Book Review: Bulletins from Dallas: Reporting the JFK Assassination

Before he takes the oath of office, President-elect Donald Trump should read Bill Sanderson’s outstanding book, Bulletins from Dallas, about how the country’s two leading wire services covered President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.  Silicon Valley titans Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Larry Page (no relation to this reviewer) and Sergey Brin could stand to read it, too. 

After calling CNN “fake news” last week, Trump could use a tutorial about how reporters go about their jobs.  It’s not always pleasant – it might even take down our most sacred institutions or a favorite person – but that’s how the business operates.  At its best, it covers events and people without fear or favor and always with accuracy, balance and fairness.  Silicon Valley’s leaders could also use the book so they can discern which news is fake and which is real.

In this day and age of fake news websites and, recently, a network news anchor gone rogue, I’m sure it’s difficult to believe that two news wire services, The Associated Press and United Press International, once competed ferociously to not only get the news first but to first get it right.

The physical beating UPI White House Correspondent Merriman Smith took at the hands of his competitor, an AP reporter, is UPI lore and is vividly recounted by Sanderson, a New York Post editor, detailing how President Kennedy’s assassination was reported by the two wire services shortly after shots were fired across Dallas’s Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.

Sitting in the front seat of what was called the wire service car, with easy access to its radio phone, Smith quickly called UPI’s Dallas bureau once gunfire rang out, dictating details as the car followed the presidential limousine to Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy died. 

Realizing Smith was hogging the phone, the AP reporter, Jack Bell, punched Smith numerous times to get it back.  His pummeling didn’t work and a story about the shots crossed UPI’s wire before the car carrying the two reporters arrived at the hospital.  There’s even speculation Smith knocked the car’s phone out of order so UPI could maintain its increasing minute by minute lead in reporting the assassination’s details.

Nearly an hour before the White House announced Kennedy’s death, UPI did something out of the ordinary, quoting a Secret Service agent – the famous Clint Hill – that the president was dead by the time he arrived at the hospital.  UPI officially announced Kennedy’s death, based on a statement by White House Deputy Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, at 1:35 p.m. CST, and the AP followed two minutes later.

In the arena of wire service journalism, where every second and minute mattered, that was similar to losing the Super Bowl 100 - 0.  In other words, the AP was resoundingly defeated. 

UPI and AP clients, at the time, included hundreds of newspapers around the world, along with numerous television and radio stations.  They demanded accurate and fast reporting.  If they took both wire services, they often compared their reports for accuracy, speed, even writing style.

On that fateful day, most Americans didn’t realize what Smith, Bell and their cohorts were enduring to provide an accurate account of Kennedy’s death.  Instead, they saw the news delivered by the man considered the country’s most trusted news source, CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite, who spent his early years working for UPI’s predecessor, The United Press.

Like his fellow Unipresser, a term used to describe those who worked or were previously employed at UP or UPI, Cronkite was ahead of his television news competitors.  He was a man of great integrity and feared reporting Kennedy’s death until it was confirmed, knowing an erroneous report of such magnitude would ruin if not end his career.

That value is lost today.  NBC News Anchor Brian Williams was caught fudging the truth about his time covering the early days of the Iraq War in 2003.  The New York Times had its own issues with Jayson Blair, a reporter caught making up stories.  More recently, Rolling Stone magazine in 2014 reported a rape at the University of Virginia that never happened.

And while the news industry might want to be smug over Trump’s callouts of what’s fake news, it would be better served to remember that some of this problem starts with us.

Sanderson’s book traces Smith’s life from his youth in Georgia up through covering six presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon.  He was a media star in his own right, writing stories for leading magazines and even appearing on television’s “The Tonight Show.”  Sanderson also shows that Smith was a Washington insider, perhaps too friendly with the presidents he covered, especially Lyndon Johnson.

The problem with today’s technology is that anyone can be a “reporter”.  But instead of having an editor review, correct and ask questions about stories before they’re published or broadcast, anyone can write a blog, publish a video, or post on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram and rarely be corrected or stopped, unless, perhaps, they say something libelous or they’re publishing an act of terrorism.  In other words, we’re in the era of fake news, deliberately or not.

