Category Archives: Notes from a small country

And now for the good news…

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I don’t, as a rule, read the HBS Alumni Magazine too closely, but here is an interesting perspective on the decline of the newspaper industry from Roben Farzad, MBA ’05  and business journalist, who paints a bleak picture of the newspaper industry, declining in revenues and importance as the barbarians digitally storm in with their click-counters and lack of respect for the sanctity of the fourth estate and its industrious acolytes. There is little hope, he says, as the fundamentals of the industry are disappearing so fast that not even patient money taking over to run newspapers as museums would help much.

I would like to point Roben to the case, developed after he finished HBS, of Schibsted ASA, a Norwegian media company that, so far, is one of the few media houses that successfully has managed the transition to the web. As one executive at monster.com said to me recently: We dominate everywhere in Europe, except Norway and Spain, where Schibsted dominate. Schibsted was early onto the Internet, and managed to have a long term view (15 years) on their investments and the luck of selling out a few of their early investments before the dot-com boom, so that their portfolio did not look totally hopeless even in 2002. It helps, of course, that its top management (particularly Kjell Aamot) was convinced, very early, that the Internet was here to stay and fundamentally would change the newspaper business.

Now, their Internet revenues exceed those from their newspapers (partially because they dominate classifieds in Norway with finn.no), more people get their news from their web sites than from their (large) newspapers. VG.no, the largest news web site, gets half as many hits as Nytimes.com (and we are less than 5m people here in Norway). VG.no breaks every rule of good web design and, precisely because of that (according to Torry Pedersen, its editor) encourages browsing. Incidentally, Torry recently became editor of both the web site and the newspaper (which, at some point in the not-too-distant future, may become free).

And yes, they have different journalists working on the net and the paper. Only 10% of the material is cross-posted, because Torry wants it that way. No mixing – these are different media and need different kinds of people.

Schibsted is by no means out of the woods yet – but they have a far better chance than any other media group I know of. I think they should focus more on their considerable capability in search technology to create more targeted and specialized, "automated" web sites, as well as get their hand more firmly in search-based advertising. And there is still work to do on integration of their activities across their various media outlets. But Schibsted did something while the rest of the media industry (and most of its journalists) lamented the coming of this vulgarity called the Internet. And that is the beauty and the fear of disruptive technologies – that by the time you understand their impact, it is too late for the majority of companies. And those who work there.

The funny thing is, if you ask journalism students, the majority of them want to work for paper papers, not this vulgar web thing, where you have to publish right away, write quickly, and instantly know whether you are being read or not. A paper journalist files one item per day. A web journalist, according to figures floating around among journalists here in Oslo, posts, on average, six.

I recently heard an anecdote about a rock singer who no longer can make money selling records, so he had to do many more concerts to maintain his income. That forced him to lay of cocaine, since he now had to go to work much more often.

A few years ago, the Oslo press club had to close for lack of customers. Presumably, they were at work. What a loss….

The maladjusted and marginalized terrorist

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Bruce Schneier, security guru extraordinaire, has a cracking good article on what motivates terrorists in Wired: The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists, much of it drawn on a paper by Max Abrahms called What Terrorists Really Want.)

The main argument is that terrorists "turn to terrorism for social solidarity", i.e., that they join terror organizations less for political aims and more because they themselves are alienated and outcasts in search for belonging and, perhaps, as an outlet for violent or authoritarian tendencies. They are loners in search of meaning rather than radicals in search a way to express their political views:

Individual terrorists often have no prior involvement with a group’s political agenda, and often join multiple terrorist groups with incompatible platforms. Individuals who join terrorist groups are frequently not oppressed in any way, and often can’t describe the political goals of their organizations. People who join terrorist groups most often have friends or relatives who are members of the group, and the great majority of terrorist are socially isolated: unmarried young men or widowed women who weren’t working prior to joining. These things are true for members of terrorist groups as diverse as the IRA and al-Qaida.

I think this makes lots of sense. During the late 60s and early 70s there was a vogue in many European countries for politically active youngsters to join the far left – a movement that at the most extreme produced the Bader-Meinhof group in Germany. Here in tiny and peaceful Norway a number of people who later wondered how they got into it joined various versions of marxist-leninist groups with the stated aim of violently overthrowing the state. (A great novel by the author Dag Solstad, later turned into a film, explores these mechanisms, telling the story of a small-town high school teacher who joins the movement because he falls in love with one of the leaders). This caused a number of bookish intellectuals from well-off homes to try to act and talk like "the people" (often with hilarious results) and take menial jobs with a view to start strikes, unrest and eventually, the great revolution.

The movement petered out eventually, due to a lack of examples of marxist-leninist success stories, better career opportunities elsewhere, the demands of family life and, most importantly, the failure of the general populace to join the cause. Today, most of these people (especially the ideological leaders) are found in relatively good positions in society and will not thank you for bringing up this period. (In one ironical twist, one of them is a professor of journalism – an interesting position for someone who once wanted to force the press to serve the needs of the proletarian dictatorship.)

