Strictly Confidential

Bits And Pieces By Chuck Nowlen

[chuckn-blog]

An Outlaw's MBA Hit Parade

Are business classes your best next move? Read these reviews, then decide

    The economy’s a river choked with loony tunes and dinosaurs. The jobless flail desperately, trying to make their way. Business schools from DeVry to Harvard dangle gilded lifelines to fertile shores.

Thinking about chasing that MBA rescue? And, if so, do you really know what to expect?

Maybe I can help. I spent much of the last five years in three part-time Twin Cities MBA programs, representing a rough continuum of what’s out there: upper-tier University of Minnesota, lower-middle-tier The College of St. Scholastica and, for "the rest of us," Metropolitan State University.

I can also claim a thin slice of The University of St. Thomas after one of my professors later switched school. That brings my total MBA exposure to a third of the classroom programs in the Twin Cities metro area.

Which, if any, might be right for you? Obviously, that's a highly subjective question. But I think the following equally subjective reviews of 10 MBA classes and professors might help you make a better-informed choice.

That's the short intro, so if you're a cut-to-the-chase type, you might want to skip to my reviews now.

Meanwhile, here's some more important context and a disclaimer or two:

I enrolled in these programs, not for an MBA degree, per se, but rather for the practical business knowledge they offered. Make no mistake about it, I'm a happy, busy journalist here; I wasn't after boardroom clout and excess — OK, maybe a little excess. Still, with the journalism profession in its own business free fall, I figured MBA training would at least broaden my on-the-job field of vision.

I was solely guided, then, by (1) the real-world value of each class; (2) how well the professors kept us engaged; and (3) how much bang each class seemed to promise for the buck — hence the shuttling among three programs with different price tags.

I wasn’t exactly forgiving either. If a professor routinely bogged things down in empty bluster, worthless meandering and/or gratuitous, small-group naval contemplation, well, let’s just say I didn’t waste much time stifling yawns and bird-dogging the clock.

Not the typical MBA approach. But I do think it gave me the freedom to call 'em as I saw 'em -- not, for example, by how the professors saw me. Frankly, I didn't give the grade game much weight at all. [Full disclosure: As of this writing, I was five credits short of a degree, with a cumulative 3.3 grade point average — a B-plus — across all three programs.]

Remember, though: One student’s gold is another student’s scrap iron — some, no doubt, saw our classes and professors very differently. So maybe it’s best to take each individual review with a few grains of salt and rely on the entire package for a taste of what the MBA experience is really like.

The professors: 10 whose classes approximate a typical array of MBA requirements and electives, rated for you on a maximum five-dollar-signs ($$$$$) scale. All are still teaching in accredited Twin Cities programs.

My reviews:

1. Organizational Behavior: "And This Ace Of Spades On My Head Makes Money How?"

2. Financial Accounting: "Dang, Those Sax Lessons Were Important After All!"

3. Financial Management: "Praise 'The Packet' And Pass The Ammunition"

4. Managerial Statistics: "If A Dude Runs Up A Stairwell 20 Times, Will Anybody Hear Him Pass Out?"

5. Human Resources Management: "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love HR"

6. Marketing Management/Practical Research Methods: "Aerobics Burns And Small-Group Hustles"

7. Management Communication And Cultural Competence: "The Real Color Of My MBA"

8. Management Information Systems: "When Harry Met Linux"

9. Process Consultation: "Relax, Breathe Slowly, And Follow The Shiny Object"

10. Strategic Management: "Behold! The Silver Fortress Of Dreams"

Twin Cities Classroom MBA Programs 2011-2012

[chuckn-blog]

Why I Love Chicago: The Politics And Karma Of Snow

It's been dark for almost seven hours, and I'm trudging through the worst blizzard since 1979, when a monster Election Day storm stole the Mayor's Office from the mighty Daley Machine. Little pellets of sleet and snow tick madly against my glasses as I brace my shoulders against a furious, horizontal wind. The temperature's gotta be at least 30 below.

I have no idea yet that a turning point in my life is on its way -- or that it will begin with a shriek, not a whimper.

My L train didn't show up on time this morning because of the weather -- a rarity, I would learn, anywhere in this city -- which meant I had to walk the 45 minutes to Evanston to get to grad school.

