop thinking of economic development as a top-down planning mechanism and treat it like a grassroots campaign.  When people are invested in the business community, even at a small scale, they become active participants in the local business environment.  Not pawns in a multi-national corporate game of pleasing distant shareholders.  We begin to think locally, we begin to empower entrepreneurs, we begin to see what’s possible.

Is it possible to raise $2,000,000 in Western New York through small donations from Joe Six-Pack in Lancaster and Tom Twelve-Pack in Hamburg?  Maybe.  However, we’d need to identify some larger investors who are not part of the existing power structure to provide our own seed funding and provide the mentorship for these budding entrepreneurs.

Each investor, no matter how small, get a weighted vote on which businesses get funded.  There will be a fund manager and a CEO hired who will report to a board of directors elected by the wider membership.  The board will manage the program, provide leadership and advise the membership.  Everyone is eligible for a leadership position as half of the board would rotate each year.  This would be a corporation, not a non-profit.

During the startup phase, we group the entreprenuers together and they hack away at their projects with legal oversight and receive guidance from guest speakers, advisers, and business planners.  We set them up for success by letting them focus on their business idea while giving them the tools to grow the idea.

So, I’ll leave it to you to tell me what you think.  Add to the idea, tell me what we’re missing or what we have right.  We’re walking the idea around town to people we’ve identified as potential partners and seed investors and I’ll post updates as the idea either blossoms or stalls.

It’s time we took control of our economic future, help make it happen.

Legalized Bribery?

Lawrence Lessig and Change Congress take a look at why two specific Democratic Senators (Evan Bayh and Joe Lieberman) might oppose inclusion of the public option in the pending healthcare reform bill.

It’s easy to be cynical, point fingers and accuse Lieberman of corruption, but the problem itself is actually much more nuanced.  The issue isn’t that politicians do the bidding of interests who pay for them to win re-election, it’s that we allow for those payments to happen at all.

Take some time to see how a solution can be implemented.

The shorter version:

The longer, more historical version:

Until we publicly fund our elections and remove the influence of money from the policy making process, we’ll never get sensible legislation on important issues.  It’s how we ended up with the watered down reform bill recently passed by the House and now under consideration in the Senate.

Change Congress.

Reinventing The Newsroom

“Newspapers have a terrible future.” – Warren Buffett, Owner of The Buffalo News, 11/3/2009

Yes, yes they do.  The finer point here is that journalism has an incredibly bright future.

The problem, as I see it, is that newspapers and the corporations that own them are risk-averse creatures.  They are not looking to revolutionize what they do as there are too many people in their employ and too many investors to satisfy.  Innovation rarely, if ever, comes from industry stalwarts.  It emerges when a market opportunity presents itself to an entrepreneur who has the capital and ability to take risks.

As it stands, circulation numbers for The Buffalo News are down again, but they have added a new revenue stream to the corporation as they are now the local printer for The New York Times.

“The Times deal is another example of how we are diversifying our business,” News’ senior vice president of marketing, Dottie Gallagher-Cohen said.

Well, kind of, but not really.  That’s like Chrysler saying they are diversifying their struggling automobile business by also making automobiles.  Diversifying the business would be expanding into a new market vertical or innovating with a new product.  However, this represents a key problem with the survival of newspapers.  They aren’t willing to expand the business footprint in any way that would put their primary revenue stream at risk.  I can’t blame them, I see the bottom line thinking which promotes that logic, I really do.

However, those in charge conflate the medium with the media.  They are unable or unwilling to envision or plan for a future in which the news of the day is not printed on paper and taken to to the reader.  What has happened in the last several years is that consumers have essentially said that the value they derive from the product at .75 per copy is not worth their daily investment.  It’s a rebuke of the business model, not necessarily of the content.  Well, it’s not a rebuke of the quality content, but it’s a rebuke of the extraneous content like stock price listings, classified ads, feature fluff found on other local outlets and AP Wire stories.

So, what is a newspaper like The Buffalo News to do?  After all, they are the paper of record in a one newspaper town and have the luxury to experiment with new models unlike their debt-laden brethren in other cities.

