Symbiosis
What can Martin Luther, clownfish, and sea anemones teach us about hanging onto democracy?
Thanks to Martin Luther and those standing on his shoulders, the tradition of free thought and expression, critical of those in power, became a bubbling ethos resulting ultimately in the revolutions that bestowed on us democracy and journalism.
I love words. Stopping to fully appreciate the nuance of meaning and etymology of a word is not just a pleasure, it’s crucial. Words are the mirror we hold up to reality as a we observe it.
Words and language, are the portal to understanding each other and the universe we inhabit. Maybe we could call language the “original metaverse”, a construct that bridges our individual minds, to create a shared reality, understanding and hopefully truth.
Sometimes I like to just say them out loud because they feel good. The unique shape each word forces your mouth to make is a type of poetry built by distinctive vowel, consonant patterns. Some of NPR’s reporter names are particularly delightful - Sylvia Poggioli, Shankar Vedantum, Tovia Smith, Domenico Montonaro, Doualy Xaykaothao – there are so many good ones. (If you don’t know how to pronounce them, check out their stories on npr.org. Totally worth it.)
Symbiosis has snared me today. It looks and sounds like its meaning. A lovely, sibilant, start and finish, like a feedback cycle. You might say it’s a sexy word.
I came across this surprisingly apt image when searching for my word of the day, taken at Symbiosis Festival 2013, an event described as similar to Burning Man. I’m not sure what’s taking place here but the couple seem to be undertaking something “symbiotic”. Photo: foxgrrl
Its early origins are from the Greek words sumbios and sumbioun, meaning “companion” and “living together”. Yowzah, this bikini clad word is an alluring siren ready for her next beach cocktail at the commune.
Today, we largely apply this word to a description of mutually beneficial relationships in nature, such as that of the clownfish and sea anemone.
Clownfish, Vancouver Aquarium. Photo: Daniel Dionne
Although, some forms are not mutually beneficial such as parasitism. Leeches are a cringy example of this type of symbiosis, in which one species slowly feeds off another causing the host to little by little sicken or possibly die.
If there are kids anywhere in your orbit, you may have passively picked up this nature tidbit about the clownfish and see anemone and their beneficial camaraderie from Pixar and Disney’s, Finding Nemo.
The real deal in nature works this way. The sea anemone paralyzes its prey with stinging cells in their tendrils called nematocysts which release a toxin. The clownfish neutralizes the toxin with a mucus that protects its body by suppressing the paralytic signal from the anemone. How beautiful is that?
Photo: Ridho Nur Imansyah
The clownfish get to live rent free amongst the anemone’s stinging tentacles and the anemone have attractive residents that bring other prey to their trap, plus nutrients from their tenant’s “fertilizer deposits”, that is poop.
It’s symbiotic and mutually beneficial.
An important mutualistic, symbiotic relationship for Americans, is democracy and journalism. We can’t have one without the other.
To understand why, let’s back track to how the United States and other democracies came to be.
Democracy and journalism evolved together in the late 18th Century, enabled by the companion technological advances of the mechanized printing press in Europe, which expedited public literacy thru newly affordable books and tracts, plus the establishment of a reliable postal system facilitating the regular sharing of information and news across regions and nations. In short, people could read and send messages over long distances for the first time.
This hallmark change resulted in the first best seller, the Gutenberg Bible in 1439, and the first break out, social media star of the age, an unknown monk from a German backwater, Martin Luther.
When Luther famously tacked his 95 theses, that is arguments or theories, to the church door challenging papal authority and the Catholic Church in 1517, he also kicked the door open to the early modern period which culminates with the French Revolution and the birth of democracy throughout western Europe and the United States. If you want to understand the birth of democracy, look at Luther. His
Martin Luther Image: Jörg Lohrer
His rock star status was due to his ability to harness this new medium like no one before. He wrote in the vernacular, that is, not Latin but the local language, German. So everyday folks could read it. And he didn’t hold back, so everyday folks wanted to read it. He was notorious for salty, direct, pithy tracts on why the Catholic Church needed to reform.
Classics like:
“I would not smell the foul odor of your name.” - From Concerning the Ministry, pg. 17, Vol. 40, Luther’s Works
“You vulgar boor, blockhead, and lout, you ass to cap all asses, screaming your heehaws.” - From Against Hanswurst, pg. 212, Vol. 41, Luther’s Works
“I can with good conscience consider you a fart-ass and an enemy of God.” - From Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil, pg. 344, Vol. 41, Luther's Works
We have Martin Luther, and those standing on his shoulders, to thank for the tradition of free thought and expression, holding those in power to account.
That early modern primordial ooze of free speech ultimately resulted in the revolutions that bestowed on us democracy and journalism. Two sides of the coin, one informing the other.
That’s cause for celebration, cue the fireworks.
Celebrating the birth of our nation with fireworks began the first anniversary following the American Revolution in Philadelphia, July 4, 1777. Photo: Caruba, July 4, New York, 2009
Andrew Pettegrew’s illuminationg book The Invention of News helps us see the tremendous value we, ordinary people, have in the treasure of a free press.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century only the rich and powerful could afford the cost of maintaining a network of couriers; as a result, those in positions of power largely determined what information should be shared with other citizens. By the eighteenth century relatively ordinary citizens could travel, send and receive mail, or purchase news reports.
It is only with the great events of the end of the eighteenth century – the struggle for press freedom in England and the French and American revolutions – that newspapers found a strong editorial voice, and at that point a career in journalism became a real possibility.
Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father and publisher of the the influential American Revolutionary War newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette. Photo: FotoGuy 49057
Democracy and journalism need each other to survive. If one fails, so will the other. Democracy cannot and will not continue to give us its anemone like protection from the oppression of authoritarianism, and its bounty of self-determination (i.e., liberty) without its partner the Fourth Estate, a free, vigorous, and trusted professional press.
How are we doing? 1800 newspapers have closed since 2004, according to the work of Professor Penny Abernathy of University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, who has been researching another new American “desert” phenomenon, the news desert.
Abernathy told the Poynter Institute in 2021 why we should care, “And when you lose a small daily or a weekly, you lose the journalist who was gonna show up at your school board meeting, your planning board meeting, your county commissioner meeting.
Communities lose transparency and accountability. Then, she said, research shows that taxes go up and voter participation goes down.”
This fact bears repeating. When you no longer have an observer, a chronicler, an advocate for the citizen, watching over the actions of those in power – taxes go up and voter participation goes down. In darkness, corruption and ineptitude flourish.
Why have we lost these local newspapers? The revenue from classifieds, ads, and subscriptions that once funded our nationwide quilt of local newspapers now goes to the likes of Facebook and Google, among others.
They’re also being gobbled up by hedge funds and consolidated into just 25 ownership chains that turn them into “ghost papers” as the same UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media report dubs them. Newspapers that have laid off the journalists, sold off the assets in real estate and equipment, leaving a shell of the organization that once served the local community with authentic journalism. They publish but it’s like cascarones or Mexican Easter eggs, thin egg shells emptied and filled with confetti, there’s a lot of fluff and cookie cutter national news – not much protein or substance, or real local reporting on what those in power are doing locally.
Cascarones Photo: Nieve44/Luz
But journalists haven’t given up. There are impressive experiments underway across the country in small and large news organizations working to find new revenue models to support their important work. Hero journalism motivates these efforts and the understanding that democracy is on the line.
It’s no mistake that Superman chose a journalist for his alter ego. They are the watchers. They look for those in distress or being preyed upon by the powerful and fly in to help by shining a light on the problem. We should hold them in the same esteem as other civil servants – like teachers, nurses, and firefighters.
Clark Kent - Superman Card Game by Whitman (1978) - Photo: Mark Anderson
And like other civil servants, journalists must be able to make a living wage and do their work without threat of violence or harassment. The recent mass exodus of nurses, doctors and now teachers shows that no profession is immune to the corrosion caused by constant risk and cheap compensation.
Remember that leech, slowly feeding off its host? Democracy’s parasites are those who attack the legitimacy of journalism to serve political aims and avoid accountability, misinformation that we share through social channels, and disinformation that is fed to us by those looking to shape the narrative mostly for power, money, and forms of radicalization.
Ankle attacked by leeches. Photo: lets.book
Or as the charming Luther might have described it, “Your words are so foolishly and ignorantly composed that I cannot believe you understand them.” - From Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses, page 87, Vol. 31, Luther’s Works
If we are to hold on to our fragile freedom we have to go on the offensive with our personal (votes, money, values, time) and collective (laws, taxes, enforcement, advocacy) to protect democracy, journalism and their partnership.