As Sanderson opines, “The Internet made news faster (but) we ... gained four minutes (and) lost a lot more.”  (page 212) 

The changed habits of today’s news consumers – taking in more information online – hasn’t helped the newspaper business.  It resulted in fewer advertising dollars and fewer reporters, Sanderson writes.  In 2000, newspaper newsrooms employed 56,200 editors, reporters, photographers and support staff.  It’s down to 32,900 as of 2016. 

This decrease isn’t just compromising the news business.  It’s also harming the country.  It’s hard to believe the nation’s depleted newsrooms didn’t contribute to some of the reporting prior to the November 8^th election predicting Hillary Clinton winning the presidency.  An election involving 50 states cannot be covered from the newsroom.  Reporters need to be on the ground, finding out what the citizenry is thinking about those who would lead them.

Only now are the editors at The Times and The Boston Globe discovering states like Iowa and Wisconsin and sending reporters there.  From reading the stories, you might think they were covering foreign countries.

The news business and the United States were fortunate to have Merriman Smith and certainly a UPI which covered politicians and events across the globe as the world’s largest, independently owned news wire service. 

The wire services have suffered many setbacks since the early 1960s.  UPI is much smaller, nothing like it was twenty or thirty years ago, having been sold a few times.  It’s owned by News World Communications, a media entity founded by the Unification Church.  The AP suffers the same woes as the media industry it serves, seeing its revenues decline nearly 25 percent from their peak in 2008.

Sanderson’s book is very well sourced, and he told me both AP and UPI cooperated with him on the book.  He also said AP’s archivists worry about how UPI is maintaining its archives.  Maybe there’s a deal to be done there, with UPI allowing AP to manage and store their archives.

Smith’s life ended in tragedy in 1970 with a self-inflicted pistol shot.  He’s buried at Arlington National Cemetery.  It’s a fitting tribute to him.  The man who stood for everything journalism holds near and dear – getting the story right – lays with America’s heroes, including his son, Albert, killed in 1966 while serving in the Army in Vietnam.

(Publishing details:  Bulletins from Dallas:  Reporting the JFK Assassination, Bill Sanderson.  New York:  Skyhorse Publishing, November 1, 2016)

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About me, the reviewer:  I’m a freelance reporter in Massachusetts and worked for UPI between 1984 and 1987, in Washington, Dallas, and Philadelphia.  I’m also the co-author, with Philip L. Kilbride, of Plural Marriage for Our Times:  A Reinvented Option? 2^nd Edition, Santa Barbara, CA:  Praeger Publishers, 2012.  My dad, Bob Page, was UPI’s general manager between 1975 and 1980.  He spent 20 years at UPI, from 1960 to 1980.

Link to my book:

https://www.amazon.com/Plural-Marriage-Our-Times-Reinvented/dp/0313384789

AP staff cuts: 

http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/12/ap-lays-off-25-staffers-004887

AP 2015 annual revenues:

https://www.ap.org/ap-in-the-news/2016/aps-2015-profit-rises-30-percent-on-tax-benefit-cost-cutting

BusinessInsider.com on a fake “mommy” blog:

http://www.businessinsider.com/mommy-blogger-calls-b-on-the-mommy-blogging-industry-and-admits-much-of-her-blogging-was-fake-2016-5

Cisco on fake blogs:

http://blogs.cisco.com/security/cognitive-research-fake-blogs-generating-real-money

Pew report on the U.S. newspaper industry:

http://www.journalism.org/2016/06/15/newspapers-fact-sheet/

Arlington National Cemetery obituary of Merriman Smith’s son:

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/amsmithj.htm

The New York Times story about Rolling Stone magazine’s fake rape story at the University of Virginia:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/business/media/rolling-stone-rape-story-case-guilty.html?_r=0

The New York Times story about Jayson Blair:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html

The New York Times story about early voting leading to a Hillary Clinton presidential victory:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/12/us/politics/early-voting-registration.html

Obamacare and the new drug policy

WASHINGTON – As the Obama Administration recoils over its inability to launch its health insurance website on time, White House spokesman Jay Carney, on Friday, announced the government’s new drug policy, called “No Secrets.”

The government, he said, reached an agreement late Thursday night with some of the country’s leading social media websites and the world’s largest search engine, Google, which, he says, “ensures Americans will have full access to their prescription drugs.”

