Mohs Surgery: Why You Should Use Sunscreen - Not for the Faint of Heart

I grew up two miles from Venice Beach.  I spent a lot of my school years at the beach.  We didn't have sun screen in those days.  It was called sun tan lotion.  I had a great time in the sun and surf.  But today there was some payback.

I had a basal cell carcinoma on my left cheek.  That was confirmed a couple of weeks ago and today I went in to have it cut out ("removed" is too benign sounding.)  The Mayo Clinic website says:

Basal cell carcinoma is a type of skin cancer. Basal cell carcinoma begins in the basal cells — a type of cell within the skin that produces new skin cells as old ones die off.
Basal cell carcinoma often appears as a waxy bump, though it can take other forms. Basal cell carcinoma occurs most often on areas of the skin that are often exposed to the sun, such as your face and neck.
Most basal cell carcinomas are thought to be caused by long-term exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sunlight. Avoiding the sun and using sunscreen may help protect against basal cell carcinoma.

I decided not to put up photos the normal way today.  Two of these are pretty gross.  So I'm embedding a Slide Show that you can view or not.  But if you think, as I did, that a basal cell was a minor issue, then look, and use your sunscreen.  What you see in the slide show is:

1.  Outpatient surgery room - leave your clothes on, lie back.  In five minutes or less he'd sliced out the cancer cells using something called Mohs Micrographic Surgery.  The description is from the college where they teach doctors how to do this, so I'm guessing it's not totally unbiased.

The Mohs procedure involves surgically removing skin cancer layer by layer and examining the tissue under a microscope until healthy, cancer-free tissue around the tumor is reached (called clear margins). Because the Mohs College surgeon is specially trained as a cancer surgeon, pathologist, and reconstructive surgeon, Mohs surgery has the highest success rate of all treatments for skin cancer – up to 99%.

"Mohs surgery is unique and so effective because of the way the removed tissue is microscopically examined, evaluating 100% of the surgical margins. The pathologic interpretation of the tissue margins is done on site by the Mohs surgeon, who is specially trained in the reading of these slides and is best able to correlate any microscopic findings with the surgical site on the patient. Advantages of Mohs surgery include:

• Ensuring complete cancer removal during surgery, virtually eliminating the chance of the cancer growing back
• Minimizing the amount of healthy tissue lost
• Maximizing the functional and cosmetic outcome resulting from surgery
• Repairing the site of the cancer the same day the cancer is removed, in most cases
• Curing skin cancer when other methods have failed" [From Mohscollege]

2.    The surgeon sliced through the tissue to where he thought he got it and I was bandaged up until they could check that the tissue was cancer free.  That was about 30 minutes.This second picture was right after they took the bandage off to do the reconstructive surgery.

3.  The third picture is after they cleaned the hole.

4.  The last one is after they stitched it up.  When I saw the hole, I asked how they were going to pull the skin back together.  He said he would enlarge the hole to make it more a straight line and then he was sewing it up.  First he would sew up inside - and those stitches would dissolve on their own, and then he'd sew up the outside.  I go back Friday to remove those stitches, which you can see in the picture. It's covered by a big bandage now.

As I say, not for the squeamish.  But a good reason to use your sunscreen. 

Basal Cell Removed [UPDATE Dec. 17, 2011 - Two months later] Here's the scar now. (Compare to last picture on slide show above.

[UPDATE February 22, 2012: Here's what it looks like 4 months later:

Why Farming In Bethel Make Sense

Saturday I was able to talk a bit to Tim Meyers at the Bioneers Conference.  He's the farmer in Bethel who is showing that it's possible to farm in rural Alaska.  In fact, it's a great place place to farm.