Well, since no one asked and I’ve spent the better part of the last year writing about it, I’ll tell you exactly what they can do.  Also, they better hurry up and try or some new media outlet might finally get access to the necessary capital and do it on their own…wink/wink, nudge/nudge

The Buffalo News should stop dithering about with pointless add-on, out of the box social networks like the KickApps fueled MyBuffalo.com and their vertical content network featuring cars and brides and other things that aren’t journalism.  I mean, why not just sell funny hats as an additional revenue stream?  It makes about as much sense as attaching these niche sites to your media outlet.

Spin off a hyperlocal, open source journalism site, let’s call it WNYNow.com for the sake of argument.  Assign an editor, a multimedia editor, a web design staff, videographers, 5-7 writers and a couple of photographers who will only work on the site.  Starting a separate business entity allows it to operate free from the arcane union rules and also allows for market based salaries and tighter cost controls.  The content is only available online and aside from advertising or marketing in the print edition, these two entities will operate separately and independently.

For enterprise or investigative pieces, allow the writers to pitch stories not to the editors, but to the readership.  They should report their story openly, asking for assistance and feedback from the readers as each story develops.  Ultimately, the readers have an ownership stake in the story and turn into advocates for your content.  They amplify your stories using social media and become ambassadors.

For day to day reporting, the editor and writers post an open calendar of events, meetings and press events that can be covered.  Ask the readers to assign a priority level and assign your staff accordingly.  They get to have a voice in the editorial assignments and are also engaged as they become part of the news process.  Utilize relationships with existing alternative media outlets in town to aggregate their coverage/content and curate the good information into a larger, co-operative piece of multimedia journalism.

You’ll build a loyal community of readers and you will know who they are, what they like, where they live and what their interests are.  You have a valuable community into which you are now able to sell access.  That’s where you begin to monetize.

As the community around your online outlet grows and traffic increases, you begin to reduce the number of pages you print in the daily paper.  As you continue the process, print reporters from the newspaper either retire, go elsewhere, or accept a non-union contract to work for the online outlet.  Eventually, the output flips and you’re printing a newspaper just a couple times each week or even just once per week while your daily reporting functions have moved online.  Profit margins will eventually grow online as the cost of provisioning the news decreases significantly since you no longer need to procure paper and ink.  You can also generate revenue from your existing print assets as you can continue to run a specialty print shop for other clients.

In short, open up the process and build a community around your core product…journalism.  After all, newspapers and journalism are two separate things and as newspapers die, the transition to online media is not an evolution, it’s a revolution.  Plan accordingly.

I know I am.

Stuff You Should Care About

This is a bit of a dumping ground for stories I think are important and deserve your attention.  I’ll keep a running list of these stories in the sidebar of this site under the Headline “Your Daily Homework”.  I’m not giving you the full backstory on each of these, just links that I hope you’ll follow.  Also, if you have something to add to any of these stories, please post the links and I’ll add them or write a longer piece on what you’ve provided.

Blackwater and The Mercenary Military

Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist and author who has spent several years documenting the privatization of the American military and what that means for the future of our combat forces and ability to fight.  His latest story highlights a bribery scandal of epic proportions involving Blackwater officials and the Iraqi Government.

The mercenary firm Blackwater has become a symbol of the utter lawlessness and criminality that permeates the privatised wing of the US war machine. The company’s operatives have shot dead scores of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, while former employees allege in sworn statements that Blackwater’s owner Erik Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe”, and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life”. Five Blackwater employees will stand trial in federal court in the US on charges that they slaughtered 14 innocent Iraqis, while a sixth Blackwater operative has already pleaded guilty. The company faces allegations of illicit weapons-smuggling and tax evasion, and is being sued for war crimes. The private army is under fire. And yet, despite all the action, none of the legal bullets has – to date – landed a serious blow.

Institutionalized Torture and Who We Are Becoming As A Nation

Glenn Greenwald tells the story of Maher Arar, a Canadian and Syrian who was tortured through America’s policy of rendition.

