Jay Rosen did something interesting today, he gave a presentation that was organized and presented in Fargo, not as a presentation but as a noteblog.#

I have to admit I cringed when I saw it, because I am sure we can do much better. But Jay knew what he was doing, when I talked with him, he talked like an outliner maven. #

This has given me a lot of ideas, no conclusions yet.#

BTW, here's the video of the talk, vintage Jay -- great stuff. #

Later he said: "Asking 'what belongs under what?' turns out to be a very useful question for organizing your thoughts." #

Yesterday I wrote about how to get Emoji characters to work in Fargo, both when editing and in the rendered content. I was using Chrome. I learned later that it works in Safari. #

Here's a screen shot. #

I think last night was the end of the season for the Knicks, and it was so fitting that it ended the way it did. It had been close the whole 4th quarter, and with less than 24 secs left, the Knicks had the ball, down by 1, the Wizards with a foul to give. Melo was having the worst game of the season, but everyone else, esp JR Smith, were connecting. Melo, playing injured, should have sat and let Smith, Schumpert, Stat, Hardaway, Chandler, Felton do their thing. Instead, they did what they always do, and it's so easy to defend, even when Melo is hot -- they gave the ball to Melo and he just held it, fumbled, never passed, no movement, until the very last moment when he gave it to Smith and he took a wild shot, and missed. With good coaching they would have won. Put an arm around Melo and say this is the game when you let the team cover for you. Win or lose. I hope, I'm sure, that's what Phil Jackson is thinking today. This is no way to structure a basketball team. Every game depends on one player. It isn't reality, the Knicks have deep talent. They just need to be allowed to play. #

Farhad Manjoo asks on Twitter: "What if you had a choice between working for a CEO who shared your politics on an important issue and one who didn't?"#

Short answer: I wouldn't want to know the politics of the CEO is, and I wouldn't share my politics with the CEO if I was required to. And given recent events, I'd think carefully before doing that in the future.#

1. Otherwise it's hard for me to relate because I haven't had that many jobs. Those I've had I didn't know the politics of anyone above me in the organization. #

2. I've done more deals in my career than been hired for jobs, and in one deal, when I sold weblogs.com to Verisign, I was aware that their management's politics were radically different from mine. It was remarkable how well we got along, and what absolutely great business partners they were. We went out socially, became friends. I did most of the joking about the differences, they took it in stride, I imagine because more people in tech are like me than them. It was really an eye-opener.#

3. I have friends in tech who have radically different politics from me. It's a matter of pride to say we have intellectually and personally satisfying relationships without agreeing on major things. As we like to believe in the US, everyone should have an opinion, and how ridiculous it would be to think everyone has the same opinion as me. How sad, because we could never learn from each other.#

3a. I did a deal with Microsoft in the middle of the browser wars of the 1990s. You can go back and read the archive of my blog, I was very critical of Microsoft at the time. Yet they embraced working with me, and vice versa, and the result was some incredible technology. Here's the odd thing, more than a few people at Microsoft privately agreed with my criticism. That's how this works, and why it works when it does. We mix things up, learn from each other, and evolve. #

4. I've hired a fair number of people over the years as contractors and team members. How would you feel if, when interviewing, I asked a prospect's opinions on various issues, and only hired people who had an approved-of position by the tech crowd on Twitter. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's actually illegal in California. It's certainly, to me, un-American, and should be illegal. #

5. Young people who have lots of choices in where to work, in tech, can afford to care about the politics of their employers. People my age (58) feel very differently about this. Frankly, I'd love to have a great job where I was part of the new technology that people are using today. I want in the game Farhad, and I'm on the sidelines, and hate that. I struggle to get people to listen to me. They don't believe people my age can't have anything useful to say. So yes, I would probably happily take a great job working for someone who had political ideas that I don't support. I'd be happy to be involved and making a contribution, and making the kind of money the kids make these days. (As an aside, Facebook, run by a 20-something, hired the great architect Frank Gehry, to build their new campus. Gehry is 85. I doubt if Zuckerberg has much respect for people my age who work in software.)#

6. Now a question back at you. Have any of your employers, Slate, the WSJ or the NYT, asked your political opinions before hiring you? Did you ask them theirs? I'm pretty sure you would have walked out of the interview if they had. Now why should reporters have independence, and developers and CEOs not be afforded the same consideration? Our jobs require integrity, as much as a reporter does. When you make our employment conditional on hiding our politics, which is the inevitable outcome of this, you make it impossible for a person of principle to participate. Did anyone consider that Eich resigned rather than discuss his politics because he thinks it's none of anyone's business? That's what I would have done, in his position.#

The change we're seeing now isn't about morals or politics, or the power of a market, it's the development of a new more far-reaching media, and we're bringing the bad habits of the old media with us.#

Politicians used to be somewhat empowered to solve problems, but the pundits, what Jay Rosen calls the Church of the Savvy have put a stop to that, calling sensible stuff nonsense and vice versa. #

In the future, everyone will be a politician, and subject to the same kind of scrutiny as today's politicians. The transformation is in progress, so there are constantly new kinds of people being judged against the "values" of the savvy. Today it's CEOs of small tech powerhouses. Tomorrow it will be everyone. You.#

We thought everyone being media would be an unqualified good thing. But it's not good or bad, just bigger and more far-reaching. #