Uncategorized - Sally Duros

How my mission became advocating for a new model of digital newsroom

For nearly two decades, my passion has been reducing noise, increasing credible sources of information and adding value to our professional and community lives through digital newsrooms.

Here’s how I found that mission.

I left business journalism in the 90s to go into Chicago city government — my reasoning was mission-based: why write about good government when I could have a role in creating it? But it’s not surprising that mission turned out to be more complex than I’d anticipated.

After serving in the offices of Mayor Richard M. Daley and CPS CEO Paul Vallas, I left public service with a hard-won understanding of the difficulties of culture change — and a front-row view of how the rapid shrinkage of newspaper newsrooms was already undermining the public’s access to vital information.

Along the way, through several projects I had worked on – including establishing the Children First Fund: the Chicago Public Schools Foundation – I had also developed a top-level perspective on philanthropy, the way foundations operate and how they carry out their commitments to their missions and social change. And I was deeply passionate about developing new tools on the Web.

That path led me into mission-based community engagement and development, and it left me genuinely uncertain whether journalists were cut out for the non-profit world and its relentless cycles of fundraising.

That question was weighing heavily when the Sun-Times laid me off in 2008. For years I had worked with web entrepreneurs and mission-based businesses and nonprofits to build the social web. My journalism background seemed a good fit for the crusade to save it.

When I learned about the L3C — an investment vehicle designed to encourage foundations to make program-related investments in mission-based businesses — I connected the dots between news and mission and found a cause I could fully get behind. I plugged into a colleague running HuffPost Chicago, who gave me a column, then a far scarcer platform than it sounds today.

I began writing about what I called the L3C Newsroom and regularly delivering information on this and other emerging ideas to foundation executives and others working in the digital newsroom space. I built a robust social media presence on the topic of emerging business models for news and was among the first journalists on LinkedIn to actively work that professional network on the business of civic and local digital news.

In 2010, I recorded this video on the idea of an L3C Newsroom — similar to a crowdfunded newsroom, with a community foundation leading the way for smaller family foundations to provide core investment for local independent newsrooms.

A video I recorded in 2010 on the idea of an L3C Newsroom, similar to the idea of a crowdfunded newsroom with a community foundation leading the way for smaller family foundations to provide core investments for local independent newsrooms.

I started to write about the L3C Newsroom and began regularly delivering information about this idea and other emerging ideas to foundation executives and others in the digital newsroom space. Ten years later, I have a backlog of information on the forward direction of newsrooms in the digital age.

During this time, I also consulted with clients such as the Better Government Association, as an organizational development and fundraising consultant, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for its new team and operations. Understanding the vast news and information deserts in Chicago — from my time working in newsrooms and in Chicago city government — I took on multimedia consulting and project management with LISC Chicago, bringing neighborhood voices into the mix through a series of mobile neighborhood tours. As a community service, I produced a companion Twitter feed and Facebook page. Other clients from those years include the Chicago Tribune, the BlockbyBlockCommunityNewsNetwork and Knight Digital Media Center.

I carved out a small but passionate niche. In 2016, I conducted a research project on Chicagos Independent News ecosystem. Sadly, that project was cut short when I experienced a family emergency when my father fell Ill and died as did my life partner.

Meanwhile, an entire new ecosystem of platforms like Substack has emerged. Separately, Tracy Baim, among others, have taken the lead on the newsroom sustainability front here in Chicago and nationwide the movement has gained momentum through many initiatives with support from The McCormick Foundation, Driehaus Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, Field Foundation, Polk Brothers Foundation and the Democracy Fund, and created the Chicago Independent Media Alliance (CIMA). I have been happy to attend a few of their meetings.

Solutions will emerge from this current darkness, and among them will be new ideas for slowing the pace of viral misinformation and creating sustainability for newsrooms. I look forward to being part of those solutions.

Here’s a great video from Neil DeGrasse Tyson on information literacy. Today we are awash in both disinformation and misinformation. I agree that our ability to fully process information and discern truth from lies is tied to our ability to understand context and learn how to ask good questions about whatever we are researching.

Video here

Chicago Community Showcase for LISC Chicago.
This playlist is a series of audio slide shows I produced with community leaders to be delivered through an early Smartphone app. It is the core content of the Chicago Community Showcase YouTube and Facebook channels and continues as the ChiNeighbors twitter feed, which I still run as a community service.