I'm lucky. I've got a great hooded down coat, so I was plenty warm the entire trip -- past the shuttered "Chicago Red Hots" hot dog shop, past the North Side's L train "graveyard" lot, past the Pamida and Dominick's stores and, finally, the long trek along upscale Sheridan Road to my first class. I was actually drenched in sweat when I arrived -- my coat is THAT good.

It's now 15 hours later, though. My skin crystalized from head to toe as I dried out, and I've been itchy and sticky all day. It's 11:05 p.m. when my train pulls up to take me home -- right on schedule again, I might add. And I'm REALLY looking forward to a long, hot shower, followed by Pabst or two before I hit the sack. The entire city seems empty, still buried in tall, shifting drifts of blowing snow.

Ten minutes later, I'm alone in the train, underground at my station. And as I step off, I hear a faint, high-pitched noise off in the distance. The noise is dampened now and then by the droning clatter of street plows and tow trucks above. But it never quite stops, and it sounds for all the world like -- could it be? -- a woman's shrill, anguished scream.

If it means that someone's in trouble, it seems so far away that I don't think I could possibly do much about it. A few seconds later, as I push through the first exit turnstile, I realize that it's much closer than I'd thought.

Now I'm outside again in the long, slightly curved, ice-encrusted ramp that'll take me up to street level, and the scream is PIERCINGLY loud and obnoxious: an unbridled, relentless, full-throated shriek, amplified now by a slight echo. I suddenly see that it's coming from a shadow moving directly toward me from the ramp's other end.

"SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!"

Quick, harshly drawn breath.

"SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!"

Quick, harshly drawn breath.

The edges of the shadow dance a bit as the wind shakes the street lights, and the outline looms a little larger with every step, as if this were some horror-movie cliche.

A robbery or assault victim? A wandering, hostile nut case? I check for my wallet and keys, just to make sure I know where they are, and I'm hoping there's a cop somewhere nearby up ahead. I tighten my right hand into a fist, tensing for a confrontation -- maybe with the screaming woman, maybe with her tormenter, or, who knows, maybe even with both.

And then, there she is: a huge, lumbering African-American woman in grey sweat pants, a long black coat and a big red stocking cap pulled low on her forehead, with a silver purse flopping at her side. She's caked head-to-toe in a thin layer of what would look like freshly sifted flour if the weather were warmer. And she's throwing her head back and clenching her own fists at the sky every time she screams, as if she's determined to shatter glass. I can see tiny frozen rivulets of tears down either side of her nose.

She notices me in mid-breath -- and gasps, completely shocked and embarassed. I realize only now that with the cold and the hour, there probably weren't any other people near the empty station who could've heard her besides me.

"Excuse me," the woman offers, looking straight down at first as she tries to ease by me. "I didn't think anybody was down here."

I have to laugh -- it's just too funny. "Hey, no problem," I tell her. For some reason, we'd both turned and faced each other as we passed, and we're now half pausing, half walking backward as we talk, like new neighbors who want to get some kind of introductory words in before one has to answer the phone.

"You sure you're okay?" I ask.

"Yeah," she says, wiping her eyes, relaxing her shoulders a bit, now chuckling between sniffles. "Life just gets to you some days, don't it?"

"Ohhhh, yeah," I nod. "It sure does."

And that's it. We both just smile, exchange goodbyes, turn around again and keep trudging in opposite directions. We say -- or scream -- nothing more.

A few minutes later, I'm on my couch in my bathrobe with that Pabst in my hand, and I'm imagining the woman getting off the train she boarded right after talking to me. I'm wondering where that might be, and I'm hoping that she's OK. I'm hoping, too, that maybe I'll see her again tomorrow so I can ask her if her night got any better.

But years pass, and our paths never re-cross.

Many adventures would follow for me in Chicago, most far more dramatic than this one. I spent countless hours chasing stories in some of the city's prime drug territory. I spent a night with a gangster's family in the remnants of the infamous Cabrini Green housing project. I was the best man at a notorious stick-up man's wedding before a judge in the Cook County Courthouse.

But I've always marked that blizzard encounter with the woman at the L stop as the time I finally relaxed and started seeing Chicago for all the one-of-a-kind humanity, grit and character that it constantly seems to provide.

I'd moved there from sheltered, lily-white, small-town Madison, Wisconsin only a week or so earlier.

I've never felt comfortable living anywhere but in a big city since.

[chuckn-blog]

Would You Buy Your Self-Esteem From This Man?

