I woke up this morning to discover that Mitt Romney had named Paul Ryan as his VP pick.  At the very beginning of the process, I was pretty bullish on Ryan being the pick and thought he'd be a good addition to Romney's campaign and messaging.  However, general wisdom was that Ryan was too happy and powerful in Congress to make the switch, unproven in a big election having never run statewide, and perhaps too divisive with his budget and conservative stances.  All of these facts led most pundits to write him off, so I did the same and hadn't given him much of a shot or much thought lately.  Now, that he's the pick, I've been thinking how it will impact the ticket.

What the Pick Means

There's no doubt it's a bold pick.  Bold means bucking traditional wisdom and doing something to up the ante, and Mitt Romney ignored all the reasons listed above and chose Ryan anyway.  Bold can be good (see: an unproven Obama deciding to run in 2008) or bad (see: McCain's choice of running mate). Mitt Romney isn't typically classified as a bold or risky guy, but I think he really went for it, here.  No matter how many people claim to know the answer right now, no one actually knows how this pick will ultimately play out.  We do know some things, though.

The pick is a clear indication that Romney recognizes he needs to inject a little life into a campaign that has seemed flat lately and is soundly losing in many national and swing state polls. You don't go bold and unproven if you're in the driver's seat, you go safe and tested (Pawlenty or Portman). The pick also demonstrates Romney's perceived need to lock up tea party and far-right votes, as Paul Ryan has been their darling of late with his austere budget and deficit-reduction recommendations.  

What the pick means for Democrats is that they get to pick right up on their already successfully tested messaging of Ryan wanting to slash medicare and attack the most vulnerable while rewarding the most successful with his tax policies.  Also, it further hampers Republicans efforts to win the important women vote, as Democrats can hit Ryan for slashing funds for women's health care.

It's a bold pick that will energize the party, but it's a little confounding that someone with such a deep opposition file and pre-defined attack messaging was selected.

What the Pick Does and Doesn't Do

Ultimately, I believe where this pick succeeds is in energizing the right and existing supporters of Romney.  If some tea partiers or fiscal hawks were thinking about sitting on the sidelines due to RomneyCare or a distaste for the man, this pick likely gets them back in the game and turns them out to vote.  That's a pretty big deal, as Romney can't afford to lose any part of his natural base in what looks to be a close election.

What it doesn't immediately do is bring many new voters into the fold for the Romney campaign.  While all indications are that Paul Ryan is a very smart, driven, charismatic guy, he has already been pounded for months by Democratic advertising that have shaped independents' views of him as Medicare slashing and Tea Party obeying candidate.  Those are not the adjectives that will turn out many new Independents.  It may help the campaign pick up some voters who were on the fringe, but I doubt it sways folks who weren't already leaning Romney.  With that being said, if Ryan turns out to be a great campaigner (fairly likely), amazing debater (likely), and most importantly can fight back Democratic attacks, he may be able to win over more Independents, but that's not something that happens out of the gate.

What's Next

Over the next few weeks, Paul Ryan is going to be subjected to a level of scrutiny he's never experienced (his brown-nosing high school tendencies have already been unearthed) and the most immediate test for him is to make sure he doesn't crack.  I think he'll be safe there.  The bigger challenge will be how quickly and thoroughly the GOP messaging machine can respond to the Democratic attacks (already taking shape on Obama's cleverly titled attack site Go Back Team).  I'm sure they're prepared, but these first two weeks will be critical staving off Independents forming overly negative opinions of Ryan.

I think this was a good, energetic pick for the campaign, but at a time when polls show Americans support Obama's approach to taxes (keeping cuts for the middle class while ending them for the rich) vs. Romney's (keeping and expanding all cuts), I think it opens up too many lines of attack and further paints the Romney campaign as too far-right and out of touch.  Advantage goes to Obama with a commendable effort star awarded to the Romney campaign.

In the past week, President Obama did something pretty unique and innovative in politics -- he proposed a compromise with a winner takes all kicker.  

The Proposal: Maintain tax cuts for households who make under $250,000 while letting those cuts expire for those who make more than that.

The Compromise: Extend tax cuts for all households earning up to $250,000 per year.  This seems to be a pretty universally supported element of policy in D.C.  America is mired in financial uncertainty and high unemployment.  No politician wants to raise taxes on 98% of Americans at a time like this.  Republicans and Democrats are both on the record saying they support the extension of these cuts.  The President has now said that he agrees and we should get this done immediately.

The Kicker:  Where Republicans, Democrats, and the President disagree is what to do for those households that make more than $250,000.  Republicans want to extend their tax cuts as well.  Most Democrats oppose this option, but it carries some support in their ranks.  However, that support doesn't matter because President Obama is on the record saying he'll veto any legislation with this provision.  The President's kicker is that he is saying to Mitt Romney, "Let's get the thing we both agree on done and then the winner can have his way with the tax cut for the $250k+."

