This poor blog has been long ignored.

I thought about just taking it down, but then it would look like I’m hiding something. I don’t have anything to hide, and the only thing I’m really embarrassed about is how little I have written here.

But now I’m running for the U.S. House of Representatives, so all the attention, properly, will be on that site:

ScottYates.com

Be sure to check that out, or follow me on the Twitter.

Politics really can be different, but only if we all do all we can to make it different. That's what my race is all about.

As close readers of this blog know, I spend just about all my time on two hard things: My day job is fixing the disinformation crisis and my hobby is fixing Daylight Saving Time.

Every once in a while they coincide.

When I’m working on Daylight Saving Time I work with a politicians who are all over the map. Right here in Colorado the two biggest names in fixing DST are about as opposite as they could be politically. In fact, they are so far out there that they are a little bit out there within their own parties. But they both believe in fixing it so that the government-controlled clock isn’t killing people.

My approach to dealing with politicians who I may or may not agree with is to never talk about anything other than Daylight Saving Time. That approach has served me well, and we’ve gone from zero states with any kind of bill passed to 15 states, and we have gone from zero federal interest to two bills with lots of bipartisan support.

I would continue to work that way, but after the attack on the Capitol on 1/6, I just can’t.

But what should I do? What is the right response?

I’ve sincerely struggled with this, and had some long talks with my family about it.

Then because of my day job, I saw an answer from one of my professors from a long time ago when I was in what was then called the "J-school" at NYU: 

"Countering the big lie." https://t.co/MT9t4a7UZl

This is amazing. Public radio station @witfnews in Harrisburg, PA, recognizing "these are not normal times," takes a stronger stand for truth and accountability. Here is the spirit we need after January 6. Read their statement.

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 29, 2021

I saw that, and thought it was great.

My first reaction that made it on to the Twitter was that it didn’t go far enough.

I think this is great, but they could also refuse to cover any of those politicians, except in the case of them either apologizing, or taking other authoritarian actions. All other activities get ignored. Why give any air to those who undermine democracy?

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) January 29, 2021

Someone from the station thoughtfully replied:

Our newsroom discussed several ideas for how to adjust our coverage, and we determined ignoring these lawmakers would hamper our ability to report the news. Instead we settled on offering context.

— WITF news (@witfnews) January 29, 2021

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the people at this public broadcaster were right. (Thinking while Tweeting doesn’t always lead to the best result.)

So, in that spirit, I’m going to do the same thing. I’ll keep interacting with politicians who sought to undermine democracy, but every time I write about them, I’ll put an asterisk next to their name, and say what they did, and I’ll link to this post.

I know that what happens on my #LockTheClock blog may not be the most important vehicle for defending democracy, but I figure we all need to do our part, and this is what I’m doing.

So, thanks WITF. If nobody else has called it the WITF Rule, well, allow me to be the first, and I hope that many other publishers will follow your lead.

Two years ago I wrote a 2018 guide to voting in Colorado for friends and family.

This time I decided to do it again. It’s not so much that I think I'll persuade anyone, it just might be handy, and it's a way for me to organize my own thoughts.

There are plenty of handy voting guides by really great journalists, but they are all so objective. I don’t want a guide with a lot of pros and cons, I just want the recommendations with maybe a bit of background. So, that’s what I have created here.

The ballot is looooong and full of traps, so let's get to it:

President

When Trump was first running, I knew I needed to be against him. I knew he was a film flam man, something I learned in my days at Spy Magazine, but the man wasn’t the reason that I needed to oppose him.

The thing that convinced me to oppose him wasn't him, it was us.

In February of 2016, way before it was a sure thing that he would get the nomination, a bunch of white Catholic school kids taunted Hispanic Catholic school kids by chanting “Build a wall!”

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in us.

Even early on we could see that Trump would incite whomever he needed to in order to make a buck. And too many of us were way too easy to nudge over into violence, racism, misogyny and hatred.

I never would have imagined that Trump would stand on a debate stage and tell domestic terrorists to “Stand By” but that speaks to about our collective failure to imagine how bad things can get.

How much worse can things get? Let’s not find out. Vote Trump out, and don’t be cute about it voting for some third party. Not this year. Vote for Biden. Seriously.

Side note:

It is WAY too easy to get on the ballot to run for president in Colorado. Yes, Republican apparatchiks engineered Kanye West onto the ballot for reasons that would make Machiavelli squirm.

But I was fascinated by all the other names and parties. Is there really a Prohibition Party? Yes, and it is actually the oldest third-party currently active in the U.S. In addition to all the other reasons to not to support this, I would not have made it this far in 2020 without some pretty serious alcohol consumption.

Also, we have a candidate by the name of Princess Khadijah Maryam Jacob-Fambro? And what would appear to be her VP pick (and father?) Khadijah Maryam Jacob Sr.? They are only on the ballot in four states. How is it Colorado makes it so easy?

But... one potential silver lining: My son keeps telling me that we should use ranked choice voting. If we had that I could rank Trump as 21st out of 21 candidates. Or I could write my dog in, and rank Trump 22nd out of 21.

U.S. Senate, U.S. House, State Board of Education, etc.

You don’t need me to tell you how to vote on these. Just be sure to vote.

RTD Director District A

Look, this is a long ballot, we gotta make decisions quickly, and move on. The Denver Post sent questionnaires to the three candidates, and only one answered all the questions. Tim Nelson gets my vote.

Judges

Two years ago I remember finding one that just barely got a recommendation from the poo-bahs that give out recommendations, and I urged a no vote.

This time there’s one judge that seemed to just squeak by, but I think we should vote for him. One of the big complaints about Barry A. Schwartz is that he has a “bias in favor of parties who represent themselves.” So... Lemme see if I got this straight: A bunch of lawyers say that they don’t like a judge because he is generous with people who don’t use a lawyer? 

That makes me a yes on Barry Schwartz, along with all the other judges on my ballot in Denver.

Amendment B, Repeal Gallagher

This is one that has had so much written about it. I have read a lot of the coverage, and at the end of the day I am a yes on B vote.

It does not give me joy, as Dennis Gallagher is a prince of a man, and I have all the respect in the world for him.

But at the end of the day we live in a representative democracy, and I think our elected officials should be making the decisions, not a maze of constitutional amendments.

Amendment C, Charitable Gaming

My antenna were all the way up for this one. Along with the incomparable Jon Anderson, I ran an effort to stop big gambling from expanding in Colorado. We were outspent something like $9,000,000 to $15. We lost, but not by much considering how radically we were outspent.

This one “modernizes” the law around Bingo. That sounds like an oxymoron to me. Are they also going to modernize the law regarding using leeches to cure disease?

We now have legal gambling 24/7, and legal sports betting. The Bingo lobby (there’s a lobby for everything) says they need this change to keep up.

Maybe they do, but I don’t care. If nonprofits are relying on Bingo money to stay afloat, maybe their time has come.

This will probably win, so whatever, but I’m voting NO on C.

Amendment 76 - Citizenship To Vote

The only reason this is on the ballot is because of two people, one of whom is the co-chair of Women for Trump 2020. The other is her husband. So, not a great start.

Does the idea have merit?

No.

The language makes it impossible for local jurisdictions to change current voting rules. One idea floating around out there is that 16- and 17-year-olds should get to vote on school board members. I've heard worse ideas. That becomes impossible if this passes.

And as the title implies -- and we can figure out from the sponsors -- this is really an anti-immigrant shell game.

Hard pass. Vote No on Amendment 76.

Amendment 77, Local Voter Approval of Bet Limits

See above for my history with fighting Big Gambling. I’m a hard “No” on this one from the start.

What really irks me is the wrapping of Local Control like a bow on the initiative.

The three mountain towns that have gambling have been decimated. This was originally sold as a way to inject a little fun into the mom-and-pop businesses in these historic towns. Well, all the small businesses have been bulldozed. The only thing left are wage-earners working for Las Vegas mega-corporations.

Calling this local control is like saying that the peacocks should run the zoo. That sounds great for the peacocks, but not so great for people, or for the other animals.

Really, if I wasn’t so busy I would be out there fighting this one, but as it is I am just going to say that other than the presidential election, this may be the most consequential item on the Colorado ballot.

For all that is good and just... please Vote No on Amendment 77.

Proposition EE - Taxes on Nicotine

Really, you had me at the title.

Is the money going to a good cause? Pre-school. Yes, that’s great. If you dumped the money in a hole, I’d probably still vote yes.

I actually saw one of the ads by the tobacco lobby urging a no vote. The ad essentially said that this was just a tax increase, and then in dark tones said that it was crafted behind closed doors and that in the room were lobbyists from Big Tobacco.

Imagine the gall it would take to try to use Big Bad Tobacco as a reason to vote... in the way that Big Tobacco wants you to vote.

Anyway, this isn’t even a close call: Vote Yes on EE.