The local cable company is what drives one of my friends crazy. I'd say he averages one enraged, hyperventilating Facebook post about it every week.

For me? It's the AMC herd pleaser, Mad Men, which, God help me, I've tried my best to like for the last four-plus years. But I just can't seem to do it.

Without fail, I last 10 or 15 minutes — max — before I have to flip the channel or leave the room in disgust.

Last season, I explained it to my girlfriend with the story of an African-American friend of mine who, while visiting me in Madison, Wisconsin from Atlanta years ago, was invited by a young white woman to her annual "Gone With The Wind" movie party.

"Uhhhh, no thanks. Never seen it," my friend said. "No offense, but that's definitely NOT one of most black people's favorites."

The woman persisted: "Really!?" But don't you at least have to give it a chance? Tell you what, just stay until you actually see something that's racist — legitimately racist. That's all I ask. I'll bet it's not nearly as bad as you think."

So my friend accepted — and, sure enough, the very first moving image was a group of singing slaves happily harvesting cotton in one of Tara's vast plantation fields.

"That's it!" my friend exclaimed, laughing. "We're outta here!" And, literally, off both he and I went on the spot.

Which is kind of what I had in mind when I tweeted the following a few weeks ago: "#MadMen: Great, just what the world needs — MORE glorification of effete, narcissistic white people's posing, whining and faux angst."

Other would-be follow-up posts seem to pop into my head while I'm jogging every Monday morning:

"#MadMen: validating America's self-important, consumerist, glitz-conformist jerks — one delusion at a time." Or ...

"#MadMen: Some people see innovation; I see a Rock Hudson-Doris Day movie on barbiturates." Or, more recently ...

"#Madmen: Come for the retro aesthetics; stay because, deep down, you want to get away with being a smug jackass too."

But I never post them.

Why?

Well, first, because it's a dead-bang loser to diss the show these days, especially among members of its core demographic. (And if you have to ask what that might be, may God help you.) People LIVE for this show, man. They get nasty about it, too — and, admittedly, my fantasy posts ... well ... sometimes aren't exactly models of civility either.

Second, I also have to admit that "Mad Men" really is a gem in many ways. Its voice, tone and production value are still compelling; its characters are still unique and multidimensional; its scripts are still nuanced and tantalizingly unpredictable.

And, third, when it comes to TV branding, "Mad Men" is miles ahead of the industry pack. From a business standpoint, anyway, the show's slick, boundary-crossing content/ad interface is true genius — or at least it was, until overexposure and imitation turned it into a caricature of itself. Nevertheless, "Mad Men" might well have changed the face of television marketing forever.

Then again, that's also the very thing that repels me about the series while others — creator Matthew Weiner's proving ground, "The Sopranos," for example — continue to keep me engaged.

Those shows don't do what "Mad Men" does like no other series in TV history: blur style, content and promotion to the point where it's all one big, multi-channel package of homogenizing consumer manipulation.

And just when I thought the homogenization couldn't get any more patronizing, "Mad Men" debuted a new African-American character this year that both the show and its fan base can now wear on their sleeves as a feel-good token of whitebread cultural correctness.

Uh ... "Fun With Rhett And Scarlett," anyone?

Don't get me wrong: Some 3.5 million Americans seem to love being homogenized by the "Mad Men" juggernaut every week, so who am I to argue?

Forgive me, though, if I keep imagining 3.5 million yutzes with ears, all completely hypnotized by their own reflections in subtly distorted glass:

"Mirror, mirror on the wall," I hear them asking, "who's the hippest sheep of all?"

[chuckn-blog]

And Now, In The "No Wonder We're A Country of Spoiled, Effete, Perpetually Self-Obsessed Whiners" Department ...

This genuine, quintessentially Madison, Wisconsin Facebook post, complete with a slide show of 5-year-olds wearing real mortarboards and brandishing home-made "diplomas" for robed principal and gushing relatives and friends:

"Kindergarten Graduation! Proud mama of a Kindergarten graduate!"

[chuckn-blog]

America's Bike Dinks: Are These Guys Asking For It Or What?

Which man above is the bigger fop?

Now that I've lived for many years in two cities listed among Bicycling.com's most "bike friendly" in America -- Madison, Wisconsin and Minneapolis, Minnesota -- my money says the guy on the left.

