corporate drone

it’s hard to get away from the corporate world when you’re always smack dab in the middle of it.

am not sure how that reflects on my person and pre-occupations when i get excited about a new online magazine targeted at business geeks such as myself.

funnily enough, i saw a blog discussing business travel, and an entry addressing the fact that it’s gone drastically down, hotels are having problems with occupancy rates etc.

but i do feel that i can get a bit more detailed than that, and might still pursue this topic for the final project.

there are a couple of reasons. i know a lot of people who are affected by this personally, myself included. this past year i’ve traveled more than usual – both personally and for work. flew to the states 3 times, went to thailand and indonesia, and have done countless little trips around europe, it seems. not to mention driving around for hours and hours to visit friends and attend weddings.

a couple of weeks ago i sighed a relief when my flight to london got bumped 2 hours. i made the executive decision to not fly and waste unnecessary fuel and (my personal) energy only to attend a meeting, which by the time of my arrival, would’ve already been well in progress,  only to get back in the taxi to get back to the airport to get back to munich a few hours later. so i went to the office instead. i realized then just how much i started to dread airports. this coming from me, a travel enthusiast.

i was talking to another friend of mine who flies off to other parts of europe at least once a week, and she has developed a dislike to traveling too. there is the packing, unpacking, late nights with colleagues, early starts to catch up on e-mails. business travel is a modern day malaise.

my fiance, quoting a german magazine article, says ‘the ‘eroticization of the job, and objectification of relationships’ is ‘the’ modern day malaise. that’s the subject of an entirely different article. or book.

as i write, i’m sitting in one of the conference rooms of a hotel near frankfurt where our firm is holding an event. this morning i flew in here from munich, of course. and tomorrow evening, i will fly back home. such is life of a corporate drone.

storytelling

so after lots of reading and some thinking, i’ve come to the conclusion that journalism is good storytelling, based on facts and truth. that’s it basically. and with good stories, there’s at least one lesson to be learned at the end of it.

the facts and truth are gathered from different sources – authorities/pundits, reference material, ordinary people. the web is then spun and out comes a journalistic piece.

so i’ve thought of a couple of stories for my final project. neither of them really ‘weltbewegend’, or earth shaking as they would say in english, but interesting to me personally.

one is the impact the financial crisis is having on business travel – and how that in turn affects the lives of employees of multinational corporations.

another is the impact it’s having on the lives of employees in munich, in particular employees of bmw and siemens – german multinationals who have their headquarters in the bavarian capital and are also two of the largest employers in the city. i’ve connections to both, as i used to work at siemens, and have contacts there, and my fiance works at bmw and i also independently have some contacts there.

don’t know which one i’ll chose yet. just hope that i can devote enough time and energy to do the story justice.

adam smith

am sure people have seen this, but i had to post this nonetheless.

and some of the coverage…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/3400562/Journalists-drunken-rant-at-bosses-buring-US-election-posted-on-YouTube.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10086002-71.html

it runs along the same “it’s so hurts it’s funny” vein…

unsung heroes

so since this class is sponsored by work, i sometimes follow the class in the office, as part of my job.

that made for a funny situation as i was crying all the way through the final salute. thank god there are just two of us in our office and i have a humongous screen to hide behind.

i proceeded to look at other puliter-prize winning entries afterwards, somewhat pleasantly surprised by the types of topics covered, and the medium used. journalism really has moved to the digital age. with audio slide shows, videos, etc. though i’m a huge fan of print material – still like to touch and feel magazine pages and photos – i’m also a huge fan of all things online because of the variety of possibilities with which to tell a story.

during my time at university, i took a video class as an elective and chose to interview my friends on the topic ‘suitable marriage partners’ as my final project. it was interesting for others to see that the choice of partner is not as clear cut as one might think. you would think, in the modern-day dating scene, that people are open to every religion or race. such was not the case with my friends – who had different backgrounds. among them was a jordanian american, a korean american, a caucasian with german roots. each was interviewed on camera, in a familiar setting – usually their bedrooms. i think the setting, the fact that they were comfortable talking about something quite personal and that that they spoke for themselves made it that much more impactful. also interesting is that for the most part, behind each of those interviewed were the invisible spirit of their parents and ancestors, dictating how they should think and feel about who they choose for life. for all the pretense of being adult and independent at the age of 20, we were still young and impressionable, and still looking to our past to guide our future.

i like stories about every day people. every day heroes, like major beck, are i think what make life worth living. riveted as i am about coverage on major political, religious and entertainment leaders, it’s heartening to read stories about the next door neighbor or the man in the deli you buy sandwiches from once a week. because in the end, for most people anyways, that’s who they get to deal with on a daily basis. it’s the little dramas of every day life that shape most people’s ordinarily extraordinary lives.

the past few weeks has been exciting indeed.

even though in the states, it’s often not the done deed to talk too openly about one’s political affiliations, am not going to hide my relief that it was obama that got elected to america’s, and the world’s, highest office. (would the pope agree with that last addition?)