Proposition 113 - Electoral College

I gotta admit, I was a bit torn on this. We’ve had the electoral college for a long time, and I don’t like fiddling with things that have been around since the founding days without a good reason.

Also, I like the idea of the smaller states getting a little bit of a boost.

But then two things persuaded me to go the other way.

First is the history. There is no other way to read it: The electoral college was created as an appeasement to the states where slavery was legal. If the northern states had not capitulated on this, think of how much different history might have been.

Second is Trump’s strutting with the electoral college map from 2016. I get that small states need power, but people have power. Not land. People.

Hard to get more fundamental than the notion that one person gets one vote. Vote Yes on Prop 113.

Proposition 114 - Gray Wolves

Photo by Thomas Bonometti on Unsplash

This one is going to thoroughly annoy a lot of people I once liked and respected when I worked for the Department of Natural Resources under Gov. Owens, but I’m voting yes here.

Sorry if this makes things harder for ranchers and hunters, but I don’t think it actually will. The data from states like Montana that have Gray Wolf populations show that ranchers and outfitters do just fine.

I do not like that we have to vote on crap like this. I wish the people on the various commissions and in the legislature would stop being so pig-headed and actually reach compromises so that activists don’t feel a need to go to the ballot. But they didn’t, so here we are.

I am a proud West Slope native, and it pains me to do anything that could be perceived to be anti-rural. But I think that is all that it is: perception. I am voting yes on prop 114.

Proposition 115, Late-term abortion

Did you know that abortions went down during Obama’s time in office? It’s true. They also went down before him, and they’ve been going down since.

Science, medicine and public health are all moving in a direction that abortion is more rare than it has been in decades.

And public opinion on the topic of banning abortion is also steadily dropping.

So, this one is going to lose, but there’s nothing I could say here that will sway anyone one way or the other, so I’ll just say that I will proudly be voting for devout Catholic Joe Biden and I will be voting no on Prop 115.

Proposition 116 - Income Tax Reduction

FREE MONEY!!! I'm voting yes, right?

Ummmm....

A bunch of conservatives are for this, and Gov. Jared Polis is kinda sorta for it.

Some liberals are against it. Cutting your nose to spite your face, etc.

My take: Why the heck is this on the ballot?!?!?!? Didn’t we elect people to do this?

Why yes, yes we did. They should do the legislating, and we here at home should elect people to do that. For that reason alone, I’m a no vote on Prop 116.

Proposition 117 - State Enterprises

Again here: This is the opposite of representative democracy. This one says that we should take a tool out of the hands of legislators and give it to the voters. Just think, the ballot could be even longer and more complicated!!!

No. No way. Hard pass. Vote No on Prop 117.

Proposition 118 - Paid Family and Medical Leave

I started three businesses in Colorado. One of the hardest things to do is attract and retain great employees. Sometimes to do that we compete with companies in what we might call the costal elites, states like California, Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey, etc.

All those states have a paid family and medical leave. If we want to compete, we need this program.

Again, lawmakers should have just done this, and not forced us, the voters, to do it. That almost tipped me to being a no vote. But in the end what won the day was the need for us to be competitive combined with the basic humanity of figuring out a system where human beings can take paid time off for legitimate family or medical reasons.

I am voting yes on Prop 118

Denver issues

These will only be of interest for my fellow citizens of the City and County, but here goes:

2A - Climate Funding

Look, I have made, as one friend called it, a “slide” to the left. The Trump era has absolutely pushed me in a more liberal direction.

But I have limits. Money for climate change? I’m not opposed right out of the box, but when it is just for Denver (not the suburbs where, frankly, we have a lot more work to do) and when it is poorly defined (what exactly is a “climate justice program”?) then it is a lot harder to convince me.

But when it is a sales tax, a tax that falls mostly on those who can least afford it, sorry, but you lost me. 

I'm a NO vote on 2A.

2B - Homelessness

Like the last one, this starts out with a strike against it because it is a sales tax, putting the burden on the poorest taxpayers. I suppose that is ameliorated to some degree by the fact that a lot of people from the suburbs come to Denver to shop, or they did before Covid and I hope they will again.

This also bothers me that we have to vote on it. It seems like the kind of thing that our elected officials should just be doing.

But all that said, a big reason for homelessness is... not enough homes. The suburbs grow endlessly out, and the amount of housing in the city just can’t keep up. Young people move to the city, which is great, but they take up housing, and drive prices up. That's generally a good thing, but it leaves those on the margins squeezed out.

Unlike the 2A, the money spent goes to something super specific: More housing. You want fewer people to experience homelessness? Make more homes. 

So I will be voting Yes on 2B (or not to be.)

2C - Professional Services

Thank The Maker for good journalists. This write-up was excellent, and shows that this is not what it appears to be (a way to enrich consultants) but is in fact a way to have another check between Denver's executive and legislative branches.

Silly that it needs a vote of the people, but here we are. Yes on 2C.

2D - DOTI Advisory Board

There are a shocking number of boards and commissions in local and state government. Do we really need another?

Well, in this case, I suppose so. Not sure why we have to vote on a board for the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, DOTI, when the city had the power to create DOTI. You have the power to make a department, but not the power to make an advisory board for the department?

(And doesn't DOTI sound, I dunno, a bit dotty?)

Yes on 2D, and don’t ask me to be on the board unless you want me ranting about better bike lanes at every single meeting.

2E - Council Approve Mayoral Appointments

Just reading the title of this you can figure exactly what is going on. The mayor and the council are having issues. (It sounds funnier if you pronounce it like KISS-yous.)

The council is for this. The mayor is against it.

The problem is that even if you like one side or the other better at the moment, this thing is going into the city charter, and then we’ll be stuck with it.

It’s a stressful year, everyone. How about if you just all go sit and watch Terms of Endearment or Field of Dreams or some other tearjerker movie, have a good cry, and hug it out.

Until then, I’m voting no on 2E.

2F - Council Meetings

Ahh, the classic “Outdated language” thing we have to fix every four years.

This time it’s about the way meetings are held. Fine, fix it.

And as a bonus, they are amending the language so the next time someone finds some “outdated language” they can fix it themselves and not put it on the ballot. Hallelujah!

Yes on 2F

2G - Council Budgeting Authority

Sorry.

This one looks boring, but it turns out that it is part II of the feud between the mayor and the council.

Really, time for you people to work your crap out, and not try to have the voters fix your contretemps.

Vote no on 2G.

2H - Municipal Broadband

Typically we see this kind of thing in small towns with crappy or no internet. Denver is neither. We have two providers that suck in some typical ways, but are basically fine. They also both have low-income solutions so people can get broadband at home for $10/month.

2H doesn’t actually create city broadband as a service, it just makes it possible that they can come back on some future ballot and create one. Oh, joy.

Until then, OK. Whatever. Jeesh. We’re all exhausted here. Yes on 2H.

2I - Clerk's Appointees

For the love of all that is holy, make this stop!

Are you kidding me? We really need to vote on this? 

Apparently so, and maybe it is a good thing if anyone still has enough energy to vote on this. Turns out the current clerk is on something of a power grab, and wants the head of elections working for him. A former head of elections thinks that is a bad idea.

I don’t know who is right, but given that the last few elections in Denver have gone pretty well, I think we should just leave things the same. No on 2I.

2J - Pit Bulls

Sorry. I can’t even...

Looks like the current law works fine. Council could have fixed this if there was something really broken, and didn’t. If the pit bull people can’t convince the council, they can’t convince me, either. No on 2J.

4A and 4B - Denver Public Schools Mill Levy

Ahhh, one ballot item that feels familiar: A school bond issue.

This is going to pass no matter what I say, Denver voters love them some school bond issues.

Back before Covid I would volunteer once a week in the Newcomers class, and soak up as much of the vibe as I could. I'm also a DPS parent.

I know that volumes get written about schools every day, and there's not much interesting that I could add, but I will say that in general DPS is a pretty well-run operation tackling incomprehensibly difficult challenges. If they say this is what they need, fine. Yes on 4A and 4B.

It is an absolute privilege to be able to vote in free and fair elections. In Denver, it is also a stinking lot of work. Hope this made it a little easier for you.

My last plea for a smart woman to help all Americans in this time of crisis has gone—thus far—unanswered. 

But I march on, undeterred, with another plea.

Where is Rachel Maddow?

I don't know exactly where she is, but I know she is somewhere safe, and she certainly looks healthy.

That’s not my question.

What I am wondering is where the real Rachel Maddow is.

You see, many times over the last few years when I just couldn’t deal with the reality of the day, I would watch her show.

I would watch it not because I agreed with her politics. Nor would I watch because I thought I would learn some headline of the day that I hadn’t heard a bunch of times before.

No... I would watch her because I needed to know that I wasn’t alone.

I needed to hear it from another human being that things going on in the world were so crazy that, well, that I was not the only one who thought it was crazy.