He showed me a National Geographic world soil map. (The inset came from Geology.com)

He pointed to the area that I've highlighted in red in the upper left.  The dark green is the most fertile soil, as I understood it.  You can see in Alaska that dark green goes along the Kuskokwim River through Bethel and it's also on the Aleutian Chain.  Coincidentally, the Kuskokwim drainage is colored green in the inset of Alaska.  [Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to what issue of the National Geographic it was.  I couldn't find the map online, but I did find a soil article here from September 2008. ]


The key here, he said, is that while agriculture has been focused around the Matsu, it's Bethel that has the good soil.  In Matsu they soil's not great and they have to use a lot of fertilizer to grow crops whereas in Bethel the soil is already very rich.  [Will there be a comment on that from Matsu farmers?]

Photo of a photo

Tim also emphasized the difference between gardening and farming.  Farming is much easier than gardening because you can make good use of a tractor.  His five acres wasn't that hard to maintain. (I'd just been to a session where Matt and Saskia - I'll try to post on that soon - talked about how much work it was to keep up their urban garden where they are growing much of their food for the year.)  Tim said he hoped that Alaska's Cooperative Extension would add farming to their efforts rather than just focus on gardening advice.  Raising food in a home garden is nice, but, he said, it's not going to seriously increase the level of Alaska's food independence.

Tim had a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program where people paid in advance for a set amount and selection of vegetables.  It was too much food for most people, he said, so now he has a vegetable stand twice a week in Bethel.  People are lined up an hour before he opens and he sells out.  The prices are lower than in Bethel's super market and his food is fresh and organic. 

He pointed out that Bethel has a number of flights headed for Anchorage every day, and they go with empty cargo holds.  Setting up more farms like his could give Alaskans a steady supply of Alaskan grown vegetables, but it will take people with the skills and the determination to do all the work. 


Visit the farm's website here.


You can hear an APRN interview with Tim here.

Origami Trash to Smal Scale Poultry at Bioneers Book Table

At the Bioneer Conference at UAA in Anchorage, among the, the book table. Here is a sampling of what was for sale.

Lovins delivered a keynote via video conference Saturday afternoon.

This one is about China.

Rachel, from the UAA bookstore, always chooses carefully for this kind of special event.

Josh Fouts Imagination as the Foundation of the Future

Another of the national bioneers speakers via teleconferencing, Josh Fouts talked about the kinds of work he's been doing exploring imagination as the important commodity of the future (well, we need it now already.)  He gave various examples from the work he's been doing in a variety of situations.
There's no way I can cover this all and keep up with what other things are going on, except to alert you to some of his work through other websites.

He began and ended with this quote:

The creative adult is the child who has survived.
Ursula K. Le Guin

Here's a blog he does with his partner Rita King.

Here's the Bioneer's website's description of the presentation (Rita wasn't there.)

The Emerging Imagination Age

Visionary media innovators Josh Fouts and Rita King call this time “The Imagination Age.” From sudden revolutions in the Middle East to “unimaginable” natural and human made technological and economic disasters, our world is in a state of radical transformation and readjustment. At the same time, powerful new media are emerging that could presage a hopeful new global culture and economy. Josh and Rita illuminate how extraordinary new tools — virtual worlds, games and the worldwide web — can leverage global cultural empowerment and educational reform, amplified by creativity, collaboration, art and music.

About the Presenters:

Joshua S. Fouts, a writer, journalist, gamer and technologist, is a Senior Fellow for Digital Media and Public Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress, a Next Generation Fellow at The American Assembly, and Executive Producer at Dancing Ink Productions. Fouts has an extensive career on the cutting-edge of journalism, online media, games, culture and foreign policy and a history exploring the impact of new technology tools for media years before they are adopted by the mainstream. In 2005 he was the first person to propose and direct a project illuminating how virtual worlds could be used for cultural relations.