i was incredibly impressed with the coverage of the elections from the new york times. one particularly interesting feature was the timeline, where you can move the cursor along and all the coverage related to one particular candidate was featured. the photography is also quite impressive.

interesting to note is the passion such a personality like obama can incite in people. he’s almost messiah-like. you also see that in the types of pictures which are made of him.

living in germany, i couldn’t help but draw parallels to another (at his time) very popular leader, whom the german people loved and hoped could rescue them from the economic problems they were in.  the sentiments, i could imagine, were similar to what’s going on these days with obama. hitler, though, used his popularity and support to drive another agenda.

i would love to go back in time, and to be a fly in the wall to see and feel how it was here in the 1930′s. only the beginning bits, because i think it would probably be a similar phenomenon. people genuinely believed in and (i think) loved hitler. the main difference being that germans then had a huge chip on their shoulder and were suffering from an inferiority complex, still needing to prove themselves as a world power.

anyways, all just speculation. back to obama. the poor man, i do have to sympathize, has so much on his shoulders. interesting to see how this will all pan out.

average joe

joe the plumber – is he the average joe or not?

on the one hand, joe claims says he’s not. because the question he directed at obama gave the impression that he would be one of those negatively affected by the tax policy obama put forward. the first impression i got is that joe used to be average, but then through hard work, became part of the elite – the 5% who will have to spread their wealth around to others. the embodiment of the american dream.

but then we find out that in reality, he really still is average. and actually would stand to gain from obama’s plans, as we understand it. so what was joe trying to do by asking obama that question, which in the foreseeable future, wouldn’t really apply to his situation anyways? what was his agenda?

given that, i think it’s fair enough for journalists to probe into his background to see what his motives are.

personally i think joe saw this opportunity to put obama in the corner, as he’s obviously pro-mccain, and as a mc cain supporter i’m sure joe felt that by asking that question in front of tv cameras, he could do his part to contribute to the campaign. but then reporters start digging up dirt on him, and it starts to look not so great. this is probably the part he didn’t count on.

on the other hand, there’s a fine line between investigation and humiliation. and this goes for full time celebrities as well as for one-hit-wonders like joe. i think often, the media lose sight of what they are doing and lose respect for the people who, through the media’s own efforts, they made larger than life. and it’s almost as if that in itself is the justification for tearing them down. we built them up, we can tear them down too. and the viewer’s voracious appetite for the luck and misfortune of others doesn’t help.

also, as many people have said in class, the reason joe got so much airtime – besides the fact that he was mentioned a dozen times in the debate, is because there is that much time to waste. there are hundreds of channels on tv, and dozens of full-time news channels competing for content. they have too much time to fill.

in europe, there are also all day news channels like euro news, msnbc, cnn or bbc. but then there are dozens of countries to cover in europe – and also the rest of the world. there’s no space to waste in that landscape.

so yes, joe could stand some scrutiny. but also, the media would do well to keep to the relevant issues at hand.

not science

so last thoughts of the day before i turn in.

the other day, while sitting in an all day video conference, during which people were presenting the projects they were working on and discussing things like supply chain, operations transformation, etc, it occured to me that although much time and effort is spent trying to treat business like a science – with studies and benchmarking efforts conducted, etc, that in the end, despite it all, business is not a science. some people have a gut instinct with business and can make it work, some people need help. there’s some recipes you can apply to most situations, but often, it’s still a lot about guesswork and feeling.

and even in real ‘scientific pursuits’ like medicine, with all of its methodologies and precision, things are not what they seem. to me ‘science’ feels like our feeble attempt to make order of and control what is ultimately still quite a mysterious set of circumstances called life. i’ve been to many allergy doctors, each of them with their own testing methods and their own brand of answers on what i should eat or not eat. everyone has their own truths. if i listened to all of them, i’d go crazy. in the end, it’s up to me to decide what works best.

and so it is, i feel at least (and after reading what’s written in our book) with journalism. it’s not precise, though there are ways to ensure it’s as precise and as close to the truth as it can be. and if you’re a true ‘journalist,’ if you’re curious about stories and want to know they are all about, you’ll spend the time and effort to make sure that what you’re reprting is as multi-faceted and well researched as possible… but much more you can’t do. and everyone has different ways of getting to the truth. some will have a gut instinct on what that truth is, and might hit it spot on, even without the methodology. if science is hardly a science, then journalism shouldn’t be too worried about its status. to me it’s just a method, backed up by some code of ethics, presented by interesting writing. and in the end, it’s anyhow up to the reader to decide what they want to believe and which truths they want to hear.

lethal mix

was in italy this weekend, visiting some friends.

now there’s a place to study journalism. when the prime minister is also the third richest person in the country, publishes a very popular news magazine and runs tv channels watched by about half the nation’s viewers, how much can you trust what you see or read?

