The Shortest Distance

If I Had A Hammer

Bruce Hendrickson — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:35:50 +0000

My wife loves cleaning tools.

I’m not saying she likes to clean – she just has a thing for the gear. Whenever we’re at the Home Depot, she’ll slow down as we walk by the vacuums. She’s been known to dial up the Home Shopping Network when they’re talking housewares. At various times I’ve come home to find a Swiffer with a ten-year supply of pads, two Twist-N-Wring mops, or a plastic power washer for the outside of the house. I didn’t even know our house was dirty, but now I can tell by the

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Print This: Video Is The “New” Type

Bruce Hendrickson — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:44:27 +0000

And apparently it has been for quite some time.

I’ve worked in publishing for over 20 years, and for most of that time I bought into the notion that the Internet was the the main reason print media was in decline. The erosion of b2b magazines in particular coincided with the rise of the web, and as web 2.0 kicked in, those same magazines went into freefall.

A closer look, however, reveals that print has been in decline for over 60 years—ever since the rise of broadcast journalism. Consider this: In 1947 there were 140 newspaper subscriptions per 100 households. Today that number

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Waving The Polish Flag

Bruce Hendrickson — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:01:34 +0000

I’m going to step away from the sort of things I usually write about to post something on a more personal note.

I live in Chicago, and throughout the year I see people waving flags. Take a drive down North Avenue or Division Street in July and you’ll see hundreds of cars festooned with the flag of Puerto Rico. It’s hard to miss a Mexican flag in May or September. And I can personally vouch for the bunting on our fence on July 4th.

So lately I’ve noticed a lot of red and white flags waving from peoples’ cars. I didn’t recognize the

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A Banana Is Not A Lunchbox

Bruce Hendrickson — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:19:14 +0000

When my daughter was little and learning to read, she had a book that was composed of very simple words and short sentences. Pictures were interspersed within the sentences as stand-ins for the more complex words. To this day, our entire family remembers one sentence in particular. It comes up on a regular basis at family gatherings, and it always makes us laugh, just because it’s so silly and it reminds us of a special time. A (banana) is not a (lunchbox). That’s it — hey, our family’s an easy laugh.

Anyway, I was reminded of it while reading a blog post

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It’s News To Me!

Bruce Hendrickson — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:21:29 +0000

I used to direct the annual strategic plan for a weekly news magazine. If you’ve kept even half an eye on media news, you can just imagine how some of those planning sessions went. At various times everything about our business would get dissected, analyzed, attacked or defended. It got down to such introspection as, “What are we, why are we here, and what is news?” Media Philosophy 101.

With the knowledge that we were an advertising-based business in print, online and with events, one person said we were a media company. Another (probably a marketer, though I don’t recall) chimed in,

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