Rita J. King is the Founding Director of Dancing Ink Productions, a company that works with major clients focused on the emergence of a new global culture and economy in the Imagination Age. King is Innovator-in-Residence at IBM’s Analytics Virtual Center, a former Senior Fellow at The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Then there's Science House

Welcome to

Science House has a simple mission: bring people together to promote and advance science.
We have three primary components:

	NETWORK
The Science House Network brings scientists together with people outside their normal circles - like journalists, film makers or entrepreneurs. We'll be holding informal talks and educational sessions and helping start discussions on all things science.

	CAPITAL
Science House Capital invests in early stage science-driven ventures and provides ongoing support to help create startup companies. From business plan drafting to intro-ductions to potential investors, Science House Capital is here to help.

	FOUNDATION
Science House Foundation helps share the excitement of science with kids all over the world. We fund educational programs, buy equipment, sponsor prizes, competitions and more. Let's talk about helping kids discover the wonder of science!

Something else is happening. There's another day of this tomorrow, and tonight at Wendy Williamson there's a talk. From the Alaska Bioneers website.

October 15th Saturday Evening 7:30pm-9:30pm Keynote with Thomas J. Elpel The New Era of Self-Sufficiency It is easy to be overwhelmed at the magnitude of the challenges we face as a species, when the whole world seems to be careening towards economic and environmental collapse. How can we adapt to a rapidly changing world, build a sustainable civilization, and put the brakes on climate change? Thomas J. Elpel, author of Participating in Nature: Wilderness Survival and Primitive Living Skills, suggests that we can start by taking our shoes off and getting back in touch with the earth. We can rediscover our connection to nature through the traditional knowledge of our ancestors. By living close to the earth we can gain the physical grounding necessary to re-examine the challenges we face as a society and find answers to some of the most vexing problems that face our species. Thomas Elpel is the director of Green University® LLC and Hollowtop Outdoor Primitive School LLC in Pony, Montana. (www.hollowtop.com). He has authored six books and produced six videos on topics ranging from wilderness survival and botany to green building and consciousness. Elpel connects the dots from wilderness survival to sustainable living, showing how the quest for survival in nature functions as a metaphor for living that empowers us to see new solutions in the modern world. Keynote with Tamarack Song Remembering: a Key to Weathering the Changes

Paul Stamets - Mycologist Extraordinaire

The afternoon sessions at the bioneer conference are teleconferenced into the national conference.  There have been several speakers and I can't quite keep up.  But the last speaker was Paul Stamets.  

Stamets has a knowledge of fungi that pushes us to think way beyond how we think today to protect fungi that play a critical role in the ecosystem of our planet and offers amazing medical potential for humans. 

The best I can do is offer you this TED video of him.

Sustainable Home Heating (Wood) at Bioneers

I'm at the bioneers conference in Anchorage.  Valerie Barber and Meg Burgett from the Cooperative Extension are doing this workshop.  I went to the Alaska Food Challenge workshop first, but didn't pull out the computer.  I have pictures and notes though and will put it up later.   [I'm not going to proof this carefully so I can get it up and go to the next session, sorry.]

Meg Burgett

This one is on how to be sustainable with a wood stove.  

Natural gas prices make natural gas the cheapest way to heat, but it's a finite resource.
Fairbanks is using a lot of wood, but they also have air quality issues.

When is Wood Cost Effective?  Oil about $37/MBTU .  Gas is about 4/15/MBTU
Wood about $15/MBTU, Electricity about $44/MBTU

Other factors to consider
1.  The stove and cost to pay back
2.  Size and quality of insulation in home
3.  Wood fuel availability
4.  Costs, including transportation
5.  Storage space for wood - needs to be stored properly, needs a cover but open on the side to dry out properly

More costs than $ - exercise


Cost comparisons - (gas on chart 2X the chart)  but gas still much cheaper.

Rich Siefert chart -

Availability and costs of wood fuel options
Cords,  chips, pellets - Fairbanks has a factory, most in Anchorage coming from Georgia or Canada?