Hilarious skit by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert for the Chicago Gridiron Show

where the mind goes (Photo credit: sally garden)

Sponsored by the Chicago Headline Club, the Gridiron Show skewered local politics and media from 1987 to 1997. A labor of love by a kooky bunch of journalists, pr peeps and politicians, it was also a benefit for student scholarships. This bit between Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert is laughing out loud funny. Writing is attributed to Adam Ritt, with tweaks by the critics themselves. The video is out of synch but listen to the audience response.

Work from the core

[This month’s Carnival of Journalism asks how organizations like the Knight Foundation and the Reynolds Journalism Institute can encourage innovation in journalism. My humble thoughts follow.]

Because journalism has been removed from its swaddling of newspaper advertising, we now have the opportunity to discover the essence of journalism and what it truly contributes to our society and to Democracy.

The tools of the digital age are revealing blind spots in our previous vision. What we face is the discovery that what many of us thought was journalism actually is not.

Helping us sort things out with their grants, programing and activism are you, the Knight Foundation and the Reynolds Journalism Institute.

At this key moment of change, I would urge you to crystallize your missions in your mindset so you can work from the core and jettison what is superfluous.

I’ve taken a stab at what this crystallization looks like. To me, you share a similar core: your mission is about social change that supports Democracy. You would prefer systemic social change, the kind that sticks and evolves. [View Knight’s mission. View RJI’s mission.]

Both of you see information and community as essential parts of an equation leading to social change that will strengthen Democracy.

But what happens when you uncouple journalism from its traditional role as the messenger that delivers information to the community and instead begin to see journalism as a catalyst, an agent that provokes or speeds change, among community?

And what happens when you uncouple journalism from the tangible hard media of newsprint and instead couple it with the intangible streams and flows of the digital sphere, including data movements and agile multimedia reporting?

Variables are unleashed and recombined in unforeseen ways. [In understanding what these variables might look like, consider the beat areas for the RJI Fellows, and the KDMC program categories.]

What arises out of this mixed-and-match chaos will continue to look very different from anything we have had before. As the entire online world struggles to find a sustainable revenue model — strange and alien revenue forms will undoubtedly appear.

So Knight and Reynolds, you must continue to do as you have been doing: track and map the relevant variables as they emerge. You must be nimble in collecting and vetting operational categories and ideas as they fly your way.

So how can you best operate to encourage inovation?

Map the principles of journalism as they emerge in new forms. Cease worrying about the appearance of journalism. Instead connect with the principles and see how they could play out.

Be open. Like a baby in its first months of life, be open to the stimulus that comes your way and divide it broadly into buckets of information, assigned along your principle map.

Look for bright spots of activity and life. Look to the edges of change because the configuration of what will work has not shown itself yet.

Thrive amid uncertainty. Look for leaders but understand the principle of social proof. Understand that promising ideas will emerge from the crowd, and within them might be a kernel for success but not necessarily the full plan.

Shatter the silos. Look to other domains of business, Web technology, economists, anthropologists, non-profits, government and communicators who have been building the online world for two decades now. Note the conferences and learning opportunities in the maturing online world and make them available to Journalist entrepreneurs. [That’s what I do as a service every day on my Twitter and Tumblr streams]

Don’t be wedded to your ideas. Hold them loosely — like a dove that has alighted on your hand — and let them go. If they have wings they will leverage on your behalf and bring many iterative returns and successes.

Be courageous. Stand out from the crowd of philanthropy. To the best of your ability while still being responsible, cast off the shackles of foundation-think that judges “safe” as being equivalent with “success.”

Support our entrepreneurs. One concrete possibility: Knight, Reynolds take the lead and join together with affinity foundation partners to create an entity dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship among journalists and their creations.

More than a decade ago when I first started reporting on entrepreneurship as an independent journalist [and learning to work for myself], I came across the Kauffman Foundation whose mission is:

To help individuals attain economic independence by advancing educational achievement and entrepreneurial success

It was after the dot-com bubble had burst in 1999 and before entrepreneurship was a field of study at business schools. It was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is today. I was helping entrepreneurs write books about their experiences and learning the ropes of the angel and venture capital worlds.

Today, Kauffman says it is looking for partners to leverage resources and capability.

Maybe you and Kauffman and others could talk about how to jointly create a home for training, experimentation and comradry for the emerging new class of Journalist entrepreneurs.

Welcome to the birth of journalism!

Carnival of Journalism 2: Take a moment to reflect on your unique skills and circumstances. Then answer: What specific things can you do to increase the number of news sources for a local community.

What specific things can I do to increase the number of news sources for a local community? I can continue to work toward establishing the L3C as a business model for news.