It’s one thing to just give the headlines of what the craziness is. It’s another thing entirely to stand back and make a human connection to understand the insanity of it all.

For a long time, I didn’t know how she did it. I knew she was good at starting with bits of history, and weaving those bits into the current narrative. I knew she was better than anyone at just having a conversation with us, the viewers, rather than talking to other talking heads.

(In that way, she reminds me Vin Scully, perhaps the greatest radio announcer of all time. While sportsball announcers always—always—work in at least pairs, and often in even larger groups, Scully worked alone. He said that what he wanted was a conversation with the listener. We felt that, and that was a huge part of the reason Scully was so beloved. With everyone else, we are observers. With Scully, we were participants in the conversation.)

So, I had those observations, but I wasn’t alone in thinking Rachel Maddow was great. But what really made her different?

I never did figure it out, but my son did.

(Do the Germans have a word for that feeling a parent has when an offspring figures out something before you do, some mixture of pride and wonder and... annoyance?)

What did he figure out?

Well, for that you need a bit more back story.

Here in isolation, our family started a little book club. (My wife’s idea, nothing but admiration for this idea.)

We all read something, and then talk about it. My contribution of reading material was Tom Wolfe's introductory chapters in The New Journalism.

For those of you cursed with a life where you haven’t read that, it is an amazing look at the state of journalism from the 1960s through to when it was published in 1973. It still reads as fresh and vibrant today as I imagine it did at the time.

One of the main thrusts of the text is the explication around the notion that some journalists adopted the tools and techniques of the novel writer, and used it for feature stories. That is, working journalists would do reporting in the way it has always been done, but instead of writing “news” with the "most important" fact at the top and then supporting material after that, the writing would be done using a number of techniques that had come down from Balzac to Dickens, and right through to Steinbeck and other renowned novelists.

Wolfe even lays out exactly what those tools and techniques are.

• Scene by scene construction
• Realistic dialogue
• The third-person point of view
• Status details

My son pointed out that he has seen all four of those elements in Rachel’s opening segments.

• She often starts out (or did, before Covid) with an elaborate description of a scene. It might be the room where the foreign minister is holding a hearing, or the committee room during the Watergate era. Then she jumps from one scene to another, one that is part of the news of the day.
  
  
• One of her favorite things to do is read at length transcripts from court hearings. Anyone in TV would tell you that this is not “Good TV” to just have a person reading text that is also on the screen. Sometimes there’s a bad courtroom artist sketch, but that’s it. And still, it is riveting.
  
  
• Rachel quite often will use a third-person point of view, but not when she is interviewing people. She will use other evidence of a person’s internal monologue, gleaned from interviews or court transcripts. For instance she could talk at length about Michael Cohen, laying out exactly how he felt about his motivations in the context of acts he was doing at the behest of the President because he described them so vividly. To have those descriptions in a vacuum fall flat, but to have them placed in the scene of having conversations with President Trump about his relationship with adult film stars... That’s a literary technique that sets tenterhooks into anybody who is passing by a television.
  
  
• And even Wolfe pointed out that status details are little understood in the abstract, but we all know them when we see them. And Rachel is a master at getting just the right little details and inserting them in her descriptions. I think Wolfe himself would have smiled watching her talk about how much money he spent on his suits, and really would have admired this segment, No Suit for you!:

That is Rachel Maddow.

That is the person who is now missing.

Her shows over the last few weeks are probably better than most of the rest of cable news. I don’t know, I don’t watch a lot of it.

But I know I haven’t been able to watch Rachel most nights the way I once did. She’s just giving me facts.

(That’s to be commended, the giving of facts. If only we had a president interested in that instead of making a buck off this crisis.)

Why is she unable to be more like herself in delivering the show? I don’t know. Maybe she’s just scared.

Just like the rest of us.

She is human.

But this is my message to you, Rachel.

Remember back to the day after the election in 2016. Everyone was in full freak out. The world was completely turned upside down.

And yet, you went deep inside yourself, and deep into a little bit of history, and you came up with a monologue that helped me so much. I am certain I was not alone.

Now, every other newscast that day in the world used the name “Donald Trump” in the first sentence of the newscast. 

You went the other way. I watched it again just now. I remember sitting in a hotel room in Boston watching that thinking Where is she going? What is she doing?

And when she got to her main point, I felt like I could take a deep breath for the first time in 24 hours.

Night after night since being quarantined, I have tuned in hoping to get a story... a story that has some novelistic characteristics. I want and need a story that will help me make sense of the world when nothing makes sense.

There’s lots of great journalism being done. There are plenty of people being very creative and giving us distractions. All of that is great.

But we need one other thing. We need Rachel to be Rachel.

So, Rachel, if you are reading this... (And anyone else who is stuck doing work that they know isn’t really their best work because they are feeling all the feels that go along with this mess) ...

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Say to yourself: I’ve got this.

And then go out there and do the kind of thing you are capable of.

I write this in the midst of the COVID-19 social distancing era. If you are reading this generations from now, or even in a couple of weeks, put yourself in the intensity of the mood at the moment.

• A virus more intense than the flu of 1918 that killed huge swaths of the world.
• An economic upheaval that looks something like 1987 and 2008 combined.
• An impeached president making things worse by the hour.

Amid all that, and the social isolation that we are all supposed to be doing to #FlattenTheCurve, well, we need some comic relief.

But where are our comics?

Nowhere to be seen.

Hi Folks. We have a new show tonight w no audience, but we cancelled next week’s shows before our scheduled break. I wish I could stay on stage to share this uncertain moment w you, but I don’t do this show alone, and I have to do what’s best for my staff. Hope to be back soon.

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) March 13, 2020

I get it about the staff, but this is freaking 2020. The writers could meet by video chat. The camera on one of Stephen's kids phones makes video in HD.

But he won't do it. Watching him without an audience was funny, but kind of cringy and awkward.

I get it that doing it without an audience is a different thing, but it doesn't make it impossible.

I understand it, but I do not understand it. How psychologically askew is Stephen and all of the others? How is it that without the immediate affirmation that comes from the audience, he becomes... mute?

Sure, there’s clearly some level of mild psychosis needed for all comedians. Stephen and Conan get into that in a hilarious-while-chilling way on Conan's podcast. 

So, what is the answer?

Well, just as I agree with those who say that the world would be in much better shape if Elizabeth Warren were just running things right now, I think we would all be in better shape comfort-wise if some women would take over in comedy.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, for example, went from a world of audience-included sketch comedy on SNL to perhaps the two funniest no-laugh-track shows of all time, 30 Rock and Parks & Rec.

Perhaps the two of them can figure out a way to come on the interwebs every night for 10 minutes or so. Really, just the two of them talking each a night about the events of the day would be so helpful for me. I am quite sure I am not alone in this.

Tina, you helped your nation twice before. The first time was when you laid the Sarah Palin insanity bare, and the second was when you introduced the word sheetcaking into the vernacular of the day.

I am now asking you, on behalf of a desperate country, call up your pal Amy every night on video chat, and stream the whole conversation so we can have the catharsis that we need so much.

Thank you in advance,

-Scott Yates 

P.S. I am not kidding. Start this right now. Thank you.

I was raised by a Democrat, my mom, and she was raised by Democrats, including her dad who was a proud union member.

But I somehow rebelled, and became a Republican. I was proud and honored to work for Republican Bill Owens here in Colorado.

Right now we have pretty great schools all over Colorado, in part because we have “schools of choice.” Any student can go to any public school, so now the schools work hard to be great so that they can attract and retain students. That was a Republican idea that Owens made happen.

I was motivated by the ideals of the GOP: Free people. Free markets. Rule of law. A government as small as it can be to be effective.

I still believe in all that. The party of Trump just does not. The federal government is bloating with borrowed money. The rule of law is in tatters. Protectionism and government control of markets through subsidies has run amok. 

And people are not more free any meaningful way. Especially the children that Donald Trump's government is separating from their families and holding in cages.

Clearly, as a conservative, my only choice is to vote not only for a Democrat, but for the first time in my life vote a straight Democratic ticket. 

But which Democrat at the top?

My first hope was Kamala Harris, and I actually bet £10 on her when I was in London, where such betting is legal. (I also wanted to bet £10 on Hickenlooper, but the odds were so high that the machine would only let me bet £5.) But then Kamala hired a campaign manager AND her sister to run her campaign. Classic rookie mistake, and the kind of thing that shows she’s not really ready.

Bernie? Sorry, but in 2016 we in the U.S. failed to see that the Brexit election was a warning about what could happen here. Bernie is our version of Jeremy Corbyn, and going with him will be a clear sign that we did NOT learn anything. Even Bernie Bros were comparing Sanders to Corbyn before the last election in England. Now everyone else should.

Also, a 78-year-old guy who had a heart attack and won't release his medical history? If you need to pass a physical to be in a movie...

