Call it culture shock. After 17 years in news, I was in a new world, and really needed time to adjust. I still do. But I’m getting a better sense of one part of the cultural difference. It’s the difference between good and evil.

And I don’t mean that I was among the evil before, or that I am surrounded by evil now. But the reality is that the news is about evil. As the great Gerry Brooks at WVIT in Hartford pointed out repeatedly, news is about bad things happening to good people. No one watches a newscast that tells you the airplanes all landed safely today.

You can say all you want about the quality of the media today, but the premise has generally been the same. Wars, crime, corruption, all the things that people need to know about in the news (and a lot of why they watch) is inherently bad. Even the weather… When the weather is bad, people love to watch the reporters out in the storm. Think they’d do that on a cloudy day?

But suddenly, at the Boston Foundation, my job is to spend more time seeking out the good. Who are the good programs? What can people do to make a difference? Who is making our schools better, our arts stronger, our streets safer? Those are the people I’m looking for now.

And the cool part? They’re out there. They’re being written about, blogged, discussed, highlighted, and recognized. And of course, part of my job is now to get them in the news. And frankly, they shouldn’t all go there. There are a number of niche publications that focus on good stories, and they have great value. But for all that people say they want “positive news”, repeated efforts to produce a positive mass audience newscast have been doomed to commercial failure.

But if you feel like all you hear on the news is too negative – look around, in your neighborhood, or online. There are a lot of positive things happening. You just have to decide, or get a new job, to get inspired to seek them out.

Maybe that’s something I’ll be sharing more of here.

via bostinno.com

So, Mike Troiano has me thinking. In his post on BostInno, he suggests that maybe if you aren’t a blogger, you shouldn’t blog. Instead, work the networks you are involved with and stop wasting the brain cells you are wasting on blog posts.

In my case, that’s not many brain cells, but he may have a point. Yankee 2.0 has been a bit dormant for some time, and maybe just a Posterous or Tumblr plus my other social networks would suffice.

As it is, I have taken his advice to set up an about.me page – at about.me/tmcenroe – I kinda like it.

Posted via email from Yankee 2.0 on Posterous

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Boston, and clearing the mental decks for a big change. One week from now, I’ll be joining the Boston Foundation as their Director of Public Relations.

If you’re like many people, your first reaction will fall somewhere between “That’s great!” and “What is the Boston Foundation?” Or both.

The Boston Foundation is one of the largest community foundations in the country, doling out about $80 million each year in grants – a mix of funds allocated by donors for their favorite causes and money controlled by the Foundation at its discretion. The Foundation has a very active community piece, and also a more and more active role shaping research and policy in the Greater Boston area, to tackle tiny little issues like education, housing and health care.

When people asked me what I wanted my next job to be, my sort of snarky answer was that it didn’t matter exactly what it was, as long as it was communications/media related and I had to care about the content. TBF fits on both those levels like a glove.

Of course, there is a lot I don’t know. I haven’t spent that much time “on the other side of the ball”, to use a quality football analogy. And I haven’t spent that much time working with people who type for a living, as NECN reporter/Boston Globe expat Peter Howe puts it. That is creating the healthy tension for me between excitement and terror that is healthy in any new position. It tells me I know just enough to realize I’m going to grow like kudzu to keep up.

But I can’t think of a place in Boston with more stories to tell than the Foundation, and they are important stories, based in research and reality. There will be some sleepless nights for me, but I’m hopeful and confident that this brave new world will be a beautiful place to hang my hat.

And after two decades in windowless corners of newsrooms… I finally get might get an office with a window. (Or near a window. See the comments. Still a step up.)

Feel free to share your advice in the comments. What’s the most important thing I should know and do as I cross over to the other side?

She’s been going through a transition of her own – moving from the infant room to the toddler room, which is probably the biggest transition of her young life. (Except for well, being born. That was a shocker.) It’s something that we’ve all been a little sad about. Her infant teachers were about as awesome as we could possibly imagine, and we were all tearing up a bit at the thought of the move, and bracing for her reaction.

But here’s the thing – two days into her new world, she’s handling it fine. In fact, it’s changed her attitude at home – and I think it’s because she’s embracing the new experience.

My theory is this – Kate loved the infant room, but as one of two older kids in the room, there weren’t a lot of things to challenge her. She wasn’t unhappy – at all. But she wasn’t overly stimulated, either. Now, it’s a new world, and each day begins with the tears of discomfort as she gets dropped off in this still largely unfamiliar place. But she settles within minutes, and when she comes home, she’s like a different kid.

Previously, she’d come home after a day and she’d be curious but sometimes cranky. More than anything else, she wanted to eat. It was totally fine. She was fun and great – and hungry.