Two things are important to know about the L3C as a business structure for news: 1) it encourages long-term ownership of a news organization that puts journalism first; 2) it is designed to accept an investment from a foundation as seed money.

The starting point for my thought is the current economic and cultural disruption, from which will emerge new ways of doing business. Among these innovations will be branded social enterprise, patient money, slow money and renewed interest in investing in all things local. There’s a lot of cash out there circulating looking for some kind – any kind — of return. The L3C returns 5% or less, and it is designed as a vehicle for investments by foundations, local businesses, institutions and others such as private equity funds.

The ideal owners of an L3C newsroom will be satisfied with this financial return and be enthusiastic about the intangible return, the social benefit delivered by a robust local news stream. Of course, since the foundation provides only seed money, the L3C newsroom in its business plan will have to persuasively describe the full complement of revenue sources for news that everyone is struggling with.

My career spans years in newsrooms, government and the independent sector, so the idea of the L3C newsroom struck me immediately as being worth a shot. But when I spoke to a group of journalism students at DePaul University recently, I was surprised by how easily they grasped the main concept of the L3C social enterprise. They didn’t get everything but they got the gist of it. It was a treat to think how unencumbered they are by the past. My attempt to explain the act of fitting copy on a page the old way could have been a comedy act – with me waving my hands in the air and them watching in puzzled silence. But in the end – who cares? Out with the old and in with the new!

I was also struck by how little the students knew about different types of businesses, including nonprofits. But instructors like DePaul’s Mike Reilley are wise, and they are integrating business concepts into the curriculum. Reilley has assigned the students the task of brainstorming a path forward for transforming their class assignment, “The Red Line Project” into a newsroom with a sustainable revenue stream.

The Knight Foundation points out that the main source of journalism has always been private enterprise and that marketplace incentives have fueled original and verified reporting.

Steve Yelvington, noted thinker on revenue models for news, said at a University of Minnesota School of Journalism event on Economic Models for News: “The truth is that journalism has never had a business model of its own. It’s always been a useful component of some other business model.”

My position is that for the first time, journalism has the potential to be thrown from its “newspaper” nest and born to a higher expression as a crucible for civic life.

Welcome to the birth of journalism as a social enterprise!

The L3C social enterprise is the bulkhead in a growing marketplace, one that values social benefit as well as investment return. There are signs of this emerging marketplace everywhere. Take a look at this recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Shared Value.

Inspired by the Peoria Newspaper Guild and its investigation into the viability of an L3C for the Peoria Journal Star, I brought the idea to my former paper, the Chicago Sun-Times. It didn’t exactly resonant with the Newspaper Guild or the Sun-Times corporate ownership. To answer our Carnival of Journalism question: To help increase the number of news sources I could always knock on the door of the Sun-Times again.

Just as the economy is seeking a foothold to stem foreclosures, create jobs, feed people and improve our lives and communities in systemic and sustainable ways, journalism is now preparing to crawl, then toddle and start to walk on its own. The two can be coupled.

I believe we could we bring together street level metrics and journalism in a mutually supportive system and change the way our society measures wealth while also changing the way we pay for journalism. It’s a nice blue sky thought.

It’s possible some of this blue sky could be added to The Red Line Project as an L3C. I could see adding some community development bells ands whistles – an added plus for foundations that are looking for systemic fixes. Maybe that’s where I should put my effort to increase the number of news sources.

Or I could concentrate on the system of news blogs we have developing here in Chicago and evolving it into an L3C; the Red Line Project could be an arm of it.

Or perhaps I could pitch in at Village Soup, a local news site that is making money and likes the L3C model.

Currently, I know of only one newsroom established as an L3C that has seed money from a foundation and that is the Pt. Reyes Light in the Bay Area. They have the structure in place and the money to get started, but when I spoke with them last fall they were hitting some road bumps in their set up.

It’s been slower going than I would like getting this idea launched and off the ground. Despite limited personal resources I have attended conferences of the Social Enterprise Alliance, BALLE and the PRI-Makers [a group of 100 foundations who make PRIs for systemic change.] I have also attended the FTC hearings on the Future of News, CitiCamp Chicago [Gov2.0] and dozens of events in Chicago about the future of news, as well as numerous technology- and journalism-based events. Thanks to the generosity of the Reynolds Journalism Institute, I was able to attend Journalism that Matters- Detroit, where my systemic community development ideas first started to percolate. I am scheduled to attend the Web2.0 conference in March in San Francisco, as a journalist, where I will be reporting on the latest ideas in developing online revenue.

