Tag: Money

CAPITALIST INTERVENTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

You know the Front Page tradition. But how much do you see about behind-the-scenes reality where newspaper reporters and editors are instead besieged by the very corporations that have gobbled up newspaper after newspaper, and city after city? My novel follows a band of idealists recruited to a family-owned newspaper by the promise of professional excellence and a competitive spirit. Through ever-more demanding workdays and a twist of fate, they ultimately overpower a monolithic neighboring rival, only to see their smiling publisher sell out to a media conglomerate. As their moment of glory disintegrates into surreal management games, unethical directives, and excruciating budget cuts, they struggle to save as much of their hard-won victory as possible – and painfully come to know themselves, their trade, and their neighborhoods in a much different light than they had just months earlier.

Hometown_News

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To find out more about Hometown News or to obtain your own copy, go to my page at Smashwords.com.

RULE OF ECONOMICS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

So there we were, in one of our informal noontime forums, this one led by an economist. The group itself was multidisciplinary, which made for some lively discussion.

As we analyzed the problem at hand, we saw that there were downsides to every possible solution we envisioned. No course of action was perfect, although some appeared to be better than others. Any way we turned, we’d be making some kind of mess for someone else to clean up or a burden for one group or another to carry.

We laughed, realizing that this is the way most of life actually is. There’s almost always a cost involved, and often unintended consequences.

And then one of our colleagues summed it up in a line that became our institute’s unofficial motto:

UNMIXED BLESSINGS ARE IN SHORT SUPPLY.

Once in a while, economics really does touch on reality.

BEHIND THE HEADLINES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Hometown News goes behind-the-scenes in the ways decisions are made in reporting the daily life of a seemingly pedestrian community – the kind of place where many of us grew up or perhaps resided. Focused on a family newspaper as it moves to a new generation of leadership, the novel builds on the aspirations of a core of young professional journalists. They share the ideal that aggressive reporting will foster grassroots democracy and an entrepreneurial vision as well as a widespread, healthy community. At most of the nation’s 1,500 daily newspapers, however, the bottom-line corporate outlook has meant that newsroom resources were squeezed to fatten corporate profits, even before the Internet began to erode paid readership. In that business model, readers and advertisers both got less and less for their money, and lively news from the neighborhood went untold. Unlike the Front Page tradition, today’s editors and writers have been stymied more by corporate bean-counters within than by Public Enemies without.

Hometown_News ~*~

To find out more about Hometown News or to obtain your own copy, go to my page at Smashwords.com.

 

A FINE STATE OF THE SEASON

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Sorting the holiday cards coming into the house renews my appreciation for the human scale of the state we live in.

There’s a card from the governor and her family, and another from our U.S. senator. (Note the singular: the other one’s a national embarrassment who represents the One Percent, non-fulltime-residents of New Hampshire all, even including any who do summer here.)

OK, these cards aren’t personally signed, but it’s still a reminder that retail politics is a Granite State tradition, one that carries some responsibility as well.

No, we aren’t responding with cards to them as well. But we still wish them a very merry Christmas. And we’re glad they’re on the case.

A COSMIC CONNECTION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Question: What do you do when something doesn’t work?

Answer: Fix it.

Q: And what if it still won’t work?

A: You throw it in the trash.

Q: But what if it’s not a thing but a person?

A: You fire ’em.

Q: But what if they’re one of the family?

A: Now the situation gets difficult. Really difficult.

SO WHAT’S THEIR EXCUSE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 7 Comments

Days after what’s been dubbed the Thanksgiving Nor’easter, much of New Hampshire was left without electrical power. It wasn’t just people out in the sticks either, where homes are scattered and require long lines for connections. No, major sections of the largest cities were also affected.

It’s not that this is an isolated incident, either. Officially, this was the fourth worst outage ever — following December 2008, February 2010, and October 2011.

The electrical grid has become undependable, and that should have the utilities worried. Customers are given more incentive for seeking not just backup relief, mainly generators, but energy independence by means of solar and wind sources.

While many of the big-bucks folks have been insisting that global warming — or more accurately, climatic instability and upheaval — is a fabrication, these kinds of disasters fit right into the predictions they’re denying. And these kinds of events will just keep coming. Or should I say snowballing? The four worst within eight years? Think about it.

The other argument that comes to mind has to do with line maintenance. Again, the four worst in eight years. The utilities can plead all they want for rate hikes, but they’ll be facing increased hostility. Folks will ask, “Just what are we getting for our money?”

It’s safe to say that for somebody here, things are going to get worse before they get better.  Or before the public, at least, turns the corner.

ALWAYS LOW PRICES AND THE FALL OF AMERICA

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

Globalization is another name for the passing of world dominance from the U.S.A. to the People’s Republic of China.

A country that cannot make uniforms for its soldiers is ill-armed, indeed. Especially when its biggest rival and potential enemy holds IOUs on a national debt. The irresponsible and tragic consequences of waging an unnecessary war one refuses to pay off. Somebody will have to pay.

For starters: wait until interest rates rise again, and pay that much more.

What could we expect from a president who’d fly halfway around the world to serve a plastic Thanksgiving turkey to the troops, as W did?

Yes, as I said at the time.

COMPOSING A REQUIEM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When I first drafted this novel three decades ago, little did I expect it to be a requiem for a profession I’ve loved and served all my life. Now, though, as the history has unfolded, I’m left hoping against hope it’s not a requiem for community after community across America as well. Read it and weep – yet laughing along the way. We are, after all, still a resourceful people

 ~*~

Hometown_NewsTo find out more about Hometown News or to obtain your own copy, go to my page at Smashwords.com.

 

 

NEWSPRINT, PAPERBACKS, AND HARDBOUND VOLUMES

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

My entire life I’ve harbored a bias regarding quality in the world of writing. Even though I’ve long been a front-line journalist, I’ve believed the text in a hardbound, academic or commercially published book must somehow be superior to what’s presented in a newspaper.

For that matter, magazines were, in that measure, a degree above newspapers, but a step or two below either paperback or hardbound volumes.

In the past few years, though, that misconception has been shattered, in part because of conversations I have with one of America’s top literary voices and in part because of encounters with a host of other living authors of more mundane accomplishments.

Yes, we have every right to expect a work that requires a year or two to draft to be superior to reports written on the fly, but in some ways, that long work often turns out to be little more than a series of daily reports strung together. What turns up can be as formulaic as any pyramid-style news dispatch, and filled with more cliche and unchallenged bombast. Read carefully and you might notice a higher standard of editing in your daily paper.

What I now realize is that I had expected the books to be eternal monuments that would sit forever on public and private library shelves. I never expected them to be commodities with their own precariously short shelf life, with rare exceptions. Even public collections have only so much space and so much patience. Rarely do I find there a recommended piece I desire.

What this all comes down to is that reality that good writing is good writing, no matter the place it appears. That, in itself, is cause for celebration.

Now, for more on the newspaper dimension, there’s my Hometown News novel. Adding a further twist to this plot, though, is the fact it’s available only as an ebook.

Hometown News