I think this is a bold and calculated gamble.  It doesn't give the President that much ammunition against Romney (no one is surprised that he supports the tax cut for the richest), but it does help him shape the national narrative of how he has been working against a do-nothing Congress.  If they won't even work to approve a tax break for 98% of Americans, what could he ever count on them to do?  If this election is a referendum on Obama, this lets him shift that narrative some to focus on how he has been handcuffed by the GOP-controlled House.  Also, it won't hurt to have clips of Romney on the stump, defending the wealthy while the campaign continues to use negative ads to paint him as an out of touch millionaire.

Furthermore, if Congress acts on his compromise, then the President walks away with two victories.  First, he gets to tout the continuation of a massive tax cut for the vast majority of the electorate.  Second, and not as immediately obvious, he gets to regain some of his mojo as a "transcendant figure" who can work across party lines to battle back gridlock and get real progress accomplished, even in broken Washington, D.C.  This refrain was a popular one for candidate Obama in 2008, and this debate gives him an opportunity to own it again.

If the compromise is accepted, then this move will really pay off for the President.  If it's not accepted, I see it providing some nice talking points and debate jabs, but it won't be anything to build the rest of the campaign around; however, one more block toward building a statue of Romney and Republicans is never a bad thing.

Overall, I appreciate the President's compromise and his boldness to dare Republicans to place a bet on him losing by accepting the compromise, now.  It'll be interesting to see if this aggressive portrait of Obama carries through to election day. 

Adapted from an email I just sent to a buddy...

I think it's a great, smart move by Apple.  They're licensing Tom Tom's technology, so I don't think you'll be disappointed in the performance of the maps.  They certainly realize the spotlight is on this change, so I don't think they're leaving anything to chance.  It's rare that Apple will intentionally shine a spotlight on themselves and screw up (Ping and Antennagate are the only two that immediatelycome to mind).

Maps provide a huge amount of data that Apple wants and also doesn't want Google to have.  Google was gathering data from essentially every smartphone on the planet between Android and iOS, so it made sense for Apple to want to stifle that since Google is a direct competitor of theirs in mobile.

Additionally, for the past few years, everyone has been saying how geotargeted recommendations/deals (you're near Chipotle, go get a free coke w/ a burrito) would be the next huge thing.  It hasn't happened yet, b/c technology has been slow or people have been unwilling to adopt it (who outside of tech really uses foursquare), but it's definitely going to happen at some point, and now Apple has a front row seat to a huge monetization and advertising opportunity.

Apple has really struggled to monetize the software side of mobile.  iAd has done nothing and iTunes doesn't make much money.  The most successful thing they've done is take a piece of other people's innovations through their app store commissions.  They need to make sure they get better at monetizing mobile devices and to do that, they need to be where people spend their time.  Maps is a massive opportunity that they're tackling head-on.  They're also trying to flank Google search with Siri and the improvements they announced there.

It's going to be interesting, but I think this was a great, bold move that is setting them up to get better at monetizing the software side of mobile.  I think the maps experience will be on par with what Google was providing, and Apple will also add some juicy Apple-like integration slickness across the iOS platform that make maps stickier than ever.

A wedding in the Bahamas and Memorial Day weekend have given me some time to catch up on New Yorkers.  One of my favorite things about the magazine is that you can pick up an issue that is a year or more old, and several of the pieces will still be interesting and likely relevant.  This timelessness is particularly handy due to the fact that a new issue comes to your mailbox each week and the average article probably takes thirty minutes to read.

I wanted to list the best articles here, so I could easily share.  They are all only available to subscribers, but if you're not yet a subscriber, you should be.

• All Due Respect. An American journalist takes on the Yakuza. [subscribers]. A profile on a quirky American journalist who splits his time between engendering himself to and then exposing Yakuza.  While the weird traits of Jake are interesting, the best part of this article is an inside look at the Yakuza, their customs, their history, and their dark side.
• The Secret of the Temple. The discovery of treasure worth billions of dollars shakes Southern India. [subscribers].  A look at a hard-charging Indian lawyer who tries to get to the secret of what lies below a temple in his region.  It turns out to be billions of dollars, but what makes this real-life treasure tale even more interesting is all of the Indian history and culture woven into the story; for example, did you know that Deities are legally considered minors under the Indian Constitution?
• The Transition. LBJ and the events in Texas. [subscribers].  An excerpt from Robert Caro's penultimate book in his exhaustive look at LBJ's life and rise to power.  This particular section focuses on the assassination of JFK in Dallas and the chaos before they returned to D.C.  I found this article really touching and poignant -- a great look at what happened that day in Dallas and how it change LBJ and America forever.
• When Giants Fail. What business has learned from Clayton Christensen. [subscribers].  A profile of the Innovator's Dilemma article and the theory of disruption that that made him famous.  I didn't know much at all about Christensen before this article, and I really enjoyed it.  The story also does a great job of explaining how Christense came to his hallmark idea and how he has since applied it to every industry and even people's lives.

I hope you get a chance to check some of these out, and I look forward to hearing people's thoughts on them.

This is a presentation from an Introduction to Marketing class I gave at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Journalism, last week.  I've taught at UNC every semester for the past few years.  It's something that I really enjoy and have a great time doing.  I remember when I first taught in 2009, there were 3/50 students in the class who were on Twitter.  This week, 100% of students had a Twitter account.  The speed at which students are learning and implementing digital lives is amazing.