But this week, something different has happened. She’s happier. She’s even more engaged. And food is fine, but she wants to laugh and explore even more. She runs and smiles and listens and communicates and connects.She’s motivated when she comes home to learn even more.

That’s what a new experience can do. It challenges you in new ways. It stretches your horizons and taps into new parts of your brain. And if it clicks – that exhilaration carries over to the rest of your life. For the kid, it was time to move up. And it was for me, too. I hope I get half of the boost from the change that she has seemed to get from the move to toddler.

What about you? Is it time for you to step up to the toddler room?

But as I was watching the game last night, I can’t help but be struck by what is a colossal failure of leadership. Here’s my take:

Sure – blame the usual suspects.

The Sox front office – There is no question that the Boston mantra was to buy the next title. In a perfect world, another Series regenerates interest in the club, and the added TV and merchandise revenues easily exceed the additional payroll. It’s pure business, and it backfired because baseball isn’t pure business. Good teams on paper don’t always win. The most expensive teams don’t always equal the best teams. And in the end, if it makes you feel better, the team dumped millions of new dollars into the club and actually find themselves losing money and finding themselves now having to work even harder to win back the fan base. (See my post from the beginning of the season: “A team that’s tough to love.”

The free agents – OK. Carl Crawford didn’t live up to expectations. He was never dynamic. He never took over a game. In short, he was closer to Paxton Crawford in terms of impact. John Lackey: You didn’t really expect much better, did you? J.D. Drew? Ditto. And Adrian Gonzalez, for all the gaudy numbers, failed last night to step up and take the blame:

“God has a plan,” he said. “And it wasn’t God’s plan for us to be in the playoffs.”

I respect his religious beliefs, but that’s a cop out, Adrian, unless you’re about to add, “…and I didn’t help.”

All three of these highly paid athletes have not stepped up and said, “Hey, I am sucking wind.”

That’s part of leadership – owning up to your own mistakes.

But the biggest hole in the Red Sox heart? Leadership in the clubhouse.

And I’m not talking about Terry Francona. Firing Terry Francona would be an easy way to overlook the bigger problem. A lack of leadership from all the Red Sox fan favorites. Youk. Pedroia. Lester. Ortiz. Beckett. Varitek. Papelbon. These are the seven guys who are supposed to be the fire for this team. Terry Francona ripping this team in the clubhouse would have blown it up, and Francona knew it. This wasn’t a failure of strategy, and the biggest fires burn from within – from the players themselves.

So where was it? Where was Pedroia? Playing his heart out, sure, but not ripping other guys to do the same. Where was Youk? Again, on a personal level, he was showing fire and gutting it out, but it wasn’t inspirational, because he’s not the kind of guy to rally the team around him. Papi? Great year, but he’s never been someone to lead in the clubhouse. Not his style. As for the pitchers, it’s tough for guys who aren’t there every day to lead in an everyday capacity – but all three could have done more to inspire a bullpen that needed a little team spirit. And ‘Tek? When the C is on your shirt but not next to your name in the lineup card, it’s tough to inspire.

Put it another way – this team needed the kind of player you look at and say, “He’d be a good manager someday.” The only one of the seven you might say that about right now is ‘Tek. But it’s the 2004 and 2007 model, not the current one.

Bottom line – this team had skills, but it lacked leadership. It didn’t need a third starter (OK, it did). But it really needed leadership – Mike Lowell. Victor Martinez. Varitek the Younger. And yes, even the King Idiot, Kevin Millar. The 2011 Red Sox tried to rally as individuals. They never rallied as a team.

Many posts have been very positive, filled with excitement, inspiration and idealism for the future.

This is not really one of them.

That’s not to say I didn’t leave with a lot of inspiration and excitement. Ethan Marcotte, who helped the Boston Globe build its responsive design for the new bostonglobe.com website, gave an inspired and brilliant talk. I saw cool new augmented reality apps, one of which, Aurasma, rocked my world when it comes to creating new ways to distribute journalism to commuters, etc. There was lots of talk about the changing role of brand which big media companies should be paying attention to. And I may get to writing all those posts later.

But my initial takeaway is that the ad-driven model for web news content is dead, and it’s not coming back. Ever. For anyone except the broadest of aggregators, it’s a non-starter, and the companies who can profit are the kinds which can drive 10 million monthly pageviews with a staff of 5. In other words, they aren’t journalism organizations.

I’m not the first person to write this, or even close. But in a two-week period at the FutureM conference and ONA11, here were some key takeaways.