Now, imagine what would have happened if the Norwegian state had declared war on these groups and instituted all kinds of controls in the name of national safety? Suddenly they would have increased in importance, had some legitimate cases of persecution (heavy-handed security always produces incidents) and play off the fear and irritation induced by surveillance and controls.

Instead, the Norwegian government largely ignored them, aside from discreet monitoring for weapons violations and espionage. To the extent that anyone was arrested, the perpetrators were charged with clear violations of current law and given sentences similar to those of anyone else.

The movement did not achieve much: A few strikes, a half-hearted rebellion at a few universities, a radical newspaper that still scrapes by (and occasionally is rather good, especially after they toned down the ideology,) "progressive" clothing fashions, some small groups of old professors with weird research streams, reams and streams of newspaper commentary, and that’s about it.

Now, imagine if the current war against terrorism had been pursued as a large-scale police investigation rather than a war, with terrorists being pulled into regular courts, security controls set up for security rather than show, publicity focused on a general toning down of the whole thing, money spent on improving the situation for various downtrodden groups, and military solutions employed as the absolutely last resort, and then only under the auspices of the UN.

I think al-Qaida would be reduced to a group of fringe Islamist fundamentalists with uncertain political aims, lots of fratricidal infighting (when the populace ignores them, they turn on each other), uncertain career paths and increasingly untenable positions. Which is what they were, until the Western world handed them prominence to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Bruce would, I think, agree. Here is his conclusion:

We also need to pay more attention to the socially marginalized than to the politically downtrodden, like unassimilated communities in Western countries. We need to support vibrant, benign communities and organizations as alternative ways for potential terrorists to get the social cohesion they need. And finally, we need to minimize collateral damage in our counterterrorism operations, as well as clamping down on bigotry and hate crimes, which just creates more dislocation and social isolation, and the inevitable calls for revenge.

A simplistic answer…

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Becker and Posner discusses the financial crisis, and for once I feel a little disappointed, for they somehow miss the international side of things. The financial crisis has been possible because the American people have been on an enormous consuming binge, thanks to cheap stuff from China financed by credit from, yes, China, channeled through mortgages based on ever escalating house prices.

Anyway, I was at an HBS alumni conference last week, and the topic, of all things, was technology trends and financial crises, with speakers such as Martin Wolf, Carlotta Perez and Erik Reinert. One interesting point which was brought up was the US curious insistence on always having cheap energy: Not only is there no tax on gasoline (which would have brought down consumption and emissions, given the national coffers some badly needed cash without having to sell Treasury bonds, and reduced dependence on foreign oil), but the US, according to another speaker, subsidizes coal production to the tune of $50b per year. Stop doing that, and you would help the environment and could buy yourself an investment bank every year….

Things Norwegian

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Tyler Cowen, economist and blogger, has a list of his favorite things Norwegian over at Marginal Revolution.

My comment: I find Undset boring (and overrated), and Hamsun can be quite a piece, too (Hunger is good, but read it before Dostoevsky’s "Crime and Punishment" or Sartre’s "Age of Reason" which explore similar themes, i.e., aimless walking around while thinking deeply existential and mostly depressing thoughts.) As for other authors, try Erik Fosnes Hansen‘s "Psalm at Journey’s End", something by Ingvar Ambjørnsen (the movie "Elling", nominated to an Oscar a few years ago, is based on his books and deserves mention in the film category). Or perhaps something by Jan Kjærstad?

Tyler also notes the Norwegian Petroleum Fund, which is one of those things we Norwegians have a very ambivalent relationship with…. 

(To understand the Norwegian psyche, note that we tend to pay excessive attention to any mention of Norway by anyone abroad, an effect of living in a very small and rather remote place. As my students in India said when they heard of our population size: "In India, that would be a measurement error!") 

Moose bridges

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ElgebroCory writes about overpasses and tunnels designed to let animals tranfer themselves – and their genes – across highways from Yukon to Yellowstone.

This is not news here in Norway – we have had "moose bridges" for years. They are a standard feature of all highways leading out of Oslo, as well as across the high-speed train to the main airport. The design is less ambitious than that visualized at Boingboing. We don’t do underpasses, since Norwegian moose won’t use them (whether US critters are less discerning remains to be seen.) As for using barbed wire for capturing fur…, well that is going to be a real motivator for sexually adventurous animals, isn’t it?

Anyway, the motivation for the bridges here in Norway is much simpler: Avoiding collisions between moose and cars. A moose can weigh in at 550 kg (1200 lbs.), and has long, thin legs which elevates most of that mass to just the perfect height for entering your car through the windscreen.

