Saturday Night Live recently nailed fast fashion in a spoof about Jos. A.Bank suits. Now the target is the 24-hour mainstream news machine frenzy in this hilarious but pretty accurate depiction of CNN.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post Sensational 24-Hour News Machine: We are SO Over It Already [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnDear headline writers. This is not Spinal Tap.

Made you click! Quite a task, it seems, in today’s hyper-competitive online media marketplace. After all, this story is just one of dozens, maybe even hundreds, that will compete for your attention today. And the truth is that some of us will use any trick in the book to get at your precious eyeballs, including cry-wolf, volume-to-11 headlines.

We all get snagged this way from time to time. Evidently, some—let’s say quantifiable lots—more than others. In many ways, we seem to have come full circle back to the days of the penny press and its yellow journalism, with an omnipresent din of hawkers on every digital street corner: Extra! Extra! Every single word guaranteed to be over the top!

But really, is everything an extra? Is there nothing interesting that remains appropriately under the top? Apparently not much.

The noise starts early in the day, for some even before we get out of bed, our smartphones serving up morning copy that promises to be “truly unbelievable!” and photo stories that are nothing short of cap-S “stunning!” and cap B-“breathtaking!” Yes, the a.m. rush isn’t complete without being informed that today—every day, in fact—is the best of times and the worst of times, the end of something as we know it, and the magnificent start of something new. Do we dare miss out?

Here’s one from Upworthy, a good site with a lot of compelling material: “This Is Not A Joke. You May Laugh, But You Shouldn’t. It’s Quite Horrifying—It has to be seen to be believed. But you still won’t believe it.” Really? This is about a bizarre napkin designed to cover the mouths of Japanese women while they eat hamburgers. Insanely weird and sexist? Yes. Warranting a headline that would make a civil defense air-raid siren blush? Maybe not.

Moving on, how does (did?) this grab you: “Antibiotic resistance will mean the end of just about everything as we know it.” Right. That’s from Salon, a way-too-frequent flyer on click-me-now air, and purveyor of other gems such as “Psychopaths: Some are just like us!” (Are they?!) and “Embrace your small penis, men: Everyone else is lying anyway!” Mmhmm. Thanks.

Of course, nothing screams like good sex—or rather, porn. Lots of porn. “Food porn.” “Ruin porn.” “Nature porn.” And, for the more bookish, here is a related, sexualizing the unsexualizable trend that won’t seem to go away: I call it “A Million Shades of 50 Shades.” Politics: “Israel’s 50 shades of dismay over Iran nuke deal.” (GlobalPost). Science: “50 Shades of Grey (Matter): How Science is Defying BDSM Stereotypes.” (Huffington Post) Literature: “You Want Erotic? The Countless Shades of Anaïs Nin.” (Yeah, well, that last one was mine. At least I went for book on book.)

Of course, there are easy pickings on both our Left and Right. Obamacare: “Worse Than Slavery.” Debt ceiling: “How to prepare for the… apocalypse.” The cacophony in this category is truly beyond the pale. Even down-the-middle CNN (I know, if CNN represents the middle, we’re in real trouble) recently offered us this, just in case tornadic destruction wasn’t enough to grab our attention: “Grandma’s Last Words: ‘Get Me Out.’” Thank you, CNN.

Want more? Just Google something. Anything. You’ll find a headline to suit your most highly caffeinated, info-active mood about all things est—biggest, baddest, worst, best. The hunt for something incredible (in the strictest sense of the word) is like shooting fish in barrel. In fact, you don’t even have to search. It will come to you. (To avoid piling on, let’s pass for now on deliberately misleading headlines, a story unto itself: accuracy as collateral damage.)

Yet strangely, it doesn’t seem too long ago in Webville when superlatives more or less meant something, and an Onion headline was an Onion headline, and not mistaken (at second blush, at least) for real information.

