When business and journalism merge

Last class, we had a visitor. A visitor who bought a magazine and then proceeded to teach about business. 

Now, needless to say, I am a journalist, which means I am mathematically challenged (this is not true for all journalists, but let's be honest). 

Mr. Burke came into our class and talked about accounts receivables, checks, balances, moneymoneymoney. 

I enjoyed Mr. Burke's presence. I enjoy learning things I do not understand so that I can better understand them. 

However much I wanted to learn about what Mr. Burke was teaching, it would not stick. We did not formally practice his principles of business. He talked to us, quizzed us on terms, and now all I know is how little I understand of the working world. 

If anything, Mr. Burke's presentation enlightens me of the fact that I never want to run a business. How could any one person know and do all of those things? Could I have an accountant do it? Sure. But I need to be able to check over things to make sure there are no problems, and how can I do that if I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing?

I think next time I try to learn about business and finance, I should either be tutored from a finance major or buy a Dummies book. Otherwise, I am lost in a sea of numbers and numbness without even a hope of drowning. 

The concept of Goodwill

Goodwill, the business, is very different than the Goodwill in business.

It is not:

But rather a theory:

"Goodwill reflects a firm’s ability to retain customers based on prior performance. Essentially, if a business does a good job providing a product or service, its customers are likely to be repeat customers."

Again, I face a bit of a moral dilemma. Why is it called goodwill? I understand why the clothing Goodwill is called that. It meets a need. But goodwill within a business because it provides a dependable service...?

I guess I just don't understand. I have this mentality that businesses are more so for their own profit than for your gain. Most businesses are trying to survive, right? And not only to survive, but to really thrive in their respective economies and times. 

But to call it goodwill when customers keep coming back doesn't seem right to me. Does anyone else feel that way? 

If not, that's okay. I am not offended. If I could call it something else, I might call it just "quality services" from the business. Or returning customers. Goodwill makes it sound like they are doing something so great for the community at large, when in reality a lot of business try to change their stores around a lot, always have new products so that you feel like you absolutely have to keep coming back to get what you need. It almost creates a dependency in a spending culture. 

I don't know. I think I would just prefer it if businesses would provide high quality items at a good price, and keep those items around long enough so that customers do not feel they have to indulge in the consumerist society we have created. 

Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable

Is there even a point to accounts receivable and payable?

I don't think I understand the point. I think it's more a moral dilemma than anything, really, though.

Think about it. For accounts receivable, a customer promises to pay for the services provided. So what -- loans? Mortgages? Tabs at the bar?

And then accounts payable is when the business promises to pay the customer.

So then I wonder, why? Why do we have this system. It seems like its beyond the barter system, doesn't it? Maybe that's just my sleepy brain talking. But really, you promise to pay for something?

Is this part of the I-want-it-right-now generation? All of this business talk has just gotten me wondering why our system is so complicated. I get it -- it's hard work to run a business. It takes money to make money.

But what happened when it wasn't like this? Did systems fall? Or was is just not creating enough money? Or did things change when we went from local bartering to international trade?

I obviously don't understand the system, and I admire that it is so complex. Who thought of all this? One night, someone was laying in their bed and couldn't fall asleep. They tossed and they turned, they tossed and they turned! To overcome their sleep depravity, they came up with complex algorithms that would one day be the spine of every business in the world! After the algorithm, they had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and went to bed.

Does it just get you wondering, who invented this stuff!?

At least I can say that I have a refreshed appreciation for all of those souls who understand this practice.

Is life like a business?

Today we have a guest who will be visiting our class to speak about what it was like for him to purchase a magazine. My professor, Sandy, has given us a bunch of overview business sheets to look at it in order to prepare.

While I don't understand most of the business-jargon, I will say this: Life begins to look like a business once you've read over some of the principles Sandy sent us.

Life probably looks like a business because our lives are surrounded by business.

Even the way I conduct some of my finances (ahem, or try to...) looks like a business.

"A balance sheet reports what a business owns (assets), what it owes (liabilities) and what remains for the owners (equity) as of a certain date. This equation must always be in balance. Always keep in mind the teeter totter  illustration shown above." 

When I try to organize my bills and my finances, I set up a spreadsheet and hope everything balances out in the end. Is it the same? Of course not. A business must be exact, precise, and functioning. My finances spreadsheets can be a little bit more slack since they will never be published or used for anything. 

Oh, and if you say something like this to me: 

Equity = Assets - Liabilities

This is my face:

But a business person will understand what those words actually mean. So even though life is surrounded by business, I am so thrilled that there are smarter people out there than me who can translate those principles into the working world.

When John Herman came to visit

John Herman came to visit our class.

John Herman added something to my life, I think. Because at first, John Herman has a mature face that somehow looks young. He has brown hair without any gray flecks in it yet. And at first, when we were introducing ourselves around the classroom, I predicted that this famous John Herman guy would be bored with what we were saying. I predicted that he wouldn't really care what we were doing, whether we were listening.

To be honest, I predicted he would come to our class and lecture at us about how to be better journalists.

But then he didn't. Instead, he talked about his own life. His eyes were alive with his adventures. He turned his instruction into a story, and went through examples of how he got followers over the Internet, lost them, and then regained an audience. He explained that he's made a name for himself not because he's advertised his products. Instead, he's advertised himself apart from any product.