Not that I really know anything about either of them. They're both just product models -- one for a cycling-gear website and the other for a site devoted to pirate reenactments, of all things. They just happened to pop up when I searched "cycling apparel" and "fop" on Google Images.

Anyway, here's my point:

Way too many chicken-legged, whitebread dinks seem to think they look cool and tough on the bike path, when they really look like they've just been gang-sodomized with Day Glo paint.

I suppose that some of this here relates to what I wrote about "Emperor's New Clothes" bosses previously in this space. That entry, though, involved delusional style over substance at work, not the leisure-time foppery I see parading around so often on two wheels.

You know ... WORK -- as in what pro cyclists do when they're busting their humps over the Pyrennes in a WORK uniform that looks like it was designed by Liberace.

Because, like most uniforms, it's BRANDING AND ADVERTISING -- as in the gaudy stuff that's necessary to pay real pro cyclists, as opposed to amateurs like ... well, ... pretty much everybody else, including me and you.

My guess, anyway, is that when real pro practice, they find the whole peacock trip unnecessary, and that when some bike fop gives them the high sign somewhere on the road, part of them wants to shout back, "Dude, do you, like, wear a leotard when you watch 'Dancing With The Stars' on TV, too?"

Maybe I'm getting too intolerant. It could also be some playground-pack atavism from my youth, I suppose. But I just can't seem to handle effete, privileged pseudo-athletes doing the "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!" thing on $2,000 bikes in public anymore.

Especially when it's so obvious that unlike real pros -- and many, many other true cyclists from Madison to Madagascar -- these guys would never stop blubbering if they ever got into a real-world scrape.

So please, bicyclists and product-hawkers alike, why not just drop the sissified self-aggrandizement already and let a great sport's genuine street appeal stand on its own – dirt, sweat, beat-up shorts and T shirts, skinned knees and all?

I guarantee you one thing: You'll hear a lot less giggling in your wake if you do.

[chuckn-blog]

Big Cats, Bigger Jungle ... Uglier Baboons

You finally find a silver lining. You finally believe that the world might have changed. You finally believe that the future might turn out okay, too.

Then you watch "Big Cat Diary" on Animal Planet.

That's when you realize that no matter what species you're talking about, the idea is basically to eat someone else's young.

I just discovered the long-running TV series recently, and I was ready for the lions, cheetahs and leopards chasing down adult gazelles and wildebeests, and dispatching them with a sustained, focused bite through the neck.

We've all seen that before, and it's grisly stuff. Still, the kill-or-die realities are something we all seem to accept. You know, the circle of life and all that.

What I wasn't ready for was the fact that helpless little ones are almost universally the preferred real-world victims in Kenya's Masai Mara game preserve, where "Big Cat Diary" is filmed.

Often, it's same-species infanticide, too. Rogue male lions, for example, will lay waste to an entire litter of their own kind in no time, just for the chance it gives them with a suddenly available mom.

Then there are the water buffalo, hyenas and other menaces roaming around, among which the fellow-primate baboon packs seem especially gratuitous. Almost exclusively vegetarian, male baboons will typically ignore a terrified baby gazelle in the underbrush, for example -- unless a competing suitor or a potential mate is nearby, at which point the male will coldly rip the little stranger into a limp, bloody snack for no other reason than machismo.

I couldn't help thinking about "Big Cat Diary" last week as I watched all the politics of hate for hate's sake boil over during the climactic scenes of the nation's health-care drama.

I kept asking myself: Let's say these histrionics actually motivate some trigger-happy loser. What, then, would the fundamental difference be between, say, the baboon predators of the Masai Mara and the packs of screaming, wild-eyed lunatics who poisoned the health-care debate with their scorched-earth death threats, propane-line sabotage, mob vandalism, crosshairs exhortations and all the rest?

Don't get me wrong: I am no partisan. In fact, after working so close to the political process for the last 30 years, I've long since stopped believing in it as a viable solution to ... well, almost any problem I can think of. So I can usually appreciate a good political knock-down, drag-out in the same way I appreciate a hard-fought football game between two teams I couldn't care less about.

This is different, though. This is about whether we're human beings or animals -- and animals without the Masai Mara's saving-grace survival excuse at that.

Hey, maybe when it comes right down to it, we're all just one big Jerry Springer freak show after all: "He slaughtered my babies ... but I love him anyway!"

[chuckn-blog]

The "Emperor's New Clothes" Boss

Good managers know exactly who they are.

