Occupy Portland has been hijacked. Try another approach

America watched with interest – and thousands joined in – when some of the “Occupy” movements took shape. It happened as Wall Street continued to fail us and Bank of America's threat to raise debit card fees fanned the flames. One percent of Americans own 40 percent of the wealth. Unemployment is higher than we've seen in generations. Homes are underwater, through no fault of most of the people who could afford the mortgages they earned. People are plain fed-up.

“The 99%” resonated with average people. There was something “there” in the unrest that brought so many together.

Then the “movement” turned a corner and average Americans are turning their backs. They're sick of it. They would not mind if it's not the lead story on the news tonight.

Most of the images we have seen lately are negative. There are mixed messages, there is no united front and the only consistent activity seems to be disgusting crimes and sanitation issues.

The problem is particularly bad in Portland. There is no leadership in the movement. Attempts to bring in legitimate groups with track records for making positive change are admirable-- but failing. Jobs for Justice and Oregon Banks Local have proposed some effective solutions worth consideration. But every time they try to speak, there's a heckler in front of the camera hurling insults and worse at the watching public.

Things get worse here because city hall has failed to manage this. The police are trying to manage the problem alone.

The answers we need can't be found in a muddy park packed with tents. Anyone with legitimate concerns or answers, should move on and regroup. Americans are hungry for what you have to give, but you're not being heard because “the 80%” of your companions have ruined your movement.

LOL and crying all the way FROM the bank. How Bank Transfer Day brought the big banks to their knees

There is something positively delicious about that fact the moxie of a California woman and 400,000 Social Media connections are doing what President Obama, Federal regulators and Congress cannot: holding the big banks accountable for creating the economic collapse.

Kristen Christian decided enough was enough when Bank of America announced plans to punish consumers who use their debit cards to make purchases. She created a Facebook page and encouraged fed up consumers to pull their money out of big banks on or before November 5th. She advocates doing business with locally operated financial institutions such as community banks or credit unions.
Nearly 70,000 people said “OK” and her invitation has been shared amongst Facebook fans nearly 400,000 times.

“Occupy Wall Street” hasn't had the same impact. I have yet to see any media reports putting a human face on who is participating or really why; most of the coverage focuses on how many have been arrested and how taxpayers will clean up the poop when it's over.

“Bank Transfer Day” is better thought out. We understand the frustration and we know what we can do about it. Credit unions are reporting so much new account activity, many are expanding their hours leading up to November 5th.

Now the big banks are “reconsidering” the debit card charges. Do you believe them? To me, it's like believing a drug addict who promises to quit. Or the cheating spouse who wants “one more chance.” The big banks had many more chances.

First there was the big bailout. How did they spend their T.A.R.P. funds? Then there was the loan modification program. That worked (not!). Now the administration has announced a new plan to help homeowners whose mortgages are underwater. As far as I can tell, it benefits only those with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac backed mortgages – and let's see if it even works for them! There are no programs and there is no forgiveness for those of us who got loans we could afford, but have since seen our property values plunge.

“Accountability has been mostly A.W.O.L. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis,” reported The New York Times, the newspaper the media haters love to brand “liberal.” A column in Sunday's paper notes that the plan to hold financial institutions accountable for foreclosure misconduct, isn't expected to sting them much.

I grew up believing after the mistakes of the Great Depression, an economic downfall would not be likely. All of the checks and balances, the safeguards, the regulation, the trust, the systems put into place to allow Americans to earn and save – it's mostly broken.

So I applaud the actions of a single person who took her frustration to social media and invited Americans to participate in Bank Transfer Day. It's got the big banks in retreat and that is as good as it gets.

The Positive Image of Public Prayer

It takes a hero, sometimes, to make prayer acceptable.

The Denver Broncos' Tim Tebow will have no part of head butting and chest bumping when there's something to celebrate on the field. He kneels. And prays. And the fans love it.

His actions are being talked about, shared on line and copied. Seems “Tebowing” is a trend.
Can't say I'm sorry.

Good reporting has a Positive Image with news consumers. We just don't see enough of it!

I'm about to share some free story ideas here, because, quite frankly, they are needed.

Watching from the other side now as a news customer, I don't see enough value. I already saw the sports highlights on ESPN. I already got the forecast from weather.com on my mobile.

The majority of your audience isn't beating a spouse, making meth in the basement, joining gangs or stabbing each other on the light rail line. So why is nearly every story about those things?

Most of the audience can identify with one or all of these issues:

*Is worse off financially now than 12 months ago
*Is unemployed, underemployed or related to someone who is
*Received a notice in the past 12 months of a financial service that is going away or is soon to cost more
*Continued to make mortgage payments on time but has seen a 15 percent decline in their home value
*Experienced shock, disgust or anger at the conduct of political decision makers
*Got off the couch to get involved by commenting to public agencies, contributing to a cause or made a personal change because enough was enough

If you want to be the news outlet that makes a difference, be the jobs source, be the personal finance destination, expose stupid things (no shortage out there) and find solutions.