Why Burn wood:
Can be cost/efficient
Reduces use of fossil-nonrenewable fuels
Supports local jobs and local economy
Reduces impacts from green house gases
Personal choice more independence for you and family - especially off the grid
Enjoy activities


Best Practices
Choose the right applicance for you and your home

Understand how to properly use your appliance
Properly locate and install appliance
Use only high quality food
Clean and maintain your appliance regularly - if using <20% moisture, burns much cleaner

Choose the right appliance
Pre 1991 before regulations
EPA certified non-catalytic
EPA ertified catalytic
Wood/biomass
Masonry stores

Old stoves - less than 20% efficient, safety hazard.  Post 1991, required to meet EPA standards.  All certified stoves labeled.

Catalytic Wood stoves - Large, well insulated fireboxes
Costs more to start - $2200- $5000  - only can burn wood.  maintenance costs up, have to replace every 2 or 3 years, tho less if more efficient.







Non-catalytic - $1800 , not counting the pipe - hot short fires, nice flame for watching, most efficiently with short hot fires.
Wood or Biomass Pellet - good, but you do need electricity.  Extremely efficient @ 90%.  About $2-3000.  No local pellets, yet in Anchorage.  Fairbanks and Delta have them.

Outdooor Woodburners, least efficient, but lower fire risk to burn house.  Buring hot for long periods, large logs, but people burn garbage.  Surrounded by water that goes to house.  Low efficiency.  Up to 12 cords a year and can produce a lot of smoke.  Neighbors not happy at all.  Not good for dense urban areas.

Masonry stoves - hold and radiate heat for a long time.  Massive heavy structures, best to plan building new home and plan house around the stove.  $5-15,000 for the cores and not made here.  Can use brick, cement, tiles, etc.

Locating your stove
Put as close to center of space to heat.
Account for space between stove and walls and traffic patterns
Maximizing the Heat - best against an interior wall with masonry around it.
Avoid exterior walls
Avoid external chimneys, straight up,
Proper installation
Insurance costs more.

High Quality Wood
SCentral - cords most available.
Support local wood collected within 50 miles from harvest
Right moisture content <20%

Cordwood Primer
128 Cubic Feet (not counting spaces in between)  4'X4'X8'  - standard pickup holds 1/2 a cord

Moisture meter

Moisture content - there's a moisture meter - internet - $40, maybe a stove store has one
Split into 6" pieces, stacked off the ground, not rotting bottom.  Cover, tarp isn't great.
In Anchorage about 6 months to get green wood to 20%.  Away from structures - rodents and insects into the wood.

Valerie Barber

Look at wood - lighter in color, feels lighter and should have cracks and splits
Distinctive clank, not a thud when you hit it
Not all trees the same
Best is birch, worst aspen and cottonwoods.  Works ok if dry and in masonry stove.
How Wood Burns in your Wood Stove
1.  All the water in the wood heats up and evaporates off
2.  Wood begins to burn or 'break-down" at around 400˚F and release....

Clean and maintain yearly

Wood's renewable, but only when trees replanted and regeneration is encouraged.

Problems here because of climate change - the warmer it gets the less some of the trees grow.  Related to drought stress.  We can produce new trees, but not natural gas and oil.

We're watching a Canadian movie now on the best way to burn wood in your stove.  The content's really good (did you ever make a knotted piece of newspaper?), but the actors are awful. 

Need to do homework before buying - check emissions to see efficiency.  Lower the emissions, higher the efficiencies.  Catalytic stoves not designed for long fires.  Hot and quick. 

Here's a website they recommended.

Nein - Nein - Nein

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 sound bite budget plan makes a great bumper sticker, but probably not such a good budget plan.

On his website he elaborates a bit, but doesn't spell out the details of how it will affect different categories of tax payers or how much money it will raise.   You can see the expanded version and a few of my thoughts below.

