reDesign

The Washington Post racked up some very impressive results today, winning six Pulitzer prizes, a record for The Post. The winning stories included an expose on miserable conditions at Walter Reed, coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings and reporting on private American contractors in Iraq who operate under a different set of rules than American forces. Columnist Gene Weingarten’s Pulitzer-winning piece about violinist Joshua Bell performing to indifferent crowds in a Metro station is a personal favorite.

These stories are what make the Post one of the nation’s best newspapers. In his letter to shareholders in The Washington Post Company’s annual report earlier this year, Don Graham wrote:

[The Post] is a news organization full of reporters and editors who’ve shown they are willing to look hard and long for important stories — information people do not want you to know about.

Graham specifically called out the Walter Reed coverage:

We also publish a newspaper that does a good job of telling the news and works occasional wonders: last year, Dana Priest and Anne Hull broke the story of the mistreatment of some Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at Walter Reed (alongside the excellent treatment for which the hospital is known). The Army’s immediate response (including the resignation of the Secretary of the Army and a change of command at Walter Reed) improved the wounded soldiers’ care and demonstrated the impact of the stories.

Unfortunately, great coverage doesn’t sell newspapers like it used to. Paid circulation is off more than 10% in the last four years, despite continued population growth in its distribution area. The Post, like many newspapers, is offering buyouts to newsroom employees.

One of the Post’s greatest assets is its industry-leading Web site. Weingarten’s piece is significantly enhanced online by the video of Bell’s performance and an online discussion. The site also allows the Post to reach readers that the print edition never could. Weingarten writes in his online discussion, “My favorite global letter so far, came from Marnie Smith of Des Moines, Iowa, who was alerted to this story in the Washington Post through an email from her daughter, who lives in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.”

The Post reaches more than 7 million readers a month through its Web site. But those readers are much less valuable than a print subscriber.

As an investment, Washington Post stock is down only 9.58% over the last year. That’s outstanding, compared with a 46.53% drop for Gannett and a staggering 65.73% decline for McClatchy.

How’d it pull off that feat? Despite its name, the The Washington Post Company isn’t really a newspaper company — the bulk of its revenues come from the Kaplan education division; the newspaper division only accounted for 21% of revenue. From the company’s annual report (pdf):

Fifteen years ago we were accurately described as a media company. Over that time Kaplan has grown into a powerhouse, a multidisciplinary and increasingly international education business unlike any other education company in the world. For the last six months of the year, Kaplan’s revenue was almost half of the company’s, at 49%. Kaplan will continue to grow stronger in 2008. The Washington Post Company is now an education and media company (this isn’t “re-branding”; it’s reality), and the accent on education could get a lot stronger in the future.

These numbers are only going to get more lopsided. In the fourth quarter, newspaper revenue dropped 6%, while education revenue increased 21% (including acquisitions). Compared with 2006, online revenue increased 11%, but was still beaten by Kaplan (+21%).

Again, from the annual report:

As the company has grown, The Post’s business results are no longer as significant as they once were. This is both bad and good: it’s bad for shareholders that the newspaper no longer provides the profits it once did. It’s good that the money the newspaper made went into education and cable investments, most of which have proven successful.

If Wall Street had its way, the company would likely be split in two. Investors cheered when Scripps announced such a separation.

The Post’s ownership structure, with the Graham family controlling a majority of the seats, makes such a separation unlikely.

Disclosure: I worked at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and at the Star Tribune (a formerly McClatchy newspaper).

Check out the great pictures on flickr from opening night at the Nats’ new stadium. This crowdsourced collection is much more captivating than the skeletal slideshow at washingtonpost.com. For best effect, install the PicLens Firefox extension.

See also: Flickr vs. The Washington Post

Some interesting reads from the last few weeks:

• Wall St. Journal Makes Politics Its Business (Washington Post) - Media critic Howard Kurtz takes an in-depth look at changes at the Wall Street Journal since its takeover by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The biggest change is the increase in political coverage amid one of the most interesting political campaigns in recent history. The Journal, a rarity among newspapers, is increasing its news hole thanks to its new benefactor. via Howard Kurtz
• Steered Wrong: Drivers Trust GPS Even to a Fault (WSJ) - For all their convenience, portable navigation devices and online mapping still have one big problem: the world’s road network is constantly changing and digital mappers can’t keep pace. Some countries in Europe even have signs at tricky intersections telling drivers to ignore their GPS’ instructions. Yet many drivers put their faith in technology and blindly follow their GPS’ instructions. Perhaps this is because their accuracy is oversold; a TomTom TV ad (see below) shows a couple driving across a bridge during the ribbon cutting ceremony. The typical map on a PND is a year old the day you take it out of the box. via Doris Truong
• Eating away the innings in baseball’s cheap seat (USA Today) - What’s more American than baseball and Cracker Jacks? Possibly stuffing yourself silly. Faced with anemic attendance, some teams have come up with a new way to generate revenue: all-you-can-eat sections where you can eat all the hot dogs, french fries and soda you can stomach. At the Braves’ Turner field, the “typical all-you-can-eat customer downed: 3.35 hot dogs; one 20-ounce soda; one 7.9-ounce bag of peanuts; one 3-ounce order of nachos and 32 ounces of popcorn.” In unrelated news, the average seat at the Mets’ new Citi Field is 21 inches wide, 2 inches wider than those at Shea.
• IRS making sure your rebate gets spent (Marketplace) - One of the big concerns about the “economic stimulus” package is that people will do something silly with it — like save it or use it to pay down debt. I suggested that the rebates be issued as VISA debit cards. Apparently the IRS is using lifestyle analysis to determine what taxpayers want and spending their $600 rebate checks for them. One couple received an air conditioner instead of the check they were expecting.

The Honolulu Advertiser has done an absolutely terrific job with its saturation coverage of the abrupt shutdown of Aloha Airlines. The coverage is exactly what local papers should be doing on big local stories.

In addition to in-depth news stories, the coverage includes extensive photo galleries and videos. Relevant historical stories are highlighted. There are active reader forums as well as tips for travelers and a job search board with ideas for laid off employees.

I’ve been using my Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPS for six months. I use it when hiking and to geotag pictures. I noticed that I haven’t been getting the advertised accuracy level; the accuracy has ranged from 25 to 150 feet.

The Garmin Web site touts the benefits of WAAS:

A WAAS-capable receiver can give you a position accuracy of better than three meters 95 percent of the time. And you don’t have to purchase additional receiving equipment or pay service fees to utilize WAAS.

What a deal! You just don’t get that out of the box — Garmin defaults WAAS to off. Once I turned it on, accuracy improved to 8 to 10 feet.

Garmin isn’t alone in shipping crippled products; many of the products and services we use come to us less than advertised. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Money. Computer manufacturers such as SONY and Dell lard up PCs with crapware like toolbars, trial versions of antivirus software and offers for broadband access. Companies like AOL, Google and McAfee pay for this distribution. It’s the price of cheap PCs. SONY recently received a lot of bad press for offering a “Fresh Start” option, which allowed consumers to buy select laptops without crapware for a $50 premium.
• Shelf appeal. TV sets are preset to look good on the big, bright showroom floor. These settings aren’t optimal in a smaller, darker environment.
• Support costs. Despite the fact that they all touted security as a key feature on the box, every wireless router I’ve had has come with security turned off. This isn’t the right choice for most users, but it is the one that will work out of the box and is least likely to trigger expensive customer support calls.
• Server capacity and operational costs. Gmail offers all users the ability to use a secure version of email, but defaults to insecure. Just go to “https://mail.google.com” and your entire session will be encrypted. Or use the Better Gmail extension to always force an encrypted session.
• The right choice for the user. Sometimes default decisions are actually based on what most users would want. Things like language, time display format and currency symbols frequently fall into this category.

It’s hard to tell which of these apply in the Garmin case. Clearly, users wouldn’t prefer data that is more inaccurate, unless there was some downside to having more accurate data. I might take less accurate data if it meant I got more battery life in exchange. The Garmin owner’s manual is silent on this topic, although it does mention other factors that affect battery life such as backlight usage.

WAAS requires more computation, so maybe it makes the unit slower? Again, the owner’s manual is silent on this.

Garmin ignores the fundamental question I always ask when giving users a choice: does the user have the information necessary to make that choice? In this case, clearly not. There’s plenty of space on the Garmin’s screen (see picture below) to explain the impact of turning on WAAS.

Judging from a GPS-fan Web site, it looks like there’s no reason to turn it off:

On the current generation Garmins, there is no discernible impact on speed or battery life with WAAS on.

