Ah, Fall.

It's official.

Fall is in the air.

It's 9:30 am. It's 55 degrees outside.

And it's crazy how just two short months in Northern California makes these temperatures feel frigid. To the Colorado or Missouri Andy, this would feel tropical.

Still, it's my favorite time of year, even in this fall foliage-challenged part of the country.

In honor of the first fall-like day we've had here, my mom and I went to Half Moon Bay, home to the famous Mavericks surf competition, the best Ramus Fizz on the planet (in my somewhat limited experience with this delightful cocktail), and also home to dozens of pumpkin patches.

Pumpkins everywhere!

And not just your run of the mill orange ones. There's huge gnarled ones, tiny little ones, and every type of gourd and squash I've ever seen, and some I have never seen.

Did you know they grow light green pumpkins?

Accompanied with autumn is my insatiable desire to hit up the Northeast, home to some of the most fantastic fall foliage around. Summer's hot, winter's bitter, but fall may make it all worth it.

Here are some places I want to go right now:

Ziplining in Massachusetts: conquering my fear of heights with a birds' eye views miles and miles of colorful trees would make me one happy "leaf peeper."

Then I want to go to Camden Hills State Park in Maine, where I can hike in, or just sit and stare at this view from afar. The only thing better than marvelous fall colors is the contrast of the colors against the water.

I've always wanted to visit Salem around Halloween. There's an Annual Psychic Fair and Witchcraft Expo! And a creepy looking Terror Trail (which could tie with ziplining as the most scary thing I've ever done.) And for the history nerd in all of us, there's the Salem Witch Museum, which I've seen before and will happily see again.

And I want to stay here, an old stagecoach tavern from 1773. There's a porch with rocking chairs and creeky floors. I'll feel like I'm actually sleeping in a Normal Rockwell painting!

Not that I'll mind.

This time of year, there's no better place to be.

Stumblin' on through

As long as I'm on the subject of things that take up way too much of my time, I thought I'd share one more thing that I love.

That I spend time with.

That I spend way too much time with.

It's called StumbleUpon, and it's been around since 2001. I've had it since 2007, but I've recently rediscovered it. And now I don't know how I ever lived without it.

It's an Internet community that allows users to find and rate websites based on their interests (a choice of 500 topics.) A toolbar can be installed on your computer (below the address bar) that makes access super easy.

I like media and PR. I like fashion and all that it entails. I "stumble" and I find an independent jewelry maker. I "stumble" again and find an interpretation on the state of the news media by a distinguished Columbia professor.

It's like channel surfing! No remote to get lost in the couch cushions! Fantastic!

It's an outstanding way to learn the hidden corners of the Internet--to break out of your daily website visits and find sites you may love but would have never found on your own.

And it's an outstanding way to waste a lot of hours.

I justify it with the assertion that it's more productive than reality television.

Here are some cool things I found while stumbling my way into the wee hours last night:

360 degree views of the world's 7 wonders! From my couch! At 1 am!

The best funny t-shirt collection I've ever seen.

Evidence that Abe Lincoln invented the emoticon.

Apparently Wikipedia publishes in Banyumasan. Who knew?

I really could have used this in my 11th grade world history class.

I'm definitely a fan. Hopefully you will be too.

"To see Life; see the world"

I was so excited to hear that Google and Life magazine have joined to scan and post all of the magazine's issues online for us to see!

You can peruse the magazine in its original format. I love reading old magazines--everything from the copy (captions in the case of Life) to the advertisements. It was such a different time, and it's fun to be transported back, even though they're being read on my shiny new 21st-century laptop. Thrill of the musty paper smell aside, this is a pretty cool way to dive into history.

Years and years later, they're somehow just as interesting as they were to their contemporary readers. History rules.

I took a class on the history of photography in grad school, and learned about the tremendous contributions the staff at Life made to photojournalism and also publishing in general. It was the first all photography news magazine and dominated the market, selling more than 13.6 million copies weekly at a dime a piece. Some of the world's most iconic images come from Life photographers, like this or this or this or this.