Recently, two opportunities for shared support were making their way through Congress.
First, the Build Back Better legislation, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives along party lines in November of 2021, which includes a significant tax break for local newspapers (among other provisions like free Pre-K and childcare for kids under six, adding hearing to Medicare, four weeks of paid family leave per year, electric car infrastructure, drug cost reduction, climate change remediation, and more.)
Democrats voting for it and Republicans against. But the legislation is dead. Although a law may be passed with 51 votes, the filibuster will prevent the vote from taking place. That’s a rule that requires 60 votes to stop debate and allow the vote to proceed. There are not enough Republican Senators supporting the legislation to allow it to come up for a vote. Nor can the rule be changed to allow a vote at this time, as there are two Democratic Senators who do not support limiting or ending the filibuster.
Second, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act which would allow up to a $250 tax credit annually, for 5 years, to individuals for subscribing or donating to a local news publisher, plus significant tax credits for local news rooms on their payroll costs for staff journalists. This legislation is imperfect due to a few holes in the details of the incentives but it’s a start, and perfect is the enemy of the good. However, it’s also DOA. While it has bipartisan support in the U.S. House, there are no Republican allies in the Senate.
Downtown Chicago newstand. Photo: chrismetcalfTV
It's not unlike other measures we’ve taken as a nation in the past to support industry or philanthropic activities that are deemed necessary or beneficial to the public good but its future is stuck in congress for now.
A similar initiative was approved and began in Canada starting in 2019. While the numbers show only 1% of the more than 27 million Canadian taxpayers took advantage of the subscription reimbursement option, the news publishers there found it to be a good incentive to maintain their current subscribers. They also believe the 15% tax reimbursement incentive was too low and that something between 25% to 50% would get more new customers in the door. The payroll tax break for journalists was the biggest game changer for supporting their financial health.
That’s good news since the U.S. version includes both a payroll tax reduction and higher reimbursement rates for the subscribers - 80% for the initial year, and 50% for four additional years. I’m not holding my breath but still hope it might find traction in congress as some point, either through a Democratic filibuster proof majority or bipartisan support.
Another notable innovation on the horizon in another country is a new directive from the European Union Commission allowing journalists and NGOs to ask the courts there to throw out “manifestly unfounded” cases. The goal is to reduce the ballooning incidence of abusive suits against them in what’s called a “strategic lawsuit against public participation”, or Slapp. That’s when a wealthy individual or company attempts to use the law to threaten or silence journalists or other organizations that report on their actions.
Sound familiar? It’s the sort of regressive restraint of speech that could take us back to the pre-Luther and Gutenberg Bible days, a time when information was the domain of the wealthy and powerful and we were not privy to what was really happening to us.
A contemporary example of a people living uninformed are the Russians who do not believe their nation is the aggressor responsible for the atrocities in Ukraine. The Russian people, save the few that have found a way around the information blockade and consume more than state media, are passive accomplices to the barbarism of their authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin. And with no real vote or democracy, or press freedom to open their minds and hearts, powerless to change it.
Photo: Cory Doctorow
If your conscience is telling you to do something now, you can help with a free enterprise solution, subscribe to a local news source. One that practices real journalism, invests profits back into serving the local community, that has a retraction and editorial policy, that labels the opinion pieces clearly versus the straight reporting, to name just a few. There are many more attributes that define the guardrails of journalism (versus garbage news). If you’re interested in learning more, my previous post, “If Bob Woodward says it’s true, is it?” will help you recognize the good stuff.
Only 21% of Americans pay for their news, although that’s up from 16% two years prior, according to the Digital News Report for 2021, produced by the Reuters Institute. That’s good news and bad. It’s gone up possibly due to paywalls that news sources have put up to try and save their income model causing the motivated news consumers to subscribe. But the dominant trend in the U.S. is checking out of news altogether due in part to being locked out by the cost and/or fatigue from too much conflict and bad news.
The problem is, turning away from authentic journalism leaves us vulnerable to trash information, and too uneducated to make good choices both for ourselves and when choosing our leaders. It leaves us open to becoming the next Russia, just riders in a car with no steering wheel driven remotely by forces out of our sight or control.
So I’m a payer. My local news tithe goes to The Dallas Morning News, Texas Tribune, and KERA the NPR/PBS station in Dallas.
If you’re looking to invest philanthropy dollars, check out Report for America. They were recently featured on 60 Minutes. Their mission is to put reporters back in those places that have become news deserts with a simple, elegant tactic - pay part of the salary needed to hire a journalist plus helping the local news organization learn how to raise funds to pay the salary once donor support is phased out. They are making an impact right now and I hope will continue to grow.
Like Nemo and his pal the anemone, protecting journalism creates a mutually beneficial symbiosis - say that again, it sounds so nice, symbiosis – that will feed us and leave a legacy of democracy for generations to come.
** Thanks for reading! Your comments are welcome below. **
Sources:
Symbiosis
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/symbiosis-art-living-together/
https://www.etymonline.com/word/symbiosis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/leech
https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/parasitism
Nemo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finding_Nemo
https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/finding-nemo/5Gpj2XqF7BV2
https://www.scuba.com/blog/explore-the-blue/meet-real-cast-finding-nemo/
Printing Press and Postal System
https://www.britannica.com/topic/postal-system/History
https://www.britannica.com/technology/printing-press
https://www.biography.com/inventor/johannes-gutenberg
Newspaper Closures and Funding Models
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/21/reader-center/local-news-deserts.html
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3940
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5376
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2021385
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2021
https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/reports/expanding-news-desert/loss-of-local-news/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/business/media/build-back-better-local-news.html
https://www.reportforamerica.org/
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/unccislm1164/viz/NewspapersByCountyUnitedStates/DesertandOne
Martin Luther: This stuff is really fun if you have the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-five_Theses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_period
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/martin-luther-insults-you
https://www.churchpop.com/2014/08/10/29-of-martin-luthers-most-hiliariously-over-the-top-insults/
https://ergofabulous.org/luther/insult-list.php
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/7/3/20/htm
Other
If Bob Woodward says it’s true, is it?
This great tragedy, and the many that have now followed from this watershed event, are due to disinformation and misinformation consumed by a public that could have chosen more wisely.
“Everyone has their version of the truth. But there are facts. There is reality. As a reporter, you can come up with the best obtainable version of the truth.”
Bob Woodward became a household name when he and his colleague at the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein, laid bare the scheme of President Richard Nixon and his associates to cheat, using criminal tactics, in order to stay in office.
Their story revealing Nixon’s Democratic Headquarters break-in, became the loose thread that unraveled a much larger pattern of corruption and criminality pervasive at the White House including a plan to firebomb a think tank office for documents.
Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting ultimately led to the only presidential resignation in U.S. history.
Photo: "Woodward and Bernstein" by debrajwagner is marked with CC0 1.0
No, Nixon wasn’t impeached. He was threatened with impeachment when the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee put forward three articles charging him with “high crimes and misdemeanors”, in July of 1974, including obstructing justice, covering up the crime, abuse of power and not cooperating with the investigation. This abbreviated list hides the enormity of the abuse.
When you read the salacious details of a criminal unit called the “plumbers” operating a shadow war on the other main American political party using tactics like firebombing and stealing information from a private citizen’s psychiatrist, using the powers of the IRS and FBI, your eyes begin to water wondering who would be safe from tyranny in such a nation.
Image: "watergate" by airship is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Nixon resigned when it became clear that the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate had a bipartisan majority willing to impeach, convict and remove him from office. The dam of democracy held in 1974.
Without quality journalism - on the part of both the reporters and the organization they worked for, The Washington Post, Nixon and his associates would not have been held accountable.
Woodward strikes at the core question of journalism in his Master Class introduction, “Everyone has their version of the truth. But there are facts. There is reality. As a reporter, you can come up with the best obtainable version of the truth.” He goes on to elaborate what journalism means to him.
In short, it’s all about the evidence, the data, the corroboration – the process.
Good judgement demands that we pick our sources of news with care. To learn the nearest truth about the happenings in the world, the reporter or news source you put your faith in must use a reliable, consistent process that adheres to best practices which includes a commitment to the “the best obtainable version of the truth”.