Step Right Up

In a past lifetime, when I was a first-year Journalism grad student in Chicago, headline writing was part of a fearsome, nuts-and-bolts J-school boot camp. (One prof was a formidable ex-marine, in fact, boasting a handlebar mustache and a hair-trigger red pen.) The effort was like puzzle-solving—and not everyone was good at it. Limited space, limited words, a story to represent and (just as with the lead) a promise to be fulfilled if a reader should take the time to engage. And, yes, eyeballs to grab, too. All told, creating a headline is like wrestling with a mini Rubik’s cube.

The idea of selling your story often taps into a different side of the brain than actually covering it. Indeed, in most editorial worlds, headlines are not written by the writer of the piece itself, but by talented copy editors and, increasingly (online), by editors themselves. Writers who have been around will tell you of the countless times they opened their paper (or magazine, or laptop) and saw their copy under some weird words that made them think hmmm—or, more likely, “oh god, no.”

In any case, no matter who’s behind what’s on top of a story, there’s nothing wrong with selling copy with snappy headlines. They can be fun and creative and (hopefully) expository—an art form unto themselves. And no one, myself included, wants you to pass over his or her work for want of intrigue. (Kudos, by the way, to someone in these pages who recently walked the line and came out shining with “The Universe is So Weird! There’s Plastic on Saturn’s Moon?”)

Moreover, facts (and there so many of them) are facts: In the not-too-distant past, each day we were confronted with a limited number of “stories”—a newspaper or two, maybe a magazine or three, some TV to choose from. But today, we’re hit with thousands of them during our waking hours, most of which come to us online, as for-profit media outlets scratch away and beg so very hard for our mindpsace. Let’s be honest: no one should expect a publishing effort to be okay with simply fading into the background.

But as readers, many of us need to do a better job considering the cry-wolf factor as we scan our screens. (Face it, there’s not going to be an uprising anytime soon that says to HuffPo, Salon and all the others, “keep pulling that crap with the headlines and you’ll lose market share.” It sure would be nice though, huh?) Maybe it is just one breath of awareness before we offer up our prized click. That nanosecond when we can say: “Wait. Really? Am I really going to reach for that bright shiny thing?”

Finally, consider that subtlety isn’t dead—it’s just, well, subtle. Noise isn’t the key to good copy or truthful news. In fact, it might serve to tell you that what follows is not as advertised. Discernment is what it’s cracked up to be. The more game you bring, the better gems you are going to find.

I guess it’s like anything else in the days of the horrifying, unbelievable, incredible Information Age—it’s our job to consume wisely and be on lookout for what is real and true under the sea of hype. That said, headline writers, please stop screaming at me! On a scale of 1 to 10, even for the sensational, 10 is enough. This is not Spinal Tap.

(As I write, this just in: “Man who stripped naked and stuck a fire extinguisher hose up his bottom in a hotel corridor walks free.”—The Independent. Seriously?)

Scott Adelson is EcoSalon’s Senior Editor of HyperKulture, a monthly column that explores opening cultural doors to initiate personal change. He is also the author of InPRINT, which reviews and discusses books, new and old. You can reach him at scott at adelson dot org and follow him @scottadelson on Twitter.

Related Reading:

HyperKulture: Dear Oprah, Please Tell Us Who We Are — Atheists, Feminists And Other ‘Others’ Need To Know

HyperCulture: From The Sanbox to Syria – Tribe, Ego and Decision Making

HyperKulture: In Swoon’s Way – Time traveling and Staring Down Florence Syndrome

InPRINT: You Want Erotic? The Countless Shades of Anaïs Nin

InPRINT: Albert Camus and the Biggest Question of All

Images: Cory Doctorow (top) and The Library of Congress

The post Read this F*&%ing Story! — Spinal Tap Headlines and You: HyperKulture appeared first on EcoSalon.

A round-up of what we’re reading right now. 

We might be able to grow tropical fruits in urban northern climates after all. And make it look good. Say hello to bananas in Paris. [Via GOOD]

You can accomplish a lot simply by being more optimistic. [Via Inc.]