Mayor Pete? Smart guy, but like so many of his fellow Millennials, he’s on the job 10 minutes and suddenly thinks he should be the CEO. I’m not opposed to some youthful energy, but, well, he could run for president in 2024, 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040, 2044, 2048, 2052, 2056 and 2060, and still be younger than Bernie Sanders in every one of those races. Maybe Secretary of State? Can you imagine him flying into a country where homosexuality is still against the law? And then he’ll speak their language? That will be fun.

Biden. Sorry, Joe. You served your country well, and you’ve suffered unimaginable loss. That perhaps explains the blind spot you have about your own still-living son. Even if it’s not the conspiracy theory stuff that Republicans want to say that it is, it is the kind of thing that will dog you every day of the campaign, and just turn off voters. Time to pass the torch.

Bloomberg. Warren’s evisceration of you in your first debate was something you just don't bounce back from. The only way Democrats win is with women showing up in huge numbers. If the choice is between two egomaniacal New York businessmen with long histories of womanizing, I wouldn’t blame anyone for just sitting the election out.

Tulsi? Sorry, I prefer candidates who are at least probably not a Putin sock puppet.

Amy. No real problem with her, but in balance I'm going with Warren.

What did it for me was this tweet:

I felt so proud and emotional voting for @ewarren today. 13 yrs ago, I emailed her asking to join her empirical methods class. I was a transfer and was told that some professors wouldn't give me the time of day. She was kind, encouraging, and responded almost immediately.

— Dalié Jiménez (@daliejimenez) February 27, 2020

What really sealed it for me was the fourth tweet in that thread:

Over the years, @ewarren remembered that I wanted to be an academic and checked on me with gentle reminders/encouragement to finish my articles. I'm not gonna lie, I finally submitted my first paper because she and @katieporteroc kept asking me about it.

— Dalié Jiménez (@daliejimenez) February 27, 2020

At that point in their lives, Warren was a big shot. She had come up with the idea for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, convinced a president to enact it, and was on her way to becoming a U.S. Senator. Still, she took the time to nudge a former student to keep after it.

She just sounds like the hardest working person in the race, and maybe in any race, ever.

I remember first being impressed with her when she had the idea for the CFPB, but then wouldn’t let her ego get in the way of its creation. She couldn’t get confirmed by the Senate to run it, in part I’m sure because the powers that be knew exactly how effective she would be at preventing them from breaking the law to make money.

(Remember when I said I’m for the Rule of Law.)

Instead of being deterred, she just decided to run for the Senate so that she could be one of the people who decides on things like who gets to run the CFPB.

And then once in the Senate, in her very first time appearing on Banking Committee in the Senate, she asked a question of the regulators of the banks. Watch just the first couple minutes of this:

She knows exactly where the pressure points are. She knows exactly what the government can do to be effective, and she does exactly that, and then no more.

In short, she’s the closest to the ideals that I held that made me vote Republican. Rule of Law. Free people (unburdened by predatory institutions). Free markets (with enough oversight to make sure they operate fairly for all).

We’ve somehow gotten to a place in this country where the vote for President is more about identity than anything. If you live in a city and do yoga, you vote for Democrats. If you drive a big truck or go to an evangelical church, you vote for Republicans.

I see Warren as cutting through all of that, and essentially returning politics -- at least a little -- to governance. She doesn’t want you to feel good or bad for whatever makes up your political point of view, she just wants the government to govern as effectively as it can on behalf of those who put the government in power in the first place.

This is the part that I think will cut across party lines. I think there are a lot of people who want the government to just do a good job when it comes to, for example, managing a pandemic.

Perhaps this is hopelessly naïve, but I've decided to vote not for the person I most identify with, and not for “the best woman for the job.” I’ve decided to put all those questions aside, and just vote for the one who will do the best job of actually being president. 

The intersection of two books has me mulling over a truly scary possibility.

The books are:

The Heart of Everything That Is

and

Trick Mirror

I haven’t actually read Trick Mirror yet, but I listened to an amazing podcast interview with her which was simultaneously exhilarating and profoundly depressing.

And it got me thinking...

Could it be that we are all the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, and the internet has landed on our shores?

I know this may seem like a stretch, but consider:

At first the Europeans who came over didn’t really mean any harm. They weren’t really even expecting anyone to be here, and they didn’t know that here was here.

And in general they didn’t start just killing people, not at the start. They kind of needed the native people to help them survive.

So it is with the internet and with social media. It wouldn’t be able to grow and mutate if it just started killing people right off the bat. There’d be way more alarm if people started dying as soon as they tried using Google.

One of the central thesis that Jia Tolentino talked about with Ezra Klein is something I'd never really had clearly in my head before, and I'm still struggling with it, but it's essentially the idea that the “winners” in the current internet economy are the ones that most successfully allow each individual to become attached to the online version of themselves.

That’s super clear with Facebook and Twitter, of course, but even is a common thread with the others:

• Apple from its earliest days told people that it knew you were secretly Pablo Picasso, or whomever, and that with the right machine you could make that clear. And without the iPhone, there would be no selfie.
  
  
• Amazon isn't just about getting you books faster, it’s about making you a star, and providing all the stuff that you deserve as a star, and even anticipating what you might want. That's the treatment that stars get.
  
  
• And Google is about making sure that you feel heard. When you search for something, you get just what you are searching for. It knows what that is because it so helpfully tracks everything you do and then makes predictions from that. It’s why privacy advocates are having such a hard time getting people outraged — most people like it when someone is interested in them, even when they know that interest is pecuniary. What do they care?

While the Europeans that came over did lots of actual killing, either directly or indirectly with Small Pox or the introduction of guns, etc., the thing that most completely killed off the spirit of the people here was an idea, the idea that land could be owned.

The tribes that lived here, in general, operated under the idea that the land can't be owned in the same way that sunlight or air can't be bought or sold. It was all a gift, to be treated as such.

Once the idea of owning land took hold, it was just a matter of time before the native way of life would be all but erased.

Reading that book about Red Cloud, visiting Pine Ridge and Standing Rock, I have limitless respect for the tribal members among us today. But I think even the two tribal members who were just elected to congress would say that one of the main points of the Tribes today is to remind us all of a time when people had respect for the land, and for the sweep of history.

One of those two is a 35th-generation (!) New Mexican, Deb Haaland. And when she was sworn in and saw Sharice Davids, the other woman who makes up the sum total of all the Native American women ever elected to Congress, all she could do was cry, and share a hug. (And then, in perhaps one of the most genuine moments ever on the floor of the House, used her younger colleague’s scarf to wipe away tears.)

Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids, the first Native-American women to ever serve in Congress, share a moment after being officially sworn in: pic.twitter.com/acIRC5hX20

— Frank Dale (@fwdale) January 3, 2019

What struck me most about that moment, and the reason it tied together so much with what Tolentino is talking about, is that Haaland was being totally herself and in that moment as it happened. She wasn't putting on a show. She wasn't acting out the part of the person being emotional, she was just being herself right then and right there. 

How rare is that these days?

Not just for members of Congress, but for everyone. We seem to all have been infected with the idea that the persona of ourselves that exists on the internet is the same thing as our actual selves. That's the dangerous idea, the one that — like land ownership for the native peoples — will be the one that dooms us.

The canary in the coal mine here is teenagers, who have grown up completely online. In an affluent society when all outward structures of resilience would seem to be stronger than ever, teens are ending their own lives at a rate that’s growing alarmingly quickly. 

This is the warning, the one that seems to me to be coming down from the elders, and also from those like Tolentino who are much younger than me and can see the pernicious nature of the all-online culture from the inside.

The warning is that the most dangerous thing is not using the internet, but letting the idea take hold that the person who we are on the internet is the same as the person who we are in the real world. We are not.

So, what do we do to fix it? How do we avoid this massacre before it happens to us?

I don’t actually know, but I have some ideas. I’ll mull those over and try to get them here, soon, or maybe I'll just get off the damn internet and read another book from a local bookseller and have actual conversations with some people in person and not worry about how that conversation will translate into a tweet. At least I’ll try.

Wish me luck.

If you are reading this, you may have heard something about the Journalism Trust Initiative, maybe because you saw it on the agenda of the SPJ’s Excellence in Journalism conference or some other event. 

It’s hard keeping all the misinformation-fighting efforts straight, and the ground keeps shifting.

But if you are at all interested in the world of misinformation (you won’t catch me using “fake news” because I don’t want the inimitable Claire Wardle to bollox up my knickers, or whatever it is the Brits do when they are unhappy with you) then you will want to know about the JTI, as you will be hearing a lot more about it in the months and years to come.

The short version is this: It’s a standards effort, a real one. There are lots of things called “standards” in journalism. But they aren’t really standards in the way that every other industry in the world understands them. Those aren’t ISO-compliant. They weren’t developed by a cross-section of industry. They’re great, sure, but they aren’t really standards.

