Bridging The Memories of 9-11: One Man’s Mission to Never Forget

10 Sep

            It began with a single American flag. 

            The stars and stripes on this day stood not just for freedom, but for defiance, resolve, and honor.  The man holding and waving the flag pole high above the Main Street Bridge in Coon Rapids, Minnesota was Daniel Hanson.  With a long white beard and wavy grey hair, he looked like Santa in search of a sleigh.  In reality, he was a statement in search of a cause.

            The cause found him.  It was 9-11.

            Every September 11th for the past five years, Hanson has been waving his flag on the bridge and every year he is joined by a growing crowd of firefighters, police officers, soldiers, families and children. 

            “We want to remember what happened to our country on that day, we don’t want anyone to ever forget,” said Hanson.

            “But we want to be able to honor those men and women that have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.”

            That’s why this year, on the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Hanson and Coon Rapids firefighters are turning their simple bridge display into a grand community commemoration.

Daniel Hanson and Coon Rapids Fire Captain Ken Boelter standing next to a section of I-beam from the World Trade Center

           Starting at 1 p.m. on Sunday, September 11th at Coon Rapids High School the city is holding a special ceremony to honor the 9-11 anniversary with a piece of the Twin Towers as a center piece.  The Coon Rapids Fire Department has acquired a section of I-beam from the ruins of the former World Trade Center that they’ll dedicate on Sunday at the high school and then lead it on a procession to Fire Station 1 where they’ll mount it in a permanent memorial to the victims of 9-11.

            Firefighters will also have a Halligan tool belonging to FDNY unit Rescue 5.  The men of Rescue 5 stormed into the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11th, only one of them ever survived.  Their Halligan tool, a piece of equipment as ubiquitous as an axe, was among the only items ever recovered from the rescue team.  Their bodies were never found.

            For Coon Rapids Fire Captain Ken Boelter, the bent and weathered Halligan is a portal-like object.  Touch it, and it transports one into souls of the men who once carried it.

            “They would have carried this in that day,” said Boelter.

            The ceremonies at Coon Rapids High School will allow citizens to see and touch the Halligan tool and the World Trade Center’s I-beam. Boelter hopes they link people to the past in ways that forever shape the future. 

            “This is just a way to remember and a way to remember particularly the 343 New York City firefighters that died that day.” 

 Here is the schedule of events:

 1 p.m.             Event starts, public viewing of I-beam and Halligan tool at Coon Rapids High School.

 2:00                Posting of color by honor guard

2:07                Flyover by 934th Air Wing

2:08                Speakers including: Anoka Co. Sheriff James Stuart, Sec. of State Mark Ritchie, Oklahoma City bombing survivor Clark Peterson, World Trade Center  family survivor Eric Aamoth, Fire Chief John Piper.

2:48                Dedication of I-beam

2:55                Bagpipes, CRHS Band & Choir

3:45                I-beam procession to Fire Station #1

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Are We Serving Our Customers’ (Viewers’) Mindset?

3 Sep

            The Associated Press alert that chimed on my newsroom computer a few years ago was short and direct.  “Bulletin: Jeane Kirkpatrick has died.”

            I leapt from my desk and shouted across the room to my 5 p.m. newscast producers, “Folks, we have to add an important story. Jeane Kirkpatrick is dead!”

            The silence was deafening.

            Then came the puzzled, if not predictable reply shouted back.

            “Who’s Jeane Kirkpatrick?”

            One of our senior investigative reporters sitting just a desk away burst out laughing and then buried his head in his hands in disgust at what he just heard.  How can anyone in the news business, the very scribes of contemporary history, not know of the first woman U.S. ambassador to the United Nations?

            I walked over to his desk and said, “Dude, we gotta cut her some slack, she wasn’t born yet when Reagan made her a diplomatic rock star.” 