It’s been slow going because new ideas take time to integrate into the mainstream and there is always push back from existing power centers. The foundations I spoke with at the PRI Makers conference are open to the idea of the L3C and other new economic models for news, but they tend to move slowly and with caution. It’s understandable. In conversations, I found more foundation officers who were open than skeptical. In conjunction with this Carnival of Journalism piece, I am posting a statement from the PRI-Makers on L3Cs and other business models as a kind of sidebar.

One common criticism of the L3C is that it is unnecessary, that there are many ways in which a regular LLC- limited liability company, can be structured to achieve the same purpose. Although it is true that many LLCs have been established in conjunction with 501(c)3s for social benefit, they lack the branding power of the L3C – which some foundation executives see as valuable. As the volunteer convener of the L3C for Media working group at trade association Americans for Community Development, I respond as quickly and thoroughly as I can to questions directed my way. We are all learning together.

To appease the legal industry that has historically profited from PRIs as well as those who have other concerns, Americans for Community Development has drafted Federal legislation to streamline the L3C/PRI process at the federal level. If so moved, the community of journalism thought leaders could join ACD in supporting this legislation. That might give a considerable boost to birthing the future of news as a social enterprise and increasing the number of news sources for a local community.

There is much work to be done. I am confident that with the assistance of many partners, we can establish social enterprise newsrooms that will deliver every possible flavor of credible news for local communities.

The Roar of the University

I managed to catch a few minutes of the end of the PBS special Dinosaur Wars the other night. The story is famous. Two brilliant paleontologists— Edward Cope and O.C. Marsh — over a three decade rivalry separately yet together created a vast collection of fossils and body of scientific work that formed the backbone of Darwin’s theory of evolution, as well as our most beloved childhood monsters — dinosaurs.

In the final chapter of Dinosaur Wars, information was leaked to a journalist, whose coverage played out the story in dramatic headlines over a period of weeks. The story rose to a crescendo of partisan politics, erupted into a bleating Congressional squall and then eventually switch-backed, knocking the two great men on their respective professional behinds, where they steeped in their individual flavors of bitterness until they reached their miserly and sickly demises shortly thereafter. As a byproduct, their behavior created a cul de sac in advancing the scientific mission of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The PBS biography of these two men on PBS says:

While the feud between Cope and Marsh consumed the scientists’ lives and damaged their careers, the amount and quality of bones they each collected became the foundation of paleontology in America. Cope left behind 13,000 specimens, and Marsh’s comparable collection proved to be “the best support of the theory of evolution,” according to a personal letter from Charles Darwin himself.

Their work was inspired. Their feud a waste. And journalism was a pawn in their game.

Spin forward to today where different kinds of dinosaurs wander the land. Our industrial age institutions — governments, universities — look for green shoots in a knowledge age frontier. How will they scale their lumbering forms to this digital, media-steeped landscape? Will they understand that there are enough bones for all of them?

That brings me to the question David Cohn has asked us journalist/ bloggers to discuss in this revival of the Carnival of Journalism.

One of the Knight Commission‘s recommendations is to “Increase the role of higher education…..as hubs of journalistic activity.” Another is to “integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials.”

I see today’s university as a place where ideas are researched, published and vetted in accordance with standards, and as a place where discourse and push-back from opposing points of view is encouraged, required, public and communicated through numerous media channels. As an active hub of journalism, the university is its own news room. Journalistic communicators working in the university newsroom showcase knowledge and ideas, host the conversation, and understand that the university’s contribution to the world is knowledge, not public relations.

So my point of view asks: What would Dinosaur Wars look like today if the two scientists had not been working in institutional silos? Cope and Marsh would still not have liked each other, but their academic differences would have been aired openly and the press would have been manipulated less.

Since I’ve been talking with entrepreneurs more than college kids these days, I asked Mike Reilley, Online Journalism Instructor at DePaul University, College of Communication, for his opinion of the media literacy issue.

“Universities move at a snail’s pace to adjust curriculums sometimes. They want to stay true to their foundational courses, which is fine, but it stunts growth and change,” Reilley replied in an email. “Technology has revolutionized communication at a core level, and we have to re-think teaching it. Not just to communications or journalism majors, but to everyone.”

In his classes at DePaul, Reilley embeds the use of Twitter, Foursquare, blogging and other digital tools as they emerge. He asks his students to think critically and to explore views on an issue and then justify their points of view. As part of their classwork, Reilley requires his students to build and report on a website, The Redline Project.

