Archive for the ‘Media’ Category
I do it in the evening; Chris prefers to do it with his morning coffee. We have two delivered every day; the Calgary Herald and the National Post; when I am out & about I buy the Globe & Mail. In spite of all our efforts articles abound that the newspaper industry is in peril.
Is this slump in sales, partially due to different generational tastes yes, and it is also about lifestyle. Everyday I revel in, utilize and thoroughly enjoy the technology that puts the world at my figure tips. It allows me no limitations to where I can take both my coaching company and online magazine. However when it comes time to relax I prefer the print media format.
I don’t think we are seeing an end of print media so much as a time of rebirth. “We have a generation that is consuming information in totally different ways” says news anchor Kevin Newman in an interview that talks about his decision to leave his on air news job in order to explore the world of digital media. (Read Crossing digital divide, interview by Karen Mazurkewich)
Time’s Managing Editor Richard Stengel recently announced that ‘For the first time since the magazine’s birth in 1923, we will soon be delivering the entire contents of TIME to paying customers in a radically different way: as a self-contained application that you can download to the iPad. (From Ushering In a New Era)
Even though the competion for readership numbers is no longer about who has the news box on the corner of main and 1st street; the media companies are still choosing to handle the issues in a singularly autonomous fashion. Will the different media apps for devices such as the Blackberry or pay for content on the Internet prove to be the sustaining solution? Of all the articles being written on this subject, James Poniewozik sums up the current situation best in his editorial All the News That’s Fit to Mint
I think tackling the insatiable need for information and news in today’s world with a more united or partnering approach might prove to be the beginning of a solution for the media’s woes; in other words to go where no newspapers have gone before.
With Your Biscotti & Coffee
1) There was once a time when I would plow through any book, now I have to agree with Sonya Chung the list of books that I haven’t finished has increased. From her column in The 
Millions blog read Sonya’s post – It’s Not You, It’s Me: Breaking Up With Books.
2) Things are so troubled for the Roman Catholic Church that it is easy to forget that there are some truly heroic nuns and priests doing some remarkable work in the world. From the NY Times Who Can Mock This Church? by Nicholas D. Kristof
3) Does your dog like to rock to Bono or is your cat more of a jazz fan? If you don’t think that they have a preference check out the world’s first Music fof Dogs concert, article by Amy Coopes.
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is currently showing “Renoir in the 20th Century” ; until May 9th when it moves to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In true Renoir style many of the women that he painted are voluptuous. While his paintings are a little vapid for my taste his female models are glorious in their natural and often nude beauty. One can only hope that families and schools take advantage of exhibitions such as these so that we can remember that the human body is really quite spectacular.
While this LA museum is celebrating the Renoir’s females down the highway television executives decided that a Lane Bryant plus size lingerie commercial should not appear on certain shows in specific time slots.
“According to Lane Bryant, the ad was rejected from a number of programs that would air at 9:00 p.m. including Dancing with the Stars, Game Shows, America’s Funniest Videos, Extreme Makeover, Home Edition and Wipeout …………..”
So why the puritanical censorship when it comes to this company? The model, lingerie and filming are all stunning. One must assume that they object to the plus size cleavage but if we ignore for a minute the sales pitch perspective are not commercials just another form of modern artistic expression?
In 2210 when the Philadelphia Museum of Art is exhibiting ‘Women of the Early 21st Century” will it truly reflect what we see as we dress every morning. For centuries art has been about the portrayal of the authentic female form but perhaps I am wrong and ABC knows better.
Written by a sublimely less than perfect woman
When it comes to my choice of television shows this season I seem to be experiencing some symptoms of having a multiple personality.
Love The Good Wife for all the right reasons; from the story lines, the clothes, to its strong female characters and if that isn’t enough I watch just to see how Christine Baranski can punctuate the end of a sentence with her expressive eyebrows.
Stepping back in time I confess to enjoying the very lusty and bloody Spartacus: Blood & Sand. Step aside Jon Hamm (Mad Men) and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) the Emmy goes to John Hannah as Batiatus. This role takes him from supportive roles to carrying the majority of scenes and story line and he does that exceptionally well. In my defense for having this 18A rated show on my list it was a lusty and bloodied time……….wasn’t it?
Tom Hanks & Steven Spielberg have another classic with The Pacific. Done with the same finesse and attention to every detail as Band of Brothers, this is a great series. When the camera puts you right on the battle field you want to turn away but you cannot because if those young men can face the death and agony so can we.