Here are some ideas:
*A Boston paper did a great story on how restaurant customers were not being served the fish they thought they were ordering. This presents all sorts of health and allergy risks, not to mention that no one should be charged $25 for a “flounder” dish that's really swain—a tasty but not so nutritious fish that sells for $3.99 a pound. The reporters collected samples from some high end restaurants and had a lab test the fish DNA. In times like these, news customers want to get what they pay for, and they want you to find the truth for them.

*Everyone is reporting on the Muslims who were fired for refusing to clock out of their car rental agency jobs for five prayer breaks a day. Dig deeper than getting a token interview with one representative of “the Muslim Community.” What would happen to you if you left to attend a church Mass without clocking out? What are typical employment policies for smoke breaks? For nursing moms? Are these uniformly enforced?

*Public overtime. You can get a database for any sector and effect change if you find abuse. You can ask that the agency just list the employee names and annual overtime payments for the past, say, 24 months. You can receive this file electronically and in just minutes, be able to scroll down the list and find who is getting the big payouts. Find a similar agency in another jurisdiction that is doing a better job controlling overtime.

*A lot has been said about the “Move your Money” and “Bank Transfer Day” movements. If you are not reporting daily on what's behind these causes, you're out of touch. Bank Transfer Day's Facefook page has been shared with over 350,000 fans. And it's less than a month old. You know the story. It was created by a 27 year old California woman. Have you done the math yet to see how much time and money, if any, customers would save leaving the big bank they're angry with? Follow a customer and show whether it's easy or difficult to make the switch.

*I'm a fan of police and 'behind the scenes in the crime lab” stories- but you can only do a couple of these a month before they are old, old, old. Look at safety equipment. Do the radios work? How old are the cars? How many cars have they wrecked and what's being done to better train them? You might even find they're sending too much on cars. My hometown police (Beaverton, OR) seem to have a few new, hot looking Camaros – unmarked. What's the need/benefit of that? They may be able to justify it but does anyone ever ask?

A few years back, advertisers and consultants sold news management on prioritizing the chase for a younger audience. This is even more laughable now than it was a few years ago, given how the economy has hit 20-30 somethings. But whatever the case management seems to believe the way to hook younger viewers is with younger hires. They come in the door with excellent technology skills and often with solid work ethics but many don't know how to get a substantive story. Here are some dues-paying steps to consider:

*Come to work an hour early to make some calls and file public information requests. Tell your assigning editors “hands off” until your shift starts today. You're investing. Get your boss to support this. An hour invested today will net results in about a week. Call every other day to see how your records request is coming along.

*Budget $25 a month of your own money for cultivating sources. Bring them a favorite coffee. Take them for a beer after work. Years ago when I was an assignment editor at WJW, a retiring crime reporter told the up-and-coming beat reporter some of this same stuff. He said, “Go to their weddings. Go to their funerals.” She did. That was only part of the reason she went on to become the city's best beat reporter, but it helped cultivate relationships.

*Pool resources. If you have a story you want to do that requires work in other cities or expensive lab tests, see if you can work with other outlets in your ownership group. Or, get your editor's help putting a group together. If everyone contributes just $100, it's likely to win budget approval.

Deadline's this evening? Editor too busy to work with you? No research help? Sharing a camera with a two-hour timetable? No money to run lab tests? Been there. I get it.

But we're talking about what's real today. How are you spending time on days when you have to wait for that camera? Are your days off so full that you can't invest some research time? I know unions hate it, but you have to invest in your career and that means giving up some personal time and resources. Forget about whether you get paid overtime – this is an investment in keeping your readers, viewers and online visitors.

Celebrating credit unions is nice work if you can get it...and I did!

I don't worry too much about people who kill the messenger. I am a spokesperson for credit unions.

Part of my job is to hate on the big banks. They keep making it so easy. I am also tasked with celebrating credit unions. That's pretty easy, too.

Think about it: credit unions have a Positive Image because of a track record demonstrating financial responsibility, giving consumers a voice through ownership – our consumers are “members” – community service – Credit Unions for Kids funds children's hospitals across the county, and the organization was founded right here in Oregon and Southwest Washington – and teaching financial literacy to 8th graders – BizKid$ was founded in Washington with credit union donations.

Credit unions are not-for-profit. Instead of paying dividends to greedy Wall Street stockholders, we pay back the members – most of our credit unions still offer free checking and free debit cards. Our members don't have to drive around looking for a branch; most of our credit unions are networked so members can deposit or withdraw from thousands and thousands of credit union ATM s across the county. Did I mention that's free? Some of them even reward you with gifts for using your debit card. Need a car loan? Chances are you interest rate is better at a credit union.

