All Jason, All the Time ... This Week on OMB ... (d'oh!)

Wowzers. What a busy week. Working last weekend covering the Second Life Community Convention - and running their party/meetup last Friday. Doing that story, plus our weekly editorial, plus an audio recording and blurb on Prof. Charlie Derber's Solving Climate Change talk. Plus working on tomorrow's Public Media Camp Boston that I've been organizing with folks at WGBH and other outlets. Plus preparing a presentation for that event. Plus photos for a lot of this stuff. Plus work on the business side of our operation. Boo hoo. Poor me. [I can hear the world's tiniest violin playing already.]

So after getting all these ducks in a row, I realize that I've produced every single thing in this week's issue of Open Media Boston. Which hasn't happened in a long time. It's like a harmonic convergence of ... I dunno ... no one else filing any articles this week.

Which brings me to my point. Although I know other OMB staff will be filing pieces this coming week ... if you're a non-profit or union or nice person or whatever, please, by all means, file an op-ed for our Opinion section this week.

It'll help diversify our next edition. And it'll let me take a little break.

(Woohoo!)

Jobs: The Dangerous Deficit - How to take on the "coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused"?

Anemic job growth persists in June with little over 80,000 new private sector jobs created last month. Anticipating these numbers, several writers this week warned that the real deficit to address is the jobs deficit. Economics columnist, David Leonhardt, cautions that the US is cutting back public sector budgets at just the same time as the rest of the world's economies – putting us on a sure path to a double-dip downtown. Who, after all, will create the demand needed to put people back to work?

Without an obvious answer to this question, Leonhardt opens his column with a stern warning: “The world’s rich countries are now conducting a dangerous experiment. They are repeating an economic policy out of the 1930s — starting to cut spending and raise taxes before a recovery is assured — and hoping today’s situation is different enough to assure a different outcome.”

Clinton-era Labor Secretary, Robert Reich believes that there is a 50/50 chance of a double dip recession: "The May jobs report shows there's not enough oomph in the economy because consumers don't have the dough," moreover, the tepid job growth (which fails to keep up with new job seekers entering the labor market) is not enough. "In a typical recovery, we would expect far better. And we've fallen into a far deeper hole than in a normal recession, so the recovery has to be much bigger." By Saturday, Reich was more emphatic: “The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession and all the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing. The odds of adouble-dip are increasing.”

Even the Economist magazine, concedes poor economic performance (although it rejects the “double-dip” thesis): “The economy already faces some headwinds from expiring fiscal stimulus (the unemployment benefits and the home-buyer tax credit are the most obvious examples), and those headwinds will build over the coming six to nine months. The test for the recovery is whether private demand will be strong enough to overcome those headwinds.”

The problem with “private demand” is that the global ruling class consensus, evidenced at the Toroto G20 meetings last week, is that it is likely the only game in town: governments everywhere are cutting back irrespective the result misery. The Economist signaled this turn with under the sharp heading: “Goodbye Keynes, Hello Hoover.”

Paul Krugman concludes his first Friday’s column by connecting the economic dogmatism with real world consequences: “what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we’re bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we’re good. And real-world policy — policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families — is being built on that foundation.”

Earlier in the week, Krugman wrote of the “Third Depression”: a long recession rather than a Great Depression: “And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world… governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.”

On Independence Day, Krugman identified the responsible party: “a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused,” by which he meant, the Republicans who refused to extend unemployment benefits. Forsaking any impact on the first part of the coalition, he addresses the “confused.” Even from his perch at Princeton and the New York Times, Krugman faces an uphill battle: President Obama’s balancing act concedes the battle of ideas to the Republicans: “Government can’t and should not replace businesses as the engines of growth and job creation in our economy.” But finds a narrow space for intervention: “there are times when only government has been able to do what individuals couldn’t do and what corporations would not do.”

History’s open challenge to Obama is to seize the opportunity to simply do “what individuals and what corporations would not do.” Journalist Andrew Reinbach—who was the first to nail Donald Trump—makes an eloquent and politically savvy case for another WPA: “Between 1935 and 1941, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs at a cost of $11.4 billion… Adjusted for inflation, that's about $144 billion today: $20.57 billion a year for seven years, $14.4 billion for ten. By comparison, the 2010 Defense budget is $663.8 billion.” Reinbach finds the political space for the program: make the 2010 elections a referendum on jobs!

Sign Petition to Free Moose and Squirrel

All the hoopla surrounding the capture of a group of deep-cover Russian agents in cities around the United States this week has obscured the real tragedy - Bullwinkle and Rocky are missing. Where are Moose and Squirrel? Well it turns out they've been held near Moscow since the Cold War. And now, by signing the following petition, you and your friends can help free them. Just one click (below) can make all the difference. Won't you help?

Petition: Russia, we have your spies. Now FREE MOOSE AND SQUIRREL!

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=129029880469541

"A Very Deep Hole" - Call for Strong Leadership on Jobs

Writing in the New York Times today, Bob Herbert reacts to the latest dismal employment data (see also our piece on the Majority Agenda Project website from last Friday). Before pointing to solutions, he writes starkly of the crisis: "Unemployment is crushing families and stifling the prospects of young people... Entire communities are going under." He continues, "The economy is sick, and all efforts to revive it that do not directly confront the staggering levels of joblessness are doomed."

Is there a solution is sight? No: "There is no plan that I can see to get us out of this fix. Drastic cuts in government spending would only compound the crisis...

"Policy makers have acted as if they are unaware of the magnitude of this crisis. They have behaved as though somehow, through some economic magic perhaps, or the power of prayer, this ocean of joblessness will just disappear. That’s a pipe dream."