Which begs the question: if there’s no negative impact, why not have it always on and remove the option?

Disclosure: I was part of the team responsible for AOL Toolbar distribution on SONY PCs.

I was out at AT&T Park yesterday for an exhibition game against the Oakland A’s and was reminded why this is one of my favorite parks in baseball. Although I’ve been to the park many times before, in its various incarnations of the Ma Bell reassembly, this was the first time I took in all the features.

(RSS readers, click to the blog to see the embedded slideshow or view it on flickr.)

Among the things I love about the park:

• The stadium itself. There are great sightlines from most seats in the park. (I wouldn’t recommend the top of the lower deck, though.) You can walk all the way around. If you don’t like your seat, there are plenty of places around the park to stand and watch the game. AT&T Park offers a blend of old and new. In addition to the high definition JumboTron in center field, there’s a manually operated scoreboard in right field.
• The setting. Of the parks I’ve been to, AT&T Park has the most picturesque setting. You get sweeping views of San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge.
• The food. Purists may object, but you can get a wide range of food, including burgers, dogs, seafood, pizza, barbecue and Mexican. Among the more unusual items for a baseball stadium: Ghiradelli hot chocolate delivered to your seat. (Which can be important, see below.) You can get a hot dog for under $5 and a bad domestic beer for under $6.
• The other activities. Again, purists may object, but there’s plenty to do at the park even if you aren’t a baseball fan. You can take a plunge down the 80-foot Coca-Cola slide, walk the promenade or just take in the great views. If you’re truly bored, use the parks WiFi or Internet kiosks. (But I’ll be rooting for your laptop screen to be shattered by a foul ball.)
• The fan-friendly policies. You can bring in food and non-alcoholic drinks. You can also transfer your tickets electronically to someone else through the Giants’ Web site. Before Major League Baseball imposed StubHub on all its teams, you could also buy tickets from season ticketholders.
• The fact that it was privately funded. The stadium is a true rarity among sports facilities these days: the public didn’t pay for it. Unlike the hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars that some parks get, taxpayer subsidies for Pac Bell were limited to improvements around the site for access.

With all that it has going for it, AT&T Park does have its challenges:

• The team. Sure, it sold out quite frequently last year, but those stats were juiced with the Bonds draw. Don’t look for a winning team anytime soon.
• The cold. San Francisco is a bit on the chilly side year around and the park’s location right on the water means you’ll probably be cold at some point. Bring your best football clothing and blankets.
• The neighborhood. It’s not a bad neighborhood, but it’s a new one and still somewhat plastic. You won’t find the street vendors and party atmosphere that you see at Wrigley, Fenway or even Camden Yards.

The Dash portable navigation device I wrote about earlier is now shipping. Dash has dropped the price $200 from the initial pre-order pricing.

It’s the first true two-way connected PND on the market, using cellular data for search, traffic and community features. Because I now work on automotive products, I’ll pass on reviewing it. The initial coverage from Walt Mossberg and The Washington Post are very positive. The Post story also goes into depth on how traffic services work.

• Dash’s Car Navigator Gives Smart Directions, If Others Participate (Mossberg)
• Beating Traffic By Joining the Network (Post)

Tellmes know how to throw a great party. The annual St. Patrick’s Day party was a jolly good time. Colleagues from Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus joined us in the courtyard for limerick and mashed potato sculpting contests. The winning sculpture? A bust of Steve Ballmer:

Ironically, on the train ride home I heard a Marketplace report about concerns that a Microsoft acquisition would destroy Yahoo’s culture. Who knows what would happen, but the report did contain at least one factual error: Microsoft employees do get free coffee. Tellme employees also get free cookies.

(RSS readers should click through to the post to see the slideshow.)