Mindset List Creators Tom McBride and Ron Nief

           That little newsroom narrative serves as a wonderful introduction to one of my favorite rites of fall, Beloit College’s Mindset List.  Before school starts each September, Beloit Professor Tom McBride along with the college’s former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief trot out a list of social and experiential realities that have shaped the lives of incoming college freshmen.  The list is meant to give educators insights into the mindset of their students so there can be more productive classroom learning and dialogue.  The list is not only instructive for college professors, it’s also useful for businesses, advertisers, marketing executives, and yes, even news organizations.  http://www.youtube.com/embed/J4HJ6EHb3CI?rel=0

          Among the most useful insights from this year’s mindset list of our future customers are these:

      1.  There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.

      9.  “Don’t touch that dial!” …what dial?

     12.  Amazon has never been just a river in South America.

     30.  Dial-up is soooooo last century.

     37.  Music has always been available via free downloads.

     63.  They won’t go near a retailer that lacks a website.

            The takeaways?  They’re connected, mobile, and consume on their schedule, not the schedule we make for them.

            Those very insights mirror portions of my own research on viewers of Fox 9 News in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  In a survey of 1116 viewers, 42 percent indicate they use the internet to access Fox 9 News content at least three to five days a week.  Twenty-two percent visit Fox 9 online every day.   Even more significant, 40 percent of Fox 9’s online audience indicates they access the station’s news content through a mobile device. 

Viewers Accessing Fox 9 Through Mobile Devices

            The implications for news organizations and businesses alike could not be more clear.  Our customers are changing and so are their mindsets.  This year’s entering class of 2015 is symbolic of the new generation of emerging consumers. They no longer shop exclusively at stores with shelves and they will not wait until 9 p.m. to watch the latest news—especially from a traditional TV set.  Those of us in legacy industries trying to reach our customers through traditional platforms and channels are in peril of becoming irrelevant in our own mindset.

            Yes, today’s next generation of consumers may not know who Jeane Kirkpatrick was, but they know how to find out on their smartphones.  The question is, will be there to tell them?

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The Terrible Toll of Alzheimer’s

27 Aug

Julie Allen, Alzheimer's Patint

    Jullie Allen knew something was wrong on the eve of a major business presentation five years ago.  She froze. 

     “For some reason I couldn’t make the changes and I couldn’t figure out what I needed to have in there,” said Allen. 

    She called the client and quit.  At 56 years old, it was her first sign that something was seriously wrong.  A year later she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

    “When you get the diagnosis the first thing is it’s gone, I’m done. I’m going to sit in a chair, because you think about the old people who are sitting there,” said Allen.  The good news is she’s determined not to be one of those people—yet.

    Alzheimer’s takes its time.

  It’s taking its time on Glenn Campbell, too.  Since disclosing his own battle with Alzheimer’s earlier this year, the rhinestone cowboy is already losing his glimmer.  ABC’s Terry Moran gave us all a gift with his recent profile on Campbell.  The gift is being able to see the progression of Alzheimer’s in people we know and love.  When Moran asked Campbell and his wife Kim Woollen about Alzheimer’s, here was the response:

Campbell:     “I haven’t got it yet. In fact I don’t know where it came from?” 

Woollen: “Yes, you’ve been diagnosed with Alzmeier’s.”

Campbell:  “What?”

    Julie Allen can relate.  “It kind of is like a snake. I kind of just keeps eating more and more away.”

    The Alzheimer’s Association gives us a wonderful top ten list of what to watch for in our own loved ones:

  1. Memory changes that disrupt daily life
  2. Challenges in planning and problem solving
  3. Difficulty completing familiar tasks
  4. Confusion with time or place
  5. Trouble understanding visual images or special relationships
  6. New problems speaking or writing
  7. Misplacing things
  8. Decreased judgment
  9. Withdrawal from work or social activities
  10. Changes in mood or personality

    Tragically, there’s no cure.  But Dr. Richard Hodes of the National Institute of Aging within the National Institutes of Health says they are making significant progress.  I spoke with him at an Alzheimer’s panel put together by U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.

    “Perhaps one of the most important advancements that’s been made is the ability to identify stages of the disease far earlier than previously had been done,” said Hodes.  “So we no longer need to be able to depend upon diagnosis when the symptoms occur which makes if possible to possibly prevent symptomatic disease.”