apparently, according to our friends, who is a fan of ‘la republicca’, what you see as ‘news’ in italy is quite often a bit too uniform. you read pretty much the same stories across many newspapers and magazines. of course a lot of them favoring said prime minister.

i asked davide about the trash fiasco in naples, if that went away or how that solved. because all of a sudden there was radio silence on the subject. apparently berlusconi said he solved the problem, and ever since he came back into power, not much more was said on the subject. davide said that it’s still problematic, but that no one dares to report on it. i personally haven’t heard much about the naples rubbish problem.  and now i’m really curious… and i tried googling it, with not much success. the last reports i saw were in june/may of this year.

unfortunately not much conversation time was devoted to the media. davide and adelheid just had their second child, amelie, and we were talking more about family and their new life in poggio.

but that would be an interesting study – the effects of a de facto media monopoly on the lives of a country’s citizens. having someone who has that much media, financial, and political power all at once can’t be healthy. sounds more like a dictatorship than anything else. would be interesting to an a deeper look into how journalism works in such a system. also would be interesting to see what people really think and feel there, and how much influence they think they have vs. how much influence they really do have…

lesson learned

i find the experience of approaching total strangers a bit…taxing, as well as fascinating.

i’m normally terrible at small talk, so having an excuse to approach someone is always easier than having no particular agenda other than just getting to know them.

i knew of a gathering of expats in munich, and i thought that might be a good place to start. first of all, because everyone speaks fluent english, or very good english, and that saves me the trouble of having to translate. and my german, though quite good, is still not at the same level as my english, so it’s a bit awkward for me to interview someone in german.

so i went to the watering hole, or so i thought. there would for sure be people who would’ve had some money invested in stocks and who would most likely have something to say about the financial crisis. the problem was, that because it was a networking group, and there was a chance, after the first encounter, that we’d meet each other again, and that other people might hear what’s being said, people were somewhat guarded in their responses. or they turned the interview into an opportunity to lecture on their political views, which was also quite interesting. people are also a bit particular when it comes to their personal financial situation. and with a gathering of international expats, many of whom either had their own companies or were well-traveled, well, educated employees of multinational corporations – there’s the pride thing going on, at least that’s how i felt..not sure if any of them really wanted to admit they might’ve lost money in stocks. and two of them felt the need to lecture me – one, as mentioned earlier, about the root of the financial crisis, as seen from his political glasses. the other gave me his opinion about investors, etc.

so there were advantages to going there, but certainly disadvantages too.

i did in the end get over my fear of interviewing in german and interviewed someone in a japanese restaurant around the corner from my apartment, and turned out to be the most honest response. i felt anyways. so that was the biggest lesson for me. don’t be afraid, and what might look like to be the easiest solution is not always so…

The burden of choice

So coming off the high horse and returning from the land of naive disbelief, I do realize that in the states – if you take information from aggregrate news sources,  and are not focused on one particular channel, etc, you could get a good overview of what’s going on in American politics, and in the world, today. A good enough of an overview, that given enough time and reflection, you could build your own opinion based on a solid foundation of ‘knowledge.’

However, it’s also fair to say that most people have neither the time nor the inclination to do such a thing, at all, much less on a regular basis. It’s a case of where theory and practice rarely meet.

Like in many areas of their lives, Americans have the burden of choice.

At least it’s not a dictatorship where there is the One Voice. Though it’s hard to say though what’s more disturbing… Knowing that you’re being censored and your view of the world is purposely stilted, or living in a place where you think you’re getting objective, fact-based, non-partisan, agenda-less news reporting, but are actually most of the time not. And not realizing that this is the case.

When you mix business with journalism – and this is talked about in our book – you do get consumer-ism. Consumers end up getting what they like to read.

So where was I going with this?…

In terms of fashion, and other lifestyle choices, getting what you want is normally a good thing. Though maybe not so good if it means sacrificing the environment and the well being of less fortunate people in other parts of the world. But let’s say for now it’s a good thing.

But in terms of truth – getting what you want to hear, or what other feel you need to hear, is less than ideal. The truth is often hard to swallow. brutal even. And in today’s society – where the entire world is becoming more intertwined than ever, delivering any less than the truth, with all its bitterness and sweetness, would be a disservice to the public.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s not the truth that the majority wants to hear… Amidst people’s already hectic lives, who wants to hear that the war in Iraq is costing taxpayers trillions of dollars and actually brings very little in terms of value? Do you want to know that the money you wake up at 5 am everyday for is being squandered by ‘trusted’ government officials and killing innocent lives?

The truth is hard to take. in my case, for example, even if i know that going to the states for business / pleasure two to three times a year places an enormous burden to the environment, do I want to be constantly reminded of it?

But maybe, when people are ready, they will demand brutal, honest reporting and non-partisanship. And the system, flexible as it is, will deliver it to them. So there is hope yet. I just hope it doesn’t take something like the holocaust to make it happen.