The aim of the lecture was to educate students on how to build a digital strategy for clients and how that differs from traditional ad strategy.  The lecture touches on the difference between tactics and strategy and looking at how to implement specific tactics to accomplish the overall strategy.

I've put the slide deck below.  It may not be super helpful as just slides without context, but I still think you'll get the gist of the presentation and hopefully enjoy it!

In the era of The Decision (this Clevelander will never forget), Brett Favre, and public trade demands, it's becoming increasingly rare to see a star athlete amicably split from their team.  Peyton Manning and the Colts have been a stark contrast to that trend, and it has been incredibly refreshing.

While Peyton's teary-eyed press conference will be the enduring image, both parties deserve a lot of credit, in the end.  After a tense offseason where Colts management let go of several key actors on the team, it seemed the writing was on the wall.  Peyton and ownership fired off a couple of quips about the situation but it never escalated or got personal.  After that initial flurry, both sides retreated and went through the process in private.  In the end, they made the announcement together and were clear that they both had the utmost respect for the other.

This situation cost Peyton Manning $28 million and cost the Colts' a hugely valuable asset.  However, those facts weren't invoked, and the sides kept it professional and cordial.  It was really a sight for sore eyes in today's sports culture.

Thanks to both for all the memories over the past 14 years and for making sure that those memories are what endures in our minds and not some messy, petty breakup.

Instapaper is hands down one of my favorite iOS apps, if not my favorite.  I downloaded the free version in September of 2010, upgraded to the free version about a year later, and have used it multiple time per week since then.  

It's a great app that lets you store any article/column/blog post from the web locally on your phone or tablet and keeps those devices in sync.  It's perfect for lazy weekends, laying in bed at night, or for long trips.  Not only do I use it for the local storage when I'm in an increasingly rare location without WiFi, but I also use it as my primary reading list that I can turn to at anytime to find a good read.

With all of the app's positive attributes and the dividends it has paid by allowing me to consume scores of articles at my own pace, you would think I'd have no problems with it.  However, I've lately noticed an alarming trend in my habits that I'll term the Instapaper Effect.

When I first started using the app, I would always scroll down to see how long a piece was and if it would take me more than 7-10 minutes to read (I'm a slow reader, too), then I would probably Instapaper it to read at a later date.  If I was just laying around or not busy, I would just go ahead and read it at that moment.  The longer I had Instapaper, the shorter my threshold became for read now vs. Instapaper.  I started Instapapering 5 minute articles.  Then, anything over a page.  It's at the point now where I may scroll, but I don't really care what length I see, I'm going to Instapaper any article I find during the workday.  It's not uncommon for me to Instapaper a mere four paragraph blog post.

While this tendency may ostensibly seem like it's bolstering my productivity by not allowing me to get distracted during the day, that's not true.  Studies consistently show that breaks from work or studying boost ultimate productivity and I have to believe reading something interesting and/or relevant is one of the best ways to realize one of those pauses.  Instead, I'm quietly getting more unproductive by refusing to give myself a break with an article. 

On top of the productivity concerns, it's just making me plain lazy.  There's no better word than lazy to describe putting off reading a four paragraph piece of writing that is relevant to your career or personally interesting to you.  Instapaper has stoked this sloth-like behavior by reinforcing to me that it's OK to procrastinate these short reads and to hopefully come back to them later in my long queue.  Obviously, though, when Instapaper becomes a chore of choking down a dozen four paragraph blog posts on a myriad of topics intermixed with longform writing, I'll absorb less information and start resisting the queue that I've loved for so long.

Finally, I've noticed the Instapaper Effect starting to manifest itself in other areas of my life other than just reading.  Want to tell me a story, but it's going to take longer than a couple minutes?  Can't I just Instapaper this for later?  Do I really need to spend all this time focusing on content, right now?!  It's getting harder for me to focus on any content that isn't 100% on my terms, and that's terrible.  

Has anyone else experienced similar results from using Instapaper?  I think it's easy to curb with focus -- the next time you're about to Instapaper something, force yourself to answer how long it would take to read and if that would really set your day back.  I'm willing to bet we all have several five minute pockets in the day where we would be well-served to read something in the spur of the moment rather than saving it for later.  I haven't been savoring those moments, but I'm going to make it a point to pushing back on Instapaper.

I have sucked at posting on this blog.  Zero posts in the first couple months of this year.  That's not good.  That's why I'm kicking off a 60 day - 30 post blog challenge for myself.  That means I have to average one post every two days for the next two months.  Plenty of people busier than me manage to do that, and I think I should be able to, too.  Some posts may be really short and sometimes they may come in a burst of several in a day, but I really want to do this.  

It will be interesting to see how this affects traffic and engagement on the blog, but that's not what it's really about.  I think it's important to thoughtfully write something everyday.  Too often lately, the only thoughts I've put into my writing are around what's the most clever email greeting to a client.  This challenge will force me into some more introspective and challenging writing.

I'm excited about the next 60 days and making the blog a priority.  We'll see how it goes!