Under the new policy, which will become effective January 1, 2014, pharmaceutical companies will “friend” their patients on Facebook. 

“No one will be allowed to reject these ‘friend’ requests because, with the government’s approval, Facebook will build a profile of the drugs each of their users are taking – under a doctor’s guidance, of course,” Carney said.

It’s expected, Carney said, Facebook will make everyone’s drug profile searchable – both in and out of the social media website.

“Think about it about this way – not only do your friends want to be friends with you on Facebook but so do your drugs,” said Mark Zuckerberg, the website’s chief executive officer, in a prepared statement.

“The next time you’re at the pharmacy, and you’ve forgotten what pills you’re taking, Facebook will be there to help,” Zuckerberg said.  “Either you call up your drug profile on Facebook, using your smartphone, or your pharmacist does on their desktop computer.

“Either way, you’re covered,” he added.

LinkedIn, a leading website for working professionals, is also part of this new policy, Carney said, because they’ll add a section to each users profile, detailing the drugs they’re taking, the amount and how often they’re required to consume them.

As with Facebook, this section of each drug profile will be made fully available for anyone to see – in and out of the website.

“Users of Viagra, Cialis and antidepressants – whatever people are taking – will be able to joke with one another about their experiences on these drugs and hire one another, too, maybe even become friends,” Carney said.

Google will take the information assembled by Facebook and LinkedIn and create searchable profiles, detailing the medicine each patient is taking, he said.

“As of now, we don’t think this new policy require anything extra, like search engine optimization,” Carney said.  “Regular algorithms should work.”

Tumblr says Google is worth $4.2 trillion

Barron’s story about Yahoo’s acquisition of tumblr fuels fears

and reservations about Silicon Valley valuations, especially

compared to ones that are grounded in reality.

To be clear, this is not meant as a knock against Barron’s reporting.

It’s outstanding, as usual.

What’s disturbing is the $1.1 billion price Yahoo paid for tumblr,

a company that received more than $125 million in venture funding

but has only produced $13 million in revenue, Barron’s reported.

The metric used for valuating Yahoo’s price for tumblr is about 84.62

times the micro-blogging website’s annual revenue. 

While tumblr may bring a unique advantage to Yahoo, what hasn’t

been made clear in any of the reporting is whether tumblr’s

technology is so proprietary it can’t be duplicated.

Tumblr, then, in many ways, is a glimpse of how venture capitalists

value website start-ups; but this euphoria or, if you prefer, valuations

far beyond reality, cannot last.

At some point, Silicon Valley industry directors and executives will

sober up, realizing Wall Street values these start-ups for far less than

the venture capitalists searching for the next greatest fool to pay

a price that's far beyond reasonable for the company they’ve invested

in and helped build.

The tumblr acquisition shows that venture capitalists, their investors

and the start-up’s employees are the winners.  The shareholders

of the acquiring company, based on what happened to Yahoo’s

stock last week, are the losers. 

If the metrics for valuating tumblr are used with Yahoo or with the

Silicon Valley’s standard-bearer of the health of the technology

industry, Google, then these two companies are worth far more,

at least by venture capitalist standards, than Wall Street says.

For example, Yahoo, during 2012, produced about $4.9 billion

in revenue; its market capitalization is about $30 billion, which is

just over six times the company’s annual revenue, a metric far

less than what it paid for tumblr.

But if tumblr’s recent value – based on the price for which it was

just purchased – is applied to Yahoo, then Yahoo should be worth

about $422 billion. 

For that matter, Google, which produced about $50 billion in 2012,

should be worth about $4.2 trillion and yet the search engine’s market

capitalization is but a humble $290 billion, just under six times

annual revenue.

Facebook, the most recent Silicon Valley player to go public,

produced $5 billion in revenue in 2012 and has a market

capitalization of $60 billion, or 12 times revenue; applying the

tumblr valuation, the social media website should be worth $422 billion.

Based on the reality of Wall Street – around six times annual

revenue – Yahoo shouldn’t have bid more than $80 million for tumblr.

How long venture capitalists can secure the kind of valuations that

tumblr just received is hard to say.  How long Silicon Valley executives

want to be the fools of venture capitalists is also difficult to predict.

