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For the past several weeks, my posts have been sparse. And when I have posted, it’s usually been a link to some interesting bit of news or an arcane blast from the distant past. Time and commitments have pulled me away and continue to do so.

So I’ve decided to take a hiatus from my True/Slant postings for a spell. The editors and support folks have all been terrific, and I still enjoy following many of the contributors’ contributions to the site.

I may still stop in from time to time to post an occasional item. But if you’re looking for me, you’ve a better chance of finding me at the site I keep for the ethics column I write for the New York Times Syndicate, in the classroom, or working on one of other projects I have on my plate. With a finite number of minutes in the day, I needed to step back from something for a while and, sadly, this was it.

I’ll leave you with a poem by Wendell Berry that he sent to me after I tried to get him to write something for a magazine where I was working as an editor at the time:

Dear Friend,

Your kindness deserves a better fate
This reply is probably already late,
And would be later if I didn’t have it thus printed out.
Such promptness is nothing to brag about;
It is jut the best I can do,
Since I am (like, undoubtedly, you)
Too busy, which is bad manners and a poor excuse.
But I’m resigned, I regret to say, to this abuse
Of courtesy, and to doing part of my duty
By neglecting the rest. The beauty
Is in the part I do;
The neglect, I guess, is only true.
But some things I did I don’t do anymore,
And some things I never did before
I still don’t do. I don’t talk on TV
Because I don’t like mechanically enforced stupidity,
But aside from its falsehood and its tedium
I just don’t trust the damned medium.
I rarely have time to read unpublished books;
I read too few published ones. And it looks
As if I had better say too
That I don’t know which magazines will publish you
Or me. And I never give advice
To anybody who may be so nice
As to take it. I can’t edit poems, interpret Scripture,
Or go anywhere to give a lecture.
I hate travel by Interstate and travel by air.
I’m almost not going anywhere.
A bird who cannot fly and sing,
I’m almost not doing anything
That can’t be done at home. To your health,
Friend! Try staying home yourself.

–Wendell Berry

At minute 5:49 of this video clip, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker tells Senator Mike Johann in his appearance before the Sentate Banking Committee:

“I tell you sure as I am sitting here, that if banking institutions are protected by the taxpayer and they are given free rein to speculate, I may not live long enough to see the crisis, but my soul is going to come back and haunt you.”

This morning, I spoke with Gene Lavanchy, anchor of Boston’s Fox25 Morning News show, about everyday ethical dilemmas.

He posed questions about moving seats at a sporting event, fantasizing about others when with a partner, reading your children’s e-mail, using labels a charity sends you when you don’t donate, using a restaurant bathroom if you don’t make a purchase at the restaurant, and acting like an illegal play you made in a sporting event didn’t happen if the referee didn’t see it.

We also talked about the ethics quiz based on the article I wrote for Real Simple magazine.

You can view a video clip of the interview by clicking on the YouTube video about or by clicking here.

Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr

Last week in The New York Times, Natasha Singer reported:

“…McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson, announced the recall of several hundred batches of popular over-the-counter medicines, including Benadryl, Motrin, Rolaids, Simply Sleep, St. Joseph Aspirin and Tylenol.

“According to a federal inspection report, the response was anything but swift. The recall came 20 months after McNeil first began receiving consumer complaints about moldy-smelling bottles of Tylenol Arthritis Relief caplets, according to a warning letter sent by the Food and Drug Administrtion to the company on Friday. Since then, a few people have also reported temporary digestive problems like nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain, the agency said.”

Singer went on to write that the news flies in the face of Johnson & Johnson’s now legendary response to the Tylenol tampering in 1982 when it pulled all of its Tylenol product off of the shelf after several deaths had been reported as a result of product tampering.

Singer writes:

“…Johnson & Johnson appeared to abandon its own template, stunning a few business school professors. Its conduct also drew harsh criticism from federal officials.”

It’s not the first time one of Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiaries has behaved in way that casts a pall on the rest of the company and its reputation. In 2001, I reported on an incident involving LifeScan, a unit of Johnson & Johnson that had failed to notify the FDA of a flaw in the software of its LifeScan diagnostic diabetes measurement device.

You can read my column on that incident here.

I ended that column with this observation:

“Precisely because the Tylenol response stands in such contrast, the LifeScan incident raises doubts among Johnson & Johnson’s customers and its employees who expect more of the company — as they should. It also raises expectations that the company will respond swiftly and strongly to ensure that such an event does not happen again. The test lies ahead.”

How Johnson & Johnson responds to this most recent incident further tests the company’s ability to maintain its reputation.

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For the February 2010 issue of Real Simple magazine, I’ve written an “Expertise” column on everyday ethical dilemmas.

On the magazine’s website, there’s an interactive quiz posing ethical challenges you might come across in the course of an average day from yard sales to the office to the bedroom.

You can take the quiz at Everyday Ethics Quiz | Real Simple.

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Terrific piece in The Boston Globe today by Christopher Shea, reporting on design firm Pentagram’s online tool that allows you to find out what typeface best describes you.

It’s in the spirit of Meyers-Briggs and other personality typing tool. You can access the test by clicking here. You’ll need to type in the word “character” (without quotation marks) as your password.

I came up Corbusier Stencil, a typeface with only capital letters and numbers. “If you like to impose yourself over something or someone but always do so with good reason and impeccable judgment, the Corbusier Stencil is your type,” the voiceover tells me as my results are announced.

After taking the short, four-question quiz, what do you come up with as your typeface and does it describe you well? Or as well as any of the personality tests you might have taken in the past?

(Thanks, Laura, for the link.)

Image by Bright Meadow via Flickr

In today’s Los Angeles Times, “On the Media” columnist James Rainey looks at the diminished pay freelancers face: Freelance writing’s unfortunate new model – latimes.com.

He writes:

“What’s sailing away, a decade into the 21st century, is the common conception that writing is a profession — or at least a skilled craft that should come not only with psychic rewards but with something resembling a living wage.

“Freelance writing fees — beginning with the Internet but extending to newspapers and magazines — have been spiraling downward for a couple of years and reached what appears to be bottom in 2009.

“The trend has gotten scant attention outside the trade.”

In an earlier post on True/Slant, I cited Samuel Johnson’s observation: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” (Read “Blockheads Writing for Free” here.)

Now, based on Rainey’s citations of some freelancers in the field, that’s becoming a more difficult task than ever.

But, he points out, some writers have taken extraordinary steps into getting paid. Tina Dupuy, one humor writer he notes in his piece, took to YouTube to shame a publication into paying her. (Tina Dupuy is a fellow True/Slant contributor. You can view her YouTube offering here and its results here.)

If operators of  print and online sites know that they can get nascent freelancers to contribute for free, they might ask themselves whether that approach  really result in better writing and a better publication.

Getting content for free or squeezing freelancers trying to make a living is not a sustainable business model, at least not one that will result in a quality product.

Who knows?

(Thanks, Bob, for the heads up on the clip.)

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from Late Flurry of Ad Dollars Fans Recovery Hopes – WSJ.com:

“A year-end flurry of ad spending helped moderate steep declines at some newspapers and magazines, and has fueled an uptick at others, raising hopes for a recovery in 2010.”

…

“‘By no means are we out of the woods,” Mr. [Bill] Wackermann [a publishing director at Condé Nast] said. “But the fact that we’re seeing positive digits in March is a good sign.’”

Read the full story by reporters Russell Adams and Shira Ovide here.