Phase 1 - 9-9-9

• Current circumstances call for bolder action.
• The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan incorporates the features of Phase One and gets us a step closer to Phase two.
• I call on the Super Committee to pass the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan along with their spending cut package.
• The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan unites Flat Tax supporters with Fair tax supporters.
• Achieves the broadest possible tax base along with the lowest possible rate of 9%.
• It ends the Payroll Tax completely – a permanent holiday!
• Zero capital gains tax
• Ends the Death Tax.
• Eliminates double taxation of dividends
• Business Flat Tax – 9%
• Gross income less all investments, all purchases from other businesses and all dividends paid to shareholders.
• Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for payroll employed in the zone.
• Individual Flat Tax – 9%.
• Gross income less charitable deductions.
• Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for those living and/or working in the zone.
• National Sales Tax – 9%.
• This gets the Fair Tax off the sidelines and into the game.

Phase 1 Enhanced Plan – Summary

• Unites all tax payers so we all pay income taxes and no one pays payroll taxes
• Provides the least incentive to evade taxes and the fewest opportunities to do so
• Lifts a $430 billion dead-weight burden on the economy due to compliance, enforcement, collection, etc.
• Is fair, neutral, transparent, and efficient
• Ends nearly all deductions and special interest favors
• Ends all payroll taxes
• Ends the Death Tax
• Features zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits
• Lowest marginal rates on production
• Allows immediate expensing of business investments
• Eliminates double taxation of dividends
• Increases capital formation. Capital per worker drives productivity and wage growth
• Capital formation will aid capital availability for small businesses
• Features a platform to launch properly structured Empowerment Zones to revitalize our inner cities
• We all know the Fed has tripled the money supply since 2008. They have been printing money out of thin air to finance the Obama spending machine. While true Fed reform that restores sound money may have to wait for my election, the best thing we can do now is to pursue policies that increase the DEMAND for dollars to help mitigate the risks associated with the increase in the supply.
• Pro-growth economic policies equal a strong dollar policy

A few thoughts  
 
 1.  How does this impact income to the government to run the various programs we depend on?  Or is the intent to gut government and give corporations free rein? People forget that the phrase "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" doesn't have the word government in it.  When corporations have absolute power - as some are close to having in their sectors - they are likely to be even more corrupt than any democratic government where at least the leaders can be voted out of office.

2.  We know flat taxes are regressive taxes which put a much greater burden on those who make less.  A larger percent of their money goes to necessities.  By making the income tax flat, and adding a sales tax (which is flat), the gap between the rich and poor will grow.  Check out this overview of a national sales taxes.

3.  End the "Death Tax."  If it were really a death tax, everyone would be taxed after their death.  This is an inheritance tax, which reverts a relatively small, yet collectively important, share of wealthy people's money back into the general kitty.  According to Wikipedia, in 2010 you had to inherit $5,000,000 before the tax kicked in.  An inheritance tax is like reshuffling the cards at the end of the game,  and we start out even the next game.  Except that we don't reshuffle the cards.  The heirs of the very rich keep most of the money and the inheritance tax is like throwing a few extra chips to the dealer. 

4.  Eliminates all payroll taxes.  Maybe he can explain how he plans to fund Social Security.  Or maybe that gets eliminated too in his plan. 




 I agree with Cain that the tax code is too complicated.  Lobbyists have gotten tax write-offs for all of their clients.  We do need to eliminate a lot of deductions, but because of the tax code's enormous impact on the economy, it does make sense - at least theoretically - to use it to give incentives that change people's behavior for our collective good.    The home mortgage deduction was instituted to encourage home ownership and has been supported by Republicans and Democrats alike.  Deductions for things like energy saving repairs on your house create jobs and lower overall energy use.  So there is legitimate use for them.  If they can be controlled, which is a big if. 


So, if Cain gives us the slogan 9-9-9, my response is Nein - Nein - Nein.

Frontier Scientists Want To Talk To You About Bears

I got an email from Frontier Scientists today. It says I subscribed to this, but I don't remember doing it. In any case, it's an interesting site. They describe it this way:

Frontier Scientists, an interactive website which connects Alaska field scientists to those curious about Arctic discoveries, has released a new series of vodcasts on the mighty grizzly bears of Denali National Park.

