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Critt Jarvis.
The Indispensable “Fourth Estate”
essay by Adrienne Redd
May 14, 2009
This past Monday night I moderated a film discussion of The Soloist (2009). A few days earlier, my daughter and I had seen State of Play (2009), a thriller about a Woodward-and-Bernstein-style reporter who uncovers a conspiracy behind the death of a congressman’s aide-mistress.
As The Soloist commenced—the story of a columnist for the Los Angeles Times who writes about and tries to help a talented but homeless schizophrenic man—I whispered to my daughter, “From now on I’m only taking you to movies about how newspapers are indispensable but dying.”
My remark, though facetious, reflects recent public concern that this country and other countries will lose their free and empowered press that watches and reports on powerful, attention-getting, exemplary, and depraved people. Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist and thinker, said that the ruling class, church, and plebiscite were the first, second and third estates, while the press is the fourth.
Historically and with regard to current concerns, “press” means “press.” Ink impressed on paper. Because of their traditions and ability to elucidate ideas, newspapers—to a greater extent than younger media—have helped ignite reforms and revolutions and afforded a forum for debate and exposé.
Newspapers have created a central forum where people exchange ideas, though they may be selected by editors and editorial boards. To assess perception of the battered institution of the nation-state between 1946 and 2008, I interpreted letters and editorials commenting on a set of turning points in social structure during the latter half of the 20th century. If the three newspapers I examined hadn’t provided a written, stored record of those opinions, the writers’ thoughts would have been lost. Of course, there exist libraries of newsreels and radio and television broadcasts from the last six centuries, but electronic media do not invite daily contribution from the public that are comparable to letters to the editor and editorials. Furthermore, archives of magnetic tape or even silicon media are less stable and much less accessible than newspaper archives, in part because words are easier to put online and to catalog than old film, radio and television news.
That newspapers showcase and then preserve public opinion is one reason that they constitute a public good. Another reason is conveyed narratively in The Soloist and State of Play—that no other medium approaches the thoroughness of researched, distilled, linear explanation that newspapers offer. Newspapers may contemplate social justice as dramatized in the based-on-a-true story of the Los Angeles Times columnist or investigate dark forces manipulating high officials as staged in the thriller.
There are two components to this point about issues researched and then explained in words on paper (or computer screens). Though pictures, particularly moving pictures, logos, and sound are attention-getting, words do a better job of organizing and composing the who, what, when, where, and especially how and why of any current event. Test this for yourself by listening to a broadcast of BBC America or NBC Nightly News, or even NPR’s All Things Considered—each a stellar venues for breaking news. Then, read the online transcript of a given story. Now compare the transcript with the account published in the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Boston Globe, etc. The electronic news is more anemic than the transcript and the transcript thinner still than the newspaper version.
The words say more and they do it in less space, using less of your time. They offer less distraction and get more content across. One is more active in reading a newspaper than in watching or listening to news with the trimmings of images and a soundtrack. The very thing that makes television or even radio news grab you is the modulation of the voices, the passions, the personalities behind the reporting, the decorations of sound and pictures. Everyone who has read a novel and then seen it translated to the silver screen knows however that the words are better than the flickering light. Radio, television, blogs, etc. offer stimulation. Words composed by professionals who have taken the time to obtain the back-stories and the details offer knowledge.
What of it? Those same words can certainly be made available on the World Wide Web, can’t they? Yes, but there is also an organization of content that distinguishes the news in a newspaper from light through a screen. An important aspect of the newspaper is that it is not moving in space or time, or flashing, or popping up ads. I can move through the newspaper and glance at some headlines, while reading and re-reading other articles that I consider important. The very big-ness of broadsheet newspaper format facilitates this option to choose among items in the news. There is a difference between the way your brain responds the broadsheet, (or the tabloid) and the screen.
Anyone who has looked at a screen for several hours versus reading a book knows from the eye fatigue that there is also difference in the optics of ink on paper. And a newspaper never needs to be charged or booted up. It is there, waiting, for the reader to roll it up, to absorb it in when and how he or she is ready.