Hard to believe that before this magazine, there wasn't a whole lot of access to photography for American readers.

The collection comprises more than 1,860 issues, covering 1936-1972.

And to think that I might have been productive today.....

Onion Fridays

I've been inspired by the video my friend Jackie posted this on Twitter this morning.
I loved it so much that I wanted to share with everybody.

I think the Onion should make more regular appearances on my blog, so the final day of the work week will henceforth be known as "Onion Friday" here on the "I Should Blog Blog."

I love this particular segment because I'm always singing the praises of social media.

Young people, old people, overzealous mothers. They all love the Twitter and the Facebook and the social media revolution.

This is so funny, though I don't doubt that occurs daily on the world wide web.

By the time I have children, they may have to cut me off of social media completely so I don't sound like this lady.

Enjoy.


Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

A moment in my day...

If there's one favorable opinion of my time without a job, it's that of my dog, Zoe.

She loves running on the beach and going on hikes. So do I.

We do this a lot.

This morning we hit Sweeney Ridge Trail, a gorgeous hike west of the bay and San Francisco.

Most of the time, the view looked like this:


But as every tourist who's ever bought a "I Heart SF" sweatshirt knows, it can get a bit foggy. This is the same view:


And there was a bit of wind:


For fear of my 14-pound Schnauzer getting swept up in a gust and going airborne, we turned around after about 45 (very steep) minutes.

She's safely on the couch next to me.

And she's sound asleep.

Time to Help!

It's been a long day, it's about dinner time, and there's a serious rumblin' in my tumblin' (yeah, I wrote that.)

And there's plenty food in my kitchen to satiate it.

But there are just too many people in California who don't have that reassurance.

Thankfully, September is Hunger Action Month.

For those of us tight on expendable income for donations, there's another very clever option to make a difference.

Tyson Foods, the San Francisco Food Bank, and the Social Media Club of San Francisco have enacted the "Hunger Challenge."

Social media = pounds and pounds of food donated by Tyson.

500 pounds, to be exact, for this blog entry!

That's a lot of chicken.

And there's no excuse not to partake.

Tweets or retweets of any of these facts will result in a 100-pound donation. Very impressive--they've even given you numerous 140-character facts to tweet.

For example:

In San Francisco, 150,000 people are unsure where their next meal is coming from.

1 in 5 San Francisco adults can’t count on daily meals they need to lead healthy, productive lives.

and

5.3 million Californians are living below the federal poverty line ($21,834 for a family of 4).

So tweet away!

I wouldn't say I'm a huge computer person or knowledgeable about much of anything remotely techie, but I certainly know enough to get my fellow San Franciscans their next meal.

Dovetailing off my food entry...

..I decided to write a bit about booze, and in particular, how they sell it to people.

A recent Advertising Age story spoke to the trends. I'm not writing about it because I like the stuff--anyone who knows me knows I'm a strict beer and wine girl, save for the rare appearance of a top-notch bloody mary.

I stay away from anything "up," "on the rocks," or "neat." I like my evening cocktail squeezed from grapes and chilled.

But I think it's so interesting how alcohol is being marketed these days. Apparently it's a backlash against the "Sex in the City" cosmos and other analogous girly umbrella-clad drinks out in the cocktailosphere.

Alcohol marketers are now appealing to the man's man, "timeless masculinity," in order to show that though the times are changing, manliness remains as it always has, and always will be.

It's all very Don Draper, Roger Sterling, and the Madmen three martini lunch.

Notable examples:

Canadian Club: "Damn right your dad drank it."
Jim Beam: "Guys never change."
Ketel One: "there was a time when men didn't drink their vodka from delicately-painted perfume bottles. ... There was a time when men were men."
1800 Tequila: "These days, it's all velvet ropes and posturing. I don't know about you, but when I drink it, I really like to kick back and be myself."