The short videos feature field biologists and interpreters who have the difficult task of keeping Alaska bears unacclimated to humans--and the humans who are visiting the Far North safe from bears. The vodcasts are produced by an award-winning Bend, Oregon videographer who specializes in backcountry nature films.

There are six films up:
Preserving Grizzly Bears and Visitor’s Experience
Front Country Interactions
Backcountry Incidents 
Denali’s Grizzly Population
Denali’s Rainbow Portal (No bears, just rainbows in Denali National Park)
Pat’s Big Bear

These links go to YouTube directly.  The Frontier Scientists site with the videos is here:



I like the idea of scientists setting up a space where the public can talk to them directly about their research.  That's the idea anyway.  Let's see how well it gets carried out. 


Here's the first one.

Wall Street Journal Circulation Scam - Will Anyone Really Care?

Robbery, rape, murder are all easy to understand.  Someone uses violence or the threat of violence to take someone's money, body, or life.  Proving who did it may not be easy, but the concepts can be grasped by most anyone.  It's easy to report and for readers to grasp.

Fraud, on the other hand, if done cleverly, requires a lot more work to detect.  The victim may be unaware, so no one is even reporting a problem.  Think of Enron.  While pulling off the US's then largest fraud ever, they were repeatedly named Company of the Year by top business journals.

How were average citizens supposed to know what was happening if 'freedom's watch dogs' were so enamored?  And everyone knows how hard it is to turn the banking ripoff into evening news sound bites.  While more people are getting the point that the rich guys got richer while the average guy got poorer, I'd bet most people couldn't explain how it all worked.  Or understand that there were some rich good guys and some unsavory average folks.
 
So, how difficult is it to understand the Wall Street Journal's circulation fraud?  Not that hard. 



Basic Assumption Needed to Understand

Circulation is the newspapers' equivalent to ratings.  Circulation means everything to the business types in the media.  The higher the circulation the more attractive a newspaper is to advertisers and the more they can charge. 

They don't make money by selling papers.  They make money by selling ads.  They sell ads and set the prices based on circulation.

So if your advertising price is for, say, 75,000 subscriptions per day, but you really only have  44,000, you're essentially charging your customers for a lot more eyeballs than actually see their ads.  Sort of like selling a fake Rolex at real Rolex prices. And at a large newspaper over a a couple of years, that could add up to quite a bit of 'stolen' money.  But for many people it doesn't quite seem like theft.  And while someone who steals $200 from an ATM machine might get a number of years in prison, how may newspaper executives go to prison for scamming for millions?



The Wall Street Journal Scheme (According to the Guardian)

1.   The WSJ sold papers below cost to European companies that gave the papers to students.  In return the WSJ had features which highlighted the companies.  This practice accounted for a whopping 41% of their European circulation.

"The Journal's decision to secretly purchase its own papers began with an unusual scheme to boost circulation, known as the Future Leadership Institute. Starting in January 2008, [remember this date] the Journal linked up with European companies who sponsored seminars for university students who were likely to be future leaders. The Journal rewarded the sponsors by publishing their names in a special panel published in the paper. The sponsors paid for that publicity by buying copies of the Journal at a knock-down rate of no more than 5¢ each. Those papers were then distributed to university students. At the bottom line, the sponsors enjoyed a prestigious link to the Journal, and the Journal boosted its circulation figures.

The scheme was controversial. The sponsoring companies were not reading the papers they were paying for; they were never even seeing them; and they were buying at highly reduced rates. The students to whom they were distributed may or may not have read them; none of the students paid for the papers they were being offered. But the Audit Bureau of Circulation ruled that the scheme was legitimate and by 2010, it was responsible for 41% of the European edition's daily sales – 31,000 copies out of a total of 75,000."