Admittedly, since written news content has also been available online, I have loved being able to read the newspaper and also look up supplemental information on the World Wide Web. However, part of what is wonderful about a newspaper is precisely that it doesn’t have hyperlinks. I don’t take as many nearly involuntary side trips as I read a newspaper. I find that I am better able to focus and follow more substance of a story. In fact, there was research done on this during the First Gulf War of 1991. People were tested on what facts they retained on the events in Iraq. The more television people watched on that military fireworks display, the less they got right with regard to basic facts and background. There was an inverse relationship between what people knew of the place of Kuwait in the world, what nations joined in the coalition, where the players lay on a map of the Middle East, etc.
Revealingly, the issue of the perhaps-terminal state of print newspapers has prominently arisen in the other news media of late, while newspapers themselves have merely alluded to the spate of harbingers, such as a five percent reduction in salaries of editorial staff at the New York Times, the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News published on February 27, and the Chicago Tribune having filed for bankruptcy protection in December.
One reason for the cinematic, radio and other electronic discussion of this decline is that auditory, visual and electronic media are easy to access, attention-getting, with no messy ink on one’s hand and no need to work very hard for the content conveyed.
Much has also been made of the declining revenues of newspapers during the ascendancy of Internet-based media, such as online news and blogs, etc. I think that the greater issue is a shift in attention span and cognitive style to what I call “imagism.” My father taught at Lehigh University for four decades, through the inception of Sesame Street, initially designed to teach the alphabet and other essentials in short television commercial-like bursts to deprived children. My father claims that he was able to track the arrival of the first Sesame Street generation at Lehigh in about 1982. Even though he was teaching visually rich courses in art history these undergraduates born after about 1965 expected college-level content to be spelled out for them and for it to be infotainment at the same time.
My point is that the source of revenue for newspapers is not the only issue. Watching the news, or listening to the radio, or even pointing a browser to the Huffington Post is easier than reading. Driving a car is easier than riding one’s bicycle to work and cutting your grass using fossil fuels is easier than pushing a manual mower. Will arguments about how the bike or the push mower are better in a number of important ways compel people to put out the effort? Or will people, except for a few die-hards, always do what is easiest.
Of course newspaper editors and writers can be lazy or fallible too. The New York Times was forced to apologize (“The Times and Iraq,” 2004) because the American paper of record relied on uncorroborated, phantasmal sources of propaganda (“a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on ‘regime change’ in Iraq”) and thus advanced the rationale of the Bush administration that the development of weapons of mass destruction was imminent under Saddam Hussein. The apologetic editorial makes reference to news coverage in the New York Times published on October 26, November 8, and December 20, 2001, September 8, 2002, April 21, 2003 that contained insinuations of Iraq’s potential for nuclear or biological weapons. The newspaper never independently verified these allegations.
The solution to continuing to get the precious reporting that newspapers offer must have many dimensions. The physical reality of the printed newspaper is a central issue to be addressed. Having the paper hold still so one can move through it, informationally is part of its superiority, but afterwards one has to gather it up and find the recycling bin. There have been times in my life that I was loathe to have a newspaper arrive on my doorstep each day because I didn’t want to dispose of the stack of paper at the end of the week.
There is a solution imagined in science fiction—the nanotechnological reading tool as thin and flexible as a piece of paper. This is described in Neal Stephenson’s (1995) Diamond Age. However, if an electronic reader such as this or as the Kindle creates a manifestation of written news that changes dynamically and doesn’t get ink on your hands, there may yet be financial hardship for newspapers. Amazon currently demands a draining 70 percent of revenue for content through the Kindle.
Another salvation for newspapers may come through actively cultivating young audiences to appreciate the deeper, more coherent content in newspapers. Newspaper corporations themselves tout this advantage via educational programs, but this effort should be amped up. Other foundations and initiatives could push the value of being informed via print to high school and college students. I myself will be attempting to do this come September via a seminar entitled Understanding Global News at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania. There, we will partake of several media relating the same news stories and compare their content, presentation, mode of discourse, agenda, slant, assumptions, and that which remains unspoken in each.