At a FutureM retail media panel, this: Major retailers are creating their own media and ad networks for the products they carry – and getting results because they reach the consumer right at the point-of-purchase. Those efforts and dollars come straight out of current media buys.

At the all-day ONA “News Entrepreneuring 3.0″ session on Thursday, the predicament of the local online news site was illustrated all too clearly. Even some of the best-known local online news sites – barista.net in New Jersey, the Next Door Media network of sites in Seattle, and others, are paying low wages to freelancers and may or may not be paying their owners because they just can’t generate the revenue. They are often profitable, but they are far from rich. (And let me be clear – they are doing awesome work. This has nothing to do with the quality of journalism.) The most optimistic view of the hyperlocal online news world came from the New Haven Independent, but there, their $575,000 budget is not ad-supported. It uses donations, grants and fundraising to cover costs.

And later in the conference, the online ad dilemma was illustrated further by examples from the tech blogs “Silicon Prairie News” and “Technically Philly”. Both of these organizations derive less that 3 percent of their revenue from online ad sales.

For these small companies – two things of note. The lack of ability to pay good salaries is scary and not sustainable in the long run. That’s the bad news. On the plus side, these small firms are much more likely to be nimble, know their communities and tolerate the discomfort than larger companies in the same predicament. Each of the companies I mention above had speakers who unquestionably believe in their missions, have new and innovative ideas and see opportunities for growth.

And let me be clear. News isn’t dead. Far from it. But I can’t help but think if I was currently at a big traditional news company, it would be budget time. And I would be trying to estimate my traffic for 2012 and making that the centerpiece of my annual budget. The numbers would be ugly, and we’d be trying to figure out how to make them look better. I wouldn’t be looking at conferences (like Silicon Prairie, which generates “90 percent” of its annual revenue from the annual ‘Big Omaha’ conference), or whether we could create an events business (like the Texas Tribune) or if we had a web consulting practice we could set up (like Technically Philly). We wouldn’t be able to seek donations (like the New Haven Independent), and I don’t see a TV station in the country with the power to set up a paywall of any kind (like the Boston Globe – and who knows what that will actually do for revenue).

But these last questions are the ones we need to have – where we break away from “How do we build traffic so we can sell more CPM ads?” and discuss “How do we build real value for consumers?”

Most big news companies still may not be ready to have that conversation. And until they do – it won’t be pretty.

I spent part of Wednesday at a FutureM session on “Retail Media”, which encompasses retail companies’ efforts to create media and media partnerships to leverage their own site traffic for further reach and profits. Among the concepts, for companies like CVS to partner up with suppliers to advertise and provide on the CVS.com site – and create new health content for consumers.

Translation for traditional media organizations – not only are companies like CVS (who had a rep on the panel) taking their advertising spend online, they’re becoming content creators who can appeal to their suppliers as a media entity. And as that happens, media organizations face a real uphill fight.

Typically, the way news organizations have tried to appeal to say, health care companies, is by creating or selling their health sections to a sponsor, who gets display space, perhaps widgets to provide content, etc., on the host organization’s site. It’s not a bad deal for the advertiser, but they are a bit at the mercy of the news organization to provide content and drive traffic, through promotions, search and so on.

Retailers, on the other hand, have the advantage of being able to reach an audience looking for health information with a likelihood of purchase. Instead of general health information, they are seeking specific information and are often ready to purchase a product or service. For an advertiser, a message at this moment has a much greater opportunity to make an impact.

There are drawbacks here – as one of the panel members noted in the discussion, retailers are looking to get customers to buy what they want them to buy, so there is a vested interest in skewing the information toward the advertiser – and not the same expectation of unbiased analysis. It is, after all, paid programming. But in an era where there is growing skepticism about the trustworthiness of the traditional media, that may weigh on consumers’ minds less than journalists might like.

As retailers become media creators for an audience at the point of purchase, traditional publishers may find themselves aced out of those ad dollars. And at a time when retailers are already trimming their own traditional ad buys, it’s a double whammy for an industry under pressure.

So – they’re keeping me. Mission accomplished.

What do I like? For $3.99/week ($3.50/week if you want to get the Sunday paper, too), there is a lot there – the layout is clean and easy to digest, although I am slightly disconcerted for some unknown reason by the fact that the online font is the same as the paper’s font. The much-touted adaptive technology does convert well for various screen sizes, and the tablet reading experience is quite pleasant, although I’m sure I haven’t found all the appropriate gestures to move through the paper on an iPad.

All in all, it’s clean and nicely designed, with easy navigation, and a minimal number of ads, which I actually notice. So help me, if that changes *and* I’m paying for the privilege of accessing this site, I will walk and never look back. I have been an infrequent visitor to Boston.com in the past because I detested the floating, dropping ads that swamped the already cluttered screen, and didn’t like having to close all the pop-under ads after I was done.