In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was “rendered” – despite his pleas that he would be tortured — to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured.  He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured.  Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing.

The story that we sanction and commit torture has been told and sadly fails to inspire indignation amongst the chattering class nor the general populace.  However, the shocking aspect of this story isn’t necessarily what happened (even though it’s horrific), it’s that our courts are refusing to scrutinize the actions of the government.

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation.  That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded “categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada.”  By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves “state secrets” and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved.

Yesterday, the Second Circuit — by a vote of 7-4 –  agreed with the government and dismissed Arar’s case in its entirety.  It held that even if the government violated Arar’s Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him.  Why?  Because “providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns” (p. 39).  In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context — even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured — and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

If you’re interested in the details as to how the United States sent this innocent man to Syria to be tortured, you can read it here.  You can also read the details of his treatment while rendered by clicking here.  He was kept in a six foot whole, unfed, naked, urinated upon and beaten with electrical cables.  What did they get from him?  Nothing, he was innocent.  Detained due to false confessions given by other prisoners in exchange for an end to their torture.  All done in your name, for the security of America.

Senator Bernie Sanders Introduces the “Too Big To Fail?  Too Big To Exist!” Bill

Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a very sensible bill into the Senate the other day, essentially saying that if a bank is to big to fail, (”any entity that has grown so large that its failure would have a catastrophic effect on the stability of either the financial system or the United States economy without substantial Government assistance.”) it needs to be identified by the Treasury Secretary and broken up into smaller corporations.  We all hate bailouts, right?  Both lefties and righties agree that bailouts are bullshit.  So, let’s do something about it.

Glass-Steagall

And while we’re at it, how about we go ahead and listen to Paul Volcker and re-institute the Glass-Steagall Act which kept commercial and investment banks separate.  Repealing Glass-Steagall in 1999 was a primary precursor to the huge economic collapse we just experienced.

“The banks are there to serve the public,” Mr. Volcker said, “and that is what they should concentrate on. These other activities create conflicts of interest. They create risks, and if you try to control the risks with supervision, that just creates friction and difficulties” and ultimately fails.

The only viable solution, in the Volcker view, is to break up the giants. JPMorgan Chase would have to give up the trading operations acquired from Bear Stearns. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch would go back to being separate companies. Goldman Sachs could no longer be a bank holding company.

In the Volcker resurrection of Glass-Steagall, commercial banks would take deposits, manage the nation’s payments system, make standard loans and even trade securities for their customers — just not for themselves. The government, in return, would rescue banks that fail.

On the other side of the wall, investment houses would be free to buy and sell securities for their own accounts, borrowing to leverage these trades and thus multiplying the profits, and the risks.

The bill was enacted shortly after the Great Depression began and helped maintain sanity in the banking sector until 1999.  The largest economic downturn since that Great Depression began shortly after it’s repeal.  Coincidence?  Not really.

The Right Wing In American Politics

As I discussed last week, the right wing is regionalizing and religifying in the runup to the 2010 and 2012 elections.  No politician represents the growth of the stupid in American politics like Sarah Palin.  At a speaking engagement in Wisconsin, Palin banned all recording devices, but one guy sneaked in an audio recorder.  Palin spent a lot of time talking about the “change” that Obama has brought and how that “change” doesn’t represent “real” American values.  As an anecdote, she points out that our new American coins no longer say “In God We Trust” on the front or back.  She was troubled by the fact that our national motto was moved to the edge of the coin and was no longer as visible as it once was.  She wondered who would make a decision like that.  Well, Crazypants McGee clearly didn’t do her research as it was the 2005 GOP Congress and President Bush who made that decision, not Obama.

