Tag: Tina Brown

My Turn

For years, Newsweek had devoted one-page My Turn for reader’s Op-ed. This move paved the way for crowdsourcing and blogging, which are both technology-enabled (same way the Karaoke machine let the audience to have their turn at the mike).

We will come to a point in the future where past practices (museum, musical hall and magazines) criss-cross with emerging ones (file sharing).

Top-down meets bottom-up.

Online games and gaming are taking away revenues from traditional casinos and sport venues.

The desire and drive to share have found a platform ( faster speed of upload.)

Brainstorming technique has been around in Group Communication, but it is stiffling and sterile.

Individual creativity has been around but it works best when not imposed.

In fact, the best contribution from team members comes intrinsically and accidentally.

(see latest Opinion Page in NYT on “the New Group Think”).

Tell all this to century-old bureaucracy (yet Wall Street is known to build colo centers right next to financial center, to gain those mili-second trading advantage. This was to show that speed  works both ways: it takes us up quickly, or down equally quickly e.g. flash crash).

Barnes and Nobles is now betting on its Nook e-readers.

Amazon on digital publishing.

Newsweek and US News and World Reports are focusing on in-depth reportage or University rankings.

I miss Newsweek’s My Turn, but I know it has outlived its time.

Now, we can view instant comments after a post.

Why wait for the editors to select (curate) and show to us?

It’s the age of personal computing, broadband on steroid and fast results at the poll.

Those who are quick to comment will get last-in first-out ranking.

There are ways now to accommodate everyone’s Turn.

The vase and the Beast

One is auctioned for 85 million (with tax and fee), while the other merged with Newsweek after it was sold for $1.00

After a lifetime of standardization and automation, something is still of value.

Nobody had appreciated Van Goh’s self-portrait or any of his pieces until after he was long gone.

Still, we want maximization, optimization and standardization, pre-reqs for an economy of scale.

What happened to innovation amidst of instead in the absence of chaos?

Google tried 20% time-off for employee’s personal and passionate projects.  May the best idea win.

Then, it resorted to salary increase. Money talks.

How do you quantify an idea, especially a break-through and disruptive one?

Sometimes a whole industry clusters around a breakthrough product e.g. Apple apps.

Why do we listen to music? Because it tapped in different parts of our neuron.

It resonates and brings us back to the time we first “connected” with that tune

(First time, I ever saw your face….).

Time and Life is tapping into this reservoir to urge you “to make that call” since operators are standing by in India to take your orders (Singers and Songwriters).

Something, in this case the vase, which had been tucked in the attic, now sees the light of day (and commands the highest auction price from a caller in China). You can imitate art and artifact, but that one piece testifies to uniqueness, rarity and antiquity.

No standardization, no automation, no reproduction. The only one. The Beauty.

Newsweek has a section called My Turn. That had been before blogging arrived.

Now, the Post, the Beast and Newsweek will join forces. Their turns to synergize and optimize (still can’t beat Huffington Post who also has to join forces with AOL – to leverage existing sales force).

Just don’t resort to standardize in this age of Page-ranking.

We honed in the efficiency model, and ended up missing the forest for the tree.

Luckily, we discovered something of a treasure in the attic, and rediscovered the meaning of value vs price.

I am sure for cheaper vase, the buyer from China could have walked down any street or gone straight to a local factory

where high production, low labor-costs and large profit return are norm. But then, it’s a Made-in-China vase.

I still read Newsweek, if it’s still published. And I wish its new Editor in Chief, Ms Tina Brown better luck this time around.

At least, there is only one Tina Brown, the Beauty who rules the Beast.