After I first left CNN, and especially after walking away from two other, simultaneous, media roles held for about a year afterward, I often found myself pondering my purpose and, heartbroken, hoping to feel confident some form of this could be renewed and restored. Recently, and especially as the theme of senseless predation with regard to media companies has felt so much like the proverbial … Continue reading On Purpose

“Did you enjoy the cocaine?” my fellow traveler asked, half-mockingly, and mostly patronizingly. I don’t understand why you are even asking me this, their eyes divulged. I don’t understand why stores at the airport don’t clamor to sell coca tea, my eyes retorted, in total ignorance. Do you want to lose business? One reason I’m grateful to be competing – not at war – with … Continue reading Influence

Are any historical eras more interesting than the first centuries BC and AD? For some reason, I have recently felt so drawn to learning more about this period, and particularly about Rome’s transition from republic to empire, that I’ve been struck by the intersectionality of storylines I’d before considered more separately. While, at first, I felt inspired simply to spend time appreciating not only the … Continue reading Territory

Today I was grateful to be able to re-read a portion of Henry Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World, from which I have a great deal to learn. And it’s felt underscored to me recently how important it is to try to keep things both in their proper proportion and in their proper order. Continue reading Orders

Recently, I experienced the unusual feeling of being not just enamored, but awe-struck, by the sight of Sirius outside my window. Continue reading Moments

The more it seems to me there are two opposing forces at play in so many of our social, economic, and political interactions – those that would encourage only a surface-level appearance of progress in order to maintain stagnancy and those that more deeply strive for progress in actuality – the more it feels important to recognize and to build on the work of those dedicated to the latter. Continue reading Unions

Perhaps one reason it is more comforting to listen to, and to talk with, honest people with whom I disagree than corporate pundits who, often, parrot what many times do seem to be the right talking points but for the wrong reasons, is that the former permit productive dialogue in which insight can be gained and problems solved. And, while I never imagined myself siding with conservatives on very many issues at all, I’ve begun to view at least a few of the party’s advocates as making the case for sustainably-paced, rather than clownishly-parodied progress. Continue reading Content

If it is true that unaccountable power is attracted to unaccountable power, cronyism being corrupt systems’ best defense against reform, should we not still pause to wonder whether a world informed by publicly-traded communications companies, their mode of operating arguably being so incompatible with human nature that their very presence may work against the well-being of society as a whole, is informed at all? Continue reading The Score

If it is true that corruption in media – and, arguably, in all organization types – tends to take the form of encouraging, and covering up, the build-up of large amounts of unaccountable power for the purpose of exploitation by only a few informed players, a great danger to the country could be said to be any system – not just any person – that would automate such processes. Continue reading Pressing

If it is true that the primary purpose of the stock market is to create a sort of black box within which profit can be made without accountability for harms perpetrated against people or planet, even while corporations spend enormous sums on marketing and image-crafting, would not its operations create a greater – and not a lesser – need for journalism in America? At the very least, should we not decide, sooner rather than later, that American media organizations’ relationship to the stock market is problematic and open a dialogue about how this may most sensibly and helpfully be addressed? Continue reading Batteries