Visuals are big and bright, and the way more stories pop up at the bottom of the page, while not quite as elegant as their brethren in New York do it, gets the job done. And with the font, if you’re a local, you know you’re reading the Globe.

That said, there are some things that I found less than perfect.

First, and well noted, was that on day one, every visitor to the new site had to register to see any stories, which, while they were free, was a very effective way to ensure that thousands of people didn’t check out the site. Even links from social media, which are supposed to be sharable with non-subscribers, required a registration, which was a turn off.

Of course, there are a number of bugs – Steve Garfield notes a video one in a Twitter conversation with the Globe account – which has been impressively active in responding to tweets and answering questions. There isn’t much in the way of video, which as a former NECN-er is something near and dear to my heart – and which in NECN’s case is likely due to the fact that we have been providing Flash content to them, which probably doesn’t play well with the adaptive technology. (That’s a bug that should get addressed soon.) And there are no comments, very limited (and I’m assuming hard-coded) related-stories feeds, and some other features that I am assuming are coming that will enhance the Globe experience.

One of the questions I had when the site was going to launch was whether it would be a non-dead-tree edition of the paper that sat for 24 hours and was replaced, which would make it a marginal product. I have been pleasantly surprised that as news develops and Globe reporters file and update stories, those stories are appearing on the site. That also opens up a possible opportunity for developing story coverage, where one could link out to Boston.com coverage of a developing story, giving the BostonGlobe.com user a chance to get even more updates from a scene while a reporter was getting his more finished product together.

But there is one issue with the updates, too, and it’s more of a pet peeve. The stories are date-stamped, but not time-stamped, which makes it very difficult to figure out where in the process of a developing story the reporter’s piece fits.

Some of these issues come together in the tragic story of a toddler found dead in a van outside a Dorchester day care. The main piece, by Brian Ballou and John Ellement, is clearly from this afternoon, but you don’t know an exact time. The “Big Story” video is time-stamped today, from Brian Ballou, but it also contains stills from yesterday and makes time references to “about an hour from now”, except we have no idea what “now” is. (The other issue is that the piece is on a page labeled ‘multimedia’ that has no other information of any kind on it, except the headline.)

I get that the idea is to differentiate the Globe stories from a standard site – and that works when the paper shows up on your doorstep in the morning. You don’t need timestamps because you have a general sense that stuff happened yesterday, they printed it overnight and poof, it’s there when you bite that AM bagel. But on-screen, the time element isn’t really optional. You need to be able to put the stories in a time context, and frankly, the fact that the Globe reporters and producers are updating the site regularly demands it – even if the timestamp only applies to the stories updated on that day. I hope to see that one fixed.

Thinking back to the Moby Dick Project meeting I attended in July, there are a lot of things the site can do better. Give me context and background. Let me comment. Continue to improve the sharing features and help me share some of the things that make the site worth paying for. But as a design goes, it hits a lot of high notes and does make the reading experience a more enjoyable one.

There’s a lot of speculation as to what the new site will mean for Boston.com, the Globe and the Times Media group. I’ll leave that alone for now, except to say that it does give current subscribers a very good reason to stay, and may attract some number of new subscribers who might occasionally buy a Sunday paper now.

As the bugs get fixed and more polish gets put on the product – and I would like to see an iOS app – ultimately, it will be a question of journalism. If enough people decide they can live without the Globe’s product, and that other sources fit the bill, it will be impossible to attract subscribers, and I don’t think a $3.99/week online subscription qualifies as a new business model for journalism.

But they’re keeping me around.

Editor’s Note: I didn’t use the abused word ‘paywall’ once. Until now. But one note about that $3.99 versus $3.50 if you want the Sunday paper, too. There is a rational reason for that irrational pricing. If I stay a Sunday subscriber, I prop up circulation and help sell circulars and other Sunday ads that are the most lucrative pieces of ‘paper estate’ the Globe has left. It’s worth that $.49/week to keep me counted in both the online reader and hard copy subscriber columns.

Usually, I’m bitching about something. This time – I’d like to sing the praises of the airline that lost my bag and gained my trust.

Back at the end of July, I traveled to San Francisco for the Moby Dick Project conference. I was flying Virgin America, and I’d packed light – just a rollerbag that I didn’t need to check, but when I got to the gate in Boston, it was a full flight and I thought, “You know, I’ll be a good doo-bee and gate check the bag, giving up the overhead space for someone else.”