Not "Emperor's New Clothes" bosses, who obsess first and foremost about only one thing: how to make people see them as they WISH they were.

The good boss wants the best staff for the job. The Emperor's New Clothes boss wants the best enablers.

The good boss would rather BE an effective manager than look like one. The Emperor's New Clothes boss is just the opposite — trapped in the delusion that contrived style can somehow pass, and blind to all the eye-rolling when he or she leaves the room. You know the type, right?

I've been lucky. I've had only two Emperor's New Clothes bosses during my three-plus decades in journalism, both of whom, not surprisingly in retrospect, were rank-amateur publishers who'd spent their entire careers doing something far different.

First there was the terminally twitchy economist and failed politician whose brother died and left him a fortune, which he used to buy a left-for-dead weekly. I'll call this guy "the Quacker," and that's exactly what he did — incessantly. Listening to him got to be an awful, tin-foil-chewed-between-fillings ordeal every time.

Most of his quacks were about an ever-changing list of perceived "enemies" — former employees and rivals, for example — that he was absolutely positive were still trying to stab him in the back. He'd insert barbs against these phantoms into any story he could, too — regardless of whether those barbs actually related to the story, or, for that matter, were even true.

Another of the Quacker's tell-tale quirks: His most favored employee — by far — found a way almost every staff meeting to refer to him metaphorically as, "the king."

The world heavyweight champion of Emperor's New Clothes bosses in my book: the even twitchier longtime certified public accountant who used his nest egg to buy a trade monthly. His idea of good management: daily OCD fits of hovering, brow-beating and the same threats and lame maxims — over and over and over again. Anything could set him off. Nothing was ever his fault.

Mind you, he was as cordial as can be during the interviews. But I'll never forget how palpable the learned helplessness was in the office on my first day at work. Everybody was so timid, so silent, so flinchy and so vacant-eyed. It was as if they'd been thrown into some weird reeducation gulag years before and had not seen the light of day since. And, of course, in many ways that's exactly what had happened.

At least twice before I arrived — and once within the first three weeks I was there — employees who just couldn't take it anymore stormed out of the office on the spot after tossing their office keys in the ultra-twitcher's face.

That's how it tends to go with Emperor's New Clothes bosses.

Why? Because they're too image-obsessed to listen; everything's a power play; and they have no clue that they're imposing their own insecurities on everybody else. Trying to do right by these guys is hopeless. You might as well try to quench a parched-desert thirst with warm brine.

And so, my friends, I implore you: Look closely for the warning signs of an Emperor's New Clothes boss when you're job searching, and be prepared to bite the bullet if you find them, even in vulnerable, slim-pickins times like these.

Be wary of lifelong amateurs in new top-dog positions. Watch for evidence of troops-blaming and hovering. Do your homework, ask around and coax out signals that you could be dealing soon with constant motivation-busters that'll only keep your career more and more stuck.

Above all, listen well — REALLY well — to your instincts, especially if you encounter a sad, lethargic, vacant-eyed staff at some point before you're hired that, well, just creeps you out way too much.

Sure jobs are scarce, but remember: With an Emperor's New Clothes boss in your future, there but for the grace of God go you.

[chuckn-blog]

Another day, another nostalgia photo, right? Well, kinda -- except that this one's full context is a bit more current than the last's, as I'll explain further in a minute. First, though, an introduction. Above is a slightly belated Valentine's Day shot from the past of my sweetie and official domestic partner, Kathy Heinricy, formerly of beautiful downtown Dell Rapids, South Dakota -- that is, until she had the grave misfortune of meeting my monkey ass in late 2007. Here's the deal: Apparently my true love was a one-of-a-kind beast whisperer growing up on her family's dairy farm in the '50s, '60s and '70s. I am told, for example, that when the Heinricys' barn cats would crack their legs in the milk-house fans, my Kathy could somehow get them to actually lie quietly on their backs in shoe boxes for the entire day while she was at school -- trussed up in string-and-Popsicle-stick traction systems that Kathy researched and improvised completely on her own. For the record, Kathy's mother has confirmed -- albeit in a fit of convulsive laughter -- that Kathy did, indeed, make those little "cat hospitals," and also that the cats did, indeed, actually heal as a result. And so, with my own fond Valentine's Day memories of my benevolent, Pavlovian spirit partner, I now reintroduce the photo above of Kathy Heinricy at age 12 or so -- after she somehow did the cat-hospital thing with a Labrador Retriever, only now adding big glasses and a T shirt, and a strategically placed open book. Sums it all up pretty well to me, my dear. And what a lucky man I am to be one of the many creatures whose lives you've bewitched for the better.