“Media literacy can be taught across any discipline in a college environment. Just as students are required to take core courses in their field of study or overall basics, a media literacy course could easily be integrated into a curriculum.”

“Twenty-five years ago, when I was an undergraduate,” Reilley says, “such a course probably wasn’t necessary. But with the emergence of the web and cross-platform mediums, including the ability for anyone to publish, [students] require a new level of critical thinking skills.”

“Anyone with a Twitter account knows this. Should I retweet the link or not? Should I retweet what someone said? Is the information I’m forwarding or sharing credible. What to do?” Reilley says. “If technology gives everyone a voice, we at least need to teach them the fundamentals of using those tools correctly.”

I agree. I developed sea legs in the twitter and blog worlds by using these tools. That is the only way. But my personal radar that detects credible and high quality information has developed over a lifetime of reporting. How to teach that?

Spirit in holiday flavors

Originally published on www.worldwit.org — Liz Ryan’s social network

By SALLY DUROS

So we are caroling to the animals at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, and it’s quite a family affair with Santa Claus and humans disguised as reindeers and penguins, and earnest people singing holiday songs. There’s even free hot chocolate and cookies for everyone. But I am feeling disoriented because Santa Claus is being interviewed and he is talking about ‘time management.”

Time management? Give us a break! Whatever happened to holiday spirit? You know spirit like in sacred books and all the spiritual traditions of the world. NOT spirit like the car, the movie, or the gun. Santa, please say it isn’t so!

Some would say that spirit has been lost in the supermarket for a long time, and that Santa himself is one of those common signs of its impending extinction.

But I would counter that Santa originates from many great spiritual traditions of gift giving, and that spirit is actually ubiquitous. You’ll see it everywhere if you look for it. Even in business.

Like the cover story for Business 2.0 in November. In case you missed it, the topic was, “The Art of the Brilliant Hunch. Science is starting to understand why the best decisions come from the gut. Here’s how to make tough calls under pressure. ”

Boy, did I glom onto that headline. That’s because I know and you know that following the gut is always the best, but not necessarily the easiest, policy. When we ignore those gut feelings to do something one way, and we do it the other way and everything goes wrong and away from the direction of our intentions, we know the real bellyache is sure to follow. And our pain is amplified by the fact that we knew better!

The Business 2.0 article cites some interesting research on intuition. The bottom line, according to the article, is that emotions start the decision-making process, people are superb pattern makers, and we excel at abduction (rather than induction or deduction. Thank goodness for that because I never could keep those two straight.) The informed gut rules, the article said, in complex, complicated and chaotic situations, rather than in situations where formal rules can be applied.

Readers were also treated to several worthwhile capsules of how hunches work in business including advertising, publishing and broadcasting. My favorite factoid was that Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, shook uncontrollably when he came up with the idea of Starbucks. (My hypothesis is that the shakes came not from the power of the idea but from psychically connecting with the future caffeine overload of a nation of office workers.)

It was s good piece of journalism, bearing good news and befitting a fine publication like Business 2.0. The argument was based on scientific fact and expertise, and I applaud Editorial Director Thomas A. Stewart for his persuasive case.

Seems to me, though, Stewart missed pinning the tail on the hunch by about a foot and half. That’s because so much of his argument was draped against that common worldview of business, where relations are assumed to be contentious, competitive and warlike. Yeah, business is like that sometimes, but does it have to be?

It’s in my nature to shift perspective and ask: What happens when we change the worldview from one of scarcity and conflict to one of plenty and affinity?
Then the real mystery becomes less about how we make decisions in chaos and complexity, and more about how we become attracted to and then passionate about an idea. And sometimes that idea – like Starbucks – has multi-billion dollar legs.

I say the beauty of the hunch is expressed most brilliantly in the creative act of bringing something new into the world.

It’s like that hunch I have that the Business 2.0 writer was picking up some energy from the cultural stew when he decided to research this article because, well, he had a hunch! Still, where did that genesis spark come from? How was he attracted to the story idea and how was it attracted to him? Pattern played a part, paycheck played a part and editors played a part, but none of these constitute the Velcro that sealed the deal.

I believe the answer is spirit, the spirit unique to each of us that brings specific gifts into the world. And, yes, the kind of spirit that has to do with looking at the world wide open, and asking,” I wonder ..? And yes, that holiday spirit that celebrates all that is good in life, and the way we are all, each and every one of us, connected with each other.