He's John Herman. He's an actor, writer, teacher, almost went to space, husband, father, and yet he's John Herman. Just John Herman.

Now that you know more about what I remember when I met John Herman, you can also know that I really liked listening to him. He had good stories to tell, and amidst his stories, he looked for feedback.

And he said that the college students in the room had the blankest expressions, and he just had no idea what we were thinking. The whole class laughed.

In a very sincere way, John Herman taught me a lot about himself and myself. By showing me all the things he was doing, had done, and even some of the things he wanted to do, I learned about the things I'm not willing to do and some of the things that I could maybe do but scare me.

Could I really put myself out there the same way that John Herman has? I don't know. But now I know there is a way.

Yahoo has survived with its technology

This video is from the Yahoo YouTube Channel. I find it relevant to this post because Yahoo gives hackers the chance to talk about what they're learning and possibly offer something to the company. Innovative? I think so.

Chapter 9 in Newsonomics starts with a very interesting fact: Yahoo is still going strong. Okay, I dumbed it down a little. A lot. There are huge statistics in there which I don't want to misspeak about, so I won't bother to guess, but basically, Yahoo is still strong. I consider this a pretty big feat considering we're in the digital age and Yahoo is not what everyone is talking about anymore. Sure, it seems like everyone has a yahoo email account, but compared with gmail, is it much more?

Then the Newsonomics chapter goes on to say that Yahoo survives because of its technology, not its ad-base. If my head didn't hurt before, it does now. And then, the author dares to say that 90 percent of the work in a company (again, I could be misquoting and this is not my intention -- fact check if you must!) should be carried by the technology and then the other 10 percent by the people. I dumbed down his idea a lot again, but the mere fact is that this author is sayingtechnology is what helps a company survive today. Is that not a little mind blowing? After being in several journalism classes, I was ready to believe it was advertising.

As much as I'm surprised, I'm also kind of not. Because Yahoo is trying to be innovative and one-step ahead, or at least in stride, with everyone else.

Does my project satisfy a news-need?

After feeling out my project, conducting light interviews about it, and talking to class members, my professor conducted a brief Q&A for members of the class to fill out. My professor's questions are listed as the Q's and my general thoughts are the A's. 

Question: I have read your idea and I would like to understand a little more about it. What need does this idea fill? Is this a need that you have yourself? Who would share this need?

Answer: This idea fills the need for reaching a broader audience and getting the news out to more people. As we've experienced in the digital age, journalism accompanied with photos, videos, and hyperlinks has huge success in the online community as well as in print (though hyperlinks make no sense in that context...nor do videos, for that matter). But people like to be engaged. Comic strips have always been the way to engage the biggest audience of any newspaper or magazine, at least I always thought. Of course this fills my own need, as well, because I desire to see the news in a way that interests me. I love comic books and I never have the chance to read them. I also love the news, but I hate reading it. I remember I used to read Newsweek magazine. My favorite part of that magazine were the two political cartoons wedged in the middle pages. Did I understand what I was reading? No, not always, not even half the time when I was younger. But I got more information, more understanding of how little I understood, out of those political cartoons than I ever did in the rest of its pages. 

Q: At this point you should have some idea of who the average user of your product will be. What is the profile of that person?

A: I imagine the majority of my readers would be high-school aged students all the way to the middle aged. But as you can see in my interview with my grandmother, even she would be engaged with my graphic stories. 

Q: Who wants this product that you intend to develop?

A: The people who want this product are the people who are interested in experiencing the worldly news in a new way. They are the people who use multiple senses to get immersed in stories and really retain its messages. More generally, the people who want this product are the people who want to be entertained, engaged, and immersed while they're going through the daily news.

Q: What problem or need are you satisfying for your customers? (Remember, the customers aren't necessarily the people who will be using your product. For example, television audiences aren't customers unless they pay for the product, as in HBO. The customers are advertisers.)

A: I'm satisfying the need for something new and for something engaging for anyone who subscribes to me. For advertisers, I'm presenting a new form of news that has the potential to grab a lot of interest. I imagine that a lot of readers would be engaged with the page, at first anyways, and if people are looking at the page, it's an opportunity for ads to be seen by a lot of people. 

Q: Who wants this product?

A: I think there's a general hunger for seeing the news differently (hence why Stephen Colbert and some other news-comedics are so popular). So I would say a lot of people who want a new experience, though I can't be sure right now.

Q: We all have to live. Where is the money in this product?

A: The money would come from both advertisers and subscribers. Hopefully.

Q: You are a journalist. Where is the journalism in this product?

A: The journalism is in the details of the graphics. A journalist has to pay attention to the surrounding details to make the graphics work, and then fact check with whoever is drawing the graphics. The journalism is also in the captions, descriptions, and dialogue within the graphic news, detailing carefully what information must be written and what information must be drawn.

Q: We've read that passion is key to success of a new venture. Money alone will not sustain it. So where is the passion in your product?

A: I'm just as hungry for this product as my interviewees seemed to be. Not only that, but I love comics. If I can make my news look like a comic book (except not quite), I'm going to go ape.