Two things on this; (1) “In God We Trust” was adopted as our national motto during the McCarthy Red Scare.  The motto was originally “E Pluribus Unum”. or “Out Of Many, One”…too collectivist and socialist-y for today, I would imagine.  (2) Palin defines herself not by the issues she advocates or the positions she holds, but rather by her enemies.  She connects with people left behind by corporatism and capitalism by making it seem as if she is just as persecuted and left behind as they.  To them, she seems a regular person who reflects their values and is fighting against the machine that seemingly ridicules their uneducated and faith-based existence.  As America grows less educated and more angry by the year, Palin becomes a very dangerous politician and a very troubling threat to those of us who value intellectual analysis and thoughtful policy in our governmental leaders.

Massa and The Netroots

A slapfight is developing on regional blogs about Rep. Eric Massa’s refusal to vote for the Healthcare Reform bill.  You have Phil Anderson, editor of The Albany Project saying that Massa is duplicitous and “full of shit”.

Today is D-Day for health care reform and we’ve still got some waverers here in NY. We already know that Eric Massa is “no” no matter what. (And I’ll have more on that later.  Short version: Massa is full of sh*t and trying to have it both ways.)

This is it, folks. It’s now or never. Too many of these guys got their seats with netroots support. (Rep Massa, I’m looking at you.) It’s time for them to put up or shut up.

To which the guys at Rochester Turning, several of whom live in Massa’s district, retort:

Eric Massa has read the bill. He said he would not vote for a bad bill. It’s a bad bill.  Employers will continue to have to pay for their employees Health Insurance.  If not, they will be committing a crime and fined.

This is an argument that Democrats across America should be having this week, in earnest.

We have establishment Democrats who value party loyalty and getting “anything” passed on healthcare in order to implement further compromised bills on important issues down the road.  They are arguing with real progressives who demand actual progress and good legislation.  It’s the crux of the problem in the national party.

Anderson has been around a long time and was most recently employed as the Director of New Media at the New York State Senate.  He’s a party first kinda guy.  The guys at Rochester Turning are like me, they’re employed in non-party jobs and want their representatives to demand good legislation.  We tend to find ourselves lumped in with the “fringe” of the party, where you find guys like Moore and Kucinich.

So, the argument from Anderson comes down to why won’t a “Progressive” Democrat like Massa act like a compromising corporate centrist Democrat?  Why won’t he get in line like the other advocates of single payer and a robust public option and vote for this watered down bill which doesn’t accomplish a whole lot of reform?

The party guys will tell you it’s because Massa is appeasing the right wing teabaggers in NY-29 and that Massa is a party sellout.  The non party guys will tell you it’s because Massa meant what he said and said what he meant.

In a letter dated July 30, 2009 from the Progressive Caucus to Reps. Pelosi, Waxman, Rangel, and Miller, signed by Rep. Eric Massa and 56 other Representatives:

Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates – not negotiated rates – is unacceptable. It would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal of”keeping insurance companies honest,” and their rates down.

To offset the increased costs incurred by adopting the provisions advocated by the Blue Dog members of the Committee, the agreement would reduce subsidies to low-and middle-income families, requiring them to pay a larger portion of their income for insurance premiums, and would impose an unfunded mandate on the states to pay for what were to have been Federal costs.

In short, this agreement will result in the public, both as insurance purchasers and as taxpayers, paying ever higher rates to insurance companies. We simply cannot vote for such a proposal.

Of the 57 signers of that letter, only Reps. Eric Massa and Dennis Kucinich followed through on their pledge to not vote for a bill without a robust public option.  Most of the signers traded away their pledge in exchange for a floor vote on a single payer amendment to the bill, which Speaker Pelosi subsequently reneged on.  Pelosi did however allow the pro-life Stupak Amendment to come to the floor for a vote, which is an affront to every pro-choice interest group in America.

So, is Massa simply voting “no” on the bill like the Blue Dog Democrats did, to appease the right wingers in their districts?  I’d say the evidence says “no”.  Along with the letter above, Massa has on numerous occasions stated his opposition to a watered down healthcare bill.

In the end, I’m glad someone in the WNY delegation voted against the bill.  While I’m glad some incremental reforms on pre-existing conditions and lifetime maximums were achieved, the sum total of the bill is a general handout to the insurance industry it’s intended to reform.  Pretty par for the course when it comes to DC legislation nowadays.

