The flickr web site has numerous photos of the damage to roads from Washdot. It’s all about roads – no houses and stuff.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot
Some of the western Cascade reservoirs have filled up so the Corps is releasing water which is adding to the damage in some places. It’s either that or risk failure of the dams.
Lake Boren is even up a couple of feet and brown again. It sits in a sort of saddle between two hills east and west and two valleys north and south. May Creek to the south takes the runoff from Lake Boren. It’s very difficult for the lake itself to actually flood.
One of the benefits of having such a hilly area is the water runs down very fast which means we don’t get the standing water. However, those folks who live in the flat valleys get it all. But don’t forget, the fast water running down the hills can take a lot of debris and cause slides. So it’s not all a bed of roses. Especially for those in the floodplains.
News in Seattle – Paper Version:
Thomas Jefferson was a great proponent of a free and independent press. He and the other founding fathers made sure the press in America would always be free of government interference or control.
However, they didn’t count on the giant piles of actual paper we have today. Publishing a newspaper requires vast quantities of paper. Large amounts of that paper are advertisements. In 1776 the paper was one sheet and might have had a small two line “ad” here and there. But the business model of today’s newspaper requires hundreds of ads.
In 1776 the subscription price paid for the newspaper. Now it only partially pays for delivery. The ads pay all the real bills, salaries, and supply costs. The environment pays for the paper.
This is one reason why 200 large daily newspapers have disappeared in the last eight years. The revenue stream is for businesses to buy ad space and the newspaper prints and delivers those ads to households. The people who read the ads go out and buy products which provides more money to buy ad space in the paper.
Notice anything missing? News! The newsroom is an additional cost that siphons revenue from the stream. But most readers allegedly buy the newspaper for the news. Oh, and the comics.
Advertising is a primary component of American commerce. We see a flyer in the Sunday paper that says Penney’s is having a 48 hour sale and we decide we need to be at Penney’s for the next two days. Even if we don’t have a specific item in mind; it’s a sale – we have to go.
News is a whole different commodity. We need weather and traffic information. And sports. How would we know it was Sunday except for sports? And we may need a few other bits of “information” such as the name they picked for Sarah Palin’s grandchild.
The trick is we can get all that “news” in about 20 minutes while we eat our Cherios. I still get the Sunday Seattle Times, soon to be our only large daily, but it takes only one cup of tea to do the whole thing. Then I have a three pound pile of paper for the recycle bin.
The Seattle P-I is for sale and Hearst says if it doesn’t sell in 60 days it will just close. I sent my bid this morning. The Times has this incredible idea that they will pick up 75% of the P-I subscribers when it closes. I don’t think so. The real beneficiaries are the advertisers.
On the sidelines are the people who insist that Seattle (name your city) requires two competing major newspapers. They say it forces them to work harder for news and get their stories correct yada, yada, yada. I say it’s not about “news” it’s about advertising. Now that the holidays (???) are over the ads have shrunk to a mere trickle.
Penney’s 48 hour sale is still going on, because nobody could get there in the snow. But they don’t have any extra money to advertise.
OK, now I’ve done it! Pointed out a problem but no suggestion for a solution. Don’t you just hate that?
Well guess what, I have a solution. It’s so simple. Microsoft! Wait, wait, let me explain!
There are products from several manufacturers that are nice and portable with readable screens. It goes by several names and comes in different sizes. But basically it’s an electronic reader.
What the newspaper companies can do is separate the news from the advertising electronically. Then publish news over the air. The Amazon Kindle has this today. You can subscribe to a daily newspaper and each morning there it is right there on your screen.
They need to improve the interface and that’s what Microsoft OR Apple should be able to do. On the Kindle you can display a newspaper section with headlines and a short intro to each story. You click on a headline and you can read the whole story. But it’s not as passive as scanning a newspaper. For example its regular text so the headlines don’t stand out.
But I bet my paycheck that if the big news organizations were to rethink their delivery paradigm (remember that word? I hate it too.) and understand that advertising and news are two different commodities we’d see a shift like this.
I mean a shift to electronic delivery on a readable medium. Sure, it’s easy to catch weather and sports on TV during oatmeal each morning but it’s also nice to sit down and read a good report on some news item you’re interested in.
You’re reading this on a puter and loving it! But I don’t have any requirement to check my facts or even make an effort to tell the truth. A News organization allegedly does. Some don’t do it, but they’re supposed to.
And, yes, this isn’t exactly me own brainchild. (I’m naming it Truk) Sony tried it, Amazon is having success with the Kindle, and Microsoft is still trying to find the right marketing approach. But the hardware exists and I think the big push will come when the news organizations see how the revenue stream can work.
Here’s why: Electronic delivery is cheap and easy – only requires one original and some broadcast hardware, which already exists. The only trick is to get consumers to buy the reader – we’re “consumers,” we’ll buy anything if it’s “ON SALE.” Once advertisers are free of the enormous cost of supporting the newspaper industry they can focus on TV and Internet. And eliminating all that wasted paper has to be good for everyone.
Big News Organizations should stop whining and rethink their reason for existence. Thomas Jefferson would probably have been one of the first to buy a Kindle and I bet he would have loved reading Ben Franklin’s news on it. To use Tom Jefferson’s quotes as arguments in favor of retaining the paper print paradigm is to deny the genius of the man. He was a forward thinking innovator and I think it’s an insult to place him with the whiners.
Al
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