So, here’s a holiday invitation offered in the spirit of peace and new beginnings. It’s adapted from the writings of Sonia Choquette, a well-known spiritual counselor in Chicago.

The next time you are called into a meeting with parties holding close cards and disparate interests, ask yourself this question: “How are we alike?” And look for what is true and what is real. Most of all, trust what you discover.

Radical, I know.

And if you are feeling really brave, check your assumptions at the door. Even if you have worked with these people for 20 years, walk into the meeting with this one directive: Never assume that you know anyone. And during your meeting, listen to what your intuition is telling you. Really listen – deeply. And trust it.

And most of all, here’s an invitation to a different kind of time management.

Let’s stretch the time period for holiday spirit to 365 days of the year.
And make each day a celebration of what is unique in each of us.

Let’s start the New Year off right.

Choosing Otherhood over Motherhood

Sally’s World, May 2003 www.worldwit.org

By SALLY DUROS

New research in the United Kingdom has found that among women born between 1954 and 1958, college graduates were 50% more likely than non-graduates to remain childless throughout their lives. Studies conducted in the United States and Germany had similar findings.

These trends register as true for my generation of college-educated women, but I am betting that findings might be different for women younger than I am.

I have seen three circles of friends choose motherhood at different phases of their lives. When I was in my early 20s, many of my neighborhood friends from grade school were married and had their first children shortly afterward. When I was in my late 20s and early 30s another circle – these women my college friends – married and had kids a few years into their careers. And finally during my late 30s and early 40s, during the 90s, another circle – this time high-level executive women – decided that to follow their hearts, they would put corporate America behind and have families.

I made a different choice. When I was 13, I decided that I would not marry and that I would not have children. My youthful decision, arrived at so easily, emerged organically from the political, social and economic climate of the time. It was my personal hard line against what I saw as an erosive devaluing of women’s contribution to the world.

Sometimes we doubt the powers of our intentions, our ability to do what we intend to do. But this youthful commitment was something that I accomplished with little difficulty. Throughout my adult life, as time passed, with considerable reflection and equal doses of gladness and sadness, I have stayed that initial course.

At times, I have felt as though my head intended one thing, but my heart expected another. There is a way, I think, that women of my generation, no matter how well-developed our desires, still believe at some gut level that a knight on a white horse will ride in to save us from ourselves.

When I told a client of mine recently that the main reason I didn’t have children was because I had chosen a career over home-making, he said he didn’t believe it. I suspect many people just a squeak younger than me don’t believe it. But it’s true.

The way I perceived things as a teenager, the role of wife and mother was limited, especially financially. I really didn’t like the idea of not having my own source of income. My mother worked hard creating a loving home environment, raising four children and being wife to my energetic, responsible and loving father. Still some inner voice urged her out into the world, and in 1971, like so many women in their 40s at the time, she headed off to do office work. It was a point of, well, umm, discussion in our family’s household, and it met with a little resistance (I love you, Dad!)

But in the end my mother won. She took deep pride in the work she did, the money she earned, and the substantial contribution her income made to the well-being of our family. My mother loved working outside the home. As a result, she was always very supportive of my life choices – no matter how hare-brained they seemed to others – and she always urged me to aim for personal happiness.

At the time I made my youthful decision, there were few visible and positive examples of the myriad ways to be a woman, raise a family and have a career. After watching my mother’s happiness with her work, I took the road most natural to me. It seemed that to have two full-time jobs, and to try to do them both well – was not an option for me.

Since that time, many women have taken creative plunges into unknown seas of work and motherhood. Their powerful excursions – into business, politics, family and community – have opened doors for women and men alike. The most fortunate of us now have full freedom to choose our roles in accordance with our unique desires as individuals rather than by rules of gender and conformity.

For Mother’s Day, I offer them deep gratitude for their courage in finding their own way, clearing the path and making transparent and accessible for all of us what was once invisible: our unique hearts and our unique paths.

Recommended reading for this Mother’s Day: Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh; The Price of Motherhood: Why the most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least valued by Anne Crittenden; Bold Women, Big Ideas by Kay Koplovitz; and Toward a New Psychology of Women by Jean baker Miller.

By the way, the opinions presented in Sally’s World are mine and do not in any way represent those of WorldWIT. I invite your rage, your praise and your suggested readings. Email me!

Passion – it’s on the ceiling!

Sally’s World, April 2003
www.worldwit.org

By SALLY DUROS

In the 80s, we worked hard. In the early 90s, we worked smart. In the late 90s, we worked fast. But now, firmly established in the first decade of the new millennium, we are working all three, but most of all we are working passion.