[chuckn-blog]

Temporary holiday hiatus from blog and Facebook to finally exorcise a persistent, yet elusive, fiction demon. Meanwhile, here's Christmas, 1976, with co-knuckleheads Bob Taglin and Dick Alpert. Best of the season, everyone!

[chuckn-blog]

One. Word.

What's with all these I-can-be-Hemingway one. Word. Sentences. Lately?

I'm. Seeing. Them.

Everywhere.

Especially. On. Facebook.

Cool. At. First.

Effective. In. Moderation.

But. Too. Much. Just. Makes. It. A. Cliche.

And. It's. Starting. To. Get. On. My. Nerves.

[chuckn-blog]

The (Un)Real Dillinger

Not that this is my main point here, although, now that I mention it, maybe it's in there somewhere after all:

When Sarah Palin announced the end of her catty, style-over-substance gubernatorial reign in the land of the midnight sun, one of the best reaction quotes came from Republican media consultant Todd Harris.

"I think Sarah Palin is on the verge of becoming the Miami Vice of American politics: Something a lot of people once thought was cool and then 20 years later look back, shake their heads and just kind of laugh."

I came out of Michael Mann's movie, "Public Enemies," thinking a lot about "Miami Vice." Not so much the movie version, which Mann directed in 2001. Mainly the almost completely vacuous fashion-and-pose TV show -- executive-produced by Mann -- that masqueraded as must-see drama during the 1980s and early '90s.

Don't get me wrong, "Public Enemies" has a lot going for it, and it's a LOT of fun, too. Johnny Depp, as usual, carries the load with a great, mesmerizing performance. Mann's eye also is utterly magical. Each shot, it seems, is a work of transformational cinematic art.

Disappointingly, though, that art comes off as watered-down whiskey and Red Bull when it comes to the movie's soul -- the complex psychological interplay between hunter and hunted, set against the bleak landscape of the cruelest depression America has ever known.

Mann has emphasized that "Public Enemies" was not intended to be a bio-pic, and, true, Hollywood's archives are littered with pale imitations of classics like "Bonnie and Clyde." But, hey, we're talking John Dillinger, Melvin Purvis and the Great Depression here! Even 60-plus years later, could you ask for more compelling and fertile psychocultural ground? Casting it as an archetypal video-game stylefest is almost an insult.

Would it have hurt, for example, to slip in such real-life facts as Dillinger's crude plastic surgery shortly before his ill-fated Biograph Theater visit -- and his misguided confidence that the surgery had indeed rendered him unrecognizable? Would actually seeing a snippet or two from Dillinger's hardscrabble childhood have kept audiences more profoundly engaged? And might some valuable dramatic tension have been added by REALLY showing any of the psychological conflicts that utlimately led the real Melvin Purvis to take his own life just a few years after the Dillinger turkey shoot?

Instead, we're left with a kind of stunningly beautiful, fast-rushing river that's a mile wide but only an inch deep: all surface; no undertow whatsoever; and, above all, not real.

Maybe that's the reason "Public Enemies" burst big-time out of the starting gate, but petered out quickly at the box office. Maybe, too, Mann intended the movie to be the virtual Nantucket sleighride it turned out to be. As one of my favorite professors once said, almost all historical movies are really about the period they are made in, not the period they portray.

In that case, though, choose almost any characters other than deep-Depression Dillinger and Purvis.

"Wasilla Vice," anyone?

[chuckn-blog]

Witch Hunts, Web Punks and 'Editor Report'

What do you do when you've been web-punked by an anonymous, vindictive former employee who's hell bent on witch-hunting your reputation?

I'll tell you my story in a minute -- I'll even reveal who the culprit was. But first, some historical background, which at least reassures me that I'm not alone.

Blacklist victims, of course, knew the feeling big-time during the post-World War II frenzy of anonymous rumor-mongering that we define with what now seems like a somewhat benign, distant catch-all term: McCarthyism.

The web version bit one of my business-school professors a couple of years ago. And it drove him to distraction -- it's one of those things that just gets to you if you can't come to terms with it somehow. Seems a onetime student didn't like his or her final grade one semester and lashed back with egregiously harsh teacher evaluations on an anonymous part of the school's website -- for multiple terms after the student's time with the professor had ended.