Real standards are the kind of thing that makes it so you can use wifi at any hotspot around the world. Did you ever stop to think how all the hundreds of different manufacturers agreed to one system of making wifi work?

The answer is standards. 

If you wake up, have a glass of water, brush your teeth, have breakfast and then go somewhere in a car, bus, train or airplane, you’ve had hundreds of standards that have been a part of your life without even thinking about it. 

And if you are saying, “I just woke up and went for a walk, so no standards touched my life.” Well, if you walked on a sidewalk, there were standards involved. If you locked the door when you left… heck, even if you stayed in bed and looked out a window, standards touched your life. 

As the New York Times points out, life is a lot easier if you can plug in any socket. This is something I learned up close at CableLabs, which is involved in dozens of standards that make the internet safer and faster. (It was the team there that helped me to see that misinformation could be battled with the time-tested tool of standards.)

But somehow all of the gathering and reporting the news, editing it, and publishing over the internet… all of it somehow gets done every day without an independent standards group having any part of the process.

How did that happen?

There’s an easy answer there, especially in America: Thomas Jefferson.

There were others, of course, but Jefferson is the one who said that if he had to choose between a government with no press or a press with no government, he would surely choose the latter.

Of course, that was before he was president and tried to crack down on coverage he didn’t like. But by then, the free press was free, and they weren’t going back. And properly so. 

So, what’s the problem?

Well, the problem is 2016. 

During the Brexit election and during the presidential election in the U.S., foreign governments were able to undermine democracy. They did that because they were able to take advantage of new technologies and newish social networks. It’s not just me saying this, it’s the law enforcement and national security experts who studied it closely and said that’s exactly what happened. They said that in January of 2017.

My question today, here in 2019, is this: What’s changed? What’s really actually changed?

It’s hard to point to any one thing that is actually different in the actual structure of the way that news is delivered, other than the fact that a lot of local news providers have gone out of business, which of course makes it even easier for misinformation to fester and grow.

Enter standards.

I pay a lot of attention to a lot of the efforts to fight misinformation, and most of them are great.

But after studying it really closely, I’ve come to be convinced that there’s one thing that will make more difference than anything else, and it’s standards.

And there’s someone who agrees with me, a guy by the name of Sergey Lavrov.

He’s the Russian Foreign Minister. 

To understand how he agrees, first you’ll need some background on the Journalism Trust Initiative.

You see, like me, people at the group Reporters Without Borders agreed that we need to bring real standards to journalism for two main reasons:

1. To keep misinformation out of the system, and,
2. To help improve the economic situation for actual journalists. 

The way this will work is by having real standards, so the people of RSF has been doing the heavy lifting of making real, ISO-compliant, standards. First they applied, successfully, for an official standard setting process with CEN, the European subset of ISO and contracted Afnor and DIN, the two independent French and German standardization bodies, to run it. 

They’ve hosted a long series of meetings where journalists and others have gathered to craft the actual standards.

The people working on those standards have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours hammering out exactly what should go into the standards. It has been a lot of hard work, and nearly all in the background. The way the process works is that the proposed standards, in general, stay private as a way encouraging full participation. Then at an agreed-on time, the standard becomes public, and anyone can comment on it.

We have now reached that time, and you can now read the whole thing, and comment. And you should.

Now this is the point where a part of you is going to want to stop reading. It’s similar to how you feel when you go to an event at a school, and someone starts talking about “the mission” or whatever and you know that you are going to get cornered into donating or, even worse, volunteering.

But keep reading, just for a moment please, so that you can understand exactly what is being asked of you, and what it might mean.

If these journalism standards get wide acceptance and use, then the original goals of the JTI will start to happen. First it will be harder for misinformation to infiltrate the newsfeeds of the world.

Second, the platforms and the advertisers will have a new tool to encourage legitimate journalism. They will be able to see who has gone to the trouble of applying for and getting certification under a set of voluntary standards. People from Google and Facebook have been a part of the JTI process at various stages. We’ll have to wait and see if they use the tools provided to them to make things better, but I am hopeful.

Look, nobody’s a bigger critic of the platforms than me, but in some ways I do feel sorry for them. They just have gotten so big so fast they don’t know how to fix the messes they’ve created. And while it’s easy to say that they should be able to, in some areas they really just can’t, and we wouldn’t want them to. I mean, in the same way that we don’t want government saying who is — and who isn’t — a journalist, well, do we want Facebook doing that?

I say the only one who should get to decide who’s a journalist is other journalists. The way that works practically is if they come together and declare themselves some kind of group as diverse as The Associated Press or as niche as a group of publishers in one city or state, well, then they get to do that.

And then those groups can, if they themselves want to, go on to be a part of a legitimate standards operation. That’s why we need real standards, so that the groups have something following an accepted process that they can use.

That’s why the standards themselves are so important. And that’s why we need you, especially here in the U.S.

I’ve been involved with the JTI since it’s earliest days. I’ve been to, I think, every meeting there was to go to. I was one of only two guys from North America in the first meeting in Paris in a stuffy room at Agency France Presse. I think for the most part the people involved have been very well meaning, but there’s no question that the document in its current form has a European sensibility. That may never change completely.

But it doesn’t mean that we can’t make sure that it will at least work for us here in America.

To do that, however, we have to show up. We have to be involved in the process. We have to do the admittedly hard hard hard hard work of reading a proposed standards document, all of it, and then making some comments.

If you want to comment in writing, you certainly can, or if you want to participate in a workshop we’ll be putting on in Austin, Denver, Washington or New York, you can do that. If you are attending the EIJ, the APME, or the ONA conventions coming up in September, that will work, too.

I’m asking you to do this because I’m convinced that standards are the thing that can do more than anything else to fight misinformation. I’m asking you to do this because with your participation the standards will get stronger, will work for more diverse journalists, and they will be a great new tool to finally do something to improve the economic reality for publishers.

And I’m asking you to do it to let the Russian foreign minister know that you are not going to play his game.

What is his game?

The Russian government has been pretty much absent in the battle over misinformation. Putin jokes with Trump about “Fake News” but other than, you know, killing and jailing journalists, the Kremlin has not tried to fight or even comment on any of the international efforts to fight misinfo.

With one exception: the JTI.

This is Sergey Lavrov, who went to Paris last year and made a big speech, and in that speech in front of the French Foreign Minister and the press and in the hometown of the JTI, criticized the JTI, by name. He then went on to say this:

“Такие подходы наводит на очень неприятные мысли о том что мы имеем дело с разновидностью политической цензуры.”

Which translates, according to his own website, to say:

“This approach leads to very unpleasant thoughts that we are dealing with a kind of political censorship.”

Now, this is laughable in an awkward way. We’re talking about a very high ranking Kremlin official saying that the government shouldn’t be involved in news content. It’s as if Weird Al Yankovic announced that singers should not be involved in parody.

But to me it’s instructive. No less than the Russian foreign minister is preemptively fighting an otherwise obscure standards effort. Why? I can only think that this is the one thing that the Kremlin is worried about, the only thing that might stop their massive and sophisticated misinformation effort. (If you haven’t seen the NY Times video series, featuring the aforementioned Claire Wardle, it’s really worth a watch. The Russian efforts are massive. And the only thing that’s changed since then is that now China, Iran and other countries are doing the same thing.) 

So, what is Lavrov worried about?

I think he’s worried that standards could actually work. I think he’s worried that the things he’s been able to do in the past would be a lot harder with standards in place. Maybe he’s worried about what the Kremlin wants to do next, the thing that nobody even knows about, and that standards would create a roadblock.

So, taking some time to work though the language of the JTI standards may not feel like fun, but it may just help. It might help keep some of the crap out of the newsfeeds. It may help strengthen the economic situation of legitimate publishers. And it may just be the one way you — personally — can stick it to the foreign governments that think they can get away with undermining democracy, and spammers who want to cloak themselves with an aura of legitimate journalism.

Pew recently did a survey showing that people don’t really blame journalists for the current misinformation crisis, but they do think journalists need to fix it. I say they are right on both counts. We didn’t make this mess, but we are the ones who need to clean it up. 

If you believe that, too, but have been trying to figure out what you, personally, can do, well… now you know. You can come to one of our workshops, or try taking a beta version of the approved, official questionnaire once it’s available.

Standards are boring, but they work. If you participate now, when your non-journalist friends and family ask you what you are doing to fix things, you can tell them about this. Not sexy, just hard work, but it’s the only thing that we have any proof might actually work.

Here’s that link. Check it out. And thank you.

If you have questions, feel free to contact me using the form at the bottom of this page.

There's a scene in Infinity War where Dr. Strange looks at all the future scenarios, 14 million or so, and figures out that there's only one that's any good.

I've been doing a bit of that with our current president now that the Mueller Report is out.

As of today, two presidential candidates have said they support impeachment, though Kamala Harris seems to have worded her support somewhat more delicately than Elizabeth Warren.