The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics includes four principles:
· Seek Truth and Report It
· Minimize Harm
· Act Independently
· Be Accountable and Transparent.
Each of these is further defined and act as guard rails for authentic journalism.
Image: Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics flier.
If you’ve never been misled by gossip with tainted motives, then you are in a tiny minority. The fallout at the least is personal drama at worst real-world loss.
Scale that nationally with persuasive misinformation, disinformation, and opinion labeled as news and the damage can be catastrophic. Further scale that with social media and whole countries can be harmed. Death is the highest price to pay but there is no shortage of economic and social cost for individuals and society.
One U.S. example is Pizzagate, the false story that was spread initially by right wing social media, then moved into wider circulation, that a pizza restaurant in Washington D.C. was a front for a child sex trafficking ring.
The owner, employees and even bands that performed at the restaurant were harassed with threats of violence. One believer ultimately drove to the restaurant from North Carolina with an AR-15 rifle to “investigate” the problem himself.
Photo: "Comet Ping Pong" by thumeco is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
No one was killed when he fired his gun in the restaurant packed with families eating lunch, but significant damage has been inflicted on the owner, those who work there, and on the shooter who was convicted and sentenced to 4 years in prison.
Parents whose children’s pictures were taken from the family friendly restaurant’s social media likes had to hire lawyers to attempt to get their pictures removed from conspiracy theory posts about pedophilia.
The owner, James Alefantis, gave an interview to Hatewatch a blog of the Southern Poverty Law Center and said of the ongoing experience, “ These weaponized social media attacks … those people [the extremists] move on. But they leave damage, real lasting damage in their wake. Not to mention they brought a gunman into my restaurant, an arsonist, [#Pizzagate] tourists, others. … My employees are traumatized, literally have PTSD, traumatized, waiters in their twenties. I know specific people who are going to therapists, or, you know, afraid to go places because of the actions of these people. So, these are real consequences. As the federal judge said, in the case against the gunman, it’s a miracle no one was killed.”
This great tragedy, and the many that have now followed from this watershed event, are due to disinformation and misinformation consumed by a public that could have chosen more wisely.
So yeah, if someone like Bob Woodward says it’s true, then it’s a good idea to allow his reporting to shape your view of reality instead of the myriad of other sources that do not follow the process of journalism.
Are reporters infallible? No
But it’s not about Woodward, the individual; it’s about his commitment to process. If a reporter or publication is consistently adhering, much like a scientist, to a set of formulaic standards with professional principals and best practices as their guide, then you’ve found the clearest mirror of our world that we have at present.
If you’re like me, your parents cautioned you growing up that, the company you keep is who you are. It’s also true that the information you consume is who you are. Are you choosing wisely?
Sources:
https://www.masterclass.com/classes/bob-woodward-teaches-investigative-journalism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/080974-3.htm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/part1.html
https://www.britannica.com/event/Watergate-Scandal/Watergate-trial-and-aftermath
https://www.vox.com/2014/8/7/5970967/what-was-watergate-scandal-nixon
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/5/13842258/pizzagate-comet-ping-pong-fake-news
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/technology/pizzagate-justin-bieber-qanon-tiktok.html
https://time.com/4590255/pizzagate-fake-news-what-to-know/
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-38156985
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/richard-m-nixon/
https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S4-2-3-5/ALDE_00000695/
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/07/07/theres-nothing-you-can-do-legacy-pizzagate
Measuring Reality
Gathering and ordering the “soundings” of human activity with a new methodology that parallels the scientific method is the next frontier in journalism.
For a time, the pandemic even changed the weather.
Weather prediction, it turns out, is partially reliant on your trip to Disney or that sales meeting in Las Vegas via a previously little-known commercial flight measurement called an aircraft sounding.
The evocative term “aircraft sounding” conjures an old technology that goes back to ancient seafarers. Still sometimes used, soundings allow sailors to gauge the depth and composition of the sea floor using just a lead weight secured to a line pre-marked with fathoms*.
Depth sounding off the coast of Norway. The anchor is hanging ready at the bow. Image: Olaus Magnus woodcutting, circa 1555, Wikicommons {{PD-US}}
Today, more than 3500 commercial aircrafts plumb the skies for more than 250 million weather observations per year, according to the National Weather Service, a massive amount of data.
Depiction of 24 hour global cycle of air traffic contributing meteorological data. Image: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Aircraft soundings, along with reports from 900 weather stations across the globe, are fed into predictive models that assist meteorologists with their forecasts. Helping us in turn to decide whether to proceed with that backyard BBQ, ball game or outdoor wedding.
Photo: "Rained Out Dinner, Great Wall" by Leo Laporte is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
But during the early days of the Covid pandemic with the precipitous drop in air traffic, the accuracy of the predictive models dropped by 50% - 75%. That’s a huge statistical shift which was anecdotally noticeable.
You may recall grousing around that time about yet another problem, unreliable weather predictions. Well, it was true.
What is a forecast ultimately but a snapshot of reality? A meteorologist uses consistent data points to assemble a prediction of future likelihoods based on the same conditions in the past. Those same points, after the fact, create a final record, or history of what was occurring that moment, hour, day and ultimately year and century. It’s not comprehensive but the snapshots become our window into the past.
Accounts of happenings in our community and world give us data points of another kind. News reports are the soundings we use to mark human history and in turn predict future possibilities.
Taken December 17, 2011 in downtown Cairo near Tahrir Square. Photo: "Two journalists and two children shelter from stone throwing militia" by alisdare1 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Journalists, like meteorologists, are taking their measurements of the daily human experience and putting the data into “models”, that is patterns of behavior, in an area of expertise or beat.
For instance, if you cover city hall long enough you begin to recognize signs of misuse of public funds or of corruption. There are repetitive characteristics of both courage and graft in the human record.
Journalists are public servants that sort through the raw data of the daily human experience and turn it into a report that helps us understand a broader narrative.
That reporting helps us navigate a complex world enabling us to, again like the weather forecast, make decisions that can harm or benefit our individual lives. Ultimately the work of journalists significantly contributes to the overall history of humankind. And it’s absolutely essential for democracy.
With so many of us asking anew, what is truth? How can we understand as a group a shared, objective human experience? My answer is quality journalism. The alternative is hearsay, propaganda, and disinformation.
Data journalism is at the forefront of a new approach to analyze human activity. Using forensics, analytics and open-source information to mine social media, GPS data, financial data and more; professional and citizen journalists are breaking news using innovative methods.
We are seeing the emergence of a new level of transparency and evidentiary corroboration that is staggering.
Belllingcat and ProPublica are at the leading edge of this kind of work. Bellingcat’s most famous contribution to date is the evidence they extracted to definitively connect Russia to the downed civilian Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine which took the lives of 298 people. I highly recommend subscribing to their newsletter.
Makeshift memorial at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport for the victims of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 which crashed in the Ukraine on 17 July 2014. Photo: Roman Boed from The Netherlands is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Journalistic best practices and ethics over time act as a developing body of standards to regulate the quality of information gathering. Now that we are awash in data and the traditional information gatekeepers of old, a small consortium of newspapers and book publishers, are no longer controlling the narrative, we need new filters to protect the quality of our understanding of the world.
Aristotle, one of the original pioneers of the scientific method, gifted us a type of thinking on how to observe the natural world.
As described by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “For Aristotle, empiricism, careful observation (but passive observation, not controlled experiment), is the starting point, though the aim is not merely recording of facts. Science (epistêmê), for Aristotle, is a body of properly arranged knowledge or learning—the empirical facts, but also their ordering and display are of crucial importance. The aims of discovery, ordering, and display of facts partly determine the methods required of successful scientific inquiry.”
Photo: "'I have a crush on the scientific method'" by afagen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
And later, Enlightenment thinkers refined the profile of those pursuing truth, “The scientist is humble in the face of nature, not beholden to dogma, obeys only his eyes, and follows the truth wherever it leads.” The character attributes of scientists and journalists closely mirror one another.
Gathering and ordering the “soundings” of human activity with a new methodology that parallels the scientific method is the next frontier in journalism. The capacity of thinking machines to help us grasp the nature of reality in aggregate, though not comprehensively, is an area where advances are due. Those advances must also come with, yet to be defined, guardrails.
