the Jindal bandwagon continue

Looks like the buzz is continuing to build. It will be interesting to see if Jindal is half as effective as Obama in leveraging momentum a full four years out?

Refreshing break from situational ethics

Being at business school, it's nice to get a dispatch from a place where situational ethics is not the standard - professional golf. Last week, golfer J.P. Hayes, playing for a spot on the 2009 PGA tour, realized after a round that he had inadvertently hit two shots with the a non-tour-approved ball.

"Hayes had a choice: He could have said nothing and kept playing, with no one aware of his mistake. Or he could turn himself in and let his mistake cost him a 2009 PGA Tour card. He chose the latter. "

Hurray for taking the tough choice, even when the error was inadvertent and arguably did not impact the results. Not wanting to let moral certitude interlope too long in today's world, 50.2% of of 55,000 polled readers state they would not have done the same thing. More here.

Music Industry Thriving

From The Big Picture:

Turns out it's only the record companies that are tanking - artists and consumers are doing fairly well thank you. This lines up with personal experience. I've bought more music, not less, since the dawn of digital media. Services like Rhapsody, Pandora and iTunes have exposed me to a myriad of artists I never would have discovered previously.

US Publishers - About To Fall off a Cliff

It's not often you get to announce to an entire industry that it is about to collapse. That's what my Managing Turnarounds professor, James Shein got to do last week at an American Press International's summit. In a room full of the who's who in the US Newspaper Industry, Shein provided the execs a nine hour overview of the class I'm currently in, with the conclusion: you are all about to fall off a cliff.

Shein related a few excerpts to our class this week. A few shocking statistics included: of the publicly traded newspapers and publishers in the room:

• All but one had a return on assets below their cost of capital (e.g., they generate negative returns to investors on a risk adjusted basis)
• All but one had an Altman Z-Score below 1.8. The Altman Z-Score is a metric that takes a few financial return indicators and predicts the likelihood that a company is in risk of declaring bankruptcy. Over two decades, it has proven to have a high level of efficacy. Score above 3 are good, scores between 1.8 and 3 are "troubled" and scores below 1.8 indicates significant distress (e.g., this is when creditors begin tightening their terms).
  

Again, this included participants from the New York Times, Washington Times, Hearst Newspapers, E.W.Scripps and Gannett. Rest of the story here.

The trade-offs of tenure in public education

The NY Times offers a compelling profile on Michelle Rhee's efforts to transform the DC school system. She's now offering dramatic pay increases to teachers willing to forgo tenure - and being fought every step of the way by the United Federation of Teachers.

The rationale for tenure in public education does make sense, as articulated by Dr. Jeffrey Mirel from the University of Michigan:

“And the historical rationale remains good,” Dr. Mirel said, pointing to the case of a renowned high school biology teacher in Kansas who was forced to retire nine years ago because he refused to teach creationism.

“Without tenure,” Dr. Mirel said, “teachers can still face arbitrary firing because of religious views, or simply because of the highly politicized nature of American society.”

There clearly is a public value to having tenure. But what Dr. Mirel fails to do is to balance that against the potential costs of tenure on the quality of public education. Ms. Rhee would argue (and I'll readily agree) that the benefits of tenure are far outweighed by the costs.

Jindal 2012

I know I'm not the first to suggest it, but how about Bobby Jindal for the Republican nomination in 2012? I can imagine him not wanting to run if Obama has a good first term so as to keep his options open for a go at it later, but who knows. He's smart, was previously mentioned by numerous people as a potential VP pick (which he wisely avoided), and could be in the early stages of building a name for himself as an innovator willing to take on tough problems, as it appears he is trying to do in his home state of Louisiana with health care. And, I might add, he's a fellow McKinsey alumnus. =)

Jindal 2012? Jindal 2012!

This explains a lot

From bastion of conservatism, Prof. Jeffrey Heart: "As if by an intrinsic law, when the free market becomes a kind of utopianism it maximizes ordinary human imperfection--here, greed, short views and the resulting barbarism." More here.

The dreams of a "Public Servant"?

It's sad that most of the truly capable people I know would never pursue public service - at least in elected form. The requirements to get elected are simply demeaning (e.g., campaigning in 5 second sound bites) and the "rewards" many in politics seem to covet, and are willing to fight tooth and nail for, are meaningless. Here's Mark Foley on the rewards of public service, from his first post-scandal interview:

"In public life, you dream of the day they'll name a hospital after you, or a bridge or a post office"

Really?!? That's the lifelong dream of a public servant?

Palin as the future of feminism?

Camile Paglia remains a fierce advocate for Palin. A contrarian opinion that gave me pause as a someone who would like nothing more than for Palin to fade into the background. Here's the thought-provoking piece:

"I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World."