Summer camp isn’t all kayaking and making lanyards. From culinary arts to military training, check out these interesting camps around the world. [Via TakePart]

Another reason to take time to unplug: exposure to dim light (i.e. your computer and television) at night may lead to depression. [Via CNN]

Ever thought about launching a food truck? First you will need a name. Don’t worry, there’s a generator for that. [Via McSweeney’s]

Americans wash their hair almost twice as much as Europeans in a week. How much is too much? [Via Organic Authority]

Choose your reading list carefully, because your bookshelf can say a lot to a potential partner. [Via How About We]

Image: twicepix

The post Link Love: Urban Bananas, Why You Should Be More Optimistic, and How Unplugging Can Save You From Depression appeared first on EcoSalon.

Don’t make this about working mothers – we need a workplace change for everyone.

When Anne-Marie Slaughter’s The Atlantic cover story appeared, it sparked a firestorm of criticism ranging from accusations of setting women in business back by telling her story of leaving her dream job in the high ranks of government to step back in her career to be there for her children; to stomping on feminism; to boohooing about her elitist stature and the choices she’s made when many women have none. Although it’s not surprising that her story caused so much backlash, thankfully it has also generated great discussion around some important issues. And, despite the furor, they aren’t just about working mothers, or even just women – but the need for our work culture to change for everyone.

The story, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” is poorly titled, but still spoke to many who appreciated that Slaughter had the courage to tell her story of stepping back and wanting to be home for her children. Many women are used to feeling inadequate after reading stories of other women who made it to the top of their demanding professions, raised exceptional children and saved the world.

A Focus on Women
I first saw Sheryl Sandberg speak at the 2011 Women in the World Summit and she wowed the audience. We are contemporaries, and she is clearly a superwoman. Afterward I followed many of her talks and speeches and while I admired her mission to motivate and support women in business in their quest to be leaders, she also made me feel a bit resentful (something Slaughter alludes to in her article). As she motivates, she also expresses disappointment in our (hers and mine) generation in our failure to become leaders and places the blame squarely on our shoulders.

I was not alone in wishing she also championed the large number of women who occupy the middle ground – who don’t necessarily want to lead multinational corporations but want to sit at the table, who want to be heard, be recognized, and be equally compensated, but who still think it’s important to spend a significant amount of time with their families or pursue interests outside the office. These are the women, and a growing number of men, who are leaning back or on the fence about opting out of the workforce or into another career (if they have that choice) because that situation is so hard to find.

Does much of the blame falls on our American work culture? To hear Slaughter put exactly those feelings into words is tremendously satisfying. Can women be both leaders and great moms? Absolutely, but as Sandberg points out, you don’t see many of them, and it’s not completely due to a lack of ambition, but some very real workplace barriers.

Since Slaughter’s article came out, a large body of work has sprung up debating the issues that she raised. You might say that she isn’t covering any new ground as a “we all need balance” piece, but she has started an important discussion. Framing her argument around working mothers got many people’s backs up, but once you step back from that (as she does late in the article and in subsequent discussions), her argument and proposed changes should apply to everyone – meaning fathers, single parents and childfree women and men.

Toxic environment
It’s no secret that our work culture is, frankly, unsustainable and unhealthy. The U.S. has been a workaholic society for years, but the recession has exacerbated the weaknesses in our work culture. CNN calls the U.S. the no-vacation nation, highlighting the fact that most companies give employees only a few weeks off a year, and most expect employees to keep in touch with the office while on vacation. The U.S. lags far behind many European nations that employ liberal vacation policies and encourage their employees to use their time off.

Mother Jones reported that many businesses are posting double-digit profit growth while continuing the current employee workload and declining to hire more workers. “Americans now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans.”

A full-time job used to require around 50 hours a week (allowing for lunch and a moderate commute). Now, for most, that number is low since we put more hours in at the office and can, and do, remain connected to the office nearly every waking moment with mobile technology. As our work culture continues to wring more and more work out of us, is there really time for much else?