    He admits there is a long way to go.  But Julie Allen is not wasting time.

    “To live with Alzheimer’s is to just plain live,” said Allen.

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Abandoned by HP. Reflections of a Palm WebOS User.

19 Aug

                Abandoned.  Dejected.  Angry.  Aghhhhh. 

                As a long-time Palm products user, that about sums up my reaction to HP’s sudden decision to trash the products and software that for me always worked and met my personal and business needs.  HP’s decision to immediately stop marketing WebOS devices including the TouchPad and Pre smart phones is a blow to every one of us that use WebOS and thought it was a smart and user-friendly mobile platform.  A tool, not a toy. 

                I should have seen this coming.

                When HP bought Palm last year, mainly for its WebOS software, I cheered.   The Goliath HP, I thought, would be Palm’s (David’s) savior by offering superior marketing, merchandising and distribution.   The initial signs were promising.  When HP introduced the TouchPad tablet and the Pre 3 smart phone in January I cheered again.  Then, the wait.  It took six months for the TouchPad to appear on store shelves.  I’m still waiting to buy my Pre 3.  During this time it became painfully obvious that Goliath was a dinosaur.   The new Goliath is Apple.  HP, the once vaunted innovator had become nothing more than a lost commodities merchandiser.

                Where did HP go wrong?  Here’s the analysis of Horace Dediu writing in August 19th edition of Harvard Business Review Today: 

                “Consider how HP and Apple faced the changes of the PC market almost exactly ten years ago.

  • On September 3, 2001, HP announced that they would acquire Compac.
  • On October 23, 2001, Apple announced the iPod.

              The rest, they say, is history.”

              HP embraced the present.  Apple created the future—mobile.  By Acquiring Palm last summer, HP embraced the present one more time.  Apple was already working on the iPad2. 

             The lesson of Apple for all of us whether we’re in computers, customer service, perhaps even journalism is that the path to long-term success and profits is to create new categories and dominate them. 

             I will miss my Palm WebOS.  It really worked—for me.  But alas, by embracing WebOS maybe I too was embracing the present and not the future.  Lesson learned.

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How Michele Bachmann Won, And How Tim Pawleny Lost

15 Aug

    The Iowa Straw Poll is in the record books.  Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann pulled off a victory that three months ago seemed unimaginable.  How she beat the likes of established pols such as Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, and Newt Gingrich & Company speaks as much to modern product marketing as it does to effective electioneering. 

    Make no mistake, Michele Bachmann is a product with her own unique brand.  Bachmann differentiated herself among the GOP presidential candidates as the social conservative with “tude” and conviction.  Bachmann called it “authenticity.”  Whatever you call it, Iowa republicans bought it.   Tim Pawlenty spent two years and millions of dollars in Iowa and in the end all his candidacy sold  was canned corn.  Bachmann sold Tobasco Sauce. 

Google GOP Candidate Search in Iowa

Google GOP Candidate Searches

    Good brands and good marketers know there are several drivers to bring consumers to your product.  In the end, Bachmann won the straw poll on Buzz and Activation.  The number crunchers at Google have just released the data on which presidential candidates Iowans searched the web for leading up to the straw poll.  Bachmann lead the pack.  It wasn’t even close .  That’s Buzz.  But Bachmann was equally as effective in activating that buzz into votes.  Pawlenty may have had a superior tactical ground organization, but lacked the strategy to create any kind of buzz for his candidacy and certainly could not activate enough supporters to vote.  

    Tragically for Pawlenty, he’s finally achieved some differentiation from the rest of the presidential candidates.  He’s out.

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Haiti One Year Later: Challenges and Hope

13 Jan

Ben & Elise Savage and their mother Kristen

            If earthquakes deliver despair, they also deliver hope.  The proof is in the eyes of Benjamin and Elise Savage.  Just two years old, they are among the youngest survivors of the earthquake that struck Port Au Prince, Haiti exactly one year ago. 