I'm not exactly the demographic.

But as Don Draper says, when it comes to marketing to women, focus on the men.

And that Don Draper is one smart, classy, and cool, albeit fictional, dude.

PS. when I waitressed and men ordered cosmos, they asked for them in rocks glasses rather than stemware. It definitely happened more than once.

And for the record, Don Draper wouldn't be caught dead drinking a cosmo from anything.

Inspired by food today...

I love it. Reading about it, cooking and baking it, going out in search of it. And of course eating it.

And here I shall expose to you one of my shameful and guilty Internet foodie pleasures: This is Why You're Fat.

It's a disgusting display of the gluttony and overindulgence that defines American cuisine, responsible for the ever rising obesity rates and heart disease across this great land.

It's home of the "spamsicle," "deep fried hamburger on a stick," and a breakfast burrito the size of my right leg.

It's obscene.

It's so fun to read (assuming you have the stomach for it.)

Whether people eat these things out of shock value or because they actually enjoy them, I'll never know. In the interest of general American well being, accompanied with confidence in the successful proliferation of our species, I'm hoping for the former.

I'm a healthy eater. I like vegetables. I like chicken breast and tuna fish.
I don't like eating carbs. They scare me. I'll never touch another baked potato--something about that big creepy carby starchy solid that just keeps me far away.

I do enjoy some junk food. I adore pancakes. The french toast casserole a friend made last weekend = crazy delicious. The maple bacon that was served beside it shows up nightly in my dreams.

In conclusion, no post about highly caloric food is complete without mention of the queen of butter and lard herself, Ms. Paula Deen.

Some of the best cookies I've ever made, chocolate gooey butter cookies, come from Ms. Deen.

I served them at my thesis defense, and I'm pretty sure my diploma wouldn't be mine in their absence. I bring them to parties, though for fear of ruining the evening, I neglect to inform people of the brick of cream cheese and stick of butter that comprise most of the batter.

Other Deen stand-outs (I have yet to try them:)

Fried pumpkin layer cake with cream cheese and orange frosting
Why, why, why do all things pumpkin always make my mouth water?

The bacon/doughnut/egg burger.
A burger where doughnuts are buns, topped with bacon and a fried egg. It inspires and disgusts simultaneously, in the way only a Deen creation can.

Am I alone in my self-professed bazaar fascination in over-the-top fattening food?

"I stay up late - till half past three! And that's a peg below me knee!"

This morning, once again, I find myself indebted to Twitter.

Daily, I learn last night's sports scores, things that happened on this day in history, and top headlines from the New York Times.

And it's all great.

But it's a rare occasion that I learn of a holiday I didn't know existed.

Yes. Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

It's 1995 at the YMCA in Albany, Oregon. Two racketball playing friends began speaking like pirates, and declared that people throughout the world should do the same one day each year.

The reason it's so cool, aside from the obvious pleasure of talking like a pirate, is that the holiday has the Internet to thank for its popularity. Save for a Miami Herald article in 2002, word of the day spread throughout the world virtually.

Now, there's 'post like a pirate' and an 'English-to-Pirtate translator' features on Twitter, and an 'English (pirate)' option for primary language on Facebook.

There's pirate language guides, Youtube tutorials, a TLAP 2009 events schedule.

Do you know what "Arrr!" actually means? The lingo guide does:

It can mean, variously, "yes," "I agree," "I'm happy," "I'm enjoying this beer," "My team is going to win it all," "I saw that television show, it sucked!" and "That was a clever remark you or I just made." And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!

My personal fav is pirate pickup lines. I reckon that if I were a wench living of the coast of somewhere, courted daily by pirates, I would have fallen for one/and/or all of them. Enjoy.

Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?

How'd you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?

Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.

Try to throw some pirate lingo into your vernacular today, my fellow landlubbers.

I truly have the unprecedented ability to finish school when the economy is tanking.

