By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

The New York Times ran a cover story in its Sunday Styles section last week about what's happened to Ruth Madoff, 68-year-old wife of Bernie, and how she can't get a hairdo or a latte in her old haunts anymore. Nobody wants to be seen letting her in their establishment because she's viewed as complicit in her husband's Ponzi schemes.

I found this comment interesting: "Alexandra Lebenthal, who is a friend of one of the Madoff sons, Andrew, as well as a fixture in Manhattan financial and social circles, said that Mrs. Madoff has not taken any steps that might rehabilitate her image. 'In America, we love tearing people down and then bringing them back, but she hasn’t played the game,' she said."

 Then there's Sasha Grey, the 21-year-old porn star who plays Chelsea in Stephen Soderbergh's new film, "The Girlfriend Experience." The IMDB synopsis remarks that she plays "a determined young woman that has managed to achieve success as an upscale escort without any apparent loss of dignity, but clearly at the expense of her ability to feel anything deeply, be it with her clients or in her personal life. In an uncomplicated way, the film makes a provocative point about the more subtle costs of switching off aspects of our aliveness (i.e. our caring) to get ahead."

What do Ruth Madoff and Chelsea have in common? Greed. As the story in the New York Times points out, Ruth Madoff cares little, if at all, about the people who her husband killed, financially speaking.

Chelsea, the empty-headed young escort in Soderbergh's film, is a highly paid call girl who, thoroughout the film, seeks new ways to market herself at the expense of her personal sense of self and her relationships with others - in particular her boyfriend (who has issues of his own, needless to say).

In short, Chelsea portrays a woman - and Madoff is the embodiment of a real-life woman - who doesn't understand that to gain the world is to lose the soul.

That's the great lesson coming out of our great economic collapse: the danger of being immersed in a commercial and materialistic culture that has lost its sense of the human perspective. While there's nothing wrong with business or making money, let's be sure we understand its true purpose and realize wealth is not an ennobling end in itself.

Greed is karma: it always comes home to roost.

Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

Is it a coincidence that, within a day of the 60th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's prescient novel, 1984, the repressive, dictatorial, Communist Chinese government issues an edict that all imported computers must have its homegrown filtering software installed?

As if Vista wasn't slow enough to begin with!

Chinese officials say that "unhealthy information" must not be exposed to its people. Under the guise of blocking pornography, this "Green Dam" will block other topics the Communist leaders don't want, "...Web sites that discuss the Dalai Lama, the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters, and the Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement," The New York Times reported.

Jon Zittrain, professor of law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, says Green Dam can scan all your personal data, working both directions, so to speak: an insidious Big Brother, just like in Orwell's 1984. You can hear Jon's views here in an NPR interview.

This is a big deal, and scary like North Korea's sentencing the two women journalists to 12 years at hard labor. Make no mistake, even as addle-headed as the Chinese leadership is [and they don't hold a candle to Kim of The North Korea], and even as worried as they are about saving "face" in the view of the world, these are political animals bent on larger issues. [Interesting, how to the Chinese Communist government leaders, saving face about Tianaman Square and social criticism on the Internet consists of sticking their collective head in the sand.] 

Not only are these leaders obsessed with saving face, but they are utterly humorless. Consider the story of "the grass-mud horse...an example of something that, in China’s authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has surely done that."

I've spent time touring China and have seen its policies at work on its sweet, interesting people. It's very sad.

And it's scary because the Chinese hold most of the paper on the U.S. That means they can pretty much dictate trade and finance terms, and even if a particular company - say Dell - decides it doesn't want to play ball, you can bet that our government will "encourage" Dell to do so.

There's no negotiating with these new Chinese regulations. No computer vendor doing business with China was consulted. It was a fiat, plain and simple. Do we really want to continue to roll onto our backs and let this government tell us how to build our products and do business with them?

I think not. We should be doing business with countries with whom we share common values and want to explore the future.

Yet I think that's exactly what will happen. The Chinese leaders have probably thought through all the implications, ramifications and ratiocinations of their act. We're caught flat-footed, belly in the air, and no position to fall back upon. Regulate. Comply.

That's too bad.

Regretfully,

Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.

By Jack B. Rochester, Managing Editor

Tuesday night, June 9, Boston: cold, spitting rain, the Red Sox playing the Yankees at Fenway. Instead, I went to see a band called The Decemberists at the Bank of American Pavilion. A tent, really, dry but not warm. Robyn Hitchcock and his mates tried to warm up the audience, but it took the poofs of smoky mist and the appearance of 34-year-old Colin Meloy and his band to do the trick.

It did. The crowd of about 5,000 was on their feet about fifteen minutes into the performance and remained standing throughout.

I looked around: lots of young people, of course, most of whom wore jeans and short haircuts but no nose rings or colored Mohawks. Quite a few older people, making this 64-year-old feel not so out of place.

What amazed me was the power of this album to draw these people out. We sat next to a thirty-something marketing guy named Ken, whose doctor-wife was otherwise busy and, on a whim, mostly because he really loves this album and this band, decided to attend.

Released in April, "The Hazards of Love" debuted at the South By Southwest music festival in March. This extraordinary piece of music: a rock opera, a novel set to music, a concept album - whatever tag you may wish to hang about its neck - is by any measure an extraordinary artistic creation. It tells the story of a maiden named Margaret and her lover, William, who navigate the shoals and breakers of life in the era of Middle English, the land and times of Sir Lancelot and Guinevere, and Romantic Love.

It is also a brilliant feat of marketing. I would never have guessed that so many people in Boston would attend this concert, much less even know of this relatively obscure band from Portland, Oregon, and its brilliant leader and composer, Colin Meloy. The music itself harkens back to the heyday of folk rock - think Fairport Convention - and Elizabethan era social mores, music, and poetry.

Meloy tells the story of writing "The Hazards of Love" here, but the real story is in how he put the act together. Meloy and his band wear suits and ties onstage, although the coats soon come off and there he stands, a somewhat pudgy guy with a flop of hair hanging over his glasses, surely obscuring his vision, long sideburns-cum-muttonchops on his cheeks, his tie knotted, shirtsleeves rolled up, button suspenders holding his trousers up as he plays his acoustic guitar and sings his heart out. It is utterly captivating.

I first heard "The Hazards of Love"  broadcast over NPR  - you still can -  when The Decemberists first performed it live at SXSW. And yes, I was captivated. I bought the CD, and as I began talking about the album and the group, I learned that I was not alone in not having heard of them. However, since then, their notoriety has spread far and wide: witness filling the BofA Pavilion last night. I stood among people who danced and and sang the lyrics, not just of "Hazards," but many other songs from their repertoire the band played in their second set.

It's somewhat difficult to peg The Decemberists. They clearly have roots in folk music - more Shawn Colvin than Pete Seeger - but they really rock as well (and are referred to in the rock genre) as witnessed in their cover of Heart's "Crazy on You," which drove the crowd nuts. But the point is, they break the rules and conventions with "Hazards."

So here's Takeaway One: As marketers, we should never assume - presume? - we understand the who and what of our market. The unfolding popularity of The Decemberists is a case study in how one performance or venue - can morph a single market into many others - SXSW to NPR to a nationwide concert tour still going on months later and far into the future.

It is also an example of how an operatic suite, made up of seventeen interconnected songs, nearly an hour in length, can fly in the face of a market where everyone thinks buyers only want to purchase single tunes. And Takeaway Two: Don't let your mindset too closely define your the segmentation or differentiation product or service - otherwise, you might not "get it."

Cheers,
Jack

Jack B. Rochester is a professional writer and editor who has worked in nearly every aspect of publishing since 1974. He heads Joshua Tree Interactive, and is Managing Editor of The Business Insider blog.

Ok, I've figured out LinkedIn. Worked well. Got some business.

But FaceBook? MySpace?  And Twitter!  Geez, I don't know.

I write stuff for a living. I also coach adults and students in Standard English grammar and writing. I do classes for corporations to show their employees how to avoid bad business English and write in a clear manner distinct from the scratchings of other primates.

Why should I be on Facebook? Or is it MySpace? Should I use those and, if so, which one?

But hear me now: I refuse to run sordid pictures of myself because I am, well, no longer a teenager. To say the least.

And Twitter. What's all the twitter about Twitter? Why should I need to know where my wife is every three minutes, let alone someone else? And I don't need to know where Jack Rochester or Tim Rosa is every five minutes, although Jack will often tell me.

Geez. What's the big deal here. What am I missing.

Or am I really missing something important?

Roger Peterson

By The Business Insider Editors

In the song "Taxman," the Beatles sang, "If you take a walk/I'll tax your feet." A similar phenomenon is being considered by the Supreme Court: If you cook up an idea for a way to do business, can you call it unique enough to patent it? The end result being, of course, that you can then charge others who want to use it: If you think of an idea I already thought of/I'll sue your butt.

"Here's an Idea: Let Everyone Have Ideas"

What's considered intellectual property in the past decade has grown like weeds in a garden. According to the National Football League, a journalist can't use "NFL" in a news story without advance, written permission. Now, according to a story in the New York Times,  a couple of yahoos named Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw think they own an "idea," masquerading as a "business process," which is described in the Times article as "a method of hedging risks in the sale of commodities, including the risks associated with bad weather."

The notion is absurd. In his blog discussing the first court opinion of this case, Joe Mullen wrote at his blog, "I suppose Mr. Bilski's company, now run by his old partner Rand Warsaw, will have to keep making its money the old-fashioned way: allegedly, by helping power companies overcharge consumers with dubious billing schemes."

Say we come up with an idea for a way to think about education, bicycle lanes, soup, nuts, and call it a "business process." We somehow get a patent for it, then we sit around and wait for somebody to replicate it - now we can sue them for damages, thus furthering the ghost economy where nothing tangible is either bought, sold, or in this case transacted.

This is stinkin' thinkin' and it's the cause of much ruination of our economy. It's utterly ludicrous that the Supremes are even hearing the case. Bilsky and Warsaw didn't get a patent, and their case was rejected by lower courts. All we can reasonably hope for is that the Spreme Court throws out the case.

We'd love to see the gang at "Boston Legal" do this one on their television show. They'd have a ball.

The Business Insider Editors

By The Business Insider Editors


Well, here we are, the day after the bankruptcy of General Motors, the largest and once most respected and influential corporation on earth. We listened to Fritz Henderson, as you probably did, do the Big Mea Culpa in the radio-TV broadcast yesterday, then promise to create a brand-new, customer-responsive, high-quality auto manufacturing company in 90 days [or less].

We were, quite frankly, stunned. Completely change and restructure [while firing dealerships and closing plants] in three months? Come on, Fritz, give us a break! We're expecting a visit from the tooth fairy tonight, too.

He asked for trust and another chance. Giving GM another chance is right up there with "the check is in the mail" and all the less polite versions of same.

The New York Times reported Henderson walking past a portrait of Alfred P. Sloan, the legendary CEO who guided GM through whitewater on several occasions during his tenure [and for whom the MIT School of Management is named and indentured]. Fritz commented, "If [Sloan] were sitting here today, he would say, 'Just do your job.'"

Which brings up the questions we, the businesspeople of the 21st century, must continually ask ourselves: What's that guy at the top, the one who's making gazillions of dollars, doing to earn his pay? And should we be paying him all those bucks, especially those take-the-money-and-run guys, the ones who tank the corporation and slip a Madaoff on the customers and clients? And what are we, the taxpayers of this country who now "own" GM, getting for our money and what will we - what can we - do with this company?

We wonder what Peter Drucker would do, or recommend we do, with GM. Maybe it's time to pull out our copy of one of his seminal books, Concept of the Corporation, a study of General Motors which went resented, ignored, and unheeded by Sloan. Or perhaps we should re-read The Practice of Management, which is as fresh and illuminating today as it was when he wrote it in 1954.

 

Or, if you don't have time to review these brilliant insights and lessons of business history, simply consider Drucker's comment on CEOs, from a 2005 BusinessWeek article:

"Although he helped many corporate executives succeed, he was appalled when the level of Fortune 500 CEO pay in America ballooned to hundreds of times that of the average worker. He argued in a 1984 essay that CEO compensation should be no more than 20 times what the rank and file make—especially at companies where thousands of employees are being laid off.

"'This is morally and socially unforgivable,' Drucker wrote, 'and we will pay a heavy price for it.'"

How prophetic.

The Business Insider Editors

Like many of you, I appreciate coffee (especially Peet's Coffee, sorry Starbucks I was loyal for a long time), thus I visit my local Peet's coffee shop on a regular basis. Since the beginning of the year, I've noticed the number of people in the local coffee shop has increased exponentially. Recently, I concluded that as layoff's have increased, so has the traffic in the local coffee shops.

I hadn't really given my random coffee shop observation much thought until I read Catherine Bergart's article in the New York Times on Sunday, May 17th titled "Losing the Income, And the Camaraderie." Ms. Bergart's article discusses her realization that not only did she lose her income with her most recent layoff, but she lost the day-to-day camaraderie of her Friends at work and she lost her third place.

Ms. Bergart references social psychologist Ray Oldenburg's book, The Great Good Place, which discusses the social and psychological importance of having a first, second, and third place. Mr. Oldenburg designates home as the first place, work as the second place, and a neutral, comfortable environment (like coffee shops, cafes, bookstores) as the third place. Mr. Oldenburg makes the argument that in America we have lost our sense of place and community. He further argues that for America to become a less fragmented nation, we need a greater sense of place and community to satisfy our cultural loneliness. In Ms. Bergart's case she discusses the loss of not only her second place (work), but her third place as well. For her, work fulfilled both of these important places in her life and therefore she has suffered doubly.

Now my over-crowded coffee shop makes sense. People are gathering in these neutral, comfortable environments to satisfy their third place needs. Where is your third place?

Until Next Time, Shanna

Shanna R. Teel is the founder and CEO of Dr. Shanna Teel & Company, Inc., a leadership and human capital management consulting firm. She has worked more than 15 years as a talent and performance management consultant, executive coach, and facilitator of adult learning.Shanna

Image Credits:

Coffee with heart: http://greenoptions.com/files/683/Coffee_Lover.jpg 

By The Business Insider Editors

We like Jerry Simmons and what he's doing.

The publishing world, as a business, often makes no sense; consider Houghton-Mifflin's decision to stop soliciting new manuscripts. The state of this indsutry is clearly evident an article originally published in Publisher's Weekly, the top trade rag of this industry. This is a reposting of an excerpt from Jerry's e-newsletter:

"This is Your Wake-Up Call" by Jonathan Karp in Publishers Weekly (excerpted below - full article at this link).

"For all of the uncertainty surrounding the future of the publishing industry—from the poor economy to the painful layoffs and restructurings in the wake of the digital transformation—to understand what's really hurting us, all you have to do is visit your neighborhood bookstore.

"Here are some of the titles I saw displayed at my local bookshop recently: in new nonfiction, I came across Speaking of Freedom: The Collected Speeches of George H.W. Bush. Any collection is suspect, but you really have to question the need for a volume of political speeches two decades old.

"In the sociology section: The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women. Who exactly is the audience for this book? Self-hating virgins? Those seeking to deflower them?

"On sale now: A History of Cannibalism. Illustrated! A gift book! The subtitle is stupendously, kaleidoscopically all-encompassing: From Ancient Cultures to Survival Stories and Modern Psychopaths.

"Just a few shelves away: Jesus, Life Coach, with the subtitle: Learn from the Best, a companion to the bestselling Jesus CEO, not to be confused with Jesus, Entrepreneur; Jesus on Leadership; or Jesus in Blue Jeans.

"Then there are the arcane books, the ones that dare to be obscure on the assumption that if people will read about cod, or oranges, anything is possible. Who could resist a history of the potato, titled, of course, Potato. Amazingly, this wasn't the only work available on the subject. There's also The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World. Wasn't it intellectually responsible of the publisher to limit the scope of the subtitle to the Western world?

"We all know that a good book should make a promise. But some of those promises have gone outrageously over the-top: How to Make Anyone Fall in Love with You… How to Make Someone Fall in Love With You In 90 Minutes or Less…The 4-Day Diet… The 3-Hour Diet… I Can Make You Thin…Stay Rich for Life…Have a New Kid by Friday.

"On the new release table sat two instant Bernie Madoff books, issued in trade paperback, presumably because the people he swindled can't pay hardcover prices. Within two weeks of the Madoff scandal, I received queries about seven different Bernie-related projects, all from well-regarded literary agents. All of this brings me to a point I have made relentlessly for the past four years: publishers must control themselves!

"We are acquiring and publishing too many books. We buy them opportunistically, and at times thoughtlessly. We edit and launch them too quickly. We market them carelessly and ephemerally. Too often, we abdicate our responsibility to be filters, guides, guardians and gatekeepers. And now, as in many other industries, we are suffering the effects. Anyone in a bookstore can see that.

"The underlying problem facing the industry is twofold: there are too many books, and too many of them are derivative of each other. You've heard of Gresham's Law—the idea that bad money drives out good. Our industry has long suffered from Grisham's Law [our emphasis] , where opportunistic authors and publishers try to imitate John Grisham and other category leaders with books modeled on someone else's commercial success. That strategy might make sense if there were great demand for these imitators, but in today's overcrowded, competitive marketplace, this kind of thinking is dangerous, because it devalues the environment into which we present our work.

"It seems likely that the influence and cultural centrality of major publishers, as well as other producers of information and entertainment, will diminish as digital technology enables more and more people to create and share their work. This is exactly why publishers must distinguish themselves by doing better what they've always done best: champion books that offer carefully conceived context, style and authority.

"Other mediums may be faster to market, but publishers will always be the ones best situated to invest time and resources into major works and to market them with overwhelming force. Whether it's Robert Caro on LBJ, or What to Expect When You're Expecting, masterly works will continue to stand out. No technology or competing enterprise is likely to pose a serious threat to that endeavor.

"Our world and our industry are firmly in the midst of a transition in the way entertainment, information and ideas are delivered. There will be more upheaval to come. The essential things that attracted us to publishing, however, the love of a good story, the quest for meaning and illumination will go on. But we must change our ways."

By the way, industry veteran Karp is publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve.

Your takeaway: Still want to write that book? Drop Jerry an email at jerry@writersreaders.com. He'll offer you good advice.

The Editors

By The Business Insider Editors

The U.S. military has long had early warning systems (EWS) to protect against provocation from other military powers. Why didn't we have one for the banking system, perhaps our most vulnerable asset - both physically and electronically? There were three early warnings that banking was in trouble:

• The Savings & Loan industry meltdown
• All kinds of trading and investing businesses being categorized as "banks"
• The banking and finance industry calling its services "products"

Still not sure what's happening/happened? Please do yourself a favor; watch this interview with Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor tapped to oversee TARP.

Second, read [as much as you can] of The Economist's Special Report in the May 16-22 issue, "Three Trillion Dollars Later...." It's a thorough, worldwide analysis of what happened and how to move ahead, unlike anything you'll read in the lightweight American newsmagazines.

The Obama administration is working on this, of course, but we all need to pitch in with our two cents worth - pun intended.

The Editors

By Roger S. Peterson, Contributing Editor

A quick disclaimer: I am an ex-Catholic who survived eight years of Catholic education. Very ex. I recall vividly the nuns and how their twisted minds stayed up all night planning horrors on us children. And even though I am an ex-Catholic, I was embarrassed at what happened to the President at Notre Dame University.

I wondered if any survey of Notre Dame female students would reveal how many use birth control pills?  I'd guess 80%. I wondered what the pregnancy rate is at Notre Dame. I wondered if it is as high as Utah's, another place filled with people who see life as stark black-and-white silos and obsess about other people's sex lives.   

And I wondered if the anti-abortion protesters at Notre Dame picketed any pedophile priests or bishops on behalf of their young victims.

No, I would guess not. I guess Catholics have to be so very silent about that issue. Don't want to remind people of church hypocrisy and illegalities. Ishy business, that.

But then I remember something my own pastor once said, "I've never known a happy priest."