There are plenty on the left, and even some on the right, who think we should impeach.

Do you think so?

Don't go by what your emotions tell you should be the thing that happens, go by what will happen.

Here are the scenarios that I see, way fewer than 14 million:

Trump Impeached in House, Convicted in the Senate, Removed from Office

This is unlikely because there would have to be about 20 Republicans in the Senate who would vote to remove a sitting president, something that literally has never happened in the history of the United States.

I'll write below about why this is very unlikely, but let's just say in this scenario that it happens.

In that case, Mike Pence becomes the president. Because he wasn't elected president, he'll likely have a primary challenge, and that primary battle will be all about the future of the party. A Sen. Marco Rubio, for example, would be able to say that he is not Trump and has always been his own man, so the election won't be about Trump at all.

Even if Pence survives a primary, he will be his own man on the ticket, and the election won't really be a referendum on Trump, so it will be a more normal election. He'd likely lose, just like Ford did after Watergate, but it wouldn't be historic.

If you are a Republican, this is probably the best case scenario for you.

Trump Impeached in House, but Acquitted in the Senate

If you are thinking, but Trump is so bad! just remember that only a third of the Senate is up for re-election. Of the 53 GOP senators, 22 are facing election. 

In my state of Colorado, one might think that Cory Gardner would vote to convict Trump so as to make his re-election a bit easier, but it may not. It may just bring him a primary that he might not survive. And even if he did, it may just not make any difference as the Democratic field is strong and the voter sentiment seems to have moved against any Republican in Colorado.

But that's Colorado. In other states, voting against a president of your own party just does not happen.

So, Trump emerges from impeachment as someone who was tried and not convicted. It weakens his presidency, but he actually gets a boost from winning in the Senate in the same way that Clinton got a boost when he wasn't convicted. He and his supporters went on to say loudly that all of that was over nothing, and they weren't wrong. Trump and his world will say the exact same thing, and come out stronger.

This is probably the second-best scenario for Republicans.

Trump Investigated, but Never Impeached

In this scenario, the current state remains the case all the way through the election: Hearings. Subpoenas. Contempt citations. On and on and on.

Meanwhile, we hope, there would also be some action on actual legislation, even though not much could pass because of the partisan divide. But holding the hearings and getting bills ready to pass for after the next election is a good way to work out the bugs lurking behind big new ideas.

In that case, Trump is weakened to the point of near irrelevancy. He is the party nominee because he's fixed it that way from the get-go.

But there is almost no enthusiasm for him to actually get elected because people like being on the winning side of history, and a guy who looks like the only reason he wants to win is so that he can keep being immune from prosecution is not exactly campaigning from a strong position.

Trump at the top of the ballot could be a crushing body blow to what remains of the Republican Party.

This is clearly the best-case scenario for Democrats.

It's not fun for Democrats to think about another year and a half of Trump, but it's the medicine we have to take here in this democracy.

What will happen?

Look, I'm as surprised as anyone that Trump is still here. I thought history was on the side of him being gone by last August.

But he's still here.

What do you want to have happen? Play through the scenarios and tell me which one gets you to what you really want.

If you look at it dispassionately, the savior of the Republican Party would be impeachment, and the best thing for Democrats would be to keep Trump in power until Inauguration Day in 2021.

Tis the season to reflect, and plan for the next year.

(And to use the word “Tis” apparently.)

I’m currently working on a plan that is complex, and just a pain in the ass to get done. It’s the kind of thing that is so new that if you were to lay odds, you would bet against it.

Of course, that was true about me when I started a new business back in 2001. The odds were against me, and still somehow I launched the business, and then sold it in 2006. The odds were not great when I started another business right after that. I’m no longer involved in that one day-to-day, but Bill Track 50 is thriving to this day. Same story for the blog writing service now known as Verblio, which is also rocking thanks to the staff and the writers making it happen.

But my effort to fix Fake News is the hardest yet. 

To whom do I turn for inspiration? Once again, it’s Hamilton. (I wrote about this at much more length way before I even saw the play.)

I even made a meme, above, using the gorgeous photograph from Josh Lehrer, made with a camera from the 1800s.

The line comes from the excellent book Alexander Hamilton’s Guide To Life, by the incomparable Jeff Wilser. 

The language is a bit obscure, but Wilser does a great job of breaking it down.

The “Projector” is you. You are the one who is projecting what the future will be. If you project yourself into the future and you create it, then you can succeed.

But it just takes hard work to make it happen. That’s the “constant” part.

Be nice if I could just have great ideas and then sit back and watch them take off. But... no.

This projector needs to be constant.

That’s going to be really important to remember in the coming year. All signs are that between the economy and the current occupant of the White House, 2019 is going to be a rough year, full of distractions and annoyances and everything that can give any of us an excuse to not remain constant.

So for me in 2019, my theme is for the Projector to stay constant.

And now I’ve got a meme to go with my theme.

Big news in the world of “Fake News” recently is that both the French and British governments are united in fighting it.

Not the problem, unfortunately, just the name.

The French have come out against the name “Fake News” for no reason other than their long history of hating any words that are Anglo-Saxon.

What should we call it? 

Information fallacieuse.

Even for the French, that seemed like a mouthful, so they also coined a new made-up word that they think will be catchy: “Infox.”

I wouldn't count on that word lasting long.

And the Brits are not offended by the Queen’s English but they are, as always, offended by Americanisms, so they, too have banned “fake news” from official documents.

There is no such thing as American English. There is English. And there are mistakes.

— A tweet quoted in the excellent The Prodigal Tongue by Lynn Murphy

The problem is that they could not agree on what word to use in its place.

We recommend that the Government rejects the term ‘fake news’, and instead puts forward an agreed definition of the words ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. With such a shared definition, and clear guidelines for companies, organisations, and the Government to follow, there will be a shared consistency of meaning across the platforms, which can be used as the basis of regulation and enforcement.

— From the report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee to the UK Government

So in very clear terms the government has said that there will be a “shared consistency” with one word, it just isn't sure which word that should be.

Ummm. Thanks.

Look, both governments are right, the term “Fake News” is horrible, and is being used to mean everything from News I don't like all the way to organized propaganda designed to destabilize democracy.

But the problem for those of us inside the battle is this: Every time we tell people who are not working on this all day every day what we are working on, no matter how we describe what we are doing, they will invariably say:

“Oh! You are fixing fake news! That’s so important!!!”

That’s when we smile wanly and say thanks.

Luckily, for those who are working on this so hard, the part about defining the problem is pretty much done. In reality, it’s been done for a long time. 

In fact, it has been done since February of 2017, when the inimitable Claire Wardle published this guide.

As helpful as that is, it still uses both the mis- and dis- forms of information.

So, which is it?

I’m going to say that misinformation has won the day, in no small part thanks to the Cyrillic alphabet, and whichever clever person it was that came up with the coolest logo for a conference, maybe ever.

Of the hundreds of conference badges I’ve gotten in my life, this is one of the few I’m hanging on to:

I wrote, at some length, about my experience in Kyiv, and then I posted some photos from the D.C. version of the event on Twitter, and will post them again below.

Unfortunately I won’t be at the event in London this week, but I expect that even at a conference named for misinformation there will still be some talk about what to call it.

And there will be more conversation about what is being done around the world. (If you are at the conference, and get that task, feel free to cheat off the homework that I already did.)

So it just may be that we will always be talking about what exactly fake news is. And the term, for better or worse, is now a permanent part of our language. 

But just as terms like Yellow Journalism or Broadsides have settled into our language with specific meanings, fake news will eventually settle in.

In the meantime, we’ll keep having the conversation, and we’ll keep trying to fix the real problems.

Just for the record, here are three examples of the gravity of the problems that we are dealing with from only the last few days:

1. New proof that Russians are again trying to disrupt the U.S. elections.
2. Twitter found out about a bot attack only after alerted by journalists.
3. Fake News is flooding the zone in Brazil before its election.

This is serious stuff, and thoughtful people are hard at work trying to make a difference. I’m totally engaged in working on my particular slice of the solution, one that is working to strengthen many of the other efforts going on by making certain that news publishers do in fact have the imprimatur of the standards-based bodies they profess to follow. You can see more about that on the Certified Content Coalition page.

But lest you think the people themselves are all humorless, I present here my own captions to some pictures from the D.C. Misinfocon.

While I won’t be at the London event, I will be looking for photos that I can use for my next post.

Thanks for reading!

