SchwartzFamily.org

Jacob had double the homework this weekend because he was fooling around during one assignment and had to finish it at home. It took him a while — he had to write Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff five times and his name five times and then write I am cat and I am dog five times.

While he was doing his homework, William got a bath with bubbles. If Jacob didn’t have homework, he would’ve gone first and had the bath the way he likes it — sans bubbles (don’t ask).

So, he said to me when he was getting ready to go in the tub, “I’m going to do my homework at school the next time so I don’t have to have a tubby with bubbles.”

The other day before school, Jacob asked “Is it the weekend yet?”

Seth Godin, change agent, marketer, not sure what he does — wrote this insightful post about why fire trucks are always sparkling clean.

Made me think about the change we are experiencing in our industry to become more competitive in the increasingly fragmented and digital marketplace.

Part of it is the ability to be interative. The Internet isn’t about perfection, it’s interative. If we wait for everything we produce to be perfect and to have a process in place to “control” it, we lose first-mover status which is important if you want to be innovative and all successful companies are innovative and iterative.

Here’s a quote from an article about what changes Proctor & Gamble are going through to meet the new marketplace demands which references my favorite reference to perfection as a hindrance by Meg Whitman:

Stop testing so much. It’s not the P&G way to put out a product without test-marketing it. But consumer testing takes time–a luxury that P&G execs increasingly don’t have. Says Susan Arnold, P&G’s beauty queen: “We don’t have time to cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s. This business is trend-based and fashion-based. You have to be intuitive, instinctual, and gut-driven.” … P&G has reduced product launch time from lab to roll-out from three years to 18 months companywide. Meg Whitman, eBay’s CEO and a P&G board member, believes that P&G should move even faster. “Perfection is the enemy of good enough,” she says. “I think that’s right,” says Lafley.

So, the next time you are heading into yet another meeting about whether or not to create a new online section or try out a new column in the newspaper, ask yourself if you’re just cleaning the old fire truck again.

– Sorry for the long post.
Kathy

Jacob’s favorite book today, Truelove, is one that Brian bought for me before Jacob was born. It tells the story of a mutt named Truelove who feels neglected when his family has their first baby.

Jacob told me he likes the book because it has a lot of dogs and he would like to have more dogs. We have two already, one is about 14 years old and the other just over a year. Jacob really wants a dog he can hold in his arms. Loki, the younger dog, was already more than 40 pounds when we adopted him. He’s a white german shephard.

I understand Jacob’s desire to have a puppy. But, despite the lesson of the book Truelove, sometimes you can’t take them all home. I know. I used to beg my parents to save every dog I saw on the street. They didn’t, but I always had a dog as a pet and so will Jacob and William

Pets really are a true love.

I admit it, I watch Super Nanny sometimes and last night was like being there for me. My boys are not nearly as bad as Rosemary’s three boys, but I could relate to much of what she and her husband John are going through.

My boys don’t listen to me unless I’m yelling. I can ask nicely twice for them to stop and they do nothing until the THIRD ASK . I take things away. I count to three. I make them sit in time-out.

Nothing seems to work.

And, like Rosemary and John, I have felt like giving up. Just let them do what they want. I don’t want to yell every day. But, that is exactly what Rosemary and John did and why they were on the show. They gave up. Their kids did WHATEVER they wanted. They went to bed when they wanted. They never cleaned up their rooms. They broke their toys and didn’t clean up the mess. They were even worse in school and after-school.

So, the good news is that I haven’t given up. I’ve thought about it. I’ve really wanted to walk away, but I haven’t. And therein lies the hope.

That and I’ve admitted to watching the damn show, so that’s the first step toward recovery.

There are lots of commentators predicting the death of newspapers. They point to falling circulation and the shift in advertising dollars from print to other media, including the Internet.

I don’t argue that the newspaper industry is undergoing a transition. But, it’s irresponsible to assume we are not actively participating in our transition. Sure, change is slow and our readers and advertisers are probably moving faster than we are right now. But, if you look closely, we are moving.