Cosmopolitan newspapers might consider going the Colbert-Stewart route and put more effort into content for which elite customers pay (rather than the old model of the main revenue coming from display ads). Both cable satirical news commentaries, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show reach only about two million viewers but they are the “perfect” two million in terms of demographics that appeal to advertisers and which elicit political responses in terms of voting and donations. Admittedly, both are comedy shows, not straight news, but there maybe something in their model.
Non-profit status for newspapers as was suggested at one of the recent congressional hearings on the state of the industry seems a vapid and problematic suggestion. Newspapers already have the option to operate as 501(c)(3) non-profits organizations. However, if they do go that route, they will lose the prerogative to endorse political candidates, a crucial function.
The hand wringing of cinematic fables and congressional hearings may or may not effect a rejuvenation of newspapers. Recently seeing these two movies, I was inspired to stipulate that my students would be required to compare print, online and other versions of three news stories per week. I also paid my slightly overdue New York Times bill of $42. Perhaps others will heed the current alarm and take similar small actions that amount to some improvement in readership and revenue.
The conundrum is that although they afford a common good, newspapers are a crucial part of the fourth estate, and should not be subsumed under public subsidy. New and better revenues for quality newspaper reporting most certainly should not come from the government or even tax-exempt status. The government of the nation-state must be monitored and criticized by newspapers, which must therefore remain separate and independent.
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The Times and Iraq. (2004, May 26). The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html
Dr. Adrienne Redd is working on a book suggesting that the public conception of several properties of the nation-state (including sovereignty, boundedness, unity and modernity) must evolve for the nation-state to thrive in the face of accelerating globalization. She has sporadically been posting essays at http://crittjarvis.com/essays-adrienne-redd that give some taste of these ideas. The working
titles for the book include: The Recombinant Nation-State, the Nation-State Re-Thought, The Biggest Thing (after Sex, Money and God), Juggernaut Turning, and the Seven Habits of the Highly Effective Nation-State.
Suggestions of less goofy titles welcome.
April 26, 2009
The Resilience of the Nation-State
In defining the methods for my dissertation I argued that a set of expected characteristics could be used to measure public perception of the nation-state. The nation-state is purely an idea. It is nothing more than a shared agreement that a huge but abstract institution has authority and weight. There is no person, no place, no document to which we can point that exhaustively embodies the nation-state (Louis XIV’s assertion aside1). Yet, it is arguably the entity that has the greatest power over our lives. Nation-states mobilize soldiers and print money, and their leaders voice big ideas about shared purpose for multitudes. The nation-state is at once an abstraction and a compelling reality.
In the past four decades the nation-state has suffered stunning body blows and transformations: acts of nonstate-on-state terrorism, hemorrhages of money, jobs, guns, drugs and ideas across former boundaries, and 31 countries born or reconfigured since 1990. Given these upheavals, we may ask, “What is going on with the nation-state?”
Based in scholarship of political science, I propose that history and theory provide a laundry list of things people expect their nation-state to accomplish. Among these are:
- Sovereignty,
- Impermeable boundaries and definable territory,
- A point of attribution of decision-making,
- Protection of and shepherding of citizens (though this function is more recent and more contested), and
- Making and enforcing internal laws while obeying international ones.
Social scientists try to come up with ways to think about and measure large and complicated social phenomena—both bad ones like poverty and war and good ones like literacy and home ownership. Changes in perceptions of the nation-state might be harbingers of the breakdown of the nation-state—or its transmogrification into something else. Empire, perhaps, as the old Cold War Chalmers Johnson has warned in his books and the excellent documentary, Why We Fight (2005, director Eugene Jarecki).
I will post more on the seven expected functions of the nation-state listed above and justifications for the list I use. For the moment, I’d like to shine the light of this approach on the declassification by President Obama of four memoranda outlining abuses permitted by the Bush administration. The memoranda about so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” including waterboarding, i.e. simulated drowning. The public already knew some of the content of the over-100 pages of descriptions and legal precedents from 2002 to 2005. Other gruesome details of mental anguish and physical assault stunned us with their cruelty.
I am asking here about lawfulness. There are two parts to lawfulness as I conceive of it as an expected function of the nation-state:
- The nation-state’s responsibility to generate a set of domestic laws allowing the society to operate, police and courts to enforce and apply those laws, and
- The statement of laws, conventions and agreements that the nation-state applies to itself as it functions in an international state system.