Yes, @jenny8lee and @DwightKnell always agree about what direction @misinfocon is going... Why do you ask? ;-) pic.twitter.com/dgT824hiqu

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) August 30, 2018

"No! This way!" says the erudite Connie Moon Sehat. pic.twitter.com/XaEMP5jdnd

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) August 30, 2018

The incomparable @kate_musgrave shows an incredulous onlooker how you can weave an imaginary spider web with one hand during @misinfocon #youhadtobethere #itwasamazing pic.twitter.com/WVdusDTWIJ

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) August 30, 2018

The inscrutable @judell listens to someone talking smack during @misinfocon. pic.twitter.com/PVRmdG0If8

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) August 30, 2018

The ruminative @sandhawke listens intently to a speaker during @misinfocon, either contemplating the words, or considering eating his glasses because he's so hungry. pic.twitter.com/G9IqoQppNB

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) August 30, 2018

You have NO IDEA how excited @josh_machleder is to put a BLUE dot on that pink sticky note during @misinfocon pic.twitter.com/WDvLkpvJR9

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) August 30, 2018

A genetically recombined Kris Kristofferson leads @misinfocon in the National Anthem.
.
.
This just in... It's actually @Nick_B_Adams. He only spoke, but wow, what a voice. pic.twitter.com/H9qrmKhdXN

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) August 30, 2018

Much to the enjoyment of your humble caption writer, @OlafSteenfadt sings "Danke Schoen" in the original German during a break at @misinfocon pic.twitter.com/SJ2On4Db8T

— Scott Yates (@scodtt) August 30, 2018

I doubt anyone much cares how I’m voting on the less well-known stuff on the Colorado ballot given that they probably don’t care that much how they cast their own vote!

But on the off chance that I can be helpful, here’s my quick guide on how I voted on the stuff that’s not in the headlines all that much.

Congress District 1

My counter-culture tendencies would like to vote for the Libertarian just because there’s absolutely no hope that anyone other than the Democrat will win in this district. (That’s why I’m voting yes on Y and Z - more on that below.)

But I’m going to vote for Diana DeGette because she’s a proud graduate of Denver South High School, where I went and where my son is going now.

Secretary of State

It’s going to be a blue wave this year, no doubt about it. The one guy who might survive is Wayne Williams. I think we have a pretty good tradition in Colorado of keeping politics out of this office, so I’m voting for Williams because he was smart enough to hire the incomparable Lynn Bartles.

Colorado Court of Appeals

I actually read the Blue Book for each of the judges, and there was only one who didn’t get a unanimous nod from the State Commission on Judicial Performance: Elizabeth L. Harris. So, that’s enough for a no vote from me. 

From the Blue Book: “Sometimes she unnecessarily reexamines facts and lower courts’ reasoning, which reduces her efficiency and which may create a perception that she is unfair. Lack of timeliness also has been a problem...”

All the rest of them got a unanimous nod, so they all get a Yes vote.

And if I could vote twice, I would for Kerri Lombardi for District court. Is it because I once covered a trial where she was an excellent prosecutor? Maybe a little bit. Actually, the real reason is that she’s another proud graduate of Denver South High School! Is there no end to the glory of that place? ;-)

That’s Denver South High School in the background. 

Amendment V

Change the age for serving in the Legislature from 25 to 21? 

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

Whatevs.

Brain development and full rational thinking is just not in place until we hit about 25, experts say. 

So, that’s a no vote from me.

(Even my son — who’s an intern at the legislature, and would be a wonderful elected official, said that he thinks legislators could use some more impulse control, and he’s studied the science enough to know that even he won’t have full use of that until he is 25 — urges a no vote.)

Amendment W

Change the format for the ballot for judicial retention elections.

Really? We have to vote on this? Isn’t this up to some underpaid staffer running MS Word in the bill room?

Mmmkay. I’ll vote yes.

Amendment X

Industrial Hemp? What?

Luckily, the swell team at Ballotpedia has a page on this one. The thing I looked for was that Jon Becker was in favor, as was just about everyone else in the statehouse. If they all looked at it and are fine with it, than I am, too. 

Yes.

Amendments Y and Z

I may be more passionate about these two than anything else this year in Colorado.

A big part of the reason that politics is so screwed up right now is that the congressional districts are gerrymandered so that the entire race is the primary. Only the extreme edges of the spectrum show up for those, so the race is to see who can out-crazy everyone else.

Then the general election comes and those of us nearer the middle wonder where we got these loony candidates.

These two amendments will take a step toward fixing that.

Two big YES votes on these two.

Amendment A

Slavery, as the saying goes, is our country’s original sin.

Can we please pass this? It won’t absolve us, but it needs to be a part of our path to absolution.

Amendment 73

I have good friends on both sides of this, but for me I’m voting yes.

• Money does NOT make for a good education, but a good education is impossible without money.
• This will make all the TABOR mess even messier. Well, maybe we should fix that?
• The tax falls more heavily on the rich, who should be doing really well because of the Trump tax cuts, so they won’t even notice it, right?

Amendment 74

While reading the text of Amendment 74, I kept thinking of this:

So, that’s gonna be a hard pass. 

No on Amendment 74.

Amendment 75

This is the one about campaign contributions. If someone donates $1 million to themselves, then all the other limits go out the window.

This is a thoughtful amendment, and it may actually help.

But this is a constitutional amendment, so if it has some unintended consequence, well, we’re screwed.

So I’m a no vote, just barely.

Proposition 109

This is the one is trying a bit too hard to be clever, with the whole “Fix our damn roads” name and the idea that there is a magical way to pay for roads without raising taxes.

I was tempted to vote yes because I think this throws another bomb into the TABOR mess (we really should fix that) and because, well, I wish we could fix the damn roads.

But there’s a lot of damn stuff that needs fixing, including dams.

(Reminds me of a joke: What did the fish say when he ran into a concrete wall?

“Darn!”)

I think the legislature needs to do its damn job, and decide how to spend tax dollars. We elect them to make the hard calls between roads, schools, prisons, etc. I say we let them do that job, and we’ll stay out of the way.

I’m a no vote on 109.

Proposition 110

This is the other roads one, but it’s done the right way. It comes from the Chamber of Commerce, which isn’t exactly a tax-and-spend kind of group. 

If we want roads to be better, we should stand up and say that we will pay for the roads to be better, and that’s what this does.

Yes on 110.

Proposition 111

Payday loans. Why hasn’t the legislature fixed this?

My hunch is that the people who make fistfuls of blood money making these predatory loans have spread just enough of it around that it has kept lawmakers from taking action.

When the legislature can’t get the job done, it’s up to us.

Vote yes on 111.

Proposition 112

This one has gotten enough press, so you are going to have to make up your own mind about this.

Luckily, this one is a change to the statute, not the constitution, so even if it does pass, the legislature will be able to fix it, or get rid of it entirely.

I hope this has been of some help.

Voting is one of the great honors we have, and I hope that everyone reading this does vote, and then checks to make sure all their friends and family are doing the same.

-Scott

There's nothing more serious to me than the fight against misinformation.

Innocent journalists are going to jail for doing their job. Elections and democracy itself are being compromised. The very notion of “Trust” is under attack, and it seems like the attackers are winning.

This needs to get fixed.

Serious people need to have solemn and clear-headed conversations and work very hard to fix what's been broken on our watch.

But do we have to take ourselves seriously every moment we are at work?

I sure hope not.

So, with this post, I begin what I hope will be a series of posts taking a look at the lighter side of fake news.

Today’s installment:

The World Cup of Information Warfare?

Inspired by an interview from Alex Stamos with CNN:

A bit from my interview with FB’s former head of security ⁦@alexstamos⁩: https://t.co/Vqolq2jhCj

— Laurie Segall (@LaurieSegallCNN) September 4, 2018

Nobody knows more about this than Alex, and he’s highly respected. (And I personally find it a bummer that he’s out of the trenches and is now an academic.)

But it got me thinking: Are the U.S. Elections really the World Cup of  Information Warfare?

I mean, he is talking very specifically about the U.S. Elections, and the US didn’t even get into the last actual World Cup. Americans are famously blasé about soccer, so making that analogy here may actually minimize what a big deal misinformation is. 

So, with all due respect to Alex, here’s a better breakdown:

I am really looking forward to Misinfocon in Washington DC. I am.

In part that's because I'm very interested in the topic of misinformation. (Currently that's the most common word I've seen used to avoid having to say “fake news” and perpetuating a phrase that the current occupant of the White House uses as an epithet to describe “news.”)

This is something I study a lot in my role as the founder of the Certified Content Coalition, a project of innovation suite from CableLabs.

But the real reason I’m looking forward to the conference is that I want to redeem myself after the last Misinfocon in Kyiv.

Why do I need to redeem myself?

Well, it's a little embarrassing, but in the spirit of transparency, bla bla bla, here goes:

An American in Kyiv

This was my first Misinfocon, and so I didn't know much of what to expect. I did read that it was a hackathon, and I've seen, participated in, and judged those many times in the startup world, so I was familiar with the format.

I just had never seen one outside of the world of startups. How would that work in the world of trying to root out bad actors trying to weaponize content for political gain? I was excited to find out.