Some interesting reads from the past couple of weeks:

• Hulu: Great Product, Still Screwed (Silicon Alley Insider) - The much-hyped video site from NBC and News Corp. is now out of beta. Hulu offers free access to full episodes from many NBC and Fox shows, plus a few free full-length movies. Hulu has decent quality video, is easy to navigate and does a good job of suggesting related content. (Hulu’s search feature can use a lot of help with its poor indexing and cryptic snippets like “Season 2 : Ep. 10″.) Despite all this, analyst Henry Blodget thinks Hulu will have a hard time making it due to constraints imposed on it by its corporate parents.
• Kara Visits Tellme (aka A Little Bit of Microsoft in Silicon Valley)! (All Things Digital) - Kara Swisher visited Tellme recently and talked to General Manager Mike McCue (my boss’ boss). The video offers a glimpse of life at Tellme. In another video, Mike talks about trends in speech recognition. (The videos didn’t work for me in Firefox; if you have trouble, try IE.)
• Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism? (New York Times) - It’s not my idea of vacation, but apparently a new trend in tourism is organized tours of slums in cities like Mumbai and Rio. Are these tours exploiting the poor in the search for profit? That’s a good question. I was surprised how quickly organized tours of hurricane damage developed in New Orleans. I’ve been to New Orleans twice since Katrina and have refused to go on them.
• How to Deal With Layoffs and Buyouts (AAJA) - What’s glummer than a gathering of AOL employees at layoff time? A gathering of journalists discussing the future of their business. As newsrooms across the country rapidly contract, young and mid-career journalists face tough decisions on whether to continue to play musical chairs or get out of the business altogether. The Asian American Journalists Association held an informative discussion offering advice to journalists on how to cope in troubled times. Although much of the advice is specific to journalists, there is also solid financial advice for anyone facing layoffs.

I stopped growing early. After what I can only assume was a massive early growth spurt, I capped out at my current 5′3″. The picture above was taken before I entered middle school; using mom as a benchmark, I must be near full height.

Being short presents a lot of challenges. I struggle to see at concerts and sporting events. It can be hard to find friends in a crowd. Clothes shopping is a frustrating ordeal. Getting a drink in a crowded bar can take a while (except for the drinks that oafs spill on me).

Being short can affect two other important parts of life: career and relationships.

Numerous studies have shown that shorter men are less likely to become CEOs and make less money than their taller counterparts. Short men who do make it into leadership positions are often viewed as dictatorial and petty, with an ax to grind with with the world.

While it’s hard to say what would have happened in my career if I were taller, it’s safe to say I’ve reached an above-average level of success for someone my age. It hasn’t been by stomping on people; I don’t think the people who have worked for me would say I’m dictatorial or petty.

Relationships are another matter. Being short presents a significant barrier in dating, which isn’t helped by “research” that says short men are more prone to jealousy. A quote from the comments to the story is telling:

I’m a woman and whenever I tell any of my girlfriends I’ve a guy in mind for them, the first question, even before his values, personality, looks, income, job, family, culture etc is always, “How tall is he?” If the answer is not over 5′10 I might as well not bother.

It’s an attitude I’ve encountered over and over. I’ve heard women repeatedly complain about not being able to find smart, successful, caring, honest men while at the same time thumbing their noses at men because of their height.

Looking at it from a market perspective, I know that I have to offset my perceived deficiencies in other ways. Being a jackass won’t help my case. Would I be as nice, as generous or as caring if I were taller? The honest answer: I don’t know.

Unfortunately, the dating market is one with severe information distortion. It’s easy for a jerk to be nice, a miser to be generous, a chauvinist to be chivalrous, a married man to pretend to be single. These things are easily faked, at least for a short time. Short men can’t fake being tall.

It’s tempting to say that women who won’t date someone who is below average in height are shallow, uneducated or ignorant. Tempting, but wrong. These attitudes persist among the most educated and independent women I know.

I’ve heard from some women that they have no inherent objection to dating short men, they just won’t because they don’t want to deal with “short man syndrome.” That’s a huge cop out.

It’s not uncommon for me — even among my close friends — to hear short jokes, the kind that would be clearly off limits if made about race, gender or sexuality.

Hollywood, which is full of short men, potentially could influence this situation. I had a glimmer of hope a couple of weeks ago while watching the pilot of Unhitched. In the show, Kate (played by Rashida Jones) is considering whether to date a shorter guy. All her friends encourage her to have an open mind.

She shows up on the date with a nicely dressed guy who escorts her to front row seats at a Celtics games. He chats it up with the players, who all seem to know him. How’d he get those great seats? He’s the leprechaun for the Celtics. Ugh.

I debated whether to post this entry because I don’t want to be labeled as having “short man syndrome.” If an articulate post about something that affects me deeply means I have a complex, so be it.

Am I short? Yup. Am I angry about it? Only when I read unfair, insulting and sterotypical comments like these.