How broadcast journalism is flawed

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008

By Steve Salerno

It is the measure of the media’s obsession with its “pedophiles run amok!” story line that so many of us are on a first-name basis with the victims: Polly, Amber, JonBenet, Danielle, Elizabeth, Samantha. And now there is Madeleine. Clearly these crimes were and are horrific, and nothing here is intended to diminish the parents’ loss. But something else has been lost in the bargain as journalists tirelessly stoke fear of strangers, segueing from nightly-news segments about cyber-stalkers and “the rapist in your neighborhood” to prime-time reality series like Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator.” That “something else” is reality.

Read the complete article at Skeptic.com.

Strategy: Mental Energy Verbally Injected: An interview with Jim Lukaszewski, part 5 of 8

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

Jim LukaszewskiRead part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Jim Lukaszewski: Doing things in real time is really important because the boss has three fundamental goals as leader. The first thing they have to do is to find new places to go. They’re the person that goes over the horizon to see where it is we have to be heading based on where we are today. Their job is then to come back and tell us about it. So the major role that any leader has is to be the chief strategist. Strategy is all about tomorrow–where we’re headed. This person is head strategist in the organization.

The second thing these people have to do is once they’ve decided on new destinations, is to prime the people to get the job done. When you look at where the organizations fail on leadership, it is either they pick crummy destinations or they fail to influence the people to get the vision accomplished.

The third thing these people have to do is go into the organization—and this is communication—and teach and coach and reiterate and remind them of what the mission is, where we’re headed, why we’re going there, why people should be motivated and energized to get these things done.

The remaining roles of these leaders is to monitor, to tweak things, to identify where they have to change direction to modify what their findings were and that sort of thing. A lot of this is communication.

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