We are on the threshold of a new type of journalism. Like depth soundings and weather measurements taken at a variety of locations -then put together and processed through a tested model that yields a view of the natural world that is unachievable through our individual senses - this new science of human observation will find novel truths of our combined human endeavor and may spark a revolution in philosophy that rivals the tectonic shifts born of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment.
As a resident of Springfield might put it, this new journalism will “embiggen” our understanding of humanity and truth.
*Annotation:
A fathom, derived from Old English, Norse and Saxon, means: arms, embrace, and grasp. It’s a measurement based on the anatomy of a large man with outstretched arms as if about to give you a bear hug, taken from the middle finger of one hand to the other.
This work on a map from street artist Id-iom illustrates the gesture perfectly. His description of what this man is getting up to cracks me up, “This gentleman is trying to embiggen his arms somewhat so he can be like Stretch Armstrong. But alas i don't think he'll achieve it. For one he's just a normal human called Geoff from Dorking (as the map suggests) and second he's mucho crazy in the brain (in fact that probably helps when trying to grow your arms out - thinking outside the box and all that malarky). At least he's happy!” Image: "Embiggen" by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
I like to imagine the fathom was born when one such man was describing to another how far it was to the bottom of the river with arms thrown out saying, “It’s about this far.” Used mainly to describe depth, it has been standardized over time to about six feet (yet another anatomical measurement). Reaching into the unknown to take this measurement was critical for navigating safe depths, map readings and where to park the ship (or not).
Photo: "Morning Haze" by Terry Kearney is marked with CC0 1.0
Incidentally, the word plumber originates from the Latin word for lead, plumbum. Ancient Roman pipes were made of lead. The artisans that crafted and repaired the waterworks were known as those that worked with lead. Yikes. Plumbing was a more dangerous occupation back then. The symbol for lead, Pb, makes a little more sense too with that insight.
Lead pipe to supply water to the Roman Baths in Bath, England. The pipe has a folded seam and is thought to have carried water under pressure. Photo: Andrew Dunn, CC BY-SA 2.0
So, the next time you are plumbing the depths of some gritty problem, you can visualize spreading your arms as wide as a large, weathered Norseman to size it up and find understanding as if pulled to the bottom by a lead weight.
"Viking" by Sune P is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Sources:
https://sites.google.com/a/wmo.int/amdar-news-and-events/newsletters/volume-9-april-2015
https://amdar.noaa.gov/docs/bams/
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/sounding
https://www.grammar-monster.com/sayings_proverbs/plumb_the_depths.htm
https://seahistory.org/sea-history-for-kids/leadline/
https://www.weather.gov/ffc/pop
https://www.discovery.com/science/chance-of-rain
https://corrosion-doctors.org/Elements-Toxic/Lead-history.htm
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02198-4
https://www.etymonline.com/word/plumber
https://www.etymonline.com/word/fathom
https://www.britannica.com/science/fathom
https://physicsworld.com/a/covid-19-pandemic-has-made-weather-forecasts-less-reliable/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200717101026.htm
https://www.bellingcat.com/about/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/15/belling-the-cat/
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972862453/how-bellingcats-web-sleuths-solve-global-crimes
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/#HisRevAriMil
Stubborn Details
Just ponder for moment how incredible it is that they have mastered a consistent cup of coffee across the vast differences in culture and infrastructure that span their many stores.
Anticipate, enter, engage, exit, reflect. What a delightful grouping of verbs! How could we harness the analytical discipline of Starbucks to improve our broader culture?
I had not yet started my blog when I wrote this nearly a year ago. I am posting this now as the last year has made it clear that the stubborn details are of greater consequence than ever.
April 27, 2020
Checking the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker this morning I stumbled on the FAQ page. The questions surprised me. They all danced around the central notion of process. People seemed to want to understand the how & why, not just the what of the most popular tool for digesting the scope of the pandemic.
There were questions about: why the map was created, by whom, about how the data is graphically contextualized, data sources and more but one really stood out. Why are the country names designated as such on the map?
According to their FAQ, “Initially the map followed the naming scheme used by the World Health Organization. It then switched to names of nations designated by the U.S. State Department.”
Something as seemingly simple as naming the nations impacted has a back story, a swerve, and finally a choice was made to represent them based on the U.S. interpretation of nationhood. I may delve into that deeper later but for now what’s evident from this fact is the devil is in the detail, an adage that despite its lustrous, well-worn sheen, is still a reliable truism.
It’s never been truer than today in our deeply layered systems-oriented economy and culture. Systems are the intentional or passively unintentional process by which a goal is achieved.
"Starbucks coffee Manel" by Manel is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
There are systems embedded in actions that seem simple. Grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks and you’ve participated in a system that has been R&D’d by an army of engineers, marketers and grad students with millions invested in a cost-effective supply chain and customer experience that is predictable across 51 countries and 16,700 retail stores.
Just ponder for moment how incredible it is that they have mastered a consistent cup of coffee across the vast differences in culture and infrastructure that span their many stores. One aspect of their process is the Customer Journey Map.
Put simply, it’s a map of the touchpoints i.e. lived experience and steps of a customer from the moment an individual decides they need your product, let’s say a cup of coffee, until the coffee is in hand, consumed and finally disposed of.
Here’s a Customer Journey Map example from Starbucks.
Image: https://blog.podium.com/customer-journey-map/
Anticipate, enter, engage, exit, reflect. What a delightful grouping of verbs! How could we harness the analytical discipline of Starbucks to improve our broader culture?
One of the foundational systems of a Democracy is news dissemination. What is the Customer Journey Map for a news consumer? Or as I like to stubbornly refer to them, citizens.
Anecdotally, it’s confusion, uncertainty, quality concerns, too many products to choose from, not enough with the desired features, many differences in the user experience, user interface, expectations and satisfaction. A process for revolutionizing the news and thusly feeding democracy is hiding in plain sight waiting for a cartographer to map it.
And Democracy, yet another process, one by which our collective goals and resource expenditure are self-determined, is reliant on that effort. Winston Churchill famously commented in a nod to governmental systems, “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”
"Sir Winston Churchill, The Roaring Lion" by cstm-mstc is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Details are stubborn and the process or systems we use to aggregate them may result in a pumpkin spice latte, no whip with sprinkles that meets expectations no matter which Starbucks you visit or a society living in mutual trust with reliable information.
Reputation
As we descend into a modern tribalism and the “golden of age” of the newspaper recedes, how do we assemble a shared view of reality? Who can we trust?
If you can’t trust the messenger, can you trust the message?
Long before the birth of journalism or even the printing press, only those with the wealth of kings could afford to pay for news, information that might make or break their literal fortunes. These information hungry titans of old did so via a private network of trusted informants. Trusting the reputation of the messenger was essential to actionable intel.
You’ll find an account in my dogeared copy of Andrew Pettegrew’s, The Invention of News, of two 11th century monasteries, located 100 miles apart, trading messengers every three years to get caught up on the news. Talk about breaking news!
Image: Wikimedia Commons
The monks, kings and populace of medieval Europe were suspicious of news from an unknown source but willing to pay vast sums for reliable intelligence from proven sources.
Pettegrew’s research revealed a “profound distrust” of the written word even once Guttenberg entered the scene with his printing press around 1440.
Pettegrew discovered that, “Rather the contrary: a news report gained credibility from the reputation of the person who delivered it. So a news report delivered verbally by a trusted friend or messenger was far more likely to be believed than an anonymous written report.”
Centuries later, even after the advent of print journalism in the 18th century, the integrity of the messenger remained paramount. Personal reputation was crucial for any individual with ambitious prospects in business or personal alliances (e.g. beneficial nuptials). Social capital was the secret sauce for trade, with wealth and prospects highly contingent on maintaining the good opinion of others.
Messenger boy for Mackay Telegraph Co., Waco, Texas, 1913 Photo: Lewis Hine. CC License.
Reputation was built in small communities from direct experiences with someone proving their honesty and reliability, over time. Perhaps a friend, who had proven their trustworthiness, could vouch for a stranger and by extension endow them with the use of their good reputation.
Great care was taken to protect reputation and cultivate the 19th century version of a credit score.
Jane Austen brilliantly signaled the currency of reputation in the world inhabited by Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. Women and men alike were subject to potentially catastrophic financial loss if they suffered a corresponding loss of reputation.
Photo: Daz Smith. CC License.
We are still wary of the unknown or strangers like our pre-Gutenberg and 19th century forebears. As evidenced by the growing numbers of us that get our news predominantly from a friend sharing it on social media.