The gate agent put a wrinkle in the plan, though. He informed me that instead of being able to pick up the bag at the jetway in San Francisco, it would come out at the baggage carousel with the checked luggage. Not ideal, but whatever.

Except I never saw my bag again.

I got off the plane at SFO, toddled down to the baggage carousel and waited. And waited. And while everyone else collected their bags, mine never appeared. I stopped in the baggage office, reported my bag lost, and waited a few minutes more while an actual person tried to solve the problem. Another traveller hadn’t claimed their bag – and they took the time to look up that traveller’s phone number and call, to see if they had somehow picked up my bag instead. No luck.

Now clothes-less in Palo Alto, I went on a little shopping trip to pick up a few things, nearly slit my jugular vein with the hotel-provided disposable razor, and dealt with it. And typically, after a few days, my bag would be delivered via Timbuktu by a surly baggage delivery person who would drop it at the door, ring the bell and be off.

Instead, I got a call the next day – from another actual human. No sign of the bag. “We’re really sorry. Usually these things resolve pretty quickly, it ends up on the next flight, but not this time,” I was told.

Saturday, I was flying home – stopped by the baggage office again. Talked to another human. No sign of the bag. “We’re truly sorry,” said the woman at the counter, who explained the process. In a couple of days, the claim would be turned over to Central Baggage, who would keep working to track it down. In the meantime, here’s who I could call.

Before I could call them, though, someone from SFO called me. Still no sign of the baggage, and it was going to Central Baggage. They’d be emailing me some forms, too, to help ID the bag and so I could tell them what was in it.

The forms arrived a few days later – and they were a bit involved. I needed receipts for the items, so I put down everything that was in there, and provided the receipts (God bless online shopping records) for the items I could.

After that, I got an email about each week from Virgin, letting me know a) the status of the bag – still missing; b) the next steps in the process; and c) that they were sorry for the inconvenience – and I could call for more updates.

Anyone who’s had their luggage mishandled knows it’s incredibly frustrating and never very convenient. Plus, typically you get the runaround from personnel and voicemail hell from the company.

Not this time. In all, I probably had about ten contacts with Virgin America about this bag. With actual humans. And in the end, they are writing me a check to help me replace my stuff. Do I wish I had my stuff? Sure. Does the check replace everything? Not quite.

But I was treated like I mattered. I was given honest answers, kept informed, and actually felt like Virgin America wanted my business.

Because of that, I want to do business with them again. And I want to tell my friends – fly Virgin. They lost my bag – but they won me over.

Here’s my final letter to Virgin America’s Central Baggage account:

I’m not sure if this goes to an actual person or not, but since everything else in this process has been handled by actual people – I’ll assume it does.

It’s unfortunate the bag never turned up, but I wanted to say thank you for your handling of the matter.

Throughout the process, I have felt informed and that there were people on the other end of the phone who actually cared about resolving the situation, as opposed to just passing the buck. You told me what was going on, checked back in with me regularly, and kept me in the loop throughout. People actually said “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

And in the end, I feel that the settlement amount is quite reasonable, and will allow me to replace a great deal of what was lost.

You haven’t just settled the claim with me. You’ve given me a new favorite airline. And considering this started with a lost bag, that’s saying something.

Thank you for your customer service. It’s appreciated.

Today a reminder of the importance of being consistent.

My wife and I have now returned from lovely north Florida, where we visited my parents for a few days. Of course, there are no simple trips when travelling with a 14-month old, and in this case, the issue was the dreaded car seat. If car rental companies would be better at respecting the needs of their potential future customers, they’d recognize a car seat is a critical piece of equipment – not a $13.95/day extra. But since they don’t, we decided we needed to take our own seat along for this trip.

We were flying JetBlue, and since they are social media savvy, I sent a note to their Twitter account confirming that they had big plastic bags to wrap car seats in so they could be checked as baggage. And sure enough, I got a tweet back:

@tmcenroe  They will have clear plastic bags available for you to use at the airport. Enjoy your flight!

Awesome! Problem solved! We got to Boston, went to the counter, checked the car seat so we wouldn’t have to haul it through the airport – and through security – and all was well.

Then we tried to get home from Jacksonville…

Could we check the car seat? Yep.

Did they have bags? No – but they did have them at the gate – so we could schlep the seat and then gate check it.

The problem here isn’t just that when travelling with a toddler, the likelihood that carrying an extra cumbersome 20-pound object through the joys of TSA-land isn’t desirable. The problem is that when you expect A and you get A-minus, it might as well be an F. It’s great they had bags – but what they didn’t have was consistency.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” wrote Emerson.

McEnroe’s corollary:

“A lack of consistency is the hobgoblin of customer-facing business.”