I just got back from a University of Portland Speaker Series breakfast. Peter Bhatia, the executive editor for The Oregonian and seven-time Pulitzer Prize winner, was this morning's speaker, and I have to say I was slightly disappointed.

After comparing today's youth to older generations, claiming that young people aren't as interested in important social issues (I believe he used the word "discouraged" to describe just how allegedly apathetic we are), he went on to discuss his views on the future of newspapers and print media.

Bhatia's first priority in news is to focus on the print medium because, after all, he's the editor of a newspaper. He mentioned the importance of keeping up with blogs and other online news outlets but phrased it like it was a chore; like he had to pay attention to these sources because they're relevant, but they don't have enough validity to parallel the importance of traditional newspapers and print media. If you acknowledge that times are changing and traditions are evolving, shouldn't you go with the grain and admit that online media sources are just as important as any tangible print media?

Maybe Bhatia fears the complete obliteration of hard copy newspapers because it's more difficult to accrue revenue from online advertisements than those placed in print. Perhaps this is why he's a proponent of newspapers and not news Web sites, ("newspapers" does roll off the tongue better). I'm interested to know what bloggers and contributors to OregonLive.com would think about this.

Perhaps the generational gap between Bhatia and me is the result of my critical views.  I took offense after that "young people" generalization, and I think a majority of the large youth population voting in the November election can empathize.

While the entire morning kind of got under my skin, I was impressed with Bhatia's recollection of working as an editor at the San Francisco Examiner in the late 70s, covering gripping stories like the Jonestown massacre and the Moscone-Milk assassinations. Having grown up in the Bay Area, I was raised to recognize the importance of these historical milestones. These tragedies were inexcusable, but to be a contributing newsman during these times I'm sure was an incredible, one-of-a-kind experience.

Chain's Medicare

The folks here wanted a very clean website - one that clearly emphasizes the brand, "Chain's Medicare" and its long history (apparently, since the Qing Dynasty days!). The clinic also prides itself with its long list of products, where Justin was inspired to apply a range of soft rainbow colors to help differentiate the product categories (see inset).

Urban Anchor

This local interior designs studio had commissioned us to help them create a website that gives vibes of a young and energetic company. Of course, we had to be true to their identity; an urban, hip and chic design consultancy. Jason decided to go with the idea of putting together pieces of sketches of the "urban environment" with animations, with banners going deeper into the site. In Portfolio, we've gone back to using a chic vertical layout, which expands as visitors click on it (see photo).

We've been really busy churning out other really creative websites (design- and function-wise). Stay tuned for more from GO PUBLIC!

Frum, you'll recall, is the one who penned the phrase "axis of evil"  for President George W. Bush a few years backfor his State of the Union address. After departing the cozy confines of 1600 Pennsylvania, he then funded smear campaigns against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi when she visited Syria and decided to play amateur psychiatrist with former VP Al Gore when he criticized Bush's foreign policy.

So you'll have to pardon me if I find it laughable that this member of the GOP intelligentsia is joining the very slim ranks of those who aren't pleased with the choice of Palin and saying it doesn't look good for McCain because of it. This group includes columnist Kathleen Parker, NYT op-ed writer David Brooks, and author Christopher Buckley, who appears to have been booted/resigned from the column at the magazine his father founded for his trouble in saying he would vote for Barack Obama.

I've noticed something after reading for the past week or so, these admissions of concern -- a lot of it revolves around Palin's lack of intelligence or intellectual curiosity, perfectly valid points and worth questioning.  However, I have a question for Frum, Parker, Brooks and their ilk*: where the fuck were you the past eight years with the current occupant of the White House, if this was such a problem?

(*Buckley the Younger is exempted because he is an equal opportunity satirist. His actual political beliefs seem secondary to everything else he does. Also, he gets a pass from me because I love most of his books.)

I have a theory about this; it can't be proven definitively, obviously, but I think it has some merit: there are obvious upper rungs of the Republican party that tolerated George W. Bush because they knew from whence he came. No matter his Texas accent, he was still from the blue-blood aristocracy that most of them are used to, went to the same elite schools (including a couple of Ivies), and surrounded himself with the right kind of neo-con intellectuals like Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, etc.