For example, I finished college in 2003. By today's standards, the job market wasn't so bad. But it wasn't the best time to leave the cozy, protective, seemingly careless bubble that was my five years in college.

Somehow, someway, I got a job offer in Santa Barbara, only to turn it down to move to Vail, Colorado. Best decision I ever made, though finding a job in sunny, gorgeous Santa Barbara is generally difficult for UCSB grads resisting skipping town.

The jobless rate in 2003 peaked at 9.2%.

Then, I finished graduate school in 2009.

Today's jobless rate in California is 12.2%, setting a new modern record.

2.2 million Californians are out of work.

A recent study reported that 2 out of 5 working age Californians are unemployed.

For the record, we're ahead of Michigan (15.2%), Nevada (13.2) and Rhode Island (12.8%) and tied with Oregon.

Now, nearly three times as many people are looking for jobs in Silicon Valley than in 2003.

I think this is an interesting statistic because it speaks to lingering questions that remain unanswered after releasing numerous job applications into the black abyss that is the Internet during the past month or so.

The job market is saturated with incredibly talented, skilled, and eager potential employees.

It's a staffer's dream, and a job seeker's nightmare.

Let's hope we've seen the worst of it.

"It won the blue ribbon in 1898..."

Sales of Pabst Blue Ribbon are up 25% this year. 25%!!!! And it may not be simply a reflection of the bad economy.

Throughout my time in graduate school, I often reflected on the power of PBR--why people who could afford remotely better beer still proudly boasted those little patriotic cans at social gatherings of the drinking kind.

An unpaid internship last summer and the drying up of funds that accompanies such a position led to a blind taste test of (and I'm trying to be diplomatic here) lower-end beers. And PBR did not win. Not even close.

(For inquisitive readers, Busch Light was the winner. The BL is $1 cheaper per case than the Pabst. Similarly, Keystone is $1.50 less per case.)

So what's this all about?

It's not the beer market. PBR hasn't been the top beer brand in this country since the 1890s, apparently winning it the blue ribbon and it's namesake. Now, it only comprises 0.7% of the US beer business.

It's not advertising. There was no reported PBR media spending in the first half of 2009.

It's brilliant marketing. Marketing that occurred before the recession.

It's retro. It's "ironic downscale chic." It's anti-establishment. It's a "hipster prop."

It's also the largest remaining American-owned beer maker.

For fellow grammar lovers out, I checked Urban Dictionary for PBR. There were many creative entries. My favorite follows:

"Derived from the Latin Pasbitinus Bluinus Ribbionus, it is a staple of white trash beverage consumption nation wide. As a noun, it is simple, referring to the mildly refreshing Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. As an adjective, it is being used to describe the people, actions and possessions of those who drink it most."

noun: "I drank a 24-pack of PBR and my wife drank my other case so I ran her over with my 1983 GMC 1500."

adjective: "That guy who ran over his wife with the pickup truck is pretty PBR."

An interesting glimpse into modern beer culture, I think.

Old stomping grounds...

I'm applying for a job at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Half Moon Bay, a beautifully untouched beachy town about 20 minutes from my house here in Northern California.

It's beautiful--right on the beach, surrounded by a lush green golf course, fire pits outside every ground-floor room.

A cocktail server job in the lobby bar is what led me to the hotel. This is something I'm unequivocally qualified for; something I have plenty experience with; something I'm markedly good at.

Something I actually did five years ago.

I wouldn't say I'm the most overqualified waitress in the world, but I'm just sayin' that it could be tough to impress human resources with my skills in radio editing and nut graph construction.

Now it's a matter of selling myself on another Ritz job besides serving overpriced martinis and Kobe beef sliders to sunburned tourists.

Without sounding ungrateful for the opportunity to finally have an income, I'd like to convince them of my hospitality prowess--my ability to transcend the lobby bar with the things I've learned in the past five years.