I was going to write a lengthy treatise on why this bill is generally bad for America and how in the long term it hurts the cause of real reform, but a Huffington Post blogger summed up my sentiments and I’d prefer to link to him in the interest of keeping this post under 2,000 words.

Personally, I supported President Obama in the primaries and the election but do not support him on this corporate giveaway built on broken campaign promises. I voted for the Barack Obama who opposed the individual mandate, who said the negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN and who campaigned against backroom deals with PhARMA.

Conservatives have expressed outrage for months about the way the health care bill was handled. Their anti-government anger is misplaced because the lets the insurances and drug companies who really helped drive this bill off the hook. But I understand their sense that this bill was passed despite the people.

Progressives should be every bit as upset that President Obama lied to us to get his historic health bill. The citizens of this country did not have a seat at the table. Proponents of single payer didn’t have a seat at the table. Under the guise of health care reform, we watched as the insurance industry got a bill passed that entrenches and enriches them.

Don’t let anyone fool you that this bill is a good start. It’s got a poison pill “Public Option” that is designed to fail.

I’m glad Massa said “no” and I’m glad he holds the 29th district seat.  To get a feel for who this guy is, take a look at his statement on the floor of the House last week in opposition to an increase of troops and money to the failed state of Afghanistan.

Yeah, that’s the kind of guy I can get behind.

SuperAwesomeFunTime Monday

It was a long weekend of healthcare debates, Afghanistan discussion, and lots of action in local politics.  I could talk about all of that today, but I don’t want to.  It’s Monday, it’s gonna be a beautiful 70 degree November day and I want some superhappyawesomefuntime discussion.  Post cool videos, links or articles if you got ‘em.

Here’s a few recent videos that put a hop in my step every time I see ‘em.

This Guy > Billy Fucillo > Riverfront Auto People

If you need car financing, you might want to visit the most racist car financier in the country

After you buy a car from the Cuban guy, get yourself insured over at Fonk Auto Insurance.  SHAPOOPI

This guy knows what the people want.  SASSAFACTION!

Where The Dirty Hipsters Are

Finally…Pomplamoose always puts a hop in my step.  Check out their YouTube channel.

Video – Journalism Panel Discussion

I’m efforting some way to get this into an more easily viewed interface and maybe cut it into smaller chunks.  Until then, enjoy.

Some thoughts on the panel discussion graciously hosted by Buffalo Spree Magazine:

• Journalism itself is NOT on the brink, content delivery mechanisms are changing and old paradigms are sunsetting.  Interestingly, it seems that people in the newspaper industry conflate the newsprint on which journalism is delivered with the journalism itself.  They have trouble seeing a way in which news will continue to be reported without the support of the print product.

• We need to stop thinking that online media and journalism is an evolution of the newspaper industry.  They are completely different animals.  Applying the same methodologies for monetizing print publications to web journalism is a ticket to failure.

• Niche players will report; large outlets will curate and distribute.  That’s the new paradigm.  Reporters must take input from multiple sources, including bloggers, subject matter experts and the readership in order to produce content that people want to consume and share.  Once upon a time, editors at print and broadcast outlets were able to determine what information was important, how it was reported, when it was reported and to whom it was reported.  That’s all over now.  Open the process and be inclusive to make a better product.

• Stop worrying about how many people come to your website.  It just doesn’t matter.  Make your content ubiquitous, place it in as many places as possible, remove barriers to entry.  Build a community and advocates first, monetize later.

If you were in attendance at the panel and have questions or thoughts, please leave them here.  I’ll add more thoughts when I have a bit more time.

Showdown At Blog Corral

Alright, so it’s not actually a showdown, it’s more of a panel discussion with liquor.  I just needed a catchy title and “Journalism On The Brink” just isn’t cutting it for me.

Buffalo Spree Publishing, Inc. presents a special panel discussion “Journalism on the brink: When the daily paper becomes the daily blog, who wins and who loses?” at 7 p.m. in the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Auditorium at the Burchfield Penney Art Center (1300 Elmwood Avenue) on November 5.  The event is free and open to the public.