He was one of them, a scion of the ranks they were used to, and a political candidate they were used to: someone who played up his faux-rural status to the public to gin up votes via the "I'd like to have a beer with him" test.  It is no small feat for them to go to their reliable Christian right bloc and talk about the evil elites on the coasts, promise to lower taxes, cut government, get Roe v. Wade overturned, keep anything sexually icky away, and then not do any of it. But this is the game the economic and foreign policy elite in the party play with the base, and many of them look down on this base.

(Democrats do it too, but more with the "dirty fucking hippie" bloc that keeps asking them to y'know, investigate the abuses of power and stop the war. These kind of Frum-Parker-Brooks schisms aren't as notable in Dem circles because they're so frequent: liberals tend to eat their own if the candidate is not perfect on every issue.)

The GOP intelligentsia's problem with Palin is that she is of the base they play down and pander to.  They're not interested in giving over the power to someone closer to the unwashed hordes, at least not before they've put her through the standard Washington wringer of vetting governors and senators first. (This goes for any candidate from either party with interests in high national office.) Thus, those economic and foreign policy conservatives who never drank the Christian right Kool-Aid can jump off early, predict doom, and claim some sort of misguided principle.

If intelligence and outward curiosity about aspects of governance were so paramount among this group, the probalby would have thought twice about President Bush eight years ago instead of, ironically, McCain.** Instead, Frum, Brooks, and their ilk are hedging bets, trying to look like prophets after years of egg on their faces regarding policy matters.

Remember, a political pundit with a track record of being astoundingly wrong for a continuous period of time never loses his column or TV appearances.  They get every chance to right themselves, no matter how much in the way of poor opinion they're paid to supply.

(**I can't accuse McCain of not being interested in foreign policy. I can say I believe he's wrong, but let's not say he isn't interested or curious in it as a subject.)

Everybody! LAUGH! HAHAHHAHAHAH

Jarvis took Greenslade to task for saying that journalists “cannot be held responsible for either the financial woes of the industry nor for the public turning its back on the 'products' that contain their work”.  A view broadly supported by City University’s Adrian Monck and Paul Farhi from the Washington Post.

Both agree that new media is bringing new opportunities to the industry at the expense of irrevocable changes.

The brass facts are that people continue to consume news, and that the internet is enabling them to consume more news, more efficiently, with more bells and whistles, than ever before.  I personally don’t see how this constitutes a threat to the journalist’s trade. 

News fulfils a basic need for information.  Newspapers have refined their product over hundreds of years in line with ferocious market forces.  The internet doesn’t threaten the creation of quality information or the commoditisation of that information, it is a medium which exists to order and present information.  The presentation of information is the building block of every webpage, the primary function of HTML, the internet’s DNA.

Print media is experiencing a seismic shift, newspapers are becoming untenable, whilst the online alternatives remain unproven and underdeveloped.  The resulting instability threatens journalists who have hitherto existed in illustrious print institutions, but it doesn’t threaten the wider role of journalism within society. 

Online news generation is stunted by the sheer volume of news circulated online by unprofitable print newspapers.  Their business models look increasingly archaic, but by the great generosity of their patrons they remain a lumbering barrier to entry for online ventures with potentially profitable business models.

The internet is changing the news business, but not the essential product, the written word.  A few papers will go bust and others will consolidate, but newspapers will survive.  Fresh information will retain its value, people will seek it out and companies will pay to advertise alongside it, whether by the pixel or by the inch.

For regular updates on the slow death of the newspapers try Newspaperdeathwatch.

Whatever the reason is, we got you reading this far and since we have your divided attention, allow me to introduce GO PUBLIC, Hong Kong's leading interactive media consultancy. We are reaching 2 years young, but we have already established branch offices in Shanghai and Bangalore, with 20+ staff and growing!

Our core service offerings split into 4 parts:

• Interactive design
• Branding design
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With over 70 clients served since June, 2008 including industry giants such as Morgan Stanley, ICBC, Pico Event Management, Cathay Pacific and New Media Group, we are carving a little niche market for ourselves despite a highly competitive market.

Please visit our website for more information at http://www.gopublic.com.hk!

Here's another link from yesterday. Buzzmachine writes in "Citizen journalism ruins the world (again)" that:

It may be a mistake for news organizations to keep begging people to send them stuff. That’s the way they think — centralized, controlling, exclusive. But the better structure may be for journalists to curate the best of what is out on the web. Rather than playing wack-a-mole on the occasional mistake/rumor/lie sent it, editors would better serve if they found the best content anywhere, not just among that which was sent to them.