We don't pay a fat-cat board of directors. Our boards are all volunteer, every last one of them. I read in the Portland Business Journal recently that people who sit on two local bank boards are getting between $40,000 and $70,000 per year, in addition to salaries from their real jobs, for being on a bank board. No wonder bank customers pay $20.00 a month for checking accounts. LOL.

Taxpayer bailouts? Not here. Our credit unions, as not-for-profit institutions, are not eligible. So on the pretty rare occasion that a credit union isn't going to make it, the other credit unions step up. Most of the time, member service is not interrupted. We pay for our own insurance fund, too. Our accounts, like those deposited in big banks, are generally insured up to $250,000. Congress writes check to the FDIC, but not to us.

“For the most part, credit unions did not make really stupid decisions,” Michael Barr recently said to a group of Northwest credit union leaders as he recalled the irresponsible bank actions that led to the recession. Barr was hired by the Treasury to write the Dodd-Frank legislation designed to reform Wall St. You can certainly argue that it's not working the way it was intended to – it resulted in 20,000 pages of regulations our industry struggles with, some of which keep us so busy, we can't have as much member focus as we'd like. The audience appreciated Barr's insight but I can't say there's much buy in to the over-regulation engulfing our credit unions. We were painted with the same brush that was supposed to remodel big banks.

One of the consequences of Dodd-Frank is a rule limiting the fees retailers pay every time a consumer uses a debit card to make a purchase. It's called a “swipe fee.” On average, card issuers were getting .40 for transactions, and that's been cut in half for institutions with assets of over $10 billion. That's the impetus or maybe the excuse for Bank of America's “economic suicide” decision to start charging its customers $60.00 per year for debit card privileges. It doesn't affect most credit unions – yet – because of our asset size. But here's why we fought that rule: we urged Congress at the time to stop and study the impact it would have on the public. We doubted merchants would refund any of the debit card swipe fees to shoppers. And we just knew it would force some financial institutions to start charging those same shoppers for debit card services. So they'd end up paying for debit card services twice: once at the cash register and again in monthly fees.

Debit cards are preferred by shoppers who don't want to carry cash or pay to write checks. Offering them is a great service to consumers and a real benefit for retailers.

Here's a fact the public may not know about the swipe fees. They pay for the expense of offering debit cards. That includes the insurance that protects consumers from fraudulent purchases. It also includes the cost of re-issuing cards after a breach. One of our Northwest credit union CEO s reported that the breach on Michaels' craft store customers alone, cost his credit union $200,000 to fix.

We fell 12 votes short of winning the argument on swipe fees. With no research or consumer impact study, the Senate voted to immediately enforce the so-called interchange rule. In fact, all four of our Northwest Senators voted against consumers. Now our worst fears are coming to fruition. Just ask Bank of America customers.

What do you think would happen, if the next time you buy something with a debit card, you asked the cashier to give you back the 20-cents his store is saving?

I am not siding with the big banks. They're clearly deciding that rather than absorbing the lost fees by cutting board compensation or stockholder dividends, they'll take it back from the same public that bailed them out.

I am instead calling on Congress for more thoughtful regulation.

Given their track record, I don't think we'll see any change overnight. But credit unions will maintain a Positive Image and you can benefit. Credit unions are a smarter choice for consumers. Not all offer the same services, but chances are, there is one near where you live or work that will offer exactly what you want. Log onto www.asmarterchoice.org and find the one that fits.

Welcome. We want you.

Ten years ago today

I always say a prayer on take-off and landing. Statistically, I'd been told years earlier, that's when a plane is most likely to crash. I don't remember where I heard that and never confirmed it, but I still pray.

I said “Thank you, Lord,” on September 11, 2001 as my plane touched down in Nashville at 8:48 a.m. Eastern time. I heard an answer back in my head that said “Your prayer was answered,” with an emphasis on the word your. I remember thinking it was a little odd but didn't give it another thought as I rushed off the flight and bought a bus ticket to the resort where I would be attending a convention of television news directors. The ticket was purchased at 9:03 a.m. Eastern time. I didn't think about the significance of either time until later when I was reviewing my credit card receipts to fill out an expense report. Today I realize I was very lucky to be in those places at those times.

I waited outside for the bus to arrive on that beautiful sunny morning. No one else was outside the terminal yet and there was no confusion. When the bus finally pulled up, the driver told me there had been a plane crash at the World Trade Center in New York; he thought it was a private plane. He loaded my luggage and invited me to sit in the air conditioned bus while he ran inside to assist other passengers. His radio was on. I heard ABC radio saying there had been a second hit. Then I knew.