But anyone who’s ever followed valuations and traditional 

economics knows prices cannot remain this high forever.  At some

point, the rubber meets the road.

The worries of Tumblr

You can’t help but wonder what Yahoo’s top corporate executives

are doing.  Sure buying blogging site Tumblr appears, at least on the

surface, to be a fine idea but what about that price?

According to newspaper reports, Yahoo paid $1.1 billion for Tumblr,

a company that generated only $13 million last year. 

Apparently making the deal irresistible was that Tumblr, according

to published reports, has between 117 and 300 million unique monthly

visitors, many of them younger – perhaps even slimmer – than the

average Yahoo user, described, in a blog at the Los Angeles Times,

and another, in Digital Trends, as “Overweight women ages 18 to 49,

who tend to be in relationships of only one to five years with children, 

residing in the suburbs or rural areas.”

The pending acquisition raises many questions and points that, perhaps,

weren’t vetted as closely as possible, including whether Tumblr’s

hipsters will want to be part of a web portal that fat, middle aged women

find attractive?

There are also other questions, too, including the following:

The information about the number of unique monthly visitors isn’t clear.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Tumblr has about 117 million

but according to Tuesday’s Investor’s Business Daily, it’s around

300 million. 

For the sake of shareholders, can Yahoo provide a unique monthly

user number that holds up to what ComScore reports, 117 million?

While apparently it’s difficult but not impossible to sell ads on Tumblr,

a more worrisome issue for Yahoo is Tumblr’s users, who, based

on what’s been reported, have no reason to remain with Tumblr.

In other words, they can flee to other micro blogging websites or

start one of their own.  If that’s true, what’s the value of Tumblr to

Yahoo?  Is this really a technology play?

Did Yahoo consider the possibility that if Tumblr’s revenues never

move north of $13 million, it could take it close to 86 years to earn

what it paid for the site?

If it can generate, as one former Google executive said on his blog,

about $100 million a year, it will only take Yahoo about 10 years

to have Tumblr paid off.  Does that number hold up if the users flee?

If there really are only 117 million unique monthly users for Tumblr,

then Yahoo paid about $9.40 for each of them.  Do they have a plan

in place to keep them?  What will it cost?

While Yahoo’s Tumblr acquisition might make sense – let’s assume

CEO Marissa Mayer knows what she’s doing – what’s not certain

is how this acquisition will move Yahoo’s stock price.

Based on what’s happened this week, so far, the stock market

appears to have welcomed Yahoo’s acquisition, modestly moving

its stock price up from where it had been on Monday, meaning that

while Wall Street approves the deal, it’s far from excited about it,

and, quite possibly, doesn’t understand it.

The larger, overriding issue is that economics catches up with

every industry.  It might not happen for a decade or 20, possibly,

even 30 years but, in time, economics determines how industries

mature, prosper, fall apart and work.

Right now, we appear to be seeing the maturing of the Internet

industry as it consolidates.

When an industry is new, entrepreneurs and companies of all shapes

and sizes often step in because they see an opportunity to thrive.

Only a very limited few will succeed but, as with PowerBall gambling,

if the winnings are viewed as being high enough, many will throw

their hat into the ring.

But eventually there’s a contraction as investors cash out, taking their

earnings and banking them for another future opportunity while

others shut down, not always able to sell the assets they once

used in the new industry.

This activity – of one company buying another – usually leaves

fewer players, making the new industry look like an oligarchy,

with a few dominant companies keeping a close eye on one another.

While it’s hard to believe today, the U.S. automotive

industry back in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, was

composed of about 2,800 companies.  They included mom

and pop shops to long established companies in the horse-drawn

wagon business trying their hand on a new idea – mechanized

transportation.

The automotive industry’s new technology was so successful,

disruptive even, that it killed off horse draw wagons.

Today, there are three automotive companies headquartered in

the United States, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, but only

two are U.S.-owned, Ford and General Motors. Italian carmaker

Fiat owns Chrysler.

The U.S. daily newspaper industry suffered a similar fate, from

being an industry once composed of more than 5,000 titles, back

in the late 19^th century, according to About.com, to one that publishes

just over 1,400 different papers today.