Some recent research I did for Inside Islam for an Obsession entry helps put this in context. Obsession is a video/propaganda piece that used newspapers to send out the dvd as a paid advertisement (even the NY Times agreed). Fox News, however, was the only news source to publish an interview online with film makers that is gushingly naive about the videos content. Here's their request for stuff.

Participation, of course, was limited to those people have seen the video and Fox viewers. At one point, a reader asks if they will be using the video for educational purposes at the University level. Use propaganda as educational material. Yikes. Obviously, the interview did not include many mainstream, moderate Muslim voices. Sheila Musaji, editor for The American Muslim, says it's a mistake to focus on “Obsession” when discussing radical Islam because the issue is a real threat to the Muslim community, too.

Such [extremist] individuals and groups are marginal at best, but they are “useful idiots” in this well coordinated and well funded campaign of villification of the entire Muslim community. Local communities need to speak out forcefully and loudly against such individuals and groups and the venom they spread. They are certainly not a threat to America, but are a threat to the Muslim community.

The Muslim community reacted as any functioning news room would. With posts like this one from The American Muslim. They added resources and case studies and left them open-ended, reminding users to send in reactions and check back in for updated content.

As important as the web is, it's not going to save print media. Before it does, there has to be some alternative other than blogs. The industry has serious resource issues which made it easy for special interest groups to slide in the back door at the right price. Nobody asked for detailed source information and when the dvd was pulled, no one dug around online for additional resources that could offer the moderate Muslim side of the story. See the entry on Inside Islam for links about this. Also, it made them susceptible to the editor's blog, written by the most boring, dry, closed-lipped bloggers there are (in comparison to other professional bloggers).

Print media need not panic. Just think before asking for help from the internet community. And update it when they reply.

A recent entry from Online Journalism Blog presents a good solution. With RSS feeds, newspapers can make stories updatable and responsive to users. Usually we know RSS feeds by other names like the news feed on Facebook. OJB asks:

Why can’t feeds just be called ’stories’? Why don’t we ‘follow’ stories instead of subscribe to them?

This is a great solution. Now, if we can just explain to journalists what that means. Maybe this post will help put things in context.

My mom went public about her decision to leave print media today (Wisconsin State Journal)

The decision hit Poynter.

I took a job working at UW on Inside Islam

WSJ Editorial Team finalists for Pulitzers, no one wins

Team Foley Network and my dad's brain cancer treatment

People talk about sharing and online culture as something new. They like to think about how awesome it is or worry about it changing the way people interact. For me, it's just more of the same story. As a toddler I went along with my mom as she advocated women's rights and rape legislation after my Aunt Mary was killed in St. Paul. I moved with my family as she transitioned to jobs in journalism in Kansas, Philadelphia, and here in Madison. Here she led a great editorial team. This year they were finalists for the Pulitzer prize. When my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer, my mom created an online network and wrote a blog about it.

It still makes me wonder, though, and think about what will stay the same.

This is a technique that you can have great use of. It creates a "newspaperlook", in other words the image will be built up on small black dots on a white background so it looks like it is printed in a newspaper.

If you have tried the popdots tutorial you will probably figure out the concept of this technique. If you haven´t you will learn a great way to use Photoshops Color Halftone filter.

Lets get started ! The image I will use as example in this tutorial.

Choose Image->Mode->Grayscale. If you have to choosewhether you wish to flatten the image or not choose to flatten it. Lets give it a bit more contrast. Choose Image->Adjust->Brightness/Contrast and drag the contrast slider to the right to somewhere around +20.
Now pick the Color Halftone filter, Filter->Pixelate->Color/Halftone. There is a problem here, The minimum amount for Max. Radius is pretty high. So set Max. Radius to 4 ( the minimum ).
Well, that makes us done ! If you want smaller dots however do like this: Make the image larger, say 200% and apply the Color Halftone filter with the same settings and the then shrink the image back to it´s original size. You may think that that result will look better.

http://www.rollingstone.com/blogs/caprilounge/2008/05/live-blogging-new-kids-on-the.php

Live Blogging New Kids On the Block's Visit to Rolling Stone

May 16, 2008 3:55 PM

Now here in the Rolling Stone office: New Kids on the Block!! Everyone’s here: Donnie, Jordan, Danny, Joey, and the other guy! Like, OMG, best ever, right!!