I've thought a lot about my career path in recent days and weeks. I've learned to reject jobs that put me behind a computer for the majority of the day. I don't have confidence in a lot of my skills, but talking to people is one thing I can do.

I miss working in hospitality. Despite daily annoyances of high demand clientele and discomfort in what I affectionately called my "pilgrim uniform," some of my best memories and friends are from the Ritz lobby bar in Vail, Colorado.

And when it comes to serving cocktails, I'd choose the dignified setting of the Ritz over beer-soaked college night at the local Irish pub any day of the week.

PS. In case you've ever wondered, like me, about the world's largest meatball (crosses my mind at least bi-weekly), here it is. Thanks to the Ritz Carlton, Cancun for this particular display o' carnage.

A job lead....

Since I was out of town for the past five days, I have nothing to eat for breakfast.

Desperation for something remotely breakfast-y led me to sift around what I affectionately call "the carbohydrate drawer," where bread, crackers, and other like-minded starches are kept.

I found fortune cookies. I took one. Right before shoveling the thing into my mouth, I read the fortune:

"Now is the time to enjoy something new."

Sounds like typical fortune cookie fare, except for that I have a job interview/meeting this afternoon!

For the first time in a month, the "something new" is not a season premier of a new sitcom or a pair of shoes.

This job prospect is something new! And though I'm nervous, the wise baked good is telling me to enjoy it! Great news, indeed.

Fortunes emerging from cookies are what you make of them, of course, but in my case, I think it's a good message. Interviews are stressful, but I think it's so important to really take it in and enjoy it, be myself, and hopefully good news will follow.

Which led me to my next move:

Whether it was out of wanting another cookie or pushing my luck, I opened another one, and read the the fortune:

"You will be selected for a promotion because of your accomplishments."

It's not a promotion, and I haven't accomplished all that much.

But I'll take it.

Join me in hoping the fortune cookie gods are watching over me this afternoon.

Wedding bells

I'm heading down south tomorrow morning to attend the wedding of a very good college girlfriend and her groom-to-be.

This is going to be special for so many reasons.

Franny is starting her life with someone we all love, who complements her perfectly, and shares her same insatiable curiosity and wildly adventurous spirit.

Franny and I are very fortunate to have a group of unbelievable girlfriends from college. We're scattered all around the country and world, carrying on with our respective lives, but always looking forward to the next time we get to be together.

And the wedding is in Santa Barbara, where we all went to college, and where I always say Franny left her heart. A few years older and many years wiser, it will be fun to be back in our old stomping grounds. Sentimental value aside, Santa Barbara in itself is an unbelievable corner of the world.

I've known Franny for more than 10 years now, and we've had only one or two arguments.

One such memory involved our college innertube waterpolo team (yep, waterpolo in rubber tubes--don't knock it till you've tried it.) We had too many people playing one day, and someone needed to hang up their tube.

Franny's competitive. I'm competitive. Neither of us wanted to sit on the sidelines.

As I recall, Franny said, "I'm not goin' out."

I had no choice but to leave the game, scowling during my swim to the edge of the pool.

After the game, apologies were made, hugs were given, and Franny and I would continue our lives, fight-free, just as close as ever.

But in reflecting on this episode, I've realized that Franny's fire and passion are qualities that I really love about her.

So when she talked to me about Ryan, her roommate turned serious romantic interest, I had a decision to make. She said she was at her "breaking point," that she wanted to tell him how she really felt, at the risk of compromising their amazing friendship. Now, I knew better than to discourage her.

She wasn't goin' out.


Franny, I'm so proud to be able to stand beside you this weekend.

Congratulations.

A word on user reviews.....

Did you know that some Yelpers get paid for reviews?!?

How did I not know this?

Here I sit on this computer, in my blissful ignorance, reading Yelp reviews of restaurants and bars from real live, eating, drinking, human beings like myself who just enjoy a nice meal with good service and have the thoughtfulness to write about their experiences.

