Brad Rourke's Blog

My latest piece is posted at Public Square Today, my blog at Washington Times Communities:

Poll: Veterans Ready To Serve On The Home Front

In the first-ever study of its kind, a new report released today by the public policy research firm Civic Enterprises shows that the new generation of veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan are eager to serve their communities and offer their leadership to the home front.

Photo by U.S. Army via Flickr

However, according to the report, the nation’s returning veterans face a number of obstacles including a lack of information about how to connect to such service, and a majority says no local organization has reached out to them to seek their involvement upon their return. The report was underwritten by Target and by the Case Foundation.

“Our young troops and their families have done everything their country has asked of them,” writes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen in a foreword to the report, which is the first representative survey of this generation of veterans. “Their lives have been changed forever by war, but their dreams haven’t changed at all. They want to raise their children, own a home, go to school, find work and even find new ways to contribute. Most of all, they want to be good citizens. They want to reconnect and renew their relationship to their local communities.”

In fact, according to the survey, almost 9 in 10 veterans said Americans could learn something from their example of service. And 92 percent of Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) veterans say that serving their community is important to them. But just half considered themselves leaders in their communities as a result of their military service. And almost seven in ten say they have not been contacted by any community institution.

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"View of the Long Walk, Windsor" by Flickr user 5k1nnyt1g3r

In this week’s edition of my podcast, Public Life Today, I talk about a simple test public leaders might use when faced with the need to act when emotions are high. It’s the “Long View Test.”

It’s simple: Think about how you want to look back on this moment. How would you like to remember your actions?

It’s a test that I too often fail, but, but it’s been a helpful thing to keep in mind as I face a range of decisions.

Click here to subscribe to Public Life Today using iTunes!

My latest piece is posted at Public Square Today, my blog at Washington Times Communities:

"Do Not Feed The Sock Puppet" by Flickr user dichohecho

The Trolls Vs. The Vigilantes In Public Life

At an online community I co-manage, there’s a conflict.

The community in question is a forum for people to discuss local issues, and we’ve set it up intentionally so there are a few hoops people need to jump through before we allow comments. It’s supposed to be an antidote to some of the uglier things that go on in the public square these days — the kind of place where you don’t say what you wouldn’t say to someone’s face.

Recently we discovered sock-puppetry among some of the commenters. That’s when you create an alter-ego and post as both yourself and the fake person. The sock puppets were, as you would imagine, fairly uncivil customers. But, by and large, they stayed just on this side of the line, so we allowed some of their comments even though we wished they would not have been made.

Things were a little more heated than usual because there were municipal elections going on and one of the races was hotly contested, with a bitter division between candidates.

Once we discovered the deception going on, we put a stop to it by banning those individuals from any commenting, and we tightened up our comment policy. But there are those who are now curious as to who these sock-puppet trolls might be. They want us to out them so they can be known. . . .

Read the rest here!

I am proud to announce the launch of a major new initiative that I have been working on with a few partners. The formal announcement will come later this week, but I wanted to give a preview to my readers because I am so excited about it.

Today, we are soft-launching the new Washington Times Communities. This is a new social journalist network tied into The Washington Times.

Along with partners Jacquie Kubin and Joe Szadkowski, we have been working furiously for the past months to get this in shape.

My role was to help design the management structure for this new network and to add in what I know about social networking and blogging from my experience with various other initiatives. I am also taking part in the day-to-day management of the Communities.

What It Is

We think that we have developed something that is somewhat unique among these kinds of things. Many newspapers have “community blog” sections. (In fact, the The Washington Times had one, which this new initiative replaces.) These can have widely varying content quality, widely varying updating schedules, and are typically hidden from view and separate from the rest of the newