Month: January 2018

  • Snow

    I went to work in the snow this morning. It wasn’t a major storm, as the snow melted as soon as it hit the ground, but it did coat cars and the trees. I did have to put my hat on, puffy coat and snow boots (more for aesthetic than need) to commute across the city.

    Having grown up in Texas, snow was such a rare and life disrupting event. In New York, it takes a blizzard to shut the City down. In Texas, everything comes to a halt if it starts snowing, regardless if it sticks or not.

    The first time I saw snow was when I was five or six. I had gone to bed, and in the morning, my mother got me up, saying that she had a surprise for me. She took me to the sliding glass door that opened to the back yard. She had the curtain drawn, and made me stand in front of it. I remember being so sleepy confused as to what was happening. Then she pulled the curtain with a whoosh, and I saw the perfect white of snow covering our bare rectangled backyard. I just had to go out in it, and she dressed me and let me run free. I made a snowman, and threw snowballs at the fence and over it. Snow angels and just stomping around in it. I’m 40 years old, and snow is still a treat to me.

  • Marching

    Today marks one year since Trump was sworn in. Tomorrow will be one year since the Women’s March, which we took part in. We never made it to 5th Ave, as the crowd was so large, but it was good time protesting the president. With the wife and the kid, and 400,000 other people, it did feel like we all were contributing, and resisting what we all knew could be a huge roll back of all of our freedoms.

    At the conclusion of this first year of the Trump presidency, I do feel completely justified in our protest. I also see the need for today’s Women’s March as well. If we don’t stand up now, then we will continue to see more and more of our freedoms attacked.

    But after the marches, the real work lays before us. It’s the next day that is more important, for that is the day when we have to start the process of getting ready for the midterm elections. I am encouraged by all the candidates that are stepping up to run. I see all the work my friends are doing to turn out the vote. And the constant talking about these issues, which continues to get people engaged.

    Will there be a huge blue tide that will rise in November? Maybe… Maybe state houses and Congress will flip… Maybe. What I hope happens is that more people turn out to vote than ever before. And that tide, the tide of voting, keeps building and swelling election after election.

  • News Media

    I am not a fan of VICE Media. There is something about the organization that has always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s like they want to be the more adult Buzzfeed, but what they come across to me is a Dan Cortese BK Tee-Vee commercial from the 90’s. Now, I do fully admit that they do get it right when it comes to their reporting, especially in regard to how they covered all the Charlottesville violence. I might not like the package it’s in, but it is a solid product.

    I bring all of this up for a good reason, and it’s that I think news media will start to function more in the VICE model. Not in the sense that traditional media will hire a bunch of millennials with weird glasses and bad haircuts… I think traditional media will start to be more of a combination of print, video and social. Diversifying their reach.

    The New York Times has started to do this with some of their feature reporting. Their story, “Deliverance From 27,000 Feet” is a piece that has to be read online to get the full impact of the videos, photographs and images. The use of all these different forms of media, enhanced the reporting when it came to this specific story, and I think it is only a matter of time before more newspapers start moving in this direction.

    Furthermore, to take this all back to VICE again, as they now have their own cable network, VICELAND, this is what traditional media will end at; just becoming all-encompassing media companies. Though focused on news, I would not be surprised if The New York Times soon start their own cable channel with 24-hour news, and programming, which is all tied together in a social media way with the newspaper and the website.