This provision of law and order, on a bureaucratic rather than not arbitrary basis was one of the main functions of the nation-state to which the seminal sociologist, Max Weber pointed in a famous speech of 1918.2
The United States, its point of authority or attribution being the 43rd president, stated, “we [The United States of America] do not torture.” Let’s set aside the specious argument that waterboarding (withstood by no one for more than 90 seconds in recorded usage, and during which victims break their own bones in order to try to escape) is anything other than torture. The recently declassified memoranda establish that waterboarding was condoned, even recommended, by high officials of the nation-state. At the same time, the highest official said that torture was not being applied. This yields a problematic equation of logic. The US doesn’t torture, but evidence has emerged that it did. What now? Will the nation-state implode like HAL the computer losing his mind? Did the United States cease to be a nation-state on the day this was uttered by it chief executive? Did it cease to be a nation-state with the recent public availability of proof of torture?
Does the nation-state need to achieve all seven nation-state properties to be a nation-state? One of the fascinating outcomes has been the convulsive tapdances by hard-liners in response to the equation above. They have ceased denying that waterboarding transpired, and have begun to defend it. One assault against President Obama’s release of these documents is that maintaining secrecy about such techniques increases their effectiveness, and that the US is less secure when they are known by enemies. Another criticism is that America’s enemies will be even angrier once its hypocrisy is known. Another is that such revelations diminish the legitimacy of a great nation.
I argue that it is precisely the willingness, ability and process for disclosing lies and crimes by the agents of the nation-state that makes it sufficiently resilient to endure and even rectify such a sickening truth. As the late Senator Daniel Moynihan asserted, only tactical secrecy is justifiable, not moral secrecy. Furthermore, I believe that President Obama understands that not pursuing the prosecution of lower-level actors will allow the capital-T Truth of “why?” to out. To grieve, and process and heal, after such a transgression, people need to interrogate the higher-ups, because speech acts will be the most effective punishment of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others who knew about and encourage such violations. Speech acts will be the most cleansing for the American People, in whose name torture was committed. Surely, this must be true for Germans, Turks, and Cambodians whose grandparents were swept into a maelstrom of mass murder.
Precisely because it is abstract, because it is rooted in rules — not purely arbitrary self-enrichment of a warlord, because it is a dynamic negotiation of a shared ideas, the nation-state and the American nation-state can recover, can be redeemed after the heart-wrenching revelation that it did torture enemy combatants. It can walk on by—but not in the way that Peggy Noonan suggests.
1 King Louis XIV of France’s motto is reported to have said “Je suis l’état. L’état c’est moi.” — “I am the state, the state is me.”
2Weber, Max. (1948). Politics as a Vocation [Politik als Beruf], lecture given by Max Weber to students of the Munich University. From Max Weber: Essay in Sociology. Edited and translated by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Routledge
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Dr. Adrienne Redd is working on a book asserting that leaders and the public must re-conceptualize several of the expected nation-state properties, such as sovereignty and boundedness, in order for the nation-state to survive. She welcomes suggestions of jazzier titles than: The Nation-State Rethought, or The Recombinant Nation-State or The Nation-State Must Evolve or Die.
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I start store manager training tomorrow for Cumberland Farms, and will be “media dark” until I’ve completed training and have my own store. A big thanks goes to Chris Brogan for unintentionally lighting a fire under my butt. Heh.
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April 9, 2009
Crossroads
The American president gave a dazzling array of speeches during the week that Buddhists observed the birthday of Gautama, Christians observed the resurrection of their messiah, Jews celebrated liberation from slavery, and people throughout the world welcomed the change of seasons.
On April 2, 2009, President Obama addressed leaders of the world’s largest economies at a meeting in London. On April 4, he spoke to signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and took questions from the press. In Prague, on April 5, hours after North Korea tested a missile that could deliver nuclear weapons to Alaska, he promised to work for nuclear disarmament. On Monday April 6, he visited Turkey for the first time as the leader of the free world, and on April 7, he completed his trip with an unannounced stop in Baghdad to explain to troops why they are still needed.