Little deals like Tumblr, at a shocking price of $1.1 billion, are

small.  Tumblr will become a division of Yahoo – not something

that fundamentally alters Yahoo.

Deals like Tumblr – where the company was valued at nearly 85

times more than its annual revenues – can’t continue.  If Tumblr

never brings in $800 million, or even $1 billion – and it’s hard to

see how it will – Internet executives will hesitate, and likely refuse,

to pay such extraordinary multiples for the next company whose

revenues don’t come close to backing up the valuation its

investors claim.

The wild-eyed optimism of the Internet -- $1 billion for Tumblr

or Facebook’s recent valuation at $500 billion (when it’s only

doing over $5 billion a year) – will end. 

As the Internet industry matures, the question that needs to be

answered is what’s the future for Yahoo, Google and Bing?

Which one of these players will buy the other to provide it

with the long-term competitive advantage it needs?

Growing up is hard to do, says the adage, and anyone

who’s been in an industry’s infantile stage knows excitement

dims as the adults move in to make sure it lives up to its claims.

So, David Karp, for your sake, let’s hope you’ve cashed out

handsomely and stashed the money where it’s safe because

you’re about to be upbraided by Marissa Mayer as she holds

your feet to the fire.

Reject Sandberg's Lean In at Your Peril

There are at least two reasons why any can man dismiss Sheryl
Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead:

First, she’s the number two, the chief operating officer of Facebook,
a vastly popularsocial networking website claiming more than 1 billion users.

Second, she’s working in an industry that’s suffered few setbacks.
While she’s done a highly impressive job at Facebook, she has yet
demonstrate the turnaround skills of former Chrysler Chairman Lee
Iacocca or, if you prefer a gender equivalent, Marissa Mayer, likely
to be lauded for reversing Yahoo!’s fortunes as its chief executive officer.

There’s at least one reason why both men and women can dismiss Sandberg:

She’s never started a company. She’s almost to Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerbergwhat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could have
been to President Barack Obama had he shown the guts to chose her,
not Joe Biden, as vice president – the accomplished, seasoned woman
in the role of number two to the Man with Potential.

In fact, Sandberg almost looks like the candidate many voted against
during the 2008 Democratic Party’s presidential nominating process.
She’s a Harvard grad and holds an MBA from the same university;
was a consultant at McKinsey & Company; worked in the
U.S. Treasury Department, where she was the chief of staff to Larry
Summers, when he headed Treasury; and was one of Google’s
senior executives prior to joining Facebook five years ago.

There’s at least one reason why older women, like some
who’ve been so passionate in their rejection of Lean In,
can dismiss Sandberg:

She’s Jane Come Lately to feminism. She didn’t do the marches
in the ‘60s and the ‘70s – the fact that she wasn’t born until after
Woodstock is no excuse! – and never experienced raw
discrimination the way many of today’s older women did when
they were younger.

In other words, she’s neither suffered nor paid her dues in the
secretarial pool,as so many women did as they entered the
workforce in the 1960s and 1970s.

Finally, the biggest reason to reject Sandberg’s book is one that
anyone can relate to – she’s rich!  According to some reports,
she’s a billionaire.

Her success has made many jealous, especially two columnists at
newspapers that are polar opposites of one another, and that alone
should tell anyone that Sandberg’s book is on the right track.

But anyone who rejects her advice does so at their peril.

She’s worked hard and, like anyone else who’s successful, had
help along the way, which she mentions in her book.

So say what you will about the imperfections of Sandberg’s
advocacy, but her success wasn’t handed to her.

Besides, when it comes to advocacy, there’s rarely one who’s
perfect. Some of the biggest names in U.S. history were flawed
but decent men, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Malcolm X, to name a few. There are likely many others.

Like many top corporate officers, Sandberg holds down a demanding
job and has a family that includes two children and a spouse, her
husband David. Her life is a constant balancing act between
professional matters and family ones.

Her philosophy on managing both is one that many working
women – and men – will find valuable:

“’Done is better than perfect.’ Done, while a challenge, turns out
to be far more achievable and often a relief.”

She’s experienced sexual harassment in a way that many men might
dismiss, and seen her professional accomplishments go unappreciated
when she was searching for work.