Moose warning signWhich reminds me of a little anecdote: When I moved to the US in 1990, I had to sell my SUV, a Mitsubishi Pajero (1987 model). I advertised it, and it ended up being bought by one of my business school colleagues. I was a little uncomfortable selling the car to a colleague – not that there was anything wrong with it, but if you sell it to someone you know, you take on a bit more responsiblity, at least morally.

Anyway, I moved to the States, then came back home for a holiday a year later. Visiting my old place of employment, I was walking through the main hallway when I heard my colleague shouting "Espen, Espen!" and literally running towards me. My neck hairs came up – was there something wrong with the car?

My colleague – a professor of organizational psychology – was short of breath and panted "Thanks for saving my life!" Eventually, the story came out:

He had been teaching a course at a branch campus outside Oslo in January. On his way home in, he had decided to take a short-cut using a dirt road through the forest. And as he came round a bend, he ran smack into a bull moose that nearly totalled the Pajero. But since the car was high off the ground and frame-built, it absorbed the impact in the front rather than with the windscreen, and my colleague was not hurt. If he had had a normal car, he said, he would almost certainly have been killed. "What a car, what a car!", he exclaimed, again thanking me profusely.

As he walked off, my heartbeat slowly returned to normal, and I thought it was a good thing I had kept quiet and not pointed out the obvious: If he had had a normal car, he would never have taken that shortcut in the first place….

—- 

Incidentally, here’s a page, in Norwegian, explaining about moose bridges. As for the moose signs, one of the problems with them is that tourists – particularly Germans – like them and steal them as souvenirs. So now you can buy them at all the tourist shops.

Norwegian elections

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Election day yesterday, there will be a new, “red-green” government. Not much else will change. I would have written about this, except a) not even foreign, die-hard journalists under a publish-or-perish regime can find much interesting about Norwegian politics, and b) Leif Knutsen has done an excellent job already: Analyzing the result here, and joking about it here.
Oh well. I will stake my hope on the Liberals, too – though that would peg me for a “clueless intellectual”….
Update: Wikipedia, of course, has the results.

Gassed out

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For all those Americans who carp about how gas prices are approaching exceeding the magical $3 $4 per gallon mark, including Joho: Let me inform you that I just tanked up my 1995 Golf (rust-colored) at the local station at the cost of NOK 612, which at today’s dollar exchange rate is about $98. For one tank of gas for a small car….
Lemmesee – the litre price was NOK 12.60, which is about $7.60 per gallon….. Don’t think I will get one of these anytime soon….

Lessig frustrated with Kopinor conference

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Lawrence Lessig gave a talk at a conference for licensing organizations here in Norway and was frustrated because the audience (or, at least, most of them) didn’t get it, and he was seen as naïve and dangerous.
I am not really surprised – the collective licensing organizations collect money where they can and dole it out to “approved” authors (not all authors, only those deemed qualitatively good enough.) Creative Commons and other forms of financing destroys (or, at least, attacks) their reason for being. Hence the hostility.

I could, unfortunately, not be at the conference. Wish I was. But I will get my chance later this year, giving a talk at a conference for a similar organization in Denmark.

As for Lessig’s view of Norway – I hope he is reassured that some Norwegians, at least, think highly of him and his ideas. The Future of Ideas remains the one book I recommend to everyone to understand the need for a differentiated set of rights systems and a “default option” of free and available.

Don’t give up, Larry. The Swedes joke that when airplanes from Stockholm land in Oslo, the captain will tell passengers to put their clocks five years back. We will get there, eventually.

An American on Norway

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Bruce Bawer has an interesting piece in the Hudson review (via Lars Halvorsen) titled Hating America. I disagree with his use of the word “hate” (a bit to strong, I think most Europeans love to hate the USA, they don’t really hate it,) as well as a number of opinions about US foreign policy that he advocates, but it is very interesting to see how he describes Norway and our relationship to the United States. Viewing Norway, he is spot on.
The “American demanding McDonald’s way up in the mountains” story always struck me as a little incongruous, coming as it did during the newspapers’ cucumber season (i.e., the summer slowdown when papers are desperate for news and staffed by interns.) The original piece described a stay at a farm taking in tourists, with some remarks about the churlishness of the owner, which sounded entirely plausible to me. In Norway, willingness to serve the customer is seen as a deficiency of character, a view that is changing, but only slowly (and given the way the economy is going, it will take quite a while before Norwegians will have to.)
P.J.O’Rourke once said that Communism was “been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes.” While flippant, the remark contains more than a little grain of truth. And to all those decrying the boorishness and lack of intellectual curiosity of Americans, I invite them to, say, take a tour of the bookshops of Boston and San Francisco, and then visit similar establishments in Oslo, and check out the selection and conduct a few tests of the quality of the staff. Then sample some museums such as the Metropolitan in NY, the MFA in Boston or (my favorite) the Fogg Museum at Harvard, before trying to get something out of the Norwegian National Gallery (or, for that matter, the Louvre).
Nothing like some data to get your perspectives in line.