The speech at the G-20 Summit encouraged the richest nations to further stimulate their economies, as the US has been trying to do. The second speech, in Strasbourg, urged NATO members to help eradicate al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and in the lawless border regions of Pakistan. The speech in Prague pledged that the US, Russia and other Great Powers would disarm to legitimize their request to other nations to do so. In the speech in Turkey, President Obama assured the EU’s only predominantly Muslim member that the west is not at war with the youngest monotheistic religion, and the joyously received speech in Iraq assured the men and women of the military that their government would support them overseas, and after they returned to the United States.
There were overlapping themes to these various audiences: economic infusions and new regulations, shared prosperity and security, and a world in which there is nowhere to hide from recession, radiation or communications. It is my assertion, however, that the “Town Hall” talk in Strasbourg, France on April 3, 2009 illuminated an interlocking group of themes that reveal Obama’s leadership and his vision for the nation-state and world governance.
I recently completed my doctoral dissertation, which distilled a set of functions that writers have expected nation-states to perform. My research tallied perceptions—both negative and positive fulfillment—of those functions in 555 letters and editorials in three newspapers from between 1946 and 2008. The findings were that, although writers consistently saw nation-states falling down on the job with regard to six of the seven functions, they nonetheless continued to talk about the nation-state as the structure most likely to bring stability and justice to the people of the world.
President Obama’s points in the “Town Hall” speech touched all seven of what I have called the nation-state properties: 1) sovereignty, 2) boundedness, 3) attribution to or legitimacy of nation-states, 4) protection and provision for citizens, 5) the nation-state’s responsibility to instill law and order, 6) the old mythology of the unity of the nation-state, and 7) its modernity as an institution. My assertion is that the President of the United States (along with a number of other leaders and thinkers) is beginning to discuss the necessary maturation of several of these nation-state functions, especially sovereignty and boundedness.
Bracketing the language that addresses these implied evolutions is the symbolism of crossroads—crossroads of space, such as rivers, of culture, such as religion, and most importantly crossroads of social time. The President underscored this by saying “we’ve arrived at a moment where each nation and every citizen must choose at last how we respond to a world that has grown smaller and more connected than at any time in its existence.”
Leaders from America and other Great Powers have been treading carefully around the concept of sovereignty for some time. The treaties, entitled collectively the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the 30 years war, stipulated that the sovereign of a nation-state determines its religious practice — not some other authority, such as the Catholic Church. Until accelerating capabilities of communications and nuclear weapons made the concept of noninterference in other nations’ internal matters obsolete, sovereignty was nearly an ideology unto itself, a sort of western secular fundamentalism—except when it served Great Powers to interfere.
Sovereignty is being re-conceptualized; and the President noted that any nation’s use of resources and international behavior affects the overall equilibrium.
Related to this acknowledgement that no nation, not even the most remote or secretive, is truly sovereign any longer, were the recurrent linguistic turns on borders, boundaries, barriers and walls that have become permeable. The Strasbourg “Town Hall” contained three explicit mentions of “borders,” four mentions of “walls” (two mentions of the fall of the Berlin Wall) and other mentions of gaps, fences, gates, and divides, etc.—the repeated point being their futility. Complementing this theme was that of inexorable interdependence such as polities have never before known. The President made this point with regard to military security, culture, and communications, with one of the most dramatic statements being: “The economic crisis has proven the fact of our interdependence in the most visible way yet. Not more than a generation ago, it would have been difficult to imagine that the inability of somebody to pay for a house in Florida could contribute to the failure of the banking system in Iceland.”
As President Obama did in his inaugural speech, and as he did in the other five speeches on the trip, he asserted that at this historical moment of great peril, “this incredible moment in history,” as he called it, there is also epochal opportunity. In addition to an implication of a turning point, he implied a social reconstruction of time—from short term, narrow maximization of utility and gratification to a greater awareness of and commitment to long-term sustainability and efforts toward difficult and distant goals.