In Glass Ceilings and 100 Hour Couples – What the Opt-Out Phenomenon Can Teach Us About Work and Family, authors Karine Moe and Dianna Shandy dissect the growing trend of highly educated women who are turning their backs on leadership and leaving the workplace – the same trend that Sandberg is lobbying against. Moe and Shandy report that dual-income families (the 100+ hour couples), show the most stress and damage from our current work climate. They conclude that an ideal arrangement involves one parent working part-time, yet meaningful part-time work is extremely hard to find.

However, concessions just for working parents can breed resentment in childfree women and men who might have their own, less recognized commitments outside of work like elder care, volunteering, hobbies or a sick spouse. That’s why change should apply to all employees, beginning with a fundamental shift in our work culture veering away from constant work obsession.

Flexibility Plays a Role
Slaughter admits that her regular full-time job as a professor is flexible and it was a shock when she entered government service to have to be on someone else’s timetable. This is where many who have spent their entire professional lives at someone else’s beck and call booed and hissed at her “complaining” which really came off more like a realization of what other professionals deal with. She quotes Mary Matalin, who spent two years as an assistant to Bush and the counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney before stepping down to spend more time with her daughters, as saying, “Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.” I would amend that to say that flexibility is the only way to accommodate the myriad of personal situations people have outside of work, and children is just one of them.

Slaughter talks about being open about being a parent and having to tend to parental duties outside of work – not to bore her co-workers, but to set the tone of her work environment as family-flexible. Many women know this to be a potential minefield. When I worked in corporate America, I saw family commitments and subsequent time away from work used as a club in both salary raise negotiations and promotion discussions for several coworkers. Supervisors couched it as the employee being “not available” and “missing meetings,” and so on. It’s easy to point to other employees who have not missed work for these reasons as examples of promotion, so there is a reason many parents feel penalized when trying to balance both. It’s also something Sandberg fails to realize when telling women it’s entirely within their control to become leaders, despite having children.

What About the Men?
Slaughter writes, “Men are still socialized to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the breadwinner; women, to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the caregiver.” Men believe they have to be the primary breadwinner, because most workplaces refuse to see them as anything else. When men leave work or miss a meeting to tend to one of their children, more often than not, they feel the need to offer up an explanation, because the underlying thought is, “Why doesn’t their mother go?” (This is not necessarily true for single dads, of course.)

In this work climate, job stability often hinges on a worker appearing to be constantly available for every meeting and task. Where women bend or step back in their careers to care for children, men become more rigid to ensure their job security. I know a man who lost his job of seven years last week, one where he worked partly at home and commuted a long distance to work since his wife worked in another town, because the company terminated all flexible work arrangements. Other employees had asked to also have flex arrangements, and rather than accommodate them, they told all current flex workers they had to be in the office daily or find another job.

All Talk and No Change?
Now that a high-profile figure has raised the issue in such a public forum and it has clearly struck a chord – will anything change? Immediately and on a large scale, probably not. But companies that are ripe to consider flexible work arrangements might be persuaded by this discussion, and those that already offer it can see how important it is for employee attraction, retention and overall happiness. And, as long as we keep the discussion open, we might make progress not just for parents, but for everyone.

Images: Victor1558, Victor1558, Ed Yourdon, Mirimcfly

The post Not a Mommy War – This is About Our Unsustainable Workaholic Culture appeared first on EcoSalon.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is a gadget geek’s dream date and the source of many tech news “leaks,” debuts and reviews. So why were green issues apparently under wraps as the world’s biggest tech executives made early keynote speeches there, on the mainstage of the trendsetting tradeshow, Wednesday?

Nobody was asking – or so it seemed – green questions, discussing environmental issues or highlighting eco-friendly features of the technologies on display. Not live, on blogs or in broadcasts. And certainly not in detail.

Microsoft executives, for example, hyped their gaming projects for 2010 including the release of a “prequel” game Halo: Reach, part of the wildly popular Halo franchise. But they didn’t say how many physical copies of the game they expected to manufacture, and if these included recyclable components.

Earlier, CNN syndicated a feature story by Ben Parr of Mashable predicting TV on computers, 3-D in your home, a range of increasingly smart mobile phones and e-book readers would be among the technology concepts out of CES 2010 to effect consumers worldwide, for years to come.