We’re turning to our correspondent who will live blog the event here in the RS offices:

12:10 PM: NKOTB arrives here in the RS conference room. Several female staffers mob the guys and pull off Donnie’s baseball cap, revealing a…pet rat named Barnaby

12:20 PM: Joey says his three favorite things are cars, pasta, and long, slow kisses. Two girls faint.

12:28 PM: Donnie says he's just looking to settle down and raise a family with a woman who can be "sweet to my mother." Five girls faint.

12:31 PM: Jordan rescues a kitten that has been lodged in a heating vent above the conference room. Nine girls faint.

12:35 PM: A bored Danny bench presses the entire staff of US Weekly. Men’s Journal offers him a cover on the spot.

12:45 PM: Donnie reveals that on their next record, NKOTB will be working with Jon Brion and Brian Eno.

12:47 PM: Donnie says he was lying.

12:49 PM: Joey is asked what his desert island album would be. He says it would be an album of songs written by an 8-year-old girl who passed away just after recording the record. Fourteen girls faint.

12:52 PM: Danny punches someone in the head for a laugh. That girl faints.

12:54 PM: Joey says he was just kidding about the dead 8-year-old girl’s album. He’d just bring The Chronic by Dr. Dre.

12:56 PM: Jordan adopts a puppy.

12:58 PM: A girl gives Donnie a wreath she made out of her hair and dried tears. Donnie says, "I already got too many of these."

12:59 PM: Jordan’s puppy gives birth to puppies. Twenty girls faint.

1 PM: The boys leave with a medley of "Hangin' Tough," "Step by Step," and a cover of Dylan's "Isis."

More NKOTB on RS.com: • New Kids on the Block Speak Out on Upcoming Tour, Album • New Kids on the Block Return to “Today” for First Show in 15 Years

[Photo: Shahar Azran]
Posted by Jason Gay

The bit about Danny punching a fan made me laugh the hardest. Is that wrong??

"Oh Fuck" titelt de cover van het Amerikaanse financiële maandblad The Economist deze maand. Het had even goed op de cover van een Belgisch financieel boekje kunnen staan.

via

Ik hoop dat Lily behoorlijk betaald wordt voor haar werk en dat ze daardoor haar studies kan voortzetten en wie weet afsluiten met een doctoraat in de studie van fenomenen als hypocrisie en massa-hysterie. Wat bovendien ook nog maar eens bewijst dat sexy mensen niet per se idioten zijn! Tiens...

Lily Cole is een jonge en knappe Britse vrouw (20) die studeert aan Cambridge University en die om haar leven en studies te bekostigen af en toe modellenwerk verricht (nou ja). Onlangs kwam ze zo ook terecht in de catalogus van Marks & Spencer. Ze showde er winterjassen en bleek een zeer professioneel model .

Nu ze ook besliste om in te gaan op het verleidelijke en zeer lucratieve aanbod van Playboy en bijgevolg 'puitenbloot' in de oktober-editie van de Franse versie zal te bewonderen zijn, reageert conservatief Groot-Brittannië als door een wesp gestoken.

Het meisje maakte met haar fotograaf een shoot die doet denken aan de jaren '60 waarin ze poseert met haar roze teddybeer. Heel conservatief Engeland ligt op zijn kant wegens de zogenaamde 'pedofiele' sfeer in de pikante reportage.

Marks & Spencer woordvoerders reageerden veel nuchterder en stelden dat ze niet zinnens zijn de carrière van hun modellen te zullen boycotten omdat die verdienen aan hun looks, zij het dan in hun blootje.

Laten we niet hypocriet doen. 'Bloot' is - nog steeds - de meest natuurlijke staat, niet gevaarlijk, bijt niet en kan ook heel erg mooi zijn. Voilà. Uiteraard is dit niet bedoeld voor een 'jong' publiek, leg het magazine dus maar niet op je salontafel ... Een gezond mens kan ermee omgaan en hoeft niet te gaan gillen van verontwaardiging. Dat het jongens meer boeit dan meisjes heeft alleen te maken met het meer 'visueel' ingesteld zijn van mannen. En dat weten meisjes al heel erg lang.