My case is a little like that, only it involved the now-defunct (I think, anyway) and anonymous "freelance writer feedback" site, Editor Report, which in 2001 carried a singularly acid-tongued post about me that still shows up among the top Google search results for my name. Friends and coworkers have contributed counter-posts, but for some reason they do not appear.

Whatever the case, I've always had absolutely no doubts who the original Editor Report poster was. This person was one of those once-in-a-lifetimes.

So that part was easy. The hard part was keeping it from getting under my skin.

Which I didn't do so well for a while. When I saw the first post, I fired an email to Editor Report, noting that it was from a disgruntled hack and chronic deadline scofflaw who was canned by unanimous staff consensus at the alt weekly I was editing at the time. I warned that there might be potential defamation exposure for such things.

But I wasn't mad -- yet. In fact, I even asked that my email be kept off-the-record.

Well, when the equally anonymous folks at Editor Report proceeded to post my email anyway, I hit the roof -- only to see my increasingly frustrated and angry subsequent emails posted on the site as well.

This, of course, was not good. And there's a folk parable that applies here -- one that I'd normally be loathe to even mention because of its old-days racial stereotyping, at least in the hands of the culturally lily-white. I'm talking about the "Tar Baby" story in the old "Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox" Uncle Remus fables. I apologize if it offends -- I only resurrect it here because it fits so well.

Here's a wrap-up: Bre'er Fox creates a baby figure out of tar, dresses it up and sets it in the middle of a path that arch-enemy Br'er Rabbit travels every day. Br'er Rabbit greets the figure -- only to be met with sustained stone silence that Br'er Rabbit takes as an insult. Flustered, Br'er Rabbit punches the figure -- still no reaction, only now Br'er Rabbit's fist is stuck. After a succession of increasingly panicked punches, kicks and a head-butt, he's stuck fast from top to toe.

In the story, Br'er Rabbit's guile saves him. Not so in my case, at least at the beginning. I felt violated. I anguished and railed over it, too -- and still the post remained, silently taunting.

And then it hit me, now a few years ago: I knew exactly where the post came from and who the real clown in my fable was. My only recourse was to expose him. 

Are you ready? Here he is ...

Yep, it's me -- the bozo who took the bait, then ranted and thrashed and contorted himself into a wretched, squirming knot of thick goo.

And, suddenly, everything was all right again, and it's been all right ever since.

Hey, I even framed that Editor Report post. And it still hangs close to me in my office as my own public admission of a lesson well-learned.

Damn thing still always makes me smile now, too. 

[chuckn-blog]

Joy of animoto

If you like to make audio slideshows, like I do, and you don't know about animoto.com yet, you should check it out.

Highly acclaimed by Wired magazine and many others, it's the lazy man or woman's dream: You just load your jpgs and add text or whatever in the order you want, pick your music, and then animoto does the rest. VERY compelling production and wonderful synchronization that make it look like you sweated over Flash or Movie Maker for hours.

Which used to be the drill for me -- and still is for most of my true-journalism projects -- before a buddy from my web-design classes tipped me to animoto, after which, my first reaction was: "Now, WHY would anybody ever use anything else if they didn't have to?" Animoto's perfect for basic interpersonal stuff -- it certainly beats a $5.00 birthday or anniversary card, for example. But, as Wired's South By Southwest show above aptly demonstrates, it can also be a godsend on the job sometimes, depending on the story and the circumstances.

Free for 12 slides, plus or minus -- or about 30 seconds run time. Three bucks for full-length. There's a great selection of animoto music if you're REALLY lazy, or you can add your own if you want. My first 30-second free show took all of 10 minutes to put together.

More-refined production options are available with animoto's "business" memberships, which are a bit too pricey for my typical day-to-day needs.

Here's a 1:12 show that I did in less than 15 minutes for $3 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU1T9N-Oiks.

Pretty cool, huh?

I'm not usually one to do free commercials like this, but, to me, animoto is definitely worth the exception. Just use it when it makes sense -- otherwise, there's no substitute for a those slow, labor-of-love hours with Flash, Movie Maker and others.

[chuckn-blog]

Just passing this on ...

If you haven't seen it yet, try this great music vid, which inspires in the best way possible -- from the ground up:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741