The evening will feature a rousing dialogue between some of Western New York’s most notable and important online news figures.

Confirmed panelists include:

Brian Connolly, web editor for the Buffalo News

Jim Heaney, blogger and columnist for the Buffalo News

Geoff Kelly, editor and blogger for Artvoice

Newell Nussbaumer, EStudent Network

Ben Siegel, editor for Block Club

Elena Buscarino, Buffalo Rising

Alan Bedenko, Marc Odien and Chris Smith of WNYMedia.net

The discussion ties in with an article in Buffalo Spree’s November 2009 issue titled “WNY’s churning urn of online news and comment: good, bad, or just confusing?” by Spree associate editor Christopher Schobert.  Unedited interviews with us can be found in the Buffalo Spree Web Extras Section.

The issues presented in the article and the panel reach far beyond Western New York. Should online content be free? Are news blogs “fair and balanced,” and is that even desirable? What do blogs and online news sites mean for both the reader, and the writer?  Can local news sites complement each other, or are they invariably opposed?

Newspapers may be on the brink, but journalism itself is not.  In fact, journalism itself may never have been healthier than it is today.  An influx of subject matter experts in online media now compete with  journalism school generalists working for print and broadcast media outlets.

For the second time, Warren Buffett, owner of The Buffalo News has publicly stated that the newspaper industry is dying.  The relevance of the print product and the accompanying business model are rapidly ceasing to be profitable.  He must have seen the latest numbers on daily newspaper circulation which paint a not so rosy picture for our friends at the local paper of record.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations says average daily circulation was down 4.6 percent in the April-September period, compared with last year. Last year’s drop was 2.6 percent among papers reporting comparable circulation totals.

The Buffalo News reported a circulation loss of 2.7 percent on Sunday, dropping to 255,369 from 262,509. Weekday circulation declined 3.3 percent to 175,984 from 181,805. Figures are for the period ended in September of this year and compared to a year ago.

This is a continuing trend and combined with rapidly declining advertising revenues, a moribund classified advertising section and a readership that is slowly dying off, the future is not bright for the newspaper.  Of course, Margaret Sullivan, Editor of The Buffalo News, greets this information with the Officer Barbrady treatment, “Move along, nothing to see here”

I’ve been writing off and on about the future of the daily newspaper for some time and I’ll probably cover some of that ground tonight at the event.  A few key terms about the future of journalism that I’ll explain on the panel are:  curation, experts, accuracy, collaboration, multi-platform, the ethic of the link, the sphere of deviance and community funded news.

As a reference point for people in attendance, I am a big believer that the future of journalism looks something like this:

You see, we are all empowered as reporters.  In the “new” news process, we would be using a shared online outlet as a distribution point for journalism that reflects the community, writ large.  We can create a product that is less about agenda and is richer in content than what is offered today.  And that is journalism in the new media ecosystem.

I hope to see you tonight

Obama and The White Man

“We want our country back!”

That’s the common refrain from teabaggers, quasi-libertarians, and the conservative movement since the election of Barack Obama in 2008.  The thing is, most of the members of that movement don’t seem to understand that America and the demographics of the voting class in this country have forever changed.

In 2008, 90% of those who cast a vote for John McCain and his VP nominee, Crazypants McGee, were white.  As a percentage of the overall voting populace, McCain captured a total of 55% of the white vote while Obama took 45% of the vote.

Yes, a candidate won a race for President in the United States without carrying a majority of white male voters.  The 45% of white American men who cast a vote for Obama were not necessarily spread out around the country in an orderly fashion.  Here’s a handy map reflecting the national distribution of white male votes for Obama.

Unsurprisingly, you’ll note that Obama did poorly in the southern states as well as other traditional red states which now make up the national dixie belt.  Obama did surprisingly well in some of the least diverse states in the North like Wisconsin, Vermont, Oregon, Washington and Maine.  There is something to that data point that I hope to get to in the future.  However, Obama didn’t need the white male vote because he took 59% of the vote for non-white men.  This chart shows Obama’s non-white male vote distribution around the country.