Especially in Kyiv. I had to give credit to the organizers for taking this conference right to what could be considered Ground Zero in the fake news world. On the plane on the way over I had watched Winter on Fire at the recommendation of a friend who had been there. Kyiv is an amazing city. More on that in a bit.

The speakers that started off the day were excellent, and I learned a ton from people like Yevhen Fedchenko, a co-founder of StopFake.org and Veronika Víchová from Kremlin Watch.

Veronika gets special props for her Twitter picture:

I understood going in that the problems were complex, and saw some of that first hand at the kick-off meeting for the Journalism Trust Initiative from Reporters Without Borders the week before.

But the speakers and many of the attendees helped me understand what was going on even a bit more.

After the first day of the conference, I fell asleep quickly, exhausted by the busy day, the Ukrainian beer, and the jet lag.

The next day brings what you might think of as a play in three acts:

Act I: Our Protagonist Goes On A Journey

I woke up very early the next day, and one story dominated the news.

At first, I thought maybe my VPN was busted because one of the top stories I was getting on Google News was from Kyiv, but it turns out that it was just a top global story, and it happened to be a quick Uber ride away from where the conference was happening.

Holy Crap!

This caused me to go into full freak-out for a bunch of reasons.

1. Holy crap!
2. It happened really close to where I was.
3. My wife and son were at home, and might get this news, not sure. I didn't know if I should call and tell them I'm fine, alerting them to the fact that fake news fighters are being gunned down right down the street from where I was fighting fake news. Or if I shouldn't call.
4. Holy crap!
5. Misinfocon was all about figuring this information warfare, and here's a guy literally on the front lines of that war who became a casualty.
6. So close.
7. Holy crap!
8. What does it mean to be fighting fake news if we can't even keep reporters alive?

I immediately shot off a note to the conference organizers. Dwight Knell made a nice mention of him to open the day, and then we kept going.

But wait, I kept thinking, is this it? Shouldn't we be doing more?

Once we broke into working groups -- and I'm not proud of this -- I pretty much hijacked the agenda of our group. We were supposed to be coming up with ideas of how to fight fake news. We did that, but all in the context of this one death.

Now, I should have been more circumspect. I mean, this was not the first journalist killed. Indeed, there were at least 65 just last year.

And while killing journalists is horrific, it’s not really central to the issues of misinformation. At least it hadn't been. That changed, as we will see.

None of that mattered. I was the excitable American, and Something Must Be Done. THIS SHALL NOT STAND!

I thought, anyway.

Act II, Our Protagonist Leads A (Small) Uprising

The format for the “hack” part of Day 2 was that we broke up into three groups. Building on the work that had been done the previous day, we were supposed to come up with some real, tangible solutions. The rules were that we were to come up with ideas with no concerns about budget or approvals. Just assume that we can get all that, and go to town.

So we did.

I went to our group and made an impassioned plea. The death of this journalist — right here in the city where we were meeting — could not go without note.

So fired up, I was, that the group all got into the action.

Here I am, in the early stages of making an arse of myself. (Photo courtesy Misinfocon.)

We came up with a whole plan. I had the brilliant idea that we should make a statue of the fallen journalist, and put it right in the central square of Kyiv. 

Some of the others in the group suggested that we maybe do something that would actually honor journalism, not just this guy. It's so good this was a group project, and not an individual one, or I really would have looked like a moron.

So we came up with a whole list of things, starting with the statue, but then moving very quickly past that to ideas that would make a difference.

1. A statue in Maidan, the central area of Kyiv made so famous in the winter of 2014 when protesters took over the square. More than 100 died, but the protests eventually led to the ouster of  the Kremlin-installed president, Viktor Yanukovich, who remains in exile in Russia to this day.
2. Matching statues in major capitals around the world to highlight the importance of journalists and the fact that so many are killed.
3. An endowment to pay for some number of journalists to report from war-torn areas. With the changing economics for newsrooms, very few news publishers pay to send reporters into the most dangerous regions, even when those are the exact regions that most need the cleansing power of sunshine from an audience paying attention to the facts.
4. Along with paying the journalists, paying for extensive security for them, and for their families back home.
5. This one was grim, but was a great idea that came from one of the local participants: Life Insurance for the reporter. The family needs to carry on if the worst happens, and if they don't have to carry on in poverty, it will certainly help. Any children left behind won't need to worry about a roof over their heads, and will be able to afford to go to college.
6. I don't know if we were channeling Warren Zevon, but it seemed like we were thinking Send Lawyers, Guns and Money. The next item was to set up lawyers to help these journalists navigate the legal minefields while they are in the literal minefields.

I then went on to a crowdsourcing platform and found a guy who turned a photo of Arakady into something that looked like a statue.

The freelancer tried it a couple of ways, one of them with a green hue that was supposed to look a bit like the green of the Statue of Liberty. Another one of the participants from Kyiv nixed that one. It was news to me, but a well known local story is of the Little Green Men — soldiers who tried to be known as the “Polite People” were actually Russian soldiers wearing green uniforms with no insignia. Putin thought he could get away with denying that they were Russian soldiers, and in some ways he did.

Anyway, no green Arkady.

We finally decided on one that just looked like marble, and we'd put an orange safety vest on the statue. Then we'd place it in the central square. We used a tourist picture I'd snapped on my first night Kyiv, and with that, we had our presentation.

I then was hoping someone else would go on stage and present, but they all looked at me to do it, and so I did.

 I then had to leave to get to the airport to fly to Lisbon, via Frankfurt. About as far of a trip as you can make without leaving Europe. (Most people in Ukraine really wants to be part of the EU, and Putin wants Ukraine to be part of Russia, hence the conflict.)

Because the first leg of the flight was a bit late, I had to run through the massive Frankfurt airport, I was basically out of communication with the outside world for about six hours.

What a six hours that was for the world of Fake News.

Act III: Our Protagonist Learns His Lesson

My plan was that as soon as I was safe in Lisbon, I was going to call home to let my family know that I was safe.

But by then, well, the only thing that was in danger was my reputation.

You’ve certainly heard the news: The brave journalist was not, in fact, dead. The blood seen near his body was pigs blood. The story is that this journalist was involved in a plot to fake his own death did so to help authorities find those who really did want him dead.

I've read all kinds of stories about this, including one that came out just before I sat down to write this, and I still don’t really know what's going on.

One thing that clearly did happen is that the killing of journalists is now firmly in the territory of misinformation. Right after Arkady Babchenko showed up at the press conference about his own death, Russians said that they were shocked, SHOCKED, that people would accuse them of killing journalists, and this one wasn't even dead. Maybe some of the other dead journalists aren't really even dead.

What have I done?, Babchenko seems to be thinking. Created a mess, is the answer. (Photo from news.com.au)

It's hard these days to say that Kremlin agitprop has a point, but in this case, well, they weren't wrong.

This is something pointed out in a story I read the next morning in my Lisbon hotel room from the New York Times that quoted a tweet from Christophe Deloire about how dangerous this was for journalism.

Then I walked over to the Global Editors Network conference and the first two people I saw were Christophe Deloire and Olaf Steenfadt from Reporters Without Borders. 

I couldn't believe that they were quoted in the New York Times, and they couldn't believe that I'd been in Kyiv for the whole outré episode.

We agreed that we may never know exactly what happened, but we do know they'll be talking about it in journalism schools for the next 50 years.

Lesson learned?

I did learn three things, however.

1. Misinfocon is a great conference. I don't know what will happen there in D.C. exactly — that’s the beauty of a hackathon. But if the one in Kyiv is any kind of guide, it will have all the right people in the right place and something magical may just come out of it.
2. It might be better if I just keep quiet for this one. If I lead a team it may produce a result that won't be judged well in the light of history.
3. Slow down and listen. Let me explain that one a bit more:

While we were in a bit of a break at the last event, one of the participants who was from Kyiv told me about their most famous poet, Taras Shevchenko.

I was in such a hurry to Do Something, that I thought it was quaint and possibly a bit annoying that someone would be talking to me about someone who’d been dead for 150-odd years. I’m trying to be a better listener, though, so I pulled up his Wikipedia page while I was talking to her, and then promptly forgot all about it.

A couple of weeks later, when I was finally closing all the tabs from that trip, I found that page. 

Here's the last part of a poem that apparently just about everyone in Ukraine knows:

Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants' blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.

Oh bury me, then rise ye up.

The woman who told me about this poet didn’t know that Arkady Babchenko — at just about that exact moment in a room a mile or so from where we were sitting — was figuratively “rising up.” 

But something about this whole thing compelled her to share that with me, and now I share it with you.

Freedom of the press is under assault right now, but a lot of us our fighting back. We are all working on different pieces of it, but we are all a lot like a family... as Taras Shevchenko might say, the family of the free.

That family is gathering Monday, and I am so glad that I'll be there for this family meeting.

But if something big happens in the news on Monday night, I won’t say a word about it on Tuesday.

Not. One. Word.