He underscored this de-legitimization of selfish interests by saying, “No more will the world’s financial players be able to make risky bets at the expense of ordinary people.” A potent linguistic thread that emerged was the idea of the commons, which are ruined if everyone treats them carelessly. The word “common” occurred in the speech a stunning 15 times in a 3,500-word speech, with only one of these being the synonym of “ordinary” and another being the synonym of “frequent.” The other 13 uses meant “shared” or “collective,” and this emphasis appears extraordinary to me.
The dramatic point is that the people and the nations of the world will all suffer if any one is wasteful and destructive, and all benefit from right behavior. Referring to the poorer regions of the earth, he said, “So it’s not just charity. It’s a matter of understanding that our fates are tied together, not just the fates of Europe and America, but the fate of the entire world.” This indictment of narrow, short-term gratification was stated in many ways: “We’ve just emerged from an era marked by irresponsibility. And it would be easy to choose the path of selfishness or apathy, of blame or division, but that is a danger that we cannot afford.“ He mentioned the long term success of the Marshall plan and also said, “Over the long term…we’ve got to have a strategy that recognizes that the interest of the developed world in feeding the hungry, in educating children, that that’s not just charity; it’s in our interests.”
The President presents an emerging map of how the traditional properties of the dominant social structure must be updated. His use of language reveals clear ideas of how to proceed—though it remains to be seen how the nation-states of the world will navigate the obstacles of the crossroads.
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Learning a new language–the retail channel of convenience and petroleum sales–is fun, and full of story. As I begin to understand this industry, to better express and communicate meaningful stories of experience, I smilingly remember my orientation day at the Defense Language Institute. I was there–at age 30–to learn Russian, quickly: A formidable task, at first glance. “Fear not,” said the training officer. “You can eat an elephant when it’s served in bite-size chunks.” So we laughed, we had fun, we learned Russian. And that methodology, in all new ventures, has served me well.
Yesterday was a head’s down day, reading and parsing a current copy Convenience Store News, putting the information into a plan of single serve sachets.
“Customer obsession is the single most important asset you can have as a company.” I am obsessed. As I have said before, and forever ask, “What makes you tick?”
I’ve gotta know: What attracts you to my store? What satisfies your demand when you stop here? What’s not working for you? What can I do to create a relationship–trusted retailer, loyal customer?
Beyond facility, What is store? It is place; it is products; but most importantly, it is people.
The story of store: An opportunity for reinvention. I am obsessed.
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I have a slew of new must-read writers: Convenience Store News. Their work illuminates positive pathways of business transformation to “What’s next in convenience and petroleum retailing.”
Want evidence of how the future is unfolding? Check out Mehgan Belanger’s tour, with slideshow, Inside Cumberland Farms’ New Concept.
Change is in the air. Change for the better. I feel it with each breath I take, better. I see it with eyes wide open, better. How best can I ride with that message?
Better. Better. Better.
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~inspired by Chris Brogan, again.
I have a quest, of sorts: To find and awaken the goodness in people, one person at a time. When I took a part time customer sales associate job at Cumberland Farms last year, I did so with the intention of understanding each customer as a guest: What makes you tick? What makes you feel good about yourself? So, what do I find when I look behind the “U” in G.U.E.S.T.? You, of course!
A little background…
I’m a guy wired to learn best from experience, by immersion–sink or swim, Mister! I was fortunate to work with Thomas P.M. Barnett for several years, and briefly with Stephen F. DeAngelis, as well. Each is brilliant, in individual talent; but creating positive futures requires moving people to action. You know–actually do something. And, for me, their vision expressed through thought leadership, and their capacity achieved for designing and executing strategic plans continues to inspire me. Why am I telling you this? Because,
Great things happen when you awaken the challenge…
…and I want to work towards Great Things Happening.
We live in a time of great abundance, with lots of information competing for our limited attention. The filters we use (automated aggregators, human recombinators) provide, as well as shape, our opportunities for “attention transactions” (you attending to me, me attending to you). My blog gives me a superb business efficiency to publish communications, enabling anyone with Web access to consider my message, from its source. *That’s* cool, way cool! And, every bit as important, an understanding of how people find stuff–especially your message–will give you a competitive advantage over someone who’s vying for the same target audience. The following is a case example of writing a post, intentionally designed with the hope being found by at least one person within a small audience: the corporate leadership at Cumberland Farms.