In between these TV shows I am trying to read AS Byatt’s The Children’s Book; many reviews call it absorbing, I’ll let you know. So far it is a bit hard to get into. I will say that some basic knowledge of Edwardian England and an interest in the same is a prerequisite for reading this book. Thank goodness I have all those Masterpiece Theater shows behind me!
With Your Biscotti & Coffee
This week I am bringing you a film site, a book and some perspective on reality TV.
1) The Auteurs, an online movie theater and gathering place for film lovers
http://www.theauteurs.com/dashboard
2) What’s Right with Reality TV by James Poniewozik
I was first going to skim this article because I thought it would be just about the reality shows but he went deeper; touching on generational and social changes which proved interesting.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1963739,00.html
3) This Book is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson
For all the closet librarians out there or info junkies like me this book looks perfect.
http://www.thisbookisoverdue.com/This_Book_Is_Overdue/Stop_Here_First.html
Check out the Librarian Blogs page.
International, US, Canadian that is the order in which I process information. Doing this when I read the newspaper is easy but when it comes to the internet it has become more of a challenge.
I have my IE browsers set for the US but an annoying pop up window keeps asking me if I want to go to the Canadian home page. I tell it ‘not to show me this again’ but every time they update it comes back. On Mozilla I finally get my Google search beaten into submission so it is set to Google.com not Google.ca. Then the same thing happens, an update and I’m back to square one. It is not that I have anything against local content but most of the time I need search results that cover a broad spectrum. In an attempt to be user friendly the companies that dominate this internet are also making the world less easy to access.
So what is happening to the World Wide Web? The use of www is now outdated, we no longer put it in our urls and everything related to it falls under the term Internet. Maintaining search engine optimization in today’s virtual world gets more & more complex and with that we often lose smaller but no less valuable sites.
Canada’s Privacy Commission has taken on FaceBook and more recently Google over privacy issues. Which is fine, intellectually I get it but the creeping in of government interference to ‘protect’ my interests can be a double edged sword. As they legislated Canadian simulcast commercials into the American stations (that I am paying for) will I one day turn on my computer to find that I only have access to a watered down version of certain sites that are seen as breaking Canada’s privacy laws.
The BBC is currently airing SUPERPOWER: Exploring the extraordinary power of the internet. A title that reminds us how we should neither take the Internet for granted nor try to harness its future potential.
With Your Biscotti & Coffee
1) Moms De Plume
Children’s books take on a new dimension with The Mischievous Mom at the Art Gallery
March 12th edition of the National Post
2) Sanitary pads…… made out of bananas?
While the title is a little humorous and wonderfully green, the motivation behind this product is a serious one. That thousands of women and girls around the world cannot go to school or work because they don’t have sanitary napkins.
Read the article & Watch the video Marie Claire Magazine
3) The Judy Project
Breaking down how the stereotyping of women in the work world is still prevalent
Recently the New York Times asked “How do you decide to get rid of a book.” The answers from six authors and one book store owner are worth reading if you too are the ‘ I would rather read than have sex, what bestsellers are on sale this week, I want to die in my favorite book store’ kind of person.
Which books we get rid of goes to the root of what type of readers we are. I read fiction and biographies to relax and for the escapism into a different life and someone else’s reality. If I don’t like it I pass it on or take it to the second hand book store. I am not snobbish about my library; hardback, trade paperback or written in the margins from a garage sale if I enjoyed reading it….it stays.
As a business coach business books get rotated quickly as they have to be current. There are of course the classics that all entrepreneurs should read such as: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber or the timeless Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich
The majority of life self-help books are overly clichéd and devoid of any genuine long term life solutions, unless it is exceptionally thorough I don’t buy much of the self-improvement genre. This criterion makes it easy to maintain a manageable selection.
While I have a minimalist attitude when to clutter in general, obviously this doesn’t seen to apply when it comes to books.There are piles in the living room and dining room, my office shelves are full and what does the top of my beautiful antique bedside table look like any way? I’ll just put a basket underneath to catch the spill off and stop it from groaning.
I can definitely relate to Joshua Ferris sentiments in his last line of the NY Times piece “………..I leave and come back, and the books I find there tell me I’m home.”