Today many of us have switched careers or spun out of traditional organizations into smaller more intimate ones – maybe even our own. It’s a realignment of values – we are giving up what doesn’t matter for what does matter. In seeking to live from our hearts in our work and personal lives, we are responding to the irresistible tug of passion.
When passion is present, we don’t stop simply because something goes wrong. We feel the pain, yet we keep going. Having passion doesn’t mean that we will succeed. It simply means that our endurance and resilience are boosted by the power of our authentic presence. Working from passion might improve the likelihood of our success, while most certainly changing our definition of success.
But don’t mistake drive for passion. Drive is a push, not a pull. It takes us away from, not into our hearts.

Sometimes I can’t believe what a wonderful life I have because as a writer and a journalist, I often get to experience mind meld with fascinating and insightful people. Because of a book project that I am working on, I had one of those conversations the other day with
Randy Komisar, author of The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living.

Komisar, who is a long-time practitioner of Buddhism, integrates his life and his work with a powerful core belief: Time is short. Don’t squander any of it. Invest your time in only those things that are important.

We were talking about passion and its role in start-up business. Komisar believes that women are better at recognizing and following passion than men are.

I agree.

To live from passion, you have to listen to your intuition and be open to hearing the beat of your personal drummer. Komisar says that women are more open-minded than men in this way, in part because men are slotted into the breadwinner role that women have traditionally been excluded from.

“Women – it’s the other side of the curse, the curse being that they’ve not had the opportunities,” Komisar says.” Women because of that are open-minded about finding what matters. They are empowered because they are disempowered in the traditional sense. Women are much more creative, I think, and much more courageous in terms of looking for those things that really matter.”

“If you think about it, (passion is at the core) of the traditional dilemma of being the super mom,” Komisar says. “You have your family and you have your career. What you see (in the struggle) is balancing two passions.”

“Most of the women involved in the dialogue about balance of life and career are involved because they care about both, because they have passion.”

Men are suffering more than women in this equation, Komisar says.
“Talk to a 50-year old man about what he wants to do next, and he looks at you (lost) … I”ll play golf. There’s no dimensionality. Their whole identity is in one thing.

Komisar, who teaches classes in entrepreneurship at Stanford, says he has learned much from students pushing against his ideas. He now more fully understands the multiplicity of passion. You may have many passions, and you will follow different passions at different times in your life.

Personally, I have been giving passion free rein in my work for a while now. I can attest that it’s difficult, financial lunacy, and often lonely. But I can also attest to the breathless creative flow that occurs when I and my passion are working side by side. There’ s nothing like it.
Except maybe this.

When I was a 10-year-old kid, I and my best friend of the week would do shoulder stands on my living room couch and imagine that we were walking from room to room on the ceiling. We would step over the tops of door frames, whose structures formed little barriers between the rooms, creating an archipelago of ceiling space, and walk from island to island, checking the treasure that laid in the bowls of the glass light fixtures.

Maybe it was the blood rushing to my head, but I used to wonder if my friend were seeing the same thing I was seeing as we explored the upside down world. I would fantasize that I was inside her brain, looking out from behind her eyes, walking on the ceiling from room to room, until it was time to go and I walked down the walls and out the door and across the street to eat dinner with her family. I would be me, but inside her head for just an hour or two, just long enough to understand what it was like to be her.

I haven’t learned yet how to get inside the mind of another, but I have found the next best thing – the wisdom I am exposed to in a great interview and the fact that I can pass it on to you. What could be better? That’s passion!

Slicing the pie of public opinion on peace

peace-symbol — Some 2,000 antiwar protesters with torches form a peace symbol at Heroes Square in Budapest, Hungary, in 2005. The event marked the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Photograph by Zsolt Szigetvary/epa/ CORBIS

Sally’s World, March 2003
www.worldwit.org

By SALLY DUROS

I heard a conservative commentator on the radio a week or so ago, using the dirty word “peace,” coupling it with its usual complements of “loonies” and “fringe” and talking about how “stupid” the advocates for peace were because they had announced where their rallies were going to be held. His reasoning was that anyone opposed to unilateral action against Iraq would want to hold secret meetings – perhaps in catacombs lit by candlelight?

This assumption reflects a reality: For quite a while now to publicly say that you are not in support of any action taken by the United states in the “war on terrorism” is a bit like tossing up your hands and saying, “Throw me to the lions!

