I am watching today’s Congressional hearings on AIG and the other coverage and commentary on what can most accurately be called “Blog TV”:  CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.  Here are reactions in a stream of consciousness fashion. Read more…

“Poretz’s Law of Jerks on the Street” was originally formulated by me in January 1981.  Read more…

I started a home-based one-person investor relations firm in 1991, just as cable investment/financial news was starting to be identified as a viable commercial market.  I worked at home until about 1997.  I do not remember when I started throwing objects at the TV when watching CNBC but it was between those years.  Read more…

This is a narrated self-running power point presentation that reiterates on my post about the prospects for a change in the headlines around the world. Consistent with my also previously discussed belief that the current economic crisis is more comparable to the days preceding the French Revolution versus the Depression, I identify three common denominators for protests that are happening around the world. If I am correct, I think it means we have to start looking at what we do and don’t do from a different perspective. Read more…

I’ve expressed my ongoing thoughts about the communications revolution previously here (to see, go to the “categories” tab to the right, and see the pull-down menu for “communications and news business” and for one on my views about “new media”).

When discussing the future of the news business, most of the attention has been focused on what is happening to mainstream media per se.  Thus, the debate is about how long newspapers will continue to publish print editions, which will be successful in a transition to the web, the “new media” plays that will replace them, etc.  But it has occurred to me that there is another serious consequence.  Read more…

For the past several months, it seems as if there should be a singular version for the word “news” because there has been really only one story: the economy, and what it means to people, how it happened, what’s happening now, who’s to blame, what should be done about it.  But there’s about to be a much more significant story taking over the headlines worldwide:  social, cultural and political upheaval.  Read more…

This is a version of the presentation I gave on the evening of February 25, 2009, to the We Media’s Game Changers Conference, held at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fl, in which I discuss my thoughts on the present state of communications and emerging trends.  Enjoy! Read more…

I was bothered this morning by a comment by Kip Herriage whose well-reasoned article “Do Not Trust This Market” was posted on Seeking Alpha.  He supported a viewpoint articulated by economic analyst Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in an article in the London Telegraph a few days ago. The gist of the article, worth reading in its entirety, is summarized in the lead sentence: Read more…

A couple of years ago, I started getting shocked by a trend I was seeing in some private research.  When the company where I work (Qorvis Communications – I co-founded), sets out to develop a communications campaign for a client, one of our first steps is to conduct research to understand the thinking of the audience we need to reach. Read more…

A basic premise of my thinking is that there is a global transition occurring from a manufacturing to a knowledge economy.  In the midst of that transition, we are now experiencing a global economic crisis that (I believe) is also a cultural, societal and political in nature.  We (I) tend to be concerned about the down side, which makes sense because the consequences of a worst case scenario can be so significant.  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an upside Read more…