I got off the bus, grabbed my bag and went inside. By then, lines were forming at ticket counters, rental car desks and around TV's. I tried to call my work and my husband several times before finally getting through to the WEWS TV assignment desk. By then I was in line for a return flight but already knew then, 20 minutes into this, that any additional flights were unlikely. The assignment editors told me to stay on the line; they knew I would not get through again if I hung up. They called the Cleveland Plain Dealer and held the phone up so I could talk to my husband. They told me about the Pentagon. They told me they had information a plane was being held hostage on the tarmac in Cleveland, and they were trying to confirm this information. By then I'd made my way to the front of the line at the Continental Airlines desk. I told the agent I worked in TV news in Cleveland and asked whether he knew anything about one of their planes being held hostage. He assured me it was not true. “Don't go with that information,” I told our desk while I asked him to get me out on the next flight. He printed me a ticket but told me he expected all flights would be grounded. In fact, he said the air traffic controllers outside Cleveland were in the process of landing some 700 planes wherever they could do so safely. That was another story of calm heroism that would not be made clear for weeks to come. At that moment for me, it was just plain scary.

The agent turned his screen around so that I could see the problem in Cleveland was only because there were no gates; as each plane landed, it had to wait for gate space so passengers could disembark. He was a clam and reliable source of information over the next two hours while I stood in car rental lines and talked by phone with my assignment desk, general manager and his assistant, Judy Shaw, another clam presence on that day which I will always remember and be grateful for.

It was Judy who finally landed a rental car for my nine hour drive home. I won't tell you how many times I had to stop at pay phones once my cell phone died – I now travel with a car charger even for trips to the grocery store – and how kind everyone was at gas stations and rest stops that day.


I heard small town radio stations in their finest hour as they brought in spiritual and political experts to reassure their audiences. In those little towns, blood drives were already beginning. I think I'd been on the road only a couple of hours when Clear Channel radio stations began their remarkable national simulcast.

I could not wait to be home again to my husband and dog but there was nothing I could do about it.

Once I arrived in Cleveland I headed directly to work to at least lend a hand to the exhausted overnight team. When the morning news was over I drove my rental car home for a much needed shower and a few hours' rest.

Driving into my subdivision, I remember thinking, “This can't be.” It was all still there. I don't think flowers have ever been more colorful. The sky was so blue, the grass so perfectly green.

I was not in the newsroom on the day I thought my team at WEWS TV needed me most, but this was also the day I learned that I was unnecessary. The team, the best breaking news unit anywhere in that time, did an excellent job without me. On September 11, 2001, I learned I was not important, but that all mankind working together can and will be a bigger force than a team of terrorists who don't really know God.

That's the feeling we all need to have and communicate today. It's been pushed to the back of our minds for many holiday seasons, triumphs and other tragedies. But it must never be forgotten.

If you have a flag, fly it today to remind the world that Americans remain united against terror.

Failure has a Positive Image -- when it's fixed.

Rule number one about calling a product "successful": It's only good if the target audience buys it.

Successful people know how to create what customers want. They also own it and move on when no one's buying.

Few if anyone gets on base every time they step up to the plate. I can't think of any entrepreneurs who haven't struck out a few times. Maybe their idea was ahead of its time. Maybe their idea wasn't sustainable with the resources they had to execute it, maybe the economic or political climate changed at the wrong time and made their idea irrelevant. Maybe their idea just plain sucked.

Those who own ideas that suck see one of two things happen: they learn from the experience and create a winner in their next at-bat, or they salvage part of their original concept because they divorce themselves from the notion that they are all-knowing. Then they accept good feedback and assistance.

This is what Howard Schultz did so effectively with Starbucks. He knew the atmosphere had changed, that some of the food service was sending more people away than it was bringing in, that staff needed to reconnect with customers. He took it back to basics and put it back on the road to success. Not only was this good for Mr. Schultz' bank accounts, it kept thousands employed. It probably also gives him some street creds with his current “No Labels” campaign – a movement to freeze political contributions until The President and Congress take responsibility for the budget mess. It's another example of an opportunity to look in the mirror, own the meltdown and fix it.

It's a good case study for those stubbornly cemented in continuing to run their not-so-brilliant ideas into the ground, taking hard workers with them.

If you are working for anyone besides yourself and more importantly if you have employees, you have an obligation to be successful. Measure your success through research, customer feedback, social media input, whatever it takes to know whether what you're offering is working for the public. Look in the mirror and respond to the information.

If you have money to burn and months to waste, then it's probably OK to be married to your own ideas—as long as you're playing with your own dime and your own time. When you have investors and employees,however, you are showing reckless disregard for their funds and their futures.

There is no shame in failure, but denial is a crying shame. Ask anyone laid off recently because a bad idea didn't get fixed.