Great insights! But where are the eco-details? Like: how greenly manufactured (or not) were those 3-D TVs by Sony, or the super thin ones by LG? How enduring are those armies of new e-book readers, and are they lower impact than used books or books from recycled paper?

It’s frustrating that “green” aspects of new products don’t appear to be as important as gigabytes and screen size by now in general and tech trade media. Consumers care. As EcoSalon previously reported, consumer demand for green gadgets is strong in the U.S.

At least NBC Universal, the official broadcast partner of CES 2010, assigned morning news man Al Roker to a segment on national television where he discussed, with Fast Company’s Paul Hochman, several items from exhibitors including the Regen Renu, a 9×9, sweetly designed solar panel that when fully charged can power an iPod for six hours.

To be fair, there was a reference to nature reported by Gizmodo’s live-blog summing up the Sony keynote speech when executives promised a 3-D version of Shark Week – brought to us by Discovery and IMAX (for viewing on a Sony set).

Even with lackluster discussion early on at CES concerning the environmental impact of mainstream gadgets, the executive director of the Green Electronics Council, and the Electronic Products Environmental Asessment Tool (EPEAT, pronounced like “repeat”) Jeff Omelchuck has high hopes of CES and the people who pay attention to it.

EPEAT is a green standards and ratings organization for the computer, laptop and display industries, that could do for electronics what LEED did for buildings, or the Motion Picture Association did by rating movies, namely to make them easier to understand before buying (or selling).

Omelchuck explained Wednesday afternoon, upon arriving to Las Vegas, that he expected to see more discussion – and marketing – of green aspects of the technology on display by this year’s conference end.

“Consumers are getting smarter,” Omelchuck said, “Brands can no longer say things like “˜we’re energy efficient compared to ourselves last year,’ or “˜this is made from some recyclable materials,’ and convince a consumer their product is green. The manufacturers are recognizing they have to meet stronger criteria. Before there was really no historical market data to prove demand for greener electronics existed. Each year our understanding gets better.”

We hope it gets so much better that a separate Greener Gadgets show held by the same conference organizers, the Consumer Electronics Association, won’t even be necessary someday. Though, this year’s takes place in Manhattan, Feb. 25th.

Love gadgets but hate e-waste and greenwash, too? Read up on CES, and e-waste issues below. Then, let manufacturers and bloggers know “green” should be a priority as high or higher than any other cool factor when it comes to new tech toys.

Basic Reading:

“No matter how cynical most may be right now about eco-friendly electronics, eventually everyone attending will have green ingrained in their heads.”- A blog post via Treehugger entitled “CES 2010 A Steaming Pile of Hypocrisy? Does it really matter?”

“Computing will play a role in protecting our planet from climate change and other environmental issues”¦There are over 250 million cars in the U.S. alone and the latest ones have more computing power on them than our first manned rocket ships providing opportunities to help drivers avoid traffic jams, [and] offering real-time tips for efficient driving”¦We also need to ensure that we improve the efficiency of PCs.” -A blog post by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer for Huffington Post, ahead of his CES 2010 keynote speech

“EPEAT, an eco-label for consumer electronics, has”¦existed behind the scenes as a business-to-business eco-rating system helping giants like the U.S. Federal government purchase low impact computers. Now, EPEAT is going business-to-consumer, making their bronze, silver and gold ratings publicly available as a reference point for shoppers”¦” – A Core77 feature story on EPEAT and eco-ratings of computers and other electronics

Further Resources:

The home page of EPEAT, which stands for Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool

An eWeekEurope.com news feature about Greenpeace’s efforts to stop the illegal shipping of ewaste to developing nations

Gizmodo’s “The Best of CES 2010” special section

Live, streaming video of CES 2010 events via Crunchgear

Engadget’s coverage of CES 2010 news, events and products

Image

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by columnist Lora Kolodny.

The post EcoMeme: Media Missing the Green Point at CES 2010 appeared first on EcoSalon.