Zolang de reportages maar een eerlijk en respectvol beeld geven van hoe mensen er in werkelijkheid uitzien en ons niet opzadelen met een totaal onnnatuurlijk imago, is het voor mij al goed. "It's all in the eye of the beholder", zeiden verstandige mensen al heel lang voor mij.

If a political endorsement should come from either broadcast or print media and be valued, it must come from an organization at the pinacle of general esteem.  An endorsement only carries the weight of the respect the endorser is generally given in a direct relationship of high public esteem and strong endorsement.

An endorsement from an organization, that has little esteem among the populace - circulation numbers are a good indicator of the level of esteem - carries little or negative weight.  An example might be the general commonly heard derisive nickname for the Arizona Daily Star, as it is routinely called the Red Star by citizens of Tucson - meaning left leaning like Pravda - only tells one side of the issue.

The New York Times is routinely named by pundits as a source or pundits extoll the editorials of the Times.  During the Republican primary a broadcast media type claimed that since Rudy Giuliani did not get the endorsement of the Times, his home town newspaper, he must not be viable.  Well, the New York Times is third in circulation in Greater New York, behind the New York Daily News and the New York Post - not very esteemed is it.  Circulation may be misleading as a judge of how much esteem a paper has.  In those circulation numbers are people buying the paper for the sports, style section, and ads.  These elements are not a real barn burner for political esteem.  A month or so, after endorsing John McCain in the primary the Times ran a hit piece on him about some affair with a lobbyist.  The piece had no weight, no basis, no facts, and was even weak on innuendo.  So much for the public's esteem of the Times. 

Another example of little or no esteem is the Gwen Ifill debacle at PBS.  She was chosen to moderate the Vice-presidential debate.  Is she balanced?  She would like you to think so.  PBS would like you to think so.  She wrote a book called: The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.   The product description taken from the Amazon.Com web site states: "In the breakthrough, veteran journalist Gwen Ifill surveys the American political landscape, shedding new light on the impact of Barack Obama’s stunning presidential campaign and introducing the emerging young African American politicians forging a bold new path to political power...".

On the surface one could say that so, she wrote a book on Obama.  What this means is that when the book is released on inauguration day, if Obama has won, she will make lots and lots of money.  She has a vested financial interest in his victory.  Yet, she did not disclose this book or recuse herself from moderating a debate that can influence the election.  What does this do to the esteem of PBS and Gwen Ifill?

Some newspaper and broadcast media are legends in their own collective minds, and have not yet figured out that few who count (voters) are paying attention to them.   A newspaper has to earn the esteem with aggressive, balanced, and accurate reporting.  A paper that does not do everything it can to inform the public accurately and with balance is not earning esteem.  The same holds for broadcast media.

A candidate must earn esteem to be elected, that is the ultimate endorsement.  In today's media environment, candidates make a good decision in seeking endorsements only from organizations, media or not, that carry substantial public esteem, and in spending little effort seeking endorsements from organizations that carry little public esteem.

As far as being a meaningful player in the political process going forward, stick a fork in the media, because they are done!

In an attempt to compete with online media, newspapers have cut stories shorter, reduced jumps from the front page, put more unnecessary graphics on the front page and emphasized more "irrelevant" issues like celebrities. Essentially, newspapers have tried to copy the internet as much as possible, resulting in a newspaper with as little content and depth as online media and without all of the convenience the web has.

Instead of transforming newspapers into a sad parody of online media, the print media should focus on its advantages.  Print media journalists are generally better and more credible writers than their online brethren. They also have more resources and information gathering experience.  Trying to compete with the web on the web's terms completely nullifies what is good about print media journalists.

Newspapers should offer what online media does not.  For example, newspapers should do more multi-part feature stories, more local news (although that is already being done) and generally more depth to stories that are covered.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so please print media, stop flattering the web.

Het bewerken van beelden bestaat al sinds het bestaan van de beeldvorming . Zeker met de opkomst van de fotografie werden alle truuken uit de doos gehaald om ons bij de neus te nemen. Ongewenste politici verdwijnen, billen en buikje worden strakker, benen worden langer, blikken smachtender ...

"Photoshoppen" is het werkwoord in die sector. En dat er "gephotoshopped" wordt is zeker. Op de weblog onder de foto vind je een verzameling van oefeningen waarbij het vaak subtiel, soms brutaal fout ging. Lachen, gieren, brullen ...