Looks a lot different, doesn’t it?

Combined with data which shows the GOP fares very poorly with the expanding hispanic and african-american demographics, the strategy for the GOP and the conservative movement is clear.  Foment a feeling that America is being taken over by radical minorities and radical “leftists” with their unamerican “urban” agenda.

Over the next couple of years, we’ll watch this strategy grow and see all new sorts of Lee Atwater style tactics and buzzwords used to covertly describe how the black man wants to take away the white man’s rights and privileges.  It’s really the only chance the GOP has to regain national power in the face of massively and rapidly changing voter demographics.  Fire people up, get them to throw tea bags at each other; compare Obama to Mao, Stalin, Hitler…whatever it takes to motivate the angry white guy who lost his job at the plant due to globalization to get off his ass and get to the polls and maximize turnout.  Demonize gays, blame job losses on unions (not shareholder demands and CEO priorities), turn hopelessness into anger and blame.

Will it work?  Can this short-term strategy effectuate a return to power for the GOP?  Long term, what is the GOP plan to reach out to these changing voter constituencies.  I’ll dig into all of that more in the next few weeks as time allows.

Think about this chart until we meet again, it’s probably the most telling of all.  It’s a difference between the vote totals of George H.W. Bush in 1988 and the vote totals of John McCain in 2008.  It’s stark to see how the GOP base has shrunk so drastically into the dixie belt in just 20 short years.

Endorsements

Volker isn't running, I just love this picture at election time.

As Alan noted yesterday, it’s obligatory that the columnists at WNYMedia issue our annual slate of endorsed candidates in local races.  Unlike Alan, I think our endorsements matter, not necessarily as a means to effect votes, but as a part of the continuing development of alternative media in WNY.  30,000 people consume our content on our page or on numerous other aggregators, partner sites, radio shows, news readers and social networks each day.  We’re an informed part of the voting populace and we represent a growing constituency in this region, one that doesn’t regularly read Bob McCarthy’s column in The Buffalo News or watch the half-assed product of our local television news teams.  Politicians need to start working with us, not against us.

So, as a means to continue defining our presence, these endorsements matter.  Take ‘em or leave ‘em.

I’m only issuing endorsements on races I have been watching.  If I leave anything out it’s either because the race is non-competitive or I am not knowledgeable enough about the candidates to make an informed statement.

Erie County Comptroller

Mark Poloncarz.  Yes, he advertises on our site, but Mark is a big boy who gets new media and understands that reaching our readers and expecting our endorsement are two completely different things.  I’d gladly accept advertising money from Phil Kadet, but his campaign manager kept asking us to interview Phil for our “magazine”, so I don’t think they really understand the whole Internet thing.  I digress…

Mark has proven himself to be competent, professional and diligent in his role as County Comptroller and he has been a nice counterbalance to both County Executive Collins and the Erie County Legislature.  Much has been made by Kadet’s campaign that Mark is too political, but Kadet sure didn’t have any problem taking $10K from Collins’ Taxpayers First PAC which is funded by the BNP as well as associates of Steve Pigeon and Joel Giambra, did he?  He sure didn’t have a problem holding fundraisers in the living room of Chris Collins or having Chris pull money in from the Associated Building Contractor lobby or asking Collins to show up at his fundraisers as a special guest or pay for his advertisements with Greener and Hook, did he?  Yeah, Kadet is non-political, my ass.

I’m sure Phil Kadet is a nice guy, but he’s been suckling from the public teat as an adviser to the County for nearly two decades and was recruited by Collins to be a rubber stamp for his budgets, forecasts and policies.  I’ll stick with Mark and his cadre of bookish nerds in the Comptroller’s office, thank you very much.