I am perplexed. I thought this was America and that unlike many other places in the world we had the right to assemble and to speak our opinions freely. And that indeed if we had a point of view we wanted to express that it was well within our rights and the parameters of common sense to express that POV in a visible way (as long as our actions are legal and law abiding).

I was thinking about this when I was eating $1 burgers with my friends Brook and Iva at Laurie’s Polka Inn in Bridgman, Michigan, and we were talking about the State of the Union, not the speech that President George W. Bush gave in January, but the actual state of the union.

Brook’s 7 year old daughter was falling asleep cuddled in her mom’s lap, and Brook says:” I wonder what my daughter will say to me when she looks back at this time, when she looks at the way my generation has led this country…”

“I was so angry at my parents when I learned that Marshall Tito was a dictator and did horrible things to people,” says Iva. Iva’s a bit younger than Brook and me. Her family moved to the United States in 1996 after trudging from one country to the next fleeing their war-ravaged home of Sarajevo. “My mother and father told me that Tito was the great one and that everything was peace and harmony, and I grew up believing in these myths because nobody would speak the truth. So war, I couldn’t believe it when it broke out!”

“When I think of the war it was like yesterday. And I know war, when it happens it happens overnight.”

And that’s how families are feeling in war-torn places around the globe – horrified at their bad luck and frightened for their lives. That’s what war and intense conflict does to people – it creates unbearable uncertainty. That’s what the incomprehensible acts of Sept. 11, 2001, did to us. The people of the United States are on edge and rightly so – we must protect ourselves and those we love.

The complexities of this situation are mind numbing.

What isn’t complex is that in the United States we have the right to speak our personal truths – whether well-reasoned or directly transmitted into our cerebral cortex from Pluto.

In the United Sates, we are not ruled by Tito. We are a Democracy. Silence does not rule the day.

In a macabre twist, the terrorists of September 11 used our freedom and our wealth as a weapon against us. The things that make this such a great country — the way we welcome people from other lands, the way we move about freely, the technology that allows us to access our money, the trust most of us have that people will follow the rules — enabled this action.

Despite our deep hurt, and this cruel turn on our freedoms and good will, we shouldn’t forget our core value of political freedom.

And that’s why I bring up that dirty word “peace.” A single syllable that some of us have been muttering under our breath worried that someone might hear and label us “loony” or worse. For a long time, the media – newspapers, broadcast outlets and others in the mainstream – have characterized anyone willing to stand with a different opinion that way.

In part, the reason for this is coalition politics. Those who stood up first were those with unequivocal moral opposition to any war – like the American Friends Service Committee – or those political groups with an axe to grind and little to lose – like the Communist Party.

The bottom line is that the early coalition couldn’t agree on a common message. Combine this with the universal horror of the terrorist action and the well-coordinated communication effort coming from the White House and you have a powerful wall of thought impenetrable by multiple points of communication and multiple points of view. All messages – from President Bush’s administration to the grassroots – are tried in the press. The message of those opposing war appeared to be a big mish-mosh, and it simply did not look credible enough to support the mainstream population. And the numbers simply were not out there.

But that is changing.

I believe the Web as a tool for global communication is deeply affecting our current state of the union. Now anyone with Internet access can sample many, many different points of view – from CNN to the BBC to their equivalents in countries around the world and to hundreds of independent media outlets ranging in perspective from so-far-right to so-far-left that they actually meet at the backend.
It is easier now than it has ever been to get the information you need to form your own opinion.

The new tool of the internet, combined with the mish-mosh coalition message and my own inherent skepticism inspired me to create a personal litmus test for developing my opinion related to any action related to controlling terrorism in the world. I ask myself: Does this action by my government make me feel safer?

Evidence is mounting that others have developed similar tests, and when the answer is “no,” they are taking to the streets. Even the New York Times in a January 20th editorial says that recent demonstrations in Washington displayed concern from America’s mainstream, not the fringe, about the United State’s proposed intervention in Iraq.
Still, the magnitude of the numbers of protestors is a point of dispute in Manhattan where the City has refused to issue a parade and rally permit for more than 10,000 people, and the coalition holding the rally, United for Peace and Justice, is seeking a permit for 100,000. At this writing in early February, the issue is unresolved, but Peace and Justice is urging supporters to continue their plans to come to New York.

Public opinion is always divided – the size of each slice of the pie is decided by who’s serving the pieces. And there are always several pies on the table to be tasted.

These rallies are a sign that our Democracy is healthy. By freely speaking our personal truth, we can keep it that way.

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