            But their story is much different that the million and a half survivors who now live on the streets or in make-shift relief camps.  Ben and Elise have a home.  Just as important, they have a family. 

            When the earthquake struck at exactly 3:53pm on January 12, 2010, Mike and Kristen Savage were a continent away, just two American parents waiting to adopt two children from Haiti.  Not just any children, they were waiting for Ben and Elise.  In the quake’s aftermath, time seemed to pass as fast a crumbling buildings. 

Kristen recalls the panic, “Thankfully within probably with 15 minutes of us finding out the earthquake had happened, we got a phone call saying that the children in the orphanage were safe.”  

The orphanage walls had collapsed, but the kids were all right. Today, both Ben and Elise are safely in Kristen’s arms inside her Savage, Minnesota home.

            For Daniel Wordsworth, it’s been a year of worrying about the children and adults left behind.  “It’s been an awful year, yes.”

            Wordsworth is the president of the American Refugee Committee, a Minneapolis based international relief organization with a large footprint in Haiti.  ARC has 15 international staff members on the ground in Haiti along with 200 paid local staff members all working to manage relief camps for the homeless. 

            From Wordworth’s view, the progress is slow.  “You have people that lost their homes, but before we can rebuild those homes we have to create an artificial environment with temporary shelters and temporary communities where we can locate those people while the long term reconstruction happens,” said Wordsworth.

            In the year since the earthquake though, reconstruction has barely begun.  Wordsworth estimates only five to ten percent of the debris has actually been removed.  Most of the effort he says, have been focused on establishing the camps.

            “I mean, the earthquake destroyed a city like Minneapolis.  Two-hundred thousand houses were destroyed in 35 seconds of the earthquake.  You can’t just rebuild that over night.  It takes more than a year.” 

            Hurricanes, riots and a cholera epidemic have not helped.  ARC’s perspective is that the next year will see greater progress in removing debris, even in areas where there’s only enough room for a wheel barrow.  Full recovery is perhaps 5 years away—provided there are no more earthquakes.

            For the Ben and Elise Savage, they get to live out their life far away from the destruction.  They are now part of an American family, but they’ll always be Haitians too.  Their new adoptive parents intend to make sure of it.  “Haiti is a part of the culture of our family,” said Kristen Savage.  “And something that I think we will want to remember and take part in for years to come.”

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Answers From Facebook About Cyber-Bullying

24 Oct

             Cyber-bullying may be one the hottest topics facing teenagers and even their parents.  Recent studies from Pew Research indicate as many at 1 in 3 teenagers who spend time online have already experienced some form of online harassment.  The report found that 32% of all online teens have been the targets of persistent online bullying such as threatening messages, unauthorized postings of pictures and the spread of rumors through online connection.

            With such research as the backdrop, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar sponsored a forum at Augsburg College in Minneapolis to address questions about cyber-bullying and help her form some direction in possible legislation.

            Among the panelists were Lynn Miland, a parent whose 15 year old daughter was bullied by fellow students.  Also present was U of M professor Shayla Thiel-Stern who has studied cyber-bullying, and Nicky Jackson-Coloco, a public policy manager with Facebook.

            It is exceptionally rare to have one-on-one access to a Facebook representative.   Mrs. Jackson-Coloco’s advise to parents of teenagers I believe is so important that I’ve put together a series of questions and answers from my interview that couldn’t meet the time restrictions of television news.

Nicky Jackson-Coloco, Facebook Public Policy Manager

Q:  What should parents be talking to their Kids about in using Facebook?

A: “I think a lot of the messages we give our kids about how they operate in the offline world applies to the online world.  Things like don’t talk to strangers, and on Facebook you shouldn’t be afraid to not accept friend requests from people you don’t know.”

Q:  How do you report bullying on Facebook?

 A:   “A lot of times we tell our kids if there’s a problem report it to an adult, tell somebody.  And on Facebook that means use our reporting infrastructure.  We have report buttons all over the site and when a report is filed it’s confidential and Facebook looks at it and takes immediate action or as quickly as possible.”

 Q:  Tell your kids they don’t have to friend everyone on Facebook.