I must also confess that while I will not read about what famous people are wearing, eating or where they vacation; I am curious about what books they are reading. So Lesley Jane Seymour , Al Gore, Rahm Emanuel, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Michaëlle Jean, Angela Merkel what are you taking to bed?
In between the self-effacing attempts at humour and the ambiguous medical reports is a woman in menopause. I have used humour myself but the truth is, it is not all that funny. No woman enjoys the extreme mood swings, muddied thinking, hot flashes, and assorted other symptoms that ebb and flow over a span of years. Not to mention the affect that fluctuating hormones is having on our intimate relationships.
I am not asking for drugs, quite the contrary if you look in my medicine cabinet you would die from boredom. There is a jar of Vicks, pills for my Afib and some Bufferin.
It is the fact that nine years into the 21st century I would have expected more in the way of unbiased research and possible options.
Hormone therapy has been a roller coaster of benefits vs risks since the ‘60s this all culminated in 2002 with the Women’s Health Initiative study. Controversy continues to swirl around drugs such as Premarin and Prempro not the least of which is how it is obtained from pregnant mares’ urine.
Understandably weary of the whole HT approach of “we’ll get it right, even if we just lower the risks to your overall good health”; women started to look to the bioidentical option that has became part of the menopause fray. Suzanne Somers and Robin McGraw have marketed themselves as part of the next big menopause solution package. This is also equally unnerving. I mean you are probably lovely ladies (call me we’ll do lunch) but in reality you are just baby boomer women; the difference is you have the money and resources to get books published and garner media hype. However you are not experts in any field.
My concern is that menopause is quickly becoming another money making health condition. Once it reaches that status we the real women of menopause; will never be offered anything more than quick fixes, snake oil scams, self-help fluff and pharmaceutical companies trying to ‘cure’ us. Or are we already there?
The majority of my coaching is done by phone which means that I don’t have to tidy my office or change out of my comfy shoes. So with a client coming over Monday at 9am I had to quickly go through my mental checklist to make sure that I was ready. Coffee pot on, files & books straightened into neat piles, quick dust, clean hand towel & fresh soap in the office bathroom, resources that she had sent me put into her file along with my notes, change shoes ……check.
Now while doing this Duke (aging, semi-neurotic chocolate lab) has been following me around. So I switch to the dog’s check list………walked, fed, water changed, toys at the ready and he didn’t look like an unmentionable body fluids where about to erupt from either end. So I stopped rushing and processing for a minute, put my hand on his face and asked him what his problem was. He then quietly leaned into me and let out a small contented sound. All he wanted was a few minutes of attention; to be stroked & loved…. this was a reminder to me that we don’t put love on a to-do list.
In between clients while I am writing or or doing administrative work I usually have a news channel such as the BBC or CNN on. This was the case when the second and much more sombre occurrence happened this week. I am referring to the death of Neda Agha Soltan. The announcer quietly issues a warning about how disturbing the footage was. At first I sat unsure of how to process the image that was unfolding before me thousand of miles away. Then I did the only thing that I could do, I stood. Alone and in the middle of my office I stood up in quiet homage to a young woman who would never see another sun rise and then I wept.
I love words whether written, spoken or sung they have power. They can expand us with knowledge or debilitate us with emotion. The art of communication isn’t in the number of words used, as less wordage & fewer sentences often enables us to process the genuineness of character or content without clutter. Well informed people know that it is best to keep their answers brief and to the point. When you give a confident woman a compliment she merely smiles and says ‘thank-you’.
My respect for words leaves me with a dislike for anything that has a whiff of censorship. If you don’t like the words discard the book, leave the theater or change the channel. It is in that context that I find myself in the surprising position of agreeing with Sarah Palin when she took offense to David Letterman’s recent joke. The content of that part of his monologue left a bitter taste that even changing the channel didn’t erase. He has apologized and Palin accepted the apology in a 94 word statement in which she even managed to even make mention of the US military. Perhaps a short ‘I accept your apology’ would have been more appropriate and a little less opportunistic or better yet maybe a tweet would be good practice for the always wordy Ms. Palin.
The world of words has changed even in the short period of time since she ran for vice-president. Political protests are being covered in 140 characters, iconic newspapers no longer exist and this summer people will be enjoying there favorite beach book on devices like Kindle.
I had better end this post before I too am overly wordy or as a writer friend of mine emailed me this week while gathering research for an upcoming article ……….sometimes it is better to shut up, stop writing and listen.