I did find it interesting that the inflated circulation number in Europe was only 75,000 in a market of (in 2010)  857 million people.

2.      A WSJ insider alerted the higher ups about the scheme and its illegitimacy.  The insider was fired.

Senior executives in New York, including Murdoch's right-hand man, Les Hinton, were alerted to the problems last year by an internal whistleblower and apparently chose to take no action. The whistleblower was then made redundant.

3.  When one of the main companies involved wanted to back out, the WSJ sweetened the deal.  Having circulation drop 16% wasn't going to look good.  They even found another company to cover the payments and told everyone to keep quiet.

In early 2010 the scheme began to run into trouble when the biggest single sponsor, a Dutch company called Executive Learning Partnership, ELP, threatened to back out. ELP alone were responsible for 16% of the Journal's European circulation, sponsoring 12,000 copies a day for which they were paying only 1¢ per copy. For the 259 publishing days in a year, they were sponsoring 3.1m copies at a cost to them of €31,080 (£27,200). They complained that the publicity they were receiving was not enough return on their investment.

On 9 April 2010, Andrew Langhoff emailed ELP to table a new deal, explaining that "our clear goal is to add a new component to our partnership" and offering to "provide a well-branded showcase for ELP's valuable services". On 30 April, ELP agreed to continue to sponsor 12,000 copies at the same rate. But that deal included a new eight-page addendum, which the Guardian has seen.
The addendum included a collection of side deals: the Journal would give ELP free advertising and, in exchange, the ELP would produce "leadership videos" for them; they would jointly organise more seminars and workshops on themes connected to ELP's work; but, crucially, Langhoff agreed that the Journal would publish "a minimum of three special reports" that would be based on surveys of the European market which ELP would run with the Journal's help. . .


By the autumn of 2010, ELP were complaining that the Journal was failing to deliver its end of the agreement. They threatened not to make a payment of €15,000 that was due at the end of December, for the copies of the Journal which they had sponsored since April 30. Without the payment, the Journal could not officially record the sales and their circulation figures would suddenly dive by 16%, undermining the confidence of advertisers and readers.

So Langhoff set up a complex scheme to channel money to ELP to pay for the papers it had agreed to buy – effectively buying the papers with the Journal's own cash. This involved the use of other companies although it is not suggested that they were aware they were taking part in a scam.

Of course when the WSJ was bought by Murdoch, who also owns Fox News, pundits immediately raised fears about the credibility of the WSJ.  From the Washington Post in August 2007:

The colorful and controversial tabloid king faced strong opposition during his four-month run at Dow Jones and whipped up worries that he would destroy the credibility of the august Journal.  [Emphasis added]

 If we look at the dates above, this scheme was put into action just six months after the WSJ was bought.

Consequences so far
The Guardian also writes that as word of their asking questions reached the WSJ's executives, Andrew Langhoff, the European managing director of the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones and Co, resigned. 

Personal note
I also have to add that the WSJ's history of selling copies to students didn't begin with Murdoch.  As a faculty member in a College of Business and Public Policy, I regularly got offers from the WSJ for a free subscription if I got students to buy the journal.  [See update below for example.] At least here the students were legitimately buying the journal (for a student rate as I recall) themselves.  But I always wondered how many faculty who made the offers to students also revealed that they would get a free subscriptions themselves.  (I never passed the offer on to my students.  Though I mentioned it a few times when we studied ethics.)

Some Contrast
There was also an Associated Press story I read in the Anchorage Daily News yesterday about boxer Dewey Bozella who is making his pro boxing debut at age 52 two years after his murder conviction was overturned and after serving 26 years in prison for a murder he didn't do.

. . . He was suspected in 1977 of killing Crapser. Bozella was fingered by a suspect in another crime and eventually charged for her death. But a grand jury found there wasn't enough evidence and refused to indict him. . .