 A:   “I really believe that in the same way you wouldn’t ask a stranger to come into your house, or your child shouldn’t get into a car with somebody he or she didn’t know, you shouldn’t accept friend requests from people you don’t now on Facebook.  You know I think there are times when you accept requests from friends of friends or maybe you talk to someone because they are going to a university that you want to go to and you want to connect with them, that’s one thing.  But people that you don’t know you should never accept a friend request.” 

 Q:  How should parents talk to their kids about passwords?

 A:  “You should never share your password with anyone on Facebook or otherwise with anybody.  Even if it’s your best friend because that gives people access to your account and your information and access to present yourself in ways that you wouldn’t want.”

Q:  What’s appropriate age for child to have a Facebook page?

A:  “Any teenager has to 13 years old to use the site and I think a lot of parents don’t know of that rule that you have to be 13.  But I think there’s no specific age.  I think it depends upon the parent and the family, and some families have media policies where here’s how much television you can watch, here’s how much time you can spend online and here’s how we feel about you using social networks. And for some people that may be 13 and for some people that may be 15, and for some people that could be even later.  But I think the key is to have conversations about social media with your kids even before they get on Facebook.  And its not just about  Facebook, it’s about whenever you’re on line how do you want to portray yourself.

     The information that you post online about yourself and the way that you portray yourself can be seen by lots of different people and sometimes in ways that you don’t realize.  So, it’s how you conduct yourself online and that’s a conversation that you can have far earlier than 13.  But I really think the appropriate age for teens to be on Facebook is when the teen and the parent decide it’s the right time.”

Q:  As a parent, should you friend your teenage children on Facebook?

A:  “I think there are probably relationships where there are no trust issues and people feel comfortable not being friends on Facebook.  But I certainly think it’s reasonable to say, ‘Hey, in the same way that I want to know the friends that are coming over to our house and who you’re going out with on a Friday night, I’d really like to understand who you’re in touch with online.  It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s because I love you and I’m concerned about your safety.  And say, ‘Listen when you turn 18 I don’t need to be your friend anymore.’”

Q:  If you’re being bullied on Facebook, how do you report it?

A:  “So on Facebook there are report buttons on almost every page of the site.  So if somebody is doing something that is in appropriate or violates our policy they click a report button and there’s a little flow that tells them how the report can be filed.  It’s very, very simple, it takes just a few seconds, and it’s really important that teens know that reports are confidential.  We take a look at those reports and we take the most egregious ones and look at those first. And then we triage and look at the other things we need to look at.”

Q:  How can you block someone from bullying you on Facebook?

A:  “So, if a teen is being bullied on Facebook, we have a feature.  They can hit the block button and it will cut off all communication with that person and you wont be able to contact them at all on Facebook.  And I actually think this is a great feature because in the real world, there’s sort of no stop feature, where it prevents that person from having any contact with you, and we do have that on Facebook.”

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2010 Emmy Winner!

27 Sep

   The envelope please…

    If everyone has a story, Alice Smith has a life time of them.   Her view of the world may have been born with the dawn of the Great Depression, but she’s been determined never to let it become her sunset.  As the daughter of a dairyman in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, she became the farm hand her father so desperately needed in those dark days after the stock market crash.  It meant chores came before school.  A high school diploma was only a luxury that didn’t milk cows or help a struggling farm pay the taxes. 

    But Alice never gave up her dream.  At 88 years old, she went back to school to finally earn that high school diploma. 

    When photo Photojournalist Andy Shilts and I met Alice Smith, we knew we had a story.  Alice wasn’t just a good story, she was a great story.  She teaches us that it’s never too late to achieve your goals, and certainly never too late to learn.  Apparently the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences agreed.  The story has just been honored with the 2010 Emmy Award for best single education story.

Hello world!

27 Sep

    Every story begins with a thought.  Over time, this blog will carry a collection of thoughts, observations and  perhaps little scraps of facts that may have otherwise been lost in the whirlwind of deadlines and television brevity.  I hope they are useful, insightful and occasionally illuminating.

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