She does an excellent job of pointing out why women feel pressured
to leave their careers after they become mothers.

In her book, Sandberg’s attempting to liberate women from their guilt
over mothering while they’re holding down fulltime jobs as well as free
men from being straight-jacketed into jobs instead of devoting
time – maybe even all of their time – into bringing up children.

While it appears she’s advancing the next phase of the feminist
cause, she’s really expanding the boundaries of what’s acceptable
in family life – for both men and women.

What some women might find upsetting about Sandberg’s book
is that instead of blaming a guy, a man or even a culture for
women’s lack of professional success, Sandberg is saying women
have only themselves – and other women! – to blame
for not achieving their goals at the office.

Professional women, she says, should look out for other women,
mentoring them wherever and whenever possible and providing
time they need to attend to their home life without suffering
consequences at the office.

But Sandberg is also an advocate for men. She acknowledges
and names the many men who’ve helped her in her career, including
former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Google Chairman Eric
Schmidt and two male colleagues, plus a senior manager, who she
worked alongside at McKinsey & Co.

This is not the anti-man book and perhaps that’s why some
women – especially New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd
and New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser – take issue with
Sandberg.  But, frankly, after reading both critiques, I wondered
if either one had done it all at the same time – been married, held
a full-time job and brought up kids.

I’m guessing neither has.

As to Peyser’s point that Sandberg doesn’t mention stepping on
a few toes to get ahead in Corporate America, if you’re reading
Sandberg’s book for that kind of advice, you’re early on in your
career.

Read Sandberg’s book – regardless of your gender -- to learn
how you can become a better executive, maybe even a better person.

---------------------------

In my own career, I’ve experienced some of subjects Sandberg writes
about. The following are a few examples:

• As the stay-at-home, work-at-home dad, I’ve seen the quizzical and
suspicious looks from many, both men and women, who’ve wondered
why I’m at the house, not the office.

To answer my critics: One, I really am working, often as freelance
reporter. Two, the question – my guilt trip – is this: Who hugs the kids
after they get off the school bus?  Who shows them that a bad day
at school isn’t their worst, and their good day at school is one of their
best? I don’t know either. No after school program can do it as well as
I can. Three, who makes sure homework gets done in a timely
fashion? Four, who takes the boys to their after school activities?
Five, you’re quite right, I’m hardly earning as much as my wife does.
But I hope – just as my mom did when she stayed home back
in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s – my contributions are just as valuable
as my wife’s paycheck.

• If there’s one skill many men could develop at the office, it’s
this – diplomacy. Think before you talk so you don’t acerbate your
female colleagues. Keep your inner chauvinist buried. During my
corporate days, I took many a man aside to tell them they needed to
improve their communication skills with their female colleagues.

• If there’s any one thing women could do to help themselves, it’s
to take Sandberg’s advice – be confident. None of us are perfect but the
single largest difference between men and women is this: Men think they
can while women are seeking credentials. Or as one weekend soccer
coach told me, “Little girls ask a lot of questions so they understand
what to do in every situation; little boys just kick the ball.”  Ladies –
kick the ball and don’t worry about failure.

• There’s little difference between men and women. I once had a
staff composed almost entirely of women. I learned that both
genders are equally ambitious and both genders – with the exception
of childbirth and perhaps a few other things – can do what
the other has traditionally done. I know how to sew. I know how
to cook. For the record, my wife is a better cook than I am, and
my mother and my mother-in-law were and are handier with a
sewing needle than me.

• The biggest difference between some women and between some
men is personality. Some are ambitious and want to accomplish goals.
Some are waiting for a handout. One’s gender doesn’t determine one’s
level of ambition.

• More than one woman has cried in my office, which is one of the
reasons I took my wife’s advice. I always kept a box of tissues on my
credenza. Crying is hardly a sign of weakness. And it’s certainly not a
character flaw. It’s just a person’s brain and emotions out of sync and
sometimes feeling pain. It usually doesn’t last more than a few minutes.

• Parenting is an ugly job, sometimes demanding one’s time at the most
inconvenient of moments. More employers need to know that. I still
recall the time I had my office in eye shot one morning when,
suddenly, the daycare called my cell phone, saying one of my sons
was feverish and needed to leave immediately.