Her take on blogs is especially interesting.  She seems to believe that the populist nature of blogs is something that the Founding Fathers never anticipated when they put freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the First Amendment.  Now that it has become so simple to publish your own blog, she reasons, the First Amendment has unworkable.

Here's the problem with that reasoning: when the First Amendment was written, newspapers were everywhere.  They were, in fact, the dominant form of public discourse.  Any yahoo with an opinion published a newspaper and sold it on the street corner for a penny.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, it reminded me of blogs, too.  What's more, the Founding Fathers clearly wanted to encourage this type of discourse as much as possible, which is why they wrote the First Amendment.  I could fill up a blog entry with quotes about free speech by the Founding Fathers, but here's a particularly good one from Thomas Jefferson:

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.

Of course, no attack on free speech would be complete without an appeal to the horrible effects of internet pornography.  Mary Belk's primary method of attack in the unsubstantiated anecdote about a "daughter of a friend."  According to Belk, this precious school girl was doing a school report on Louisa May Alcott innocently typed the words "Little Women" into an internet search engine and was accosted by child pornography.  Really?  Let's look at the holes in this claim more closely:

• I typed "Little Women" into Google with safe search turned off, and I got page after page of web pages about...Louisa May Alcott.  Not only did I not get any kiddie porn, I didn't even any porn sites within the first 20 pages (I know, I was surprised, too).
• I'm sure that there is child pornography on the internet, but I don't think that you can find it just by typing a couple of search words into Google.  The people who traffic in kiddie porn know that what they are doing is illegal.  They aren't going to make it easy for law enforcement to find them.
• Even if, by some quirk of the Mighty Google Fairy, somebody were to find child pornography on Google by doing an innocent search, I don't think that they aren't going to be able to right to the kiddie porn by just clicking on the link.  I don't think that those who traffic in that sort of stuff are likely to just give out free samples.  When you are selling a product that's likely to garner you some serious prison time, you probably ask for payment up front before you supply the goods.
• If nothing else, Belk's over-the-top, clutch-the-pearls telling of the story makes it unbelieveable.  It's not just that this little girl was unwittingly exposed to pornography, she was exposed to child pornography.  It's hard to imagine how this story could be any more melodramatic and still retain any credibility.

So, why am I wasting my time trashin this opinion piece in the Opelika-Auburn News?  The main reason is because this kind of half-baked, lazy analysis of First Amendment issues is not all that unusual, especially in the South.  Free speech scares people, and it really scares people who are opposed to change.

Next time you read an editorial about the "dangers of pornography" or see a television news piece about "anti-American activists," ask yourself a question:  Have they really presented any reasons for me to be worried about this, or are they just expecting me to be worried because it's different than what I'm used to?

I have a soft spot for the 10th Circuit.  I started practicing in Kansas, which is in the 10th, and I spent several years reading opinions that came out of Denver.  It was always my impression that the 10th Circuit, while not particularly famous for spectacular legal reasoning, has more than its fair share of common sense.  A decision that came out last week, however, has me rethinking my opinion.

The case is Doctor John's v. Roy City, Utah, and it involves a store that sold adult videos, books and novelties that opened near Salt Lake City in a town that, at the time, didn't have any specific statutes governing adult businesses.  After the store opened, however, the city enacted a special licensing process for SOBs and asked the store to file for a new business permit.

Doctor John's didn't like the idea of having to reapply for the more restrictve SOB license, so it sued in Federal Court, arguing that the statute was unconstitutionally vague and was an impermissible restriction on free speech.  In its decision, the 10th Circuit held that the restrictions on SOBs were "content neutral" and that the city had an "significant interest" that was served by the "narrowly tailored" licensing requirements imposed by the city.  (These are some great legal phrases.  If you want to see my explanations for them, you can read it here.)

I am disappointed with the 10th Circuit's take on all three issues.  First, I can't buy the idea that restrictions on businesses that sell sexually-explicit materials are "content neutral."  Yes, I know that virtually all of the circuits have held the same thing, but that doesn't make it logical.  The restriction does not apply to all books or all videos.  It only applies to books and videos with sexual content.  If a city passed a law restricting stores that sold religious books and videos, no one would call the law "content neutral." But since the content involved is sex, courts engage in the delightful fiction that the law doesn't discriminate based on content.