Like the original social media, word of mouth, stories today shared by a trusted friend online are laundered and imbued with a scent of truth.
But as we descend into a modern tribalism within walled off silos of media and the “golden of age” of the newspaper recedes, what will become of our information innovations?
The practice of journalism, a set of methodologies pioneered to tuss out the most accurate, truthful set of facts feasible from the human experience has grown in sophistication and quality of output since its invention.
For instance, the development of the novel requirement of corroboration in the 16th century - the practice of waiting for confirmation or evidentiary documentation from multiple sources to verify information. Innovation didn’t stop there. Over the next 300 years the practitioners of journalism gradually perfected a system of checks and balances to consistently report reliable news.
Today, there are still excellent journalists churning out the good stuff but their numbers, for the moment, are dwindling.
Ann Arbor News, final edition. Photo: Dan Bruell
News organizations had 455,000 people on their payroll in 1990. By 2019, it had dropped to 88,000 employees.
With the move to digital media, ad dollars shifted from the content creators - newspaper and broadcast journalism - to the search and social middlemen, Google and Facebook.
Layoffs and closures of local newspapers followed and the corresponding loss of reliable information for us. The Covid pandemic ad revenue losses may be the final extinction event for many more local newspapers.
Here we are, like our Victorian predecessors on the precipice of our version of the Industrial Revolution, living in a new era of disruption, at the dawn of a Communication Revolution.
Most of us are residing in large, complex, interconnected communities. Regardless of our geography, we still need a pragmatic understanding of our world to make good decisions. We cannot build for the future, as individuals or communities, in a suspended state of cynicism or bifurcated reality.
The question remains, how do we identify trustworthy news messengers now?
We must pioneer an updated system of news reporting. It will inevitably require faith in a proven reputation of either the individual reporter or of the organization based on the consistent use of best practices to find and share facts.
When you visit a doctor or hire a CPA, their work is trustworthy because the profession long ago created a certification system that codified, then required the use of best practices. Violate the expectations egregiously, foremost among them do no harm, and you could lose your license.
What is needed is not only a voluntary code of ethics, but a more formalized set of expectations and methodologies, perhaps even a certification for those who dedicate their life’s work to the honorable profession of journalism.
Only within the cradle of a shared set of facts can American democracy and the promise in the U.S. Constitution of equal treatment and opportunity be realized and continue to be nurtured globally.
Sources:
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7922617/pride-and-prejudice-charts
https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-Industrial-Revolution
https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/Social-upheaval
https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/05/why-the-golden-age-of-newspapers-was-the-exception-not-the-rule/
The Invention of News by Andrew Pettegrew
https://hapgood.us/2018/11/14/a-teaser-on-some-results-on-cynicism-and-online-information-literacy/
Fossilized Narrative
The implication of the $200 million-dollar rebranding effort was that this was a new type of oil company. One you could trust with the environment, with your future.
It all started with a conversation on a flight to New York a few weeks after September 11, 2001.
My husband and I had resolved finally to take that long dreamt of trip to Italy to mark a significant birthday. Like so many unrealized plans, for so many, it was put on hold due to Covid. Instead, I plunged my time and money into a new endeavor from the relative safety of my office, Seth Godin’s altMBA program.
If you’ve ever listened to his podcast, Akimbo, you’ve heard the testimonial ad:
“…What altMBA gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good; you got access ideas, you got access to information, that’s awesome but when you gonna show up? When are you gonna face that blank page? When are you going to face the possibilities within you? When are you going to face those fears? I’m not going to let you hide. You gotta show up. And that’s the hardest part. And it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical. It’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question.
It’s not because we don’t know or don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up is possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories I see out there but I can show up.
Then Seth comes in and gently whispers, “Consider the altMBA.”
Travel is for me an exercise in expansion. Prior to leaving I start the trip at home by reading history books, dusting off my knowledge of art collections on offer, studying maps and preparing to eat and explore adventurously. In short, priming myself for intellectual and hopefully spiritual change in the baptismal of people and culture not of my own.
Once the trip was canceled, I turned to the altMBA as my change catalyst. Best decision ever, it’s the easy answer to what good came out of this year? And for me, the clear winner of the Silver Lining Award of 2020. The experience has transformed a year of pain and challenge to one of beauty, growth, possibility and connection.
This substantial blog post was written for an altMBA assignment or “prompt” as it was called in the program. The brief was to analyze Assets, Boundaries and Narratives at play in a company or organization unraveling how their interplay has lead to or will lead to success or decline.
Seth defined them as follows:
· Assets are productive tools, things we can use again and again.
· Boundaries are things we can’t, won’t or shouldn’t do.
· Narrative is the story we tell ourselves, a story about boundaries, about assets and about potential.
Assets come in two main flavors tangible and intangible. Tangible assets are physical like machinery, computers, buildings, land, minerals, inventory on hand, the things used to make a product or service.
The intangible assets, which have just as much or more value in their potential for future development, are non-physical like brands, patents, copyrights, perception and intellectual capital.
The analysis that follows of British Petroleum turned out not to be dry. It has the contours of a sporting match with the underdogs entering the field surprised to find themselves in the arena at all. Instead of becoming obsolete, the players involved stand poised to realize a historic transformation on par with converting a turn of the last century buggy whip manufacturer into a transportation mega company.
BP dances up to the edge but falls mid-pirouette. The hardened narrative that defines our possibilities kept them in a box of their own making. Like so many of us, we are limited by the framing we cannot or refuse to see.
It all started with a conversation on a flight to New York a few weeks after September 11, 2001. It was remarkable not because it occurred on a flight that would soon pass over ground zero, which at the time conjured up the image of a painfully extracted molar, but notable instead due to the stranger whom I sat next to, a BP executive.
Ground Zero, New York City. October 26, 2001. Photo: Rob Sheridan
In 2000, the oil company previously known as British Petroleum, made the audacious decision to rebrand itself as BP, coyly referencing not British in their new slogan but “Beyond Petroleum”. The implication of the $200 million-dollar rebranding effort was that this was a new type of oil company, one you could trust with the environment, with your future. An oil company that would acknowledge the realities of climate change and face them head on. Their new logo sealed the impression with a happy flower motif bursting yellow at its center giving way to two lovely variations of green petals, or sun rays. Ah, just makes me think of… oil.
BP British Petroleum Gas Station Sign, May 2014. Photo: JeepersMedia
At the time, I was excited to learn that my aisle mate was with BP. Their new ad campaign had caught my attention. I was eager to learn were they really going to invest and transition into clean energy as implied.
I honestly don’t remember his exact answer. I do remember the gist of it. He conveyed with maximum confidence that the plan was in fact to become the first global oil producer to voluntarily move some of its assets, increasing over time, into renewables. With the world feeling pretty bleak at that moment, it sounded like a piece of welcome good news. Climate Change has been a focused worry, bordering on obsession for me for a good long while.
So, what about BP and their assets? Did they live up to the intent of their $200 million-dollar investment in rebranding. Did the culture match the face of BP? What worldview led to the decision? Has it worked out?
During that in-flight conversation I remember referencing Lord John Browne, the Chief Executive at BP that led the push to change the public opinion of big oil. He seemed impressive, a Lord and the first top oil company executive to acknowledge Climate Change publicly. That’s right, the first! You can watch it yourself here. He had made an impression on me and I asked the BP Executive if Browne intended to lead it to completion. Which again I vaguely recall as “you betcha.”
Well, it didn’t go as planned. Or did it?
It was at Stanford University in 1997, Browne roiled his oil industry peers with a shocking speech saying, “Only a fraction of the total emissions come from the transportation sector - so the problem is not just caused by vehicles. Any response which is going to have a real impact has to look at all the sources.”
He added, “If we are to take responsibility for the future of our planet, then it falls to us to begin to take precautionary action now.”
And finally, “What we propose to do is substantial, real and measurable,” he assured his audience. “I believe it will make a difference.”
It was tantamount to a cigarette manufacturing executive coming out in the 1960’s to say, “Yep, these things cause cancer and from now on we’re transitioning into cancer research.”
Afterward, an unhappy oil industry official remarked that, Browne had “left the church.”
The timeline just prior to Lord Browne’s ascension into the Chief Executive role and from this point forward can only be described as epic, operatic, Shakespearean or better yet Wagnerian. I am going to take you on a trip through the choices and asset valuations of BP from this dynamic moment through to the present. It changed everything.