Gatejumping done right is a beautiful thing…
It’s transition time again, and needing to make a personal decision which work opportunities to pursue I started querying the website of Convenience Store News: “Cumberland Farms”. Bingo! The results turned up, “Petrowski on Leadership.” Hmmm… Joseph Petrowski is the CEO of Cumberland Farms and Gulf Oil.
“Oh boy, I’ve got an opinion on marketing,” Joe is quoted. And I’m thinking, “Me, too. Joe! Me, too.” Which got me to wondering, Could I get his attention with my blog?
Opportunity presented: intention and really, really good luck
I originally intended to write only one piece about Cumberland Farms. I wanted to say something about Joe Petrowski’s vision for the company’s future, as well as my perception of my store’s advantage. In other words, I wanted to shape any subsequent conversation with good business principles. The result was “Reducing cost opportunity in an attention economy,” which is what “Love coffee? Hate lines?” signage does, by design. But, as luck would have it, Chris Brogan had just opined otherwise, posting “Sending the Wrong Message.” D’oh! That’s my coffee he’s talking about… Arrrrgh! Inspired to action, I countered with “Context is critical: Where is your customer’s attention?“, a key question to ask when working to reduce cost opportunity.
Within hours, a return on investment: Feedback from Cumberland Farms
Honestly, for better or worse, I had no expectation of a corporate response. But they came-comment and email, linking my chain of influence: the VP of store operations and the director of marketing, each positive and encouraging. Best part, they forwarded my blog to the president of the company. Woot!
Executive summary
Disclosure: When I posted “Cumberland Farms is my employer,” in October of last year, the first person to read it came from an ISP named: Cumberland Farms, Waltham. No comments, emails, or any kind of feedback. But, that was indication enough that corporate might be watching the Web for key words. Thus, I am always thinking how best to tag each post, with my target audience in mind.
In this instance of responding to Chris, though I wrote as personal opinion, effectively, for that post, I represented Cumberland Farms; and in doing so, I know there was an associated risk that corporate policy might not be favorable to my having done so, without first gaining permission. That said, this attention transaction was successful: Corporate knows I can walk the talk, I know Cumberland Farms can work the Web.
But, you might be asking, “With this blog, did you get the attention of Joe Petrowski?”
All I can say for now is… We’ll see.
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Got questions? You can reach me at crittjarvis@gmail.com
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I work part time for what began as a family owned business, Cumberland Farms. But, as successful businesses often do, it got big. And, evidently, it’s getting bigger. What this might mean for me begs a question: Do I want a full time role? Dunno… So what do I do first? Diligence, of course… talk to people–with help from my son, Joe, who took these pictures, and Marjorie, who grounded us in play.
A little background about me, Did you know that…
Once upon a time, a farmer I would be…
Cows take solar energy and nutrients stored in grass,
convert it into a fulfilling product: milk.
Serve the cow, the cow serves us.
How cool is *that*?
So it was, Joe, Marjorie and I went to visit our friends in the Cornwall Bridge environs of Connecticut: people serving people.
Local Farm, Cornwall Bridge, CT; March 21, 7pm
Having dropped off Marjorie at a surprise sleepover with Housy High friends, and after finishing chores, Joe and I headed over to the lodge at Mohawk Mountain for a lighthearted strategy session, planning Sunday’s diligence drive. The result? He’d get time in the woods, I’d get time in the new Cumby’s in Farmington. We’d both get the pictures we wanted, you know, like this blue Mohawk Mountain.
Mohawk Mountain, CT; March, 2009, 8pm
Joe’s fluent in art, I noodle with words; we spent our time together at Mohawk, talking about the past and present–successes and failures–as well as the kind of future we wanted to create. We knew what we were looking for: utility and significance.
And, the next morning in Farmington, we found the template for future opportunity…
Directions to Sunday breakfast
March 22, 2009, Farmington, CT
Imagine the possibilities…
If beavers could design,
beyond habits of their nature,
the world might be turned anew.
Building competitive advantage and efficiencies.
Cumberland Farms? Feels right to me. I mean, How better to appreciate those who bring us food?
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