Life unraveled in 1983 when false testimony from convicts that granted their freedom cost Bozella his. Bozella was arrested again for Crapser's death and in December 1983 was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years to life. He collapsed to the ground in tears, crying out that he didn't do it.

Murder is easy to understand and there is a demand for a conviction.  It doesn't matter if it's not the right guy as long as we can convince ourselves it is.  But fraud is dicier.

Apparently the folks at WSJ didn't see anything wrong when the whistleblower brought things to their attention a year ago.  Or they thought the risk was worth any possible consequences.  Langhof's resignation would seem to be the cost of doing business and mollifying anyone who is seriously concerned.  If it hadn't been for the leftover sensitivity from News Corps' recent phone hacking scandal, perhaps he wouldn't have had to resign.  And I'm sure Langhof's salary and other perks these last few years will carry him over for a while.

And Bozella gets a chance to get his body battered in a pro fight now that he's out of prison.


UPDATE October 14:  I just got an email offer for students of the type I mentioned above:

For a limited time, we are offering you a free 4-week trial to The Journal.  You'll receive the print Journal every weekday, plus unlimited access to the Online Journal.

The Wall Street Journal now provides more politics coverage than ever, making it an ideal complement to your Political Science textbook.  Plus, our Education program makes it easy for you to integrate our content into your curriculum.

With the Journal-in-Education program, you'll:

• Save time with our faculty-developed tools and integration ideas.
• Engage students and promote debate with The Journal's reliable coverage of U.S. and World events.
• Keep courses fresh with a daily supply of new material and information.

When your students subscribe, they'll receive The Journal in print, online and via smartphone.  Plus, students pay the lowest rate - 75% off regular rates!
Try out The Journal for free for 4 weeks and see for yourself how The Journal will provide you and your students with relevant, real-world content for your classes.

The Wall Street Journal Education Department
200 Burnett Road
Chicopee, MA 01020

This is a commercial message.

"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals. Let them make experiments on journalists and politicians."

This quote comes from Brooke Gladstone's The Influencing Machine, illustrated by Josh Neufeld.    I know Brooke Gladstone from her radio show On The Media, so I picked  it up from the new books section at Loussac Library.  The Meet the Author section (plus the cartoon style) caused me to check it out.

Click to get it clearer

 I don't like to pry.  I like to engage people in conversation, but I'm not comfortable at all pushing for more information than someone wants to give.  I want to hear the important stuff, and certainly the complicated stuff.  The personal stuff is important when it helps explain their behavior.  I certainly don't want to make people cry!   But I wanted to read what she was thinking.   Did she have things I should know about, as a blogger? 

 

Being a reporter is a diagnosis?   I do have a compulsion to know why.  I like to take pictures;  it's a way of processing what I'm seeing.  The camera allows me, forces me, to focus in on parts of what's there and it blocks out the other parts.  I get to see things close up, to look at the parts I would otherwise miss when all the data in the scene bombards me.  But I'm not at all comfortable photographing people who don't want to be photographed.  

And I can relate to processing things by writing about them.  But I don't need to post them to the world.  That's an extra that blogs afford people today.  But I was just as happy writing in my private journal where no one could see. 

Well, the book isn't really about her, it's about her take on the history of media. (So, in a way you could say it's about her.)  A basic lesson is that as bad as things might look to some today, even in the US, the idea of freedom of the press has gotten a lot of bruises over the years, and reporters are usually not very popular - particularly in the eyes of those covered, but also among readers.  And often with good reason. 


I'm only partway through the book.

I'm really curious about why she chose to use the cartoon style.  Is that how she envisioned the book?  I can see that if you also do the drawings, but in this case she has an illustrator.  Did she think it would be read by people who normally wouldn't read a book on the media?  I saw at least one 'fuck' in there, so she wasn't writing this for high schools to buy.  How much did she work with Josh Neufeld on the layout? 





Still looking for the quote in the title of the post?  It's in one of the images.