And it could all be a lie. Not necessarily on par with seeing my dad's handwriting on a gift "from Santa Claus," but still so very disappointing.

I suppose I thought it was against some grand unspoken code of ethics.

Or something.

One such example is Mel's Drive-In, a famous 50s-ish-type restaurant in my own San Francisco. If you write a Yelp review, bring in a copy and get 20 percent off your burgers malts, and fries.

A local PR firm calls this a "virtual bribe," and rightly so in my opinion.

My only relief comes from the fact that Mel's Drive-In accepts both positive and negative reviews, perhaps attempting to increase their Yelp presence rather than simply buy people off for writing glowing, shining, happy, positive reviews.

Maybe it's that Mel's and other such restaurants are capitalizing on the public relations potential of Yelp.

Maybe it's that blissful ignorance talking. But in the perfect world according to Andy, this is not the way Yelp should work.

Aside from my passion for PR and media, I also happen to be a foodie and a wino, afflictions that are worsening by the year.

I read wine blogs in the mornings when I have no intention of drinking wine.

I voraciously peruse recipe sites when I have no intention of cooking.

I read reviews of restaurants in cities I have little intention of visiting.

I love cooking for my friends and family, watching their faces as they enjoy something I knew they'd love.

I revel in requests from friends for particular recipes that I've made in the past.

And I fancy myself a bit of a turkey burger connoisseur. I eat a lot of them. Rarely do I follow a recipe. Rather, like with my salads, I include everything I can find in the kitchen, save for the kitchen sink, and they're usually pretty great.

Today is Labor Day. And there's no better day to test a new burger recipe.

This week, the Internet was abuzz with Oprah's favorite turkey burger, and "the best turkey burger in the entire world."

It's from Mar-a-Lago, a Donald Trump resort in Palm Beach.

While I don't normally use recipes for burgers, I am intrigued by this one for two reasons:

1. Oprah loves it.

2. It calls for some pretty unique ingredients, most of which I wouldn't typically include in my burgers. Among other things, these burgers include Granny Smith apples and Major Grey's chutney (a mango-based jelly.) They're also topped with pear chutney

As one reviewer put it, "Why hasn't there ever been a turkey burger that tastes like the day after Thanksgiving?"

I can't wait to try them. Hopefully, they'll join the ranks of my carrot cake, spaghetti squash, and gooey chocolate butter cookies as crowd favorites.

Not that I can take credit.

If it's good enough for the Donald and the Oprah, it's good enough for me.

Fun things from around the web

Just thought I would write about a few things that caught my interest this week:

1. The Harvard Clothing Line: for all of your seersucker, plaid, and preppy blazer needs.

Meant to emulate the Harvard dress code of years past, "Harvard Yard" will arrive in department stores in February.

My favorite quote from the story (as told by the creative director):

“We want to combine the power of Harvard with the power of a plaid shirt."

You can check out the "good ol' boy era" collection here.

2. Today in cupcakes

I've always wondered about the designer cupcake trend that has swept our great nation as of late, starting in New York and LA and proliferating to other parts of the country. More specifically, I wonder: 1) When people will tire of spending $4 on a simple baked good and 2) when people will simply tire of cake in a cup.

According to Slate, half a dozen cupcake bakeries have opened in the DC area in the past 20 months, with more on the way.

They call it the cupcake bubble, and like with other bubbles, the expect it to pop soon.

In other fattening food news, fried butter is making its debut at the Texas State Fair this month. Apparently it tastes like a buttery biscuit or croissant.

My favorite quote from the story (as told by the creator of aformentioned butter invention):

"An order of fried butter will get you three or four pieces of piping-hot dough in a little cardboard boat. 'Any more than that and I think it would be a little bit too much. A little bit too rich.'”

Apparently three or four daily fried butter pads is just right.

Other fried foods to make their debut at the self-proclaimed "Fried Food Capital of Texas:"

Texas fried pecan pie, country fried pork chips, and fried peanut butter cup macaroons.

