Howardowens' Journals

We're selling our house

Here's some hot Bakersfield Real Estate.

HowardOwens.com is back

I've started blogging again at HowardOwens.com.

Streets of Bakersfield

It seemed like a good night to record my own take on Streets of Bakersfield.

The telegraph is dead. Long live the telegraph

On Jan. 27, Western Union, the company that sent its first telegraph in 1851 and pioneered stock tickers and money transfers, announced that it is getting out of the messaging business. The telegraph, an icon of international communication for more than 150 years, is dead. Technology -- phones, e-mail and SMS -- has finally swept it aside.

The day before the death of the telegraph was announced, First Data, the parent company of Western Union since 1994 (Western Union was nearly bankrupt in the 1980s), announced it was going to spin off Western Union into its own publicly traded business. Why? Because Western Union has become First Data's most profitable unit and it only made sense to deliver more share holder value by segregating its market power from the rest of First Data. In 2005, Western Union did $4 billion in business and showed $1.4 billion in profit.

So while the telegraph died, Western Union focused on a once small part of its business and turned it into a worldwide necessity -- money transfers -- transforming itself and ensuring its survival, at least until technology does away with cash.

I think there is a lesson here for newspapers.

Newspapers -- It's only a flesh wound

As a journalist in San Diego, I got to know a lot of the other local media types, and one of my favorites was J.D. Crowe, who was the cartoonist for the Evening Tribune. When the Tribune closed, the new Union-Tribune decided to keep Steve Kelly and drop Crowe. Wrong decision.

After a couple of years, I lost track of J.D. Through a media blog, I learn he's now in Mobile and he's getting some attention for this cartoon about the state of the newspaper industry.

To me, there's some irony, because when Copley decided to close one of it's papers, not only was the wrong cartoonist kept, the entire wrong staff was kept. The Evening Tribune was by far a much better newspaper than the anemic San Diego Union.

I'm sure it's just coincidence

There's a great deal of consternation within the newspaper industry about what Google's up to. You've got Google local aimed at newspaper markets, and Google AdSense, which is a threat to traditional advertising, and of late, Google Base, which seems aimed squarely at newspaper's classified revenue.

As a dedicated Google watcher, I'm using Google's customizable start up page as my home page, and every day, Google serves me up three interesting quotes.

Here's today's quote:

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. - Ben Hecht

Do you think Google is trying to tell us something?

This is art

My friend Bruce sent along this link of wonderfully strange paintings.

Not Everybody Loves Bakersfield

I happen to think Bakersfield is a great, but some times that seems like a minority opinion. And the younger a person is, the greater the hosility toward Bako. This very funny rap video encapsulate's ever cliched complaint about "The Armpit of the State."

Escrow closed

This house is now ours.

CompanyTown.com sold and I made money

I got an e-mail from Network Solutions -- a domain I used to own that I let expiree (companytown.com) sold (turns out to a broker) and NS paid me a comission. Amazing. I never expected that. A total of $8.86.