For each year, the total assets are indicated at the end of the section, based on the December 31 annual report. Data courtesy of YCharts.
1985 – British Petroleum was unfocused with businesses in minerals, coal, animal feed, and chicks (yes, baby chicks, crazy right?!) in addition to oil. Output from existing fields in the North Sea and Alaska were declining. New development/production costs were higher than competitors which led to difficulty making money on new fields.
Total Assets $30.54 billion
1987 – Under three CEOs, Peter Walter, Robert Horton, and David Simon; BP began taking a new direction, buying more assets through acquisition of Britoil and shares in Standard Oil. Shedding employees and consolidating operations.
Total Assets $26.87 billion
1995 – John Browne takes over as CEO after climbing through the ranks from an apprentice petroleum engineer. Continuing operational reductions and flattening the organizational chart.
Browne’s approach is a combination of Lean as demonstrated in this comment on how to simplify management structure, “A team of people focused on a coherent bit of a big, complex business can develop the kind of intimate knowledge of the business that’s needed to maximize performance and to create the options necessary for building the future. They can work the assets harder than a large organization can, and they’re much less likely to sit on those assets if they can’t be made to perform or don’t make sense. It’s a structure that allows people to have many face-to-face interactions and to form deep personal relationships, which are critical in a learning organization.”
And Theory of Constraint as shown by his reflection on how to approach strategic planning in a learning organization, “Given the uncertainty in the world, strategy cannot be about gambling on one possible outcome five or ten years down the road. Grand master plans have a habit of not being fulfilled. In my view, strategy is about buying the right options that will give us a shot at competing in the future—that will give us the right to play if we decide we want to when it becomes clearer what the game is about. To create the kind of distinctive asset base and market positions that allow one to outperform the competition and generate great returns requires a continuous process of developing strategic options, applying skills and technology to stretch their potential, and regularly winnowing them, choosing only the best.”
Total Assets $34.35 billion
1997 – Browne makes his ground-breaking speech at Stanford acknowledging the cause and effect between human activated carbon products and climate change. This action ultimately broke up the Global Climate Coalition, a group of fossil fuel corporations promoting climate change skepticism with $1.68 million in funding. Amidst the immediate fallout from the speech, BP withdrew from the group. Many were angry and wondered why he had dropped this bombshell on the industry?
There was speculation at the time as to whether John Browne was influenced by his good friend Prime Minister Tony Blair and the recent report released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Or whether he was merely creating a goodwill shield to better position BP’s optics and throughput. I’m not sure which is true, but I suspect it was somewhere in the middle at the time.
Also that year, Browne continued to shed employees down from 129,000 in the previous decade, to 53,000 employees.
Total Assets $85.95 billion
1998 – Next, he led the takeover of Amoco, the largest acquisition of an American company by a foreign concern, for $48.2 billion, kicking off the era of big oil. Followed by Exxon acquiring Mobil for $73.7 billion, the largest merger in history at that time. The move expanded the exploration and petrochemical assets of BP.
Total Assets $84.92 billion
1999 - Back in 1981 BP began dabbling in solar with the acquisition of Lucas Energy Systems becoming Lucas BP Solar Systems. With the Amoco acquisition, BP got American Solarex as part of the deal. They made a bid to increase their ownership at a cost of $45 million to 100% by 1999 and renamed the group of solar holdings as BP Solar.
Total Assets $89.56 billion
2000 – BP launches their $200 million-dollar new brand. The logo, ”Named the Helios mark after the Greek sun god, the new logo signifies dynamic energy in all its forms from oil to gas and solar, said Sir John”, according to a Guardian article.
He went on to explain, “We are not an oil company. 40% of our hydrocarbon production comes from natural gas. We are aware the world wants less carbon-intensive fuels. What we want to do is create options.”
Not everyone was a believer, Rob Gueterbock, a climate energy specialist at Greenpeace, said “The company’s move was a triumph of style over substance. They spent more on the logo this year than they did on renewable energy last year. Given they spend $8 billion a year on oil exploration, BP stands less for beyond petroleum and more for burning the planet."
The major shopping spree continues with acquisition of three additional major assets: Atlantic Richfield (Arco) $27 billion, Burmah Castrol $4.7 billion and Vastar (natural gas) $1.5 billion. This year is the leap that kicked BP into another league as the previous acquisitions begin to pay off.
Total Assets $143.94 billion
2002 – Browne visits Stanford University once again. This time to proclaim victory, “The company’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have fallen to almost 80 million tonnes, 10 million tonnes below 1990 levels and 14 million tonnes below the level they had reached in 1998.
Browne went on to say, “I believe the American people expect a company like BP - the largest single supplier of oil and gas in this country - to offer answers and not excuses,” Browne concluded. “People expect successful companies to take on challenges, to apply skills and technology and to give them better choices. Well, we are ready to do our part - to reinvent the energy business, to stabilize our emissions - and, in doing so, to make a contribution to the challenge facing the world.”
BP however is investing 25 times more in oil and gas.
Total Assets $159.12 billion
2003 – BP invests $8 billion in TNK a Russian owned oil and gas company.
Total Assets $177.57 billion
2004 – My speculation is that the commitment to solar begins to soften with the sale of BP Solar’s R&D operation. Back in 1997, a few months after that titanic speech taking ownership for oil and carbon products causing climate change Browne gave a truly inspiring interview to the Harvard Business Review. The topic was leadership. I must say I’m going to hang on to this article. He waxes eloquently about his strategy for moving BP from a sleepy player in the oil and mineral market to one of the largest most profitable energy companies in the world. Many of the details reflect lessons from the altMBA program. It’s a fascinating look at the theories in practice.
The interviewer asks Browne, “Was a fuzzy purpose one of the root causes of your previous problems?” Browne replies, “In order to be in control of your destiny, you must realize that you will stay ahead competitively only if you acknowledge that no advantage and no success is ever permanent. The winners are those who keep moving. We have tried to instill this attitude in our people.”
And, “Now we also expect people, when they’re setting targets or challenging a boundary, to look beyond the oil industry to whichever industry does something best. For example, we’ve learned a lot from the automobile industry about procurement, which has helped us lower the cost of building service stations. And we went to the U.S. Army to learn about capturing and sharing knowledge.”
And earlier in the conversation, “This was the sort of innovation that people would come up with when we challenged them. And before too long, it became contagious. Without prodding, people began to ask themselves, where can I innovate? Or they would realize on their own, this isn’t a good idea—let’s try something different. So, contrary to what some may believe, you can institutionalize breakthrough thinking.”
It appears that BP has broken the self-imposed boundaries centered on the question, what business are we really in? Culture, management choices, and a dab of chance would soon cement a direction that remained within the four corners of industry traditionalists.
Total Assets $194.63 billion
2005 – BP commits to investing $8 billion in renewable energy by 2015.
The Lean and Theory of Constraint measures begin to take a toll on operations. With the Amoco merger came the Texas City refinery which was badly in need of repair. Part of BP’s successful throughput strategy has been wringing all the value from their assets.
According to ProPublica: Several safety inspections revealed critical and worsening problems, but improvements would not allow them to meet the revenue targets. Reductions were called for instead, among the reductions at Texas City:
• Cut inspectors and maintenance workers by the dozens to save just over $1 million.
• Eliminate safety calendars: $40,000 in savings.
• Reduce purchases of safety shoes for employees: $50,000 in savings.
• Eliminate safety awards: $75,000 in savings.
On March 23, 2005, a series of equipment and operating failures caused one of the worst refinery accidents in history. 15 people were killed and 180 injured. Check out this heavy video recreating the blast and reporting on the causes here.
Courtesy of U.S. Chemical Safety Board.
The ProPublica article further reported:
After the Texas City explosion, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP $21 million. The company also agreed to a $50 million plea bargain with the U.S. Department of Justice, in which it promised to comply with the improvements OSHA required.
The string of investigations that were conducted after the blast cited cost cutting and poor maintenance as contributing factors.
The Chemical Safety Board found that “budget cuts and production pressures seriously impacted safe operations at Texas City” and that BP executives “failed to provide effective leadership and oversight to control major accident risk.”
Total Assets $206.91 billion
2006 – Massive oil leak in Alaska. More fallout from the Lean approach to asset management.
Total Assets $207.09 billion
2007 – Lord Browne entered the spotlight one last time at the helm of BP to announce the expenditure of $1.7 billion more in safety measures each year, for the next four years. The 2005 blast, he said, “was a watershed, and it would forever change BP. That remains true.”