3. Glamour magazine encountered controversy when they featured an image of a plus-size model, nearly naked, on one of their pages. The Daily Beast calls it "the belly roll heard round the world."

The thing is, the model is amazingly beautiful, and despite her lack of washboard abs, looks fantastic. The way MOST WOMEN look.

My favorite quote from the story (as mentioned in a blog comment):

"There’s still this addiction to thin, thin, thin in the media, which has us all addicted. It’s time for a Revolution all y’all! Down with size 2, up with size YOU!“

The reaction to the photo is such a testament to our society these days.

Some people are saying the magazine industry is turning over a new leaf. Cynics believe the controversy is a way to sell more magazines.

Either way, I can't wait for the day when images like this grace pages of magazines without a stir.

Ah, Science

It always excites me when I read a sentence that starts with "A recent study shows" or "Researchers believe" and ends with a positive, healthful spin on one of my vices, such as coffee or red wine.

As any reader of these things knows, however, such studies are open to question. One minute coffee is a cancer cure in a cup and the next it joins the ranks of trans fats or red meat.

Needless to say, I was happy to find this study this morning. It's from 2006, but as those of us who have done research know, these kinds of things don't appear overnight.

Drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more money than non-drinkers (!!!!!)

This delights me for three fundamental reasons:

1. The crux of the study lies in personal social capital (a concept with which my master's thesis made me all too familiar.)

In a nutshell, social capital stresses that social networks have value; that social contact can increase productivity and solve problems.

An evening at the bar, the study claims, can create new contacts and strengthen existing ones

Note: Benefits desist at dancing on the bar and singing drunken karaoke at the company Christmas party. This, in fact, has been shown to weaken ties with coworkers.

2. As a graduate looking for work, it gives me an excuse to leave the house for reasons beyond grocery shopping.

While there may be blasphemy associated with leaving this computer screen full of tabs open to Craigslist and Monster.com, this marvelous study shows that getting out and talking to real live people can actually be more beneficial to me.

3. Who doesn't like going out for good cocktails with good friends?
I'm a social person, which I hope will benefit me in my future career.

And when out for drinks with friends, you never know who you'll meet.

News about News

I don't write too much about the media on this blog, but it is something I think about a lot. Journalism school curriculum these days seems to be a mix between learning the trade and understanding the current dire state of news.

We heard from the very first day of school, "Journalism needs fixing. If one of you could come up with a solution to maintain quality news, you'll make a lot of money."

(I'm still holding out hope that it's one of my brilliant classmates that comes up with a revolutionary new plan--like the Google or Facebook of news media.)

So even though I steered away from the actual practice of journalism, I remain very concerned about its progress in adopting a suitable business model that will keep news organizations in business (thriving rather than just scraping by) and keep Americans in touch with things they need to know to lead informed lives.

Which is why I thought I would share something I read this morning about Amish media.

In short, one of the solutions that has been presented for making a profit with news is hyperlocal coverage--the idea that if a newspaper presents only local news, it will attract local advertisers and maintain readers who may have otherwise gone to other sources for their news. Hand in hand with this idea is that of citizen journalism or participatory journalism--the idea that the community contributes to the news product through letters and guest columns, giving them a sense of ownership and improving the product.

These are both hotly debated solutions. But The Budget, an Amish newspaper out of Ohio, has been following these principles for 120 years, and its business is as healthy as ever (even with a website--for the non-Amish, technology using readers.)

A British graduate student spent some time in Sugarcreek, Ohio. In her time among the horse drawn carriages, she couldn't help but see parallels between this thriving news product and steps being taken by mainstream media to keep afloat--making itself the most relevant place for advertisers to reach consumers, dedicating significant space to reader letters, and giving readers a sense of entitlement to the paper that transcends generations.

I can't pretend to know the first thing about how news organizations are going to survive through the changing news climate and rough economy, but I do think it's interesting to look to organizations who are experiencing success and to learn from them.