So what does Herbert propose: "For all the money that has been spent so far, the Obama administration and Congress have not made the kinds of investments that would put large numbers of Americans back to work and lead to robust economic growth. What is needed are the same things that have been needed all along: a vast program of infrastructure repair and renewal; an enormous national investment in clean energy aimed at transforming the way we develop and use energy in this country; and a transformation of the public schools to guarantee every child a first-rate education in a first-rate facility.

"This would be a staggeringly expensive and difficult undertaking and would entail a great deal of shared sacrifice. (It would also require an end to our insane waste of resources on mindless and endless warfare.) The benefits over the long term would be enormous...

"Bold and effective leadership would have put us on this road to a sustainable future. Instead, we’re approaching a dead end."

This disappointment may not be entirely justified, especially from a progressive supporter of Barack Obama, but is certainly befits the author of "Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream."

For the Majority Agenda Project and others sharing Herbert's approach, a difficult political challenge remains: How to move forward in an irrational political climate. Here's how one reader responded to Bob Herbert:

"You & Krugman & other smart people have been beating this drum for a long time. But the Tea Partiers -- many of whom, ironically, have time to tea-party because they're among the long-term unemployed -- are driving the no-new-taxes, reduce-the-deficit, small-government mantra. If you don't think Republicans & Democrats alike who are up for re-election this year (which is of course ALL of the House) are buckling to the angry white people's narrow, illogical worldview, you haven't been reading the Times' political coverage.

"Don't blame President Obama. I think he'd LOVE to increase appropriations for jobs creation. But the House just nixed a hefty increase in jobs funding & the Senate is looking forward to cutting even more than the House bill allows.

"Politicians are notoriously shortsighted, but they have never been more so than since suddenly last summer when the tea party noisemakers (& their Republican backers) drowned out rational discourse, a white-out that will remain in place for at least this election cycle & likely much longer."

This blog entry also appeared on the Majority Agenda Project website.

Rodney's Bookstore is Closing - Possibly for Good

Much as we're proponents of social media and digital communications in general, we're also fans of the printed word - since most of the Open Media Boston staff is old enough to remember when books, newspapers and magazines were how one got an education and regular information about everything happening on our big blue marble.

So it is with heavy heart that I mark the passing of one of Cambridge's great remaining used bookstores - Rodney's Bookstore in Central Square. They're giving up their lease as soon as they sell all or most of their remaining stock. So they'll be open at least another month. And, if I understood their clerk correctly yesterday, the degree to which they can generate cash by selling their books will determine whether or not they can reopen somewhere else in the area.

Not that I think their prospects are especially great without some sugardaddy or momma to bankroll them as an essentially profitless antiquarian enterprise - one has only to remember other efforts at bookstore relocation (witness McIntyre and Moore's bouncing around Harvard Square to Davis Square to Porter Square) to understand the cruel economics of face-to-face bookselling in an age of online sales and rising commercial rents - locations outside downtown Boston or central Cambridge are not often capable of forestalling the seemingly inevitable end of bookstores (at least independent general-interest bookstores) as many of us have known them.

Nevertheless, we are great supporters of doomed Quixote-like crusades at OMB (d'oh!), and since Rodney's is selling off really great stuff for 50 percent off, I think it's worth everyone's time to head over their and buy some books. I got a great book on the history of photography during my visit yesterday, and fully intend to head back for more.

Rodney's Bookstore is at 698 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge's Central Square.

OMB Staffer Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia Hit By Car

On Tuesday, Open Media Boston Tech Editor Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia was hit by a car while riding his bike. His leg was broken and he sustained a concussion. According to his doctor, he'll be recovering at the hospital and then at home for the next 3 months.

OMB viewers can send get well wishes to our main email address: info@openmediaboston.org.

We'll add more details as they become available.

Open Media Boston Gets Nice Plugs from Noted Media Mavens

When I first launched Open Media Boston in March 2008 (although I actually started preparatory work back in July 2007), I knew it was probably going to be a long time before the publication got much recognition from nationally-known media experts. That's because OMB was not only a new news outlet, but we were trailblazing a new news model - the specifics of which I will soon begin discussing more in public - that I wanted to present in a low-key way in practice over many months. Rather than in hyperbole-laden press releases. I figured that if we did a decent job, OMB would get noticed in new media circles. And it's obviously important that we get some attention if OMB is really going to succeed and stick it out over the long haul. But there was no way to know in advance if that would ever come to pass.

Then suddenly, over the last couple of weeks, we've started getting more positive attention in a shorter time span than we have heretofore. Which is certainly gratifying. We've been working hard week in and week out for almost two years now - quite a long time for an experimental social media operation like ours. So it's nice to get some validation of our efforts from people that think deeply about the promise and perils of the new journalism.

First, Michele McLellan of the Reynolds Journalism Institute added OMB to her list of "promising online news organizations" on her Knight Digital Media Center blog. That was way cool of her, so I called her up and told her how much we appreciated our inclusion.

Then, through friends at Free Press, the entire OMB staff had the opportunity to hang out a bit with Robert McChesney and John Nichols (both Free Press founders) at the Cambridge, MA stop on their speaking tour in support of their new book "The Death and Life of American Journalism." Which was a fun and informative evening from start to finish. And not only did they say nice things about us to the crowd at the Cambridge event, but they went on to plug us on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now show two days later.

I don't automatically assume that either development will lead to exactly the kind of outcome that can improve Open Media Boston's chances of long term success. But it's still an excellent sign that our project is getting some positive vibes sent our way by people who are key figures in the construction of a new (and hopefully better) journalism.