Erie County Sheriff

John Glascott is my pick.  Did Glascott do enough to define himself as a candidate?  Who knows and who cares?  This election is a referendum on Tim Howard and his inability to perform the basic duties expected of a County Sheriff.  He has failed, epically.   His failures have been recounted on these pages regularly and it’s seems repetitive to mention them yet again.  If you were to make a documentary of Howard’s tenure as Erie County Sheriff, the soundtrack would undoubtedly be Yakety Sax.  At this point, I’d vote for Mike Hudson and his diseased liver over Tim Howard for Sheriff.

Erie County Legislature – 9th District

Christina Wleklinski Bove is my pick.  If you’ve driven through West Seneca at election time in the past few years, you’re familiar with the ubiquitous signs for Bove littered around the district.  She is a tireless campaigner and has a solid track record of finding efficiencies and implementing cost cutting strategies in West Seneca.  She’s innovative, dramatic, interesting and will certainly spice up the legislative chambers.  Her opponent Brian Wirth’s primary qualification appears to be that he is the grandson of longtime politician Sandra Lee Wirth.  He’s taken a few classes at ECC and has worked as a roofer for his Uncle and as a realtor for his Grandma.  He’s also endorsed by the local teabaggers, who are evidently not concerned with credentials, skills, education or anything like that…

Erie County Legislature – 10th District

I endorsed Kevin Hardwick shortly after he announced his candidacy and I stand by that endorsement today.  He’s a good man and will do a quality job serving the residents of his district.

Erie County Legislature – 12th District

Bob Reynolds has done a quality job as a county legislator and deserves to keep his seat.  Unfortunately, he opposed Chris Collins on several issues in the last year and thus earned a Collins sponsored challenge from former Channel 2 reporter Lynne Dixon.  Reynolds has 30 years under his belt as an employee of Ford and understands that there are benefits to implementing Six Sigma as an efficiency tool.  However, he has been outspoken in his criticism of how Collins has implemented Sigma as Collins is yet to demonstrate meaningful savings with his program.  Reynolds has been an advocate for the Distressed Property Task Force and a leader on labor and efficiency issues.  He’s a good government legislator and Dixon doesn’t have an edge in experience, qualifications or unique legislative proposals which would provide reason to replace Reynolds.

Erie County Legislature – 14th District

Tom Loughran might be the least dynamic man to ever hold office in the Erie County Legislature.  He’s a smart businessman and an effective legislator, but he is not a gifted retail politician or fundraiser.  Contrast with his opponent, Shelly Schratz, whose primary claim to fame is unpaid taxes, “stirring the pot”, and being shrill.  The Amherst Town Board is a model of inefficient governance and immaturity and she has been a major instigator of that silliness.  Do we really want to promote her to higher office?  Sure, she can impress a room of teabaggers with her small government buzzwords, but when it comes down to doing the business of a legislator, Schratz has proven ineffective. Loughran might not be interesting, but he has done good work in the legislature as a budget skeptic and advocate for sensitive environmental policy.

Orchard Park Town Supervisor

Patrick Keem is a lifelong Orchard Park resident and Chairman of the Erie County Citizens Budget Review Commission.  He has tirelessly campaigned for the office and has a detailed strategic plan for the Town of Orchard Park.   His opponent, Town Clerk Janis Colarusso, fought Kevin Gaughan every step of the way in regards to the vote to downsize town government and has spent 30 years working in the public sector as a party apparatchik.  She traffics in the sort of doubleplus ungood, non-committal reform speak of middle rung politicos.  You wouldn’t know any of this based on the tenor of the campaign, which has been professional, polite and focused on issues in the town, a refreshing rarity in the local political wars.

Mayor Of Buffalo

Unfortunately, the Erie County GOP has given up on the City of Buffalo and decided to depress urban turnout to benefit their countywide candidates by not running a candidate in this year’s Mayoral contest.  I’m advising everyone I know to write in “None Of The Above” in the Mayor’s race as a statement of dissatisfaction with both the middling performance of Byron Brown and the lack of choice in this year’s election.  If I had a choice between Byron Brown and Random Republican Guy with a pulse, I’d pull the lever for the Republican.  Since I don’t, it’s “None of the above”.