Just a few weeks later he suddenly resigned due to a tabloid scandal revealing a sexual relationship with a male companion. Though he had already been forced into taking early retirement due to the massive losses caused by BP’s poor safety record and the recent Texas City refinery explosion. The resignation would cost him $30 million in retirement and stock benefits.
Tony Hayward was appointed CEO.
Though Texas City faded from the media’s attention, it continued to have pollution and safety issues.
Jordan Barab, assistant secretary of labor for OSHA, told ProPublica. “I’ve often said before that we think the company as a whole has a systemic safety and health problem throughout its facilities.”
Total Assets $216.86 billion
2008 – Total Assets $228.24 billion
2010 – Five years later, BP had not learned from that painful lesson in Texas City, the effort to “wring every profit from their assets” and cut costs led to the largest environmental disaster in American history, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Though Browne was no longer with BP his words echo back eerily from his 1997 Harvard Business Review interview, “The wonderful thing about knowledge is that it is relatively inexpensive to replicate if you can capture it. Most activities or tasks are not onetime events. Whether it’s drilling a well or conducting a transaction at a service station, we do the same things repeatedly. Our philosophy is fairly simple: Every time we do something again, we should do it better than the last time. This year, drilling will account for more than half of our $3.8 billion in capital expenditures on exploration and production. We drill lots of wells. If we drill each well more efficiently than the last one, we can make a lot more money—which is exactly what we’re trying to do.”
And, “We haven’t been at it too long, but already we’re reaping fantastic gains. Deepwater drilling is a good example. We have a big acreage position in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling is an enormous technical challenge. The water there is between 2,000 and 8,000 feet deep, and then you have to drill 7,000 to 12,000 feet below the seabed to reach hydrocarbons. Because the water is so deep, you can’t affix anything to the seabed, and no human being can go down that far. So, you have to use special vessels to drill. They are very expensive, and because it’s fashionable to be drilling in this area, they’re becoming even more expensive. In 1995, we spent 100 days on average drilling deepwater wells. We now spend 42. How did we do it? By asking every time we drilled a deep-water well, what did we learn the last time and how do we apply it the next time? And we learned not only from our own people but also from contractors and from partners such as Shell.”
On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded killing 11 workers and dumping an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the waters off Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon. Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:
The oil well over which it was positioned was located on the seabed 4,993 feet (1,522 metres) below the surface and extended approximately 18,000 feet (5,486 metres) into the rock. On the night of the accident a surge of natural gas blasted through a concrete core recently installed by contractor Halliburton in order to seal the well for later use. It later emerged through documents released by Wikileaks that a similar incident had occurred on a BP-owned rig in the Caspian Sea in September 2008.
Fishery Closure Boundary as of June 21, 2010 due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, extending from Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana to Panama City, Florida. Map: U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
For 87 long days, the oil gushed into the one of the most biodiverse marine habit’s on Earth and millions of marine mammals, whales, sea turtles, birds, fish and decades to hundreds of year-old corral lost their lives. 10 years after the spill the slow rolling tragedy is still impacting marine life.
Dr. Brian Stacy, NOAA veterinarian, prepares to clean an oiled Kemp's Ridley turtle, June 2010. Photo: NOAA's National Ocean Service
According to research shared in National Geographic:
Dolphins have been hit hard. Losing 1000 immediately after the spill, they have continued to decline with reproductive failures, lung disease, heart issues and impaired stress response and death. Scientists have also found that workers that helped in the cleanup are experiencing the same symptoms and health problems as the dolphins. It was summed up nicely by Cynthia Smith, a veterinarian at the National Marine Mammal Foundation, “You don’t necessarily think of a dolphin as being representative of yourself or a human being representative of a dolphin, but our lives overlap,” Smith says. “We’re in this space together, and there’s a lot to learn from that.”
Health, safety and environment (HSE) workers contracted by BP clean up oil on a beach in Port Fourchon, La., May 23, 2010. Photo: United States Coast Guard
BP Chief Executive, Tony Hayward, didn’t last the year stoking the fire of angry American sentiment while testifying before the U. S. Congress about the spill with stonewalling and insensitivity. Some thought his leadership incompetent, he remarked at one point, “No one wants this over more than I do, I’d like my life back”.
As of today, BP has spent $65 billion on the cleanup. At that time the cost was already hitting $4 billion within 3 months of the spill. Plus they committed to set aside another $20 billion for further cleanup and compensation going forward. The process of selling assets began, to pay the enormous tab.
During the crisis other oil companies threw BP under the bus as the one bad actor among the other well-behaved oil companies. BP hadn’t been forgiven yet, they were still paying the price for Browne’s admission that their product causes Climate Change.
By October his successor, American, Robert Dudley, a long-time employee of BP, who also came up through the ranks, had taken over as CEO.
Total Assets $272.26 billion
2011 - BP divests all of their solar assets to focus on wind and biofuels and surprisingly is still committed to meeting the 2005 target for investing $8 billion in renewables.
Total Assets $293.07 billion
2013 – After a rocky operational relationship with TNK including billion-dollar back tax claims out of nowhere and Soviet-era KGB searches, plus ejecting then group executive, now CEO Robert Dudley, from the country; BP sells its 50% stake to Rosneft, a Russian state-owned oil firm for $26.7 billion. The dividends over that 10-year period were $19 billion, a 472% return on investment. Not bad!
This is it, BP’s peak year for asset valuations. It begins from this point to hover and move slightly up but for the most part the trajectory is stagnant or down.
BP has another bit of good news, it finally reaches its $8 billion-dollar target expenditure in renewables and then promptly dumps them the following year.
Total Assets $305.69 billion
2014 – BP disposes of all renewable assets except biofuel including $3.1 billion in wind farms and rights for future development. It looks as though the John Browne gambit of keeping pieces on the board for an as yet seen play has been retired.
Total Assets $284.30 billion
2018 – Ultimately BP sold off $75 billion in assets to pay for the Deepwater Horizon disaster cleanup costs and facility improvements.
They became a smaller and more focused company as a result, according to CEO Robert Dudley.
Most of BP’s projects through the end of the decade would be natural gas, which would rise to 60 percent of BP’s fossil fuel production. BP also doubled down on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. They were among the first in line to win new leases to drill again in the gulf once the U.S. government restrictions were lifted.
“This is not a race to renewables. It has to be a race to reduce emissions,” Dudley said.
It’s clear by now that the culture at BP is not committed to the broader framing of energy production but more specifically, fossil fuel energy production.
Total Assets $282.18 billion
2019 – In May, BP finally agreed to a request from shareholders for details and transparency on how the company would meet Paris climate agreement carbon emission reductions. As a result, the company agreed to sell a handful of its most carbon-intensive projects, a surprising development.
Total Assets $295.19 billion
2020 - CEO Robert Dudley steps down due to poor earnings after nearly a decade on the job saying of his predecessor, “Bernard (Looney) is a terrific choice to lead the company next. He knows BP and our industry as well as anyone but is creative and not bound by traditional ways of working. I have no doubt that he will thoughtfully lead BP through the transition to a low carbon future.”
Totals Assets as of September $260.25 billion
And here we are full circle, once again not bound by traditional ways. This time however it’s not so much a choice. Banks and insurance companies have been warily eyeing the future of the fossil fuel industry. They are beginning to see funding exploration as a growing risk.
When the price of oil fell dramatically in May from the steep decline in usage due to Covid-19, a supply glut preceding the pandemic and OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, refusing to cut production; we got a glimpse into the future of oil. A tsunami of forces that brought the price crashing to $15 per barrel, a price not seen since 1999. A party for the consumer but not the oil producers.
This is a peak behind the curtain for what we may expect if, when big oil’s assets become stranded by the conversion to renewables. The spoiler is they won’t be worth the cost of extraction.
Carbon Tracker explains it this way:
“Stranded assets are now generally accepted to be those assets that at some time prior to the end of their economic life (as assumed at the investment decision point), are no longer able to earn an economic return (i.e. meet the company’s internal rate of return), as a result of changes associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy (lower than anticipated demand/prices). Or, in simple terms, assets that turn out to be worth less than expected as a result of changes associated with the energy transition.
