Leaders.net

Thursday, June 06, 2002


The movement of do-it-yourself money management is often portrayed as a choice, as if there were viable alternatives. But even if you rely on others for help -- or even give others control over your resources -- you still have to choose the right people, and keep an eye on them. There are times when people need good financial advice -- there's nothing wrong with that. But no matter whom you hire or what organization you rely on to secure your future, the only person who has to live with the result is you. [Motley Fool]
4:41:43 PM

DaveNet: Is it marketing or journalism? [Scripting News]

"As our conversation continued, Scoble and I concluded that there may not be any journalism today. It's all about compromise and under-the-table deals between the reporters and their employers. No disclosures or disclaimers. Total disrespect for the intelligence of the readers. Lots of nice people playing footsy with the people they're supposed to be watching and when they try to grab stuff that doesn't belong to them, they don't blow the whistle."

Dave, one of the biggest strains on my health during the years I wrote The WordPerfectionist was maintaining my integrity as an independent newsletter writer. In our case, we wrote about one company. Our survival depended on access to their customers. There was a lot of synergy. We were boosters because we loved the software and the company. We made no claims of being "impartial journalist" but as providing careful analysis, and teaching people how to make the most of their investment.

Yet, after years of a symbiotic relationship, they pulled our access to their customers when we said about a new version that it was a very worthwhile upgrade but that before people upgraded their entire customer bases, they should wait a month or two for SP1. Well, because of our integrity and the trust our readers had in our word, several large customers deferred end-of-year upgrades until 1Q of the next year. This "caused" some people to lose end-of-year sales bonuses (at least that was what I heard). And the impact of that was to intentionally withdraw their considerable support--leaving it for us to notice the impact a few months later when sales disappeared. We never recovered and ended up selling the business... and switching to Microsoft Word when we went to Windows.

Anyway, I understand all-too-well that the tensions within business relationships temper Truth and Integity. Most people would call the police if the kids two miles away are doing drugs, drinking, and vandalizing. What if they are your best friend's kids? What if they are your kids?

Perhaps the journalist's dilemma is no different.

4:38:39 PM


Small Players Matter While large players and big media companies act like they are the main reason for the web and Internet and therefore should drive policy decisions, the numbers show that the contributions of the myriad of small players -- individuals, non-profits, and small businesses -- are crucial to the vitality of the web and its value to people. [Dan Bricklin] Thanks Dan for the brief analysis of web traffic and the value of small sites. I find most of the serious value I get from the 'net (that I couldn't ever have gotten from other technologies) comes from tapping into sources of information that are not widely marketed. We just bought a Canon S9000 photo printer. The reviews we found through Google from photo and graphics professionals that posted on their personal sites both showed us flaws with other options and provided confidence in this choice. It took hours for us to do this research, but without Google's built in intelligence, it would have been impossible to do this research.
4:10:32 PM

This Week on the Healthnotes Newswire:

Vitamin B6 Supplement Helpful for Autistic Children
Policosanol Helps Reduce High Cholesterol
Herbal Treatment Effective against Hepatitis B

2:39:16 PM


Herbert Bayard Swope. "I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time."
8:42:59 AM