At the tiny Pocono Record, for example, we break news first on our Web site. Recently, there was a fire in downtown Stroudsburg around 9:30 p.m. We had it first on our site with pictures and subscribers to our text alert service got the news on their cell phones soon after.

The ongoing news reporting through multiple media makes our print presentation, which more than 50% of the market still wants, that much stronger. We were recognized by the Poytner Institute for our front-page coverage of that story. Click here for a screenshot of the coverage.

We recently started producing audio slideshows. The slideshows are a great way to capture the emotion of a scene through sounds that complement the fantastic photography of our staff photographers. Some would say, “big deal, lots of sites do this and even do video.” Well, they’re right. And we have plans to start capturing stories with video but I don’t think it’s the technology that’s makes a difference.

Anyone can do a slideshow. I make them for my family but that doesn’t mean they are any good. Any can shoot video.

But doing it well is a lot harder than it looks. Our reporters, photographers and editors are trained to tell compelling stories in ways that capture imagination and inform. To say it’s responsible is an understatement. We have a public duty to report. Do the millions of bloggers out there hold the same duty? I doubt it.

And who blogs about the Poconos anyway? Who reports on what the school board discussed last night? Who captures the images of the local 9/11 Memorial Ceremony to share with those who couldn’t attend? Who goes to every high school football games, writes down the statistics, takes pictures of the best plays, and compiles all that information into a package for online and print readers to engage with at their leisure?

Well, no one does that except the Pocono Record.

Are there challenges facing us and the industry at large? Absolutely. Are we sitting around doing nothing about it? Absolutely not.
Great content wins the day. Our business might be different in a few years, but we’ll still be the public record for the Poconos for many years to come.

My friend and colleague at the Knoxville News Sentinel wrote this in his blog:

The number one thing that newspapers have is that a newspaper throws away more content in a day than Yahoo makes in a year.

Shawn Riegsecker, CEO of Centro, a Chicago-based media buying firm

Riegsecker was speaking Tuesday at the Newspaper Association of America conference for newspaper investors. The quote was in a story in Online Media Daily from MediaPost CommunicationsHis point was the biggest advantage newspaper Web sites have over competitors like portal sites is a large amount of quality content that advertisers want to be placed alongside, the article said.

Another notable comment in the story was that Tribune Co. said interactive revenues will be $225 million or 6 percent of publishing revenues this year and will be 12 to 15 percent within four years.

Dying? No. Different? Yes.

I attended my first PTA meeting last week for Jacob’s school. There was a good crowd there and I noted silently that there is always many more people at the first meeting than at the second.

I hope to buck that trend and show up as often as I can. Their decision to hold some meetings during the day hurts my chances at succeeding, obviously. But, I’ll give it a try.

The sole purpose of the PTA is to raise money for those things that the school district cannot afford to buy or just won’t buy. So, items like field trips, class presentations, the science fair. All things that I fondly remember enjoying when I was in school but never cared about how those events were paid for. Maybe the PTA paid for our field trips back then, too?

Anyway, I’m not much of a fundraiser. I’d rather just write a check and be done with all the marketing materials sent home in Jacob’s back-pack. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just add together the costs of all the things the district won’t pay for and divide that number by the number of children and ask the parents for whatever it comes out to? The fundraising programs are sophisticated and must cost a pretty penny to run. The direct route — asking parents to donate — would enable all the collected dollars to fall straight to the bottom line.

But, hey, what do I know?

Oh, and if you want to donate you can buy frozen food online here and put in our school code so we get credit — 24656.
Or, you can buy stuff here and enter this number for LB Morris - 1692971.

There, that’s my plug now who can I make the check out to?

Jacob started kindergarten and William is going full days now. They are doing well although Jacob is an “active” little boy according to his teacher.

William is a “joy.”

We had homework last night!