For existing assets, our research can highlight those assets which are most at risk of becoming stranded through the energy transition, as society looks to restrict global warming to well below 2°C, as under the Paris Agreement. There are already examples of coal mines, coal and gas power plants, and other hydrocarbon reserves which have become stranded by the low carbon transition.”
So here we are at the end of a very, very long journey both in the history of energy production globally but also this assignment which I had initially anticipated would be brief.
I began this analysis not understanding the depth and maze of the rabbit hole in which I had fallen. I will admit, I began writing Tuesday and stayed at it late into the night. I picked up where I left off Wednesday morning and ran right through again into the wee hours of Thursday morning, to be precise 6:23 am.
I couldn’t stop pressing forward to find out how this rollicking story of vision, tragedy, and retrenched conventional culture would end. I have learned more from this assignment than an I ever dreamed possible by taking this excessively long look at BP. I can honestly say I admire their tenacity (and certainly John Browne’s audacity), despite the fact that in my outsider’s judgement they missed a much richer, more generous story arc and future asset base.
My perspective at the outset, once I had that conversation on the plane many years ago, is that BP has - over the years since John Browne, flaming sword in hand, declared he would set the world free from the burden of oil industry induced climate change - wrongly framed its potential. I couldn’t resist that visual reference to the fiery other, American abolitionist John Brown, with no ‘e’.
John Brown Mural, Tragic Prelude (unsigned, 1940 ), Kansas State Capitol Building, Courtesy Quintard Taylor Collection
When I consider the many chances BP missed to become THE preeminent world leader in the generation of global energy supply, it’s stupefying. They kept pushing back on the framing that would have put them out in front.
The worldview of the good-ole leadership at BP served them well at keeping the assets growing but at what price? They knew what they knew. Each preceding CEO was from within the ranks and came up most likely loving what they did, oil and gas energy production for the world.
Changing that culture may not have even been an option. They simply couldn’t see past the powerful sway of what had worked and making it as profitable as possible at all costs including human life. In a report from the year 2000, for a cost benefit risk analysis, BP put a $10 million price tag on a single human life. They spent a great deal more.
I will be watching them more closely from this point forward. There’s still a chance they could turn this around before it’s too late.
In August of this year, new CEO Bernard Looney made a bold announcement. BP is setting out once again to remake itself into a clean energy producer, and get this, within a decade! They are planning specific investments in wind, solar, hydrogen, and a clean-burning gas. Sound familiar? This is the really impressive part, with a renewables budget of $5 billion per year. Here’s the kicker that literally seals the deal, with a corollary 40% reduction in their oil and gas production within the same time frame. They’re not leaving themselves an opening to stay in the fossil fuel industry. They’re selling and converting their assets, it’s the real deal this time. Although I feel uneasy making such a declaration. Knock on wood.
BP’s share price jumped by more than 7 percent during trading after the strategy was revealed.
You may wonder what happened to the inestimable John Browne? Was he true in his desire to turn this titan of carbon pollution into the messiah of renewables? I don’t know but I can share that he did not remain in retirement. He is once again a chairman. According to the Washington Post in 2014 Browne took up the leadership of Cuadrilla Resources with the intent of fracking the English countryside. Caudrilla, incidentally, in Spanish describes the coterie that assists the matador in taking down the bull. You may wonder as I did, who is the bull in this scenario, the English countryside and its residents?
Protesters have dubbed Browne “the fracking czar”. He was quoted as saying, Shale gas could be very, very important for this country; it could be transformative.” “It’s like the opening of Alaska or western Siberia or the Gulf of Mexico.” It leaves one to feel that he might not have been entirely sincere in 1997.
Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and Lord Browne at the L1 Energy launch New York, May 2015. Photo: LetterOne Group
In a recent Guardian article reporting that Lord Browne had joined yet another oil enterprise L1 Energy which is controlled by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, he was asked what he would say to Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish Climate Change activist? His reply, “I would say that I have been at this for longer than you’ve been on the planet and that [decarbonisation] will take time. And so my proposal is this: remember that energy is a very big system and there is not one solution. We can’t have one magic bullet that will make the solution work for us. Because we will need coal, oil and gas, we need to do everything we can to decarbonise the emissions. This is critical for the future.”
Though the devil may be on one of John Browne’s shoulder’s, I still think he’s got a quiet angel on the other. It may be that since his untimely departure from BP he’s decided it’s just not worth listening to. And for him, maybe it never was.
Large oil companies, especially American producers that don’t have government pressure yet, may play it safe for a bit longer but my perspective is that BP is the one playing it safe, this time.
Sources:
https://carbontracker.org/terms/stranded-assets/
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/A-Third-Of-Fossil-Fuel-Assets-May-Soon-Be-Stranded.ht
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/growing-concern-over-stranded-assets
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/21/business/market-place-speculators-bp-and-sohio.html
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
https://news.stanford.edu/news/1997/may21/bp.html
https://wamu.org/story/19/09/03/engineers-can-help-save-the-earth/
https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/07/26/377141/index.htm
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Climate_Coalition
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html
https://www.c-span.org/video/?81435-1/global-climate-change
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP#1998_to_2009
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narec
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-dec-02-mn-49856-story.html
https://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/warming/BP.html
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2000/jul/25/bp
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2000/mar/15/bp
https://www.naturalgasintel.com/with-vastar-bp-adds-another-jewel-to-crown-2/
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/magazine/how-green-is-bp.html
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2002/2002-03-12-06.asp
https://www.propublica.org/article/blast-at-bp-texas-refinery-in-05-foreshadowed-gulf-disaster
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/business/worldbusiness/01cnd-oil.html
https://www.csb.gov/bp-america-refinery-explosion/
https://www.britannica.com/event/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill/Cleanup-efforts
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/jul/21/bp-tony-hayward-set-to-step-down-press-reports
https://money.cnn.com/2010/07/27/news/companies/bp_hayward/index.htm
https://www.ft.com/content/80cd4a08-2b42-11e1-9fd0-00144feabdc0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HSE_workers_clean_up_Port_Fourchon_beach_2010-05-23.JPG
https://www.adn.com/business-economy/energy/2018/07/16/after-deepwater-horizon-a-new-bp-emerges/
https://ycharts.com/companies/BP/assets
https://ycharts.com/dashboard/
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BP/bp/total-assets
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/04/bp-ceo-bob-dudley-to-step-down-bernard-looney-will-succeed.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/business/energy-environment/bp-renewable-investment.html
https://money.cnn.com/2015/08/18/investing/oil-prices-15-kotok/index.html
Iterative
If you’re a scientist, how can you not love the Scientific Method?
If you take out those pesky randomized trials and control groups, you’re skipping a critical step, testing.
If you’re a scientist, how can you not love the Scientific Method?
The French microbiologist that initially popularized the uncertain outcomes of treating Covid-19 positive patients with hydroxychloroquine was quoted complaining about the “dictatorship of the methodologists” who insist on randomization and control groups in clinical trials.
I admire his turn of phrase. The “dictatorship of the methodologists” is exquisitely evocative but with an ambulance chasing attorney vibe.
Jim Adler, legendary Texas attorney. Photo: Carolyn Hestand Kennedy
I’m Didier Raoult, the French microbiologist, I stand tough and with a big, big hammer!
Even if you don’t find a thrill participating in the base jump of releasing your work for peer review, an admiration for process is science. If you take out those pesky randomized trials and control groups, you’re skipping a critical step; testing.
And in this particular instance, testing that removes the bias of the tester and protects patients from harm.
It’s like blind orchestra auditions. The performer plays behind a partition to relieve the judge of bias. Some auditions even use carpet to dampen the steps of performers as they enter to reduce the possibility of discerning gender from their gait. The outcome is more women make it to preliminary and final rounds.
Vienna Philharmonic blind audition configuration. Photo: Jun Keller
In the world of science, part of testing is subjecting your results to peers who conduct the same experiment, using the same methodologies with the objective of achieving the same outcomes to prove the initial hypothesis. If your hypothesis is correct, then the results should be repeatable. It’s not a dictatorship it’s a sparklingly, transparent, meritocracy.
Kahn Academy has captured the essence very elegantly in the last paragraph of their Scientific Method lesson.
In most cases, the scientific method is an iterative process. In other words, it's a cycle rather than a straight line. The result of one go-round becomes feedback that improves the next round of question asking.
I’m not a scientist but I find it heroic that these beautifully, disciplined practitioners of the Scientific Method have assembled an objective reality, slowly and meticulously over centuries that has stood the test of time.