Mike Durkin

I fired myself over the weekend.

Not literally, but in a sense that I took a moment to detach from my current role and points of progress on projects with the idea of coming in Monday as if I were a new hire. The mindset brings a fresh perspective to projects, a renewed energy to the same position and a forced cleaning of the email inbox.

As personnel, project and/or content managers, it is easy to fall into the trap of rigidity and process. Meetings with the same minds can equate to different projects being attacked with the same approach, but when you bring a new person (or a fresh mind) to the mix, it becomes a catalyst for change.

I’m enjoying my first day in my same job. I hope you fire yourself soon.

As a chain of 20 guilty verdicts were read by the jury in the trial of Tom Petters, a chain of communication was at work in the newsroom this evening.

Our reporter, Bill Keller, was on the phone with our assignment editors, within earshot of my desk as I was filing a report on the reaching of a verdict. As word of the first guilty verdict came down, I started to publish an update on our TweetDeck, which became guilty on the first 11 counts by the time it was ready to send.

Seconds later, Petters was guilty on all counts and MyFOX9.com was the first TV station in the Twin Cities to confirm it online.

Minnesota doesn’t allow cameras in the courtroom, which adds an intense level of suspense to covering a trial when you aren’t the reporter in the courtroom.

What a night. Oh, by the way…Petters could get 335 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 on each count. Thinking of running a Ponzi scheme?

Link: Petters guilty on all counts

My former college roommate and interactive marketing pro Kareem Ahmed posed an open question on his blog today on participation in Cyber Monday. Here’s my comment to Kareem’s post:

I lump Cyber Monday in with lack Friday as two “events” that go against the grain of what the holiday season is meant to be. I’ve had a great debate with family members this season.

Last year, we all traveled to Florida to spend a final Christmas with our grandma. With some out-of-work family, the general state of our checking accounts and the need to travel or ship gifts, we chose a sort of Secret Santa approach, only buying one gift. The result? The holiday was less commercial and much more focused on bringing family together and cherishing some long-honored food traditions.

I don’t have as much of a problem with Cyber Monday as I do Black Friday. Cyber Monday comes after the extended holiday passes, giving Thanksgiving its due process. Both are also days in which large retailers can leverage their bulk to further out-duel small businesses.

I’ve seen this recession put a lot of weight on a good handful of people close to me. In the grand scheme of things, this economic crisis has been bad for just about everybody, but there have been some bright spots to come out of it.

When we realized our state and nation were in for the long haul, we launched a franchise at the station called Surviving the Economy. It highlighted people who were doing more than weathering the storm, but actually finding opportunity and sometimes their true passion at the same time.

More some companies, it has allowed them to flex some creative muscle. For some individuals, it has proven the power of their drive and the fire in their internal furnace.

But I think some of the most important lessons learned in the workplace during this stretch is how important people are and how we can all live with fewer luxuries in the office in order to keep those people.

If you’ve worked anywhere for any substantial period of time, your workplace becomes your second family. I for one would much rather make my own coffee at home, have the holiday party at the office, stamp my own mail and find creative solutions rather than hiring a contractor than have to come to work minus a person that was in the trenches with me.

Every time I get an email, a meeting request or conference call dial-in info regarding a third party application orsolution it makes me cringe.

The products these third parties develop are often times very solid. It’s the third party thing I have a problem with. They are never seamless. Sometimes it’s the overall look-and-feel, sometimes it’s the administrative console and most of the time it’s a user-end issue.

A visitor to a website should only have to create one account to get through any registration-required point of entry.

Companies really need to make the investment in internal development.

I’m a very food-obsessed person, so I’ve been following the news of Conde Nast shutting down Gourmet very closely and monitoring the fallout and reaction from it. A few local chefs are devastated, and editor Ruth Reichl was set to make an appearance this Saturday at the Twin Cities Book Festival (appearance has since been canceled).

Yesterday, Christopher Kimball (Cook’s Illustrated publisher, America’s Test Kitchen host) had an op-ed in the New York Times, with an overriding theme of uncertainty as to whether a mass of (mostly-amateur) voices on the internet will be a catalyst for the fall of quality, expert journalism and publishing. The op-ed takes on the issue of paid content online, and how it’s necessary to ensure the experts who create this content are compensated to keep the content coming.

Personally, I think consumers get smarter every year. I think, while it may take a while, news and information consumers will realize they want to get the best information available, and they will probably be willing to pay the price. Think about iTunes – what if you could get the same song for free, but the audio just wasn’t quite as clear as the paid version. You would undoubtedly buy it. On another personal note, I don’t necessarily think it is within the right of network news organizations (like my own) to charge for content, considering the public service we provide, and the fact you can get our programming over the air with no premium cost (but that’s another discussion).

Anyway, here’s the three paragraphs (non-consecutive) I found most applicable, with a link to the full op-ed.

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Now, 68 years after its founding, Gourmet has followed American Cookery, ending a long and masterful turn at the helm of the food publishing world. This, hard on the heels of the death of Julia Child in 2004, makes one tremulous about the future. Is American magazine publishing on the verge of being devoured by the democratic economics of the Internet? Has the media industry fully become an everyman’s playing field, without the need for credentials or paid membership? Or, to ask the questions that every media executive is really whispering, “Will I have a job next year?”

The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million instant pundits, where an anonymous Twitter comment might be seen to pack more resonance and useful content than an article that reflects a lifetime of experience, experts are not created from the top down but from the bottom up. They can no longer be coronated; their voices have to be deemed essential to the lives of their customers. That leaves, I think, little room for the thoughtful, considered editorial with which Gourmet delighted its readers for almost seven decades.

To survive, those of us who believe that inexperience rarely leads to wisdom need to swim against the tide, better define our brands, prove our worth, ask to be paid for what we do, and refuse to climb aboard this ship of fools, the one where everyone has an equal voice. Google “broccoli casserole” and make the first recipe you find. I guarantee it will be disappointing. The world needs fewer opinions and more thoughtful expertise — the kind that comes from real experience, the hard-won blood-on-the-floor kind. I like my reporters, my pilots, my pundits, my doctors, my teachers and my cooking instructors to have graduated from the school of hard knocks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/opinion/08kimball.html?_r=2&ref=opinion