The "content neutral" prong is annoying, but not unexpected.  The 10th Circuit's ruling on the other two prongs, however is pretty alarming.  In order to justify its licensing restrictions, the city relied on the old saw that sexually oriented businesses have the "secondary effect" of "increasing crime in the area."  The big problem with this position, however, is that there are exactly zero studies that deal with the alleged secondary effects of "take away" stores that only sell items for use off the premises.

Doctor John's briefing pointed the absence of any studies on its type of store, but, in a shocking move, the 10th Circuit inexplicably ruled that the facial inapplicability of the city's study didn't matter.  Instead, the Court said, because the city had some studies about the alleged effects of SOBs (of other types, in other cities) it was up to Doctor John's to prove that the studies didn't apply.  So much for my theory that the 10th Circuit is a court that uses common sense.

First of all, we are talking about the First Amendment.  Since the city is seeking to restrict speech, it should be the city's burden to prove that the studies that it is relying on apply to Doctor John's.  Secondly, the "secondary effects" studies have always been based on the idea that SOBs attract antisocial men to the area and then induce them to commit crimes by whipping them into a sexual frenzy by displaying providing sexual entertainment.  Both sides admitted that Doctor John's did not provide on site entertainment, and Doctor John's presented evidence that almost half of its customers were women.  On its face, this evidence makes a pretty strong case that the studies don't apply to Doctor John's.

To understand the craziness of the 10th Circuit reasoning, let's take sex out of the equation.  Suppose that Blockbuster wants to open a store in a shopping center, but the city's zoning ordinances don't allow any "purveyors of motion picture entertainment" to be located in retail areas.  Blockbuster challenges the ordinance in court, and the city defends itself by pointing to studies showing that movie theatres cause traffic congestion and should be located away from retail areas.

No reasonable court would ever expect Blockbuster to "prove" that the movie theatre studies don't apply to its retail video rental stores.  But that is essentially what the 10th Circuit did to Doctor John's.

My last complaint about with the 10th Circuit's decision is that it assumes---without any support that I can find---that the proposed restrictions in the city's licensing requirements are narrowly tailored to address concerns about the secondary effects of adult businesses.  The licensing requirements, however, consist primarily of restrictions on operating hours and requirements that the owner and employees obtain licenses from the city.  Even if we assume---as the "studies" cited by the city claim---that the customers of SOBs are more likely to commit crimes in the area, licensing owners and employees would not have any effect on the actions of customers.  I don't see how a statute can be "narrowly tailored" when it doesn't even address the alleged secondary effect that it is based on.

Before I am too hard on the 10th Circuit, I have to add that the briefing in the trial court in this case was not stellar.  I logged onto Pacer (the Federal Courts' electronic filing system) and tried to follow the summary judgment filings in the case, and I eventually gave up.  It does not appear that Doctor John's ever filed an expert witness report (which would be a necessity in this case), and I counted at least three different motions for summary judgment (which is a lot for any case, and certainly a lot when you are already representing an unpopular client).  Bad briefing makes bad law, and judges aren't going to overlook sloppy lawyering when you represent an adult business.

If you've been advertising in local papers or other print media, maybe it's time to switch gears or rethink your marketing campaign. In today's down-turned economy, I always recommend placing coupons in your ads. I've had ample opportunity to experiment with the discounts on my offers. The best performers are monetary, not percentage or buy one / get one discounts. So try this wording on your next offer: "Get $10.00 off your next purchase of $50.00 or more." Believe it or not, this out performs "Save 20% on your next purchase." These are two actual examples of ads that I've run for our PostNet store. Even though the 20% offers the same buying power to the consumer, I think it's too abstract for the consumer to grasp. While the monetary deal, $10.00 off coupon actually forces the consumer to spend more money.

If your business is franchised, be sure to check your franchisee link off the main website for an ad builder link. More often than not franchise headquarters will have this implimented on the site. You'll be pleased with the variety and professional appearance of these ads. Ad builders are very intuitive and make customizing and managing your promotional materials a breeze.

Businesses that aren't governed by a franchise agreement should talk to a marketing pro if not seeing results from their in house advertising. Many forms of print media have art departments that can assist advertisers with their designs. I can't stress enough, if your ads don't convey professionalism they probably won't work. Redesigning your ad campaigns with an advertising agency is always money well spent.

-- Dee / www.postnet-fl.com