• Sometimes we’re called to do something that we have no experience
doing. Don’t sweat it. Just do it.

I once had to provide trauma care to my younger brother after he
was hit by truck’s outside, rearview mirror. My lessons on trauma
care, at that point, came from the war movies I had watched and a
popular television show, “Emergency.”

I was 11 years old, my brother was seven, and we were living in
Hong Kong. On that particular day, we were doing some last-minute
Christmas shopping. I attended to my brother, making him lie down on
the sidewalk, and I placed my hands on his forehead in a vain attempt
to stop the bleeding, as a crowd gathered around us.

A very nice British man made sure an ambulance was called and
stayed with us until it arrived; and, as luck would have it, within this
crowd was a familiar face – a boy from the school I attended,
accompanied by his mother. She called home, telling mom
what happened and the hospital we were going to. She then insisted
her son join us for the ride to the hospital. Looking back it, that lady
was a saint.

 • We’re all stronger than we think. At the heart of her book, that’s
Sandberg’s message.

Looking into the future: The Day the Presses Stopped

bc-shenandoah
Attention: Editors & Publishers
Newspapers no longer printed
Monday, January 1, 2057

SHENANDOAH, Iowa (AP) – The last 600 copies of Iowa’s Shenandoah Valley News rolled off the presses last night, making it the last U.S. newspaper to shut down its print edition and closing a chapter in the history of the American daily newspaper industry.

Starting today, if the local population wants to read the Valley News, they’ll need to make sure their subscription is paid up so they can access the newspaper on the Internet.

The Shenandoah Valley News stood out in the landscape of the American daily newspaper industry because it was the sole, remaining holdout with a printed edition. Prior to the Valley News closing its printed edition, there had been a group of small newspapers in Kentucky that continued to offer a print edition but they were discontinued five years ago.

As of today, not a single American daily newspaper is printed. If anyone wants to read a daily newspaper published in the United States, they’ll need access to the Internet, and, more often than not, a valid subscription, so they can read it on their home, office, car or handheld computer as well as the many other ways that the Internet can be accessed.

The Shenandoah Valley News, until 10 years ago, had a daily and Sunday circulation of around 1,200 copies. But with a decline in the local population, and the ones that remained handy with a computer or other handheld devices that also accessed the Internet, the paper’s circulation slipped more than 50 percent, to around 570 on Sunday and 540 on Thursday, the only other day it was printed.

Like others in the American daily newspaper industry, the Valley News cutback on the number of pages it printed and reduced the number of days it published a printed edition; it even offered a tabloid edition of itself, starting 10 years ago.

“Nothing worked,” said Roy Oakes, publisher of the Valley News, so he and his managing editor, Wanda Lloyd, on instructions from their corporate owner, Google, started preparing for the day when they would only offer the paper on the Internet.

“We’ll save a bundle by not printing the thing,” said Oakes. “And, so far, the paper – can we still call it that? – is receiving a strong reception on the Internet.”

“The only thing that’s surprising about this move is how long we waited to make it,” said Lauren Jurgins, CEO of Google, the country’s largest newspaper publisher. “We’re an Internet company so it’s surprising we let the Shenandoah Valley News offer a print edition as long as it did. Our other newspapers stopped printing years ago.”

Google changed its strategy about 20 years ago when it decided to own information providers and intellectual property, not just broker them. As a result, they purchased a slew of newspapers, including the Gannett and McClatchy chains, as well as a number of book publishers.

“Traditional publishers, whether it was newspapers, books or other kinds of intellectual property, as we saw it, just didn’t appreciate what they had,” said Jurgins. “We’ve put these products on steroids, making them available anyway possible, and the results, so far, have exceeded our expectations.”

Microsoft soon followed, purchasing Chicago-based Tribune Company as well as a few assets from Hearst, including its newspapers and some magazines.

As of today, Oakes says, the paper’s Internet subscriptions are more than double what they were in print, around 1,300.

The Valley News has been offering its subscribers a 50 percent discount for the Internet edition. Subscribers can purchase either a 12-week or a full-year subscription for either $72.00 or $312.00, respectively.

Not only will the paper save money on newsprint costs, it also eliminated its circulation department. The paper’s classified advertising telemarketing department, based in the Philippines, will also handle consumer sales of the newspaper’s Web site.

The paper’s affiliation with Newspaper Editing, a company offering off-shore copyediting services from Vietnam, will continue.

“Our newsroom staff is composed of one editor and three reporters, one of whom is part time,” said Oakes. “Everyone in our newsroom knows how to update our Web site as well as send our stories to our digital distributor.

“Our ad folks are only selling retailers and car dealers in our designated market area,” Oakes said.

“In order to keep these subscriptions, and get a few new ones, we’ll need to make sure we’re on top of the communities we cover,” said Lloyd. “Hopefully, our advertising people we’ll be successful, too.”

It’s generally accepted by economists that the American daily newspaper industry started its decline about a century ago when television networks started offering news programming. The industry was further hindered with the advent of the World Wide Web.

“People became accustomed to reading the paper on their home PC,” said Arthur Twyinesome, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “As a result, newspaper circulation declined and the newspaper industry, for about three decades, never charged anyone to read the paper on the Internet.”

Further hindering the newspaper industry was the line of “i” products introduced by Apple Computer, starting in the century’s first decade. After the successful introduction of the iPod and iPhone, the company went on to introduce, with great success, the iBox, iCup and iShades – products that allowed people Internet access at anytime, regardless of what they were doing, and, as a result, reduced their purchases of printed products.

The iBox, sold exclusively to Kellogg’s, allows consumers Internet access from their favorite box of cereal.

“The great thing about the iBox is that consumers can learn more about our cereals or catch up on the news or even read a book – all while eating their breakfast,” said Winston Jared, a spokesman for Kellogg’s.

The iCup, initially oblong-shaped, gives consumers that ability to access the Internet from their coffee cup and was sold exclusively to Starbucks; a rounded iCup was introduced last year and Starbucks reports that consumers are accepting the rounded screen.

“The iCup is a hit with our customers,” said Anne Nestroff, Starbucks CEO. “It gives us an advantage over other coffee sellers because it allows our customers to catch up on the news, e-mail or whatever while enjoying their favorite java.”

“The beauty of the iBox and the iCup is that they’re disposable,” said a spokesman for Apple. “Once you’re done, you just throw it away – or place it in your recycling bin.”

Apple introduced iShades, a line of eyeglasses that can be used in a variety of ways, five years ago. Not only they can be used to correct vision but they’re also sunglasses and can access the Internet. They’re especially popular with train commuters or other travelers, allowing them to catch up on news and entertainment programming without having to carry anything.

Apple reports that more than 500 million iShades have been sold.

“We’re ahead of our own expectations,” said Steve Jenson, Apple CEO.

Some communities, like New York, Boston and Chicago, have cracked down on iShades, prohibiting people from wearing them if they decide to drive their car. If they’re just sitting in their car, and have placed it on automatic drive, then their allowed to wear their iShades.

Printed products took a further hit when Verizon, Microsoft and Electronic Arts teamed up to create a handheld gaming and telephone device that connects to the Internet, called the XPG.

“You can play games, go to the Internet, call your friends or download a book,” said Sally Higgins, a spokesman for Microsoft. “The XPG is the only handheld device anyone needs.”

By the time most U.S. daily newspapers stopped offering a printed edition, around 2040, the industry’s aggregate circulation had dropped to under 30 million. That was a loss of 20 million over the course of 30 years, said Juan Agranos, executive director of the Newspaper Association of America.

“Newspaper Internet subscriptions are increasing,” he said. “As of the last audit, overall newspaper Internet circulation is around 45 million.”

As a result, Agranos said, advertising on newspaper Web sites is increasing.

“Advertisers are learning that, once again, people turn to daily newspapers to be informed,” he said.

In addition to selling more subscriptions to its Web edition, the Shenandoah Valley News, like its newspaper colleagues, will sell its stories á la carte on Apple’s iNews, a system that allows consumers to have news stories covering their interests sent to their e-mail address.

“We think that’ll be a good source of revenue for us, especially since so many people have moved away,” said Oakes. “Our stories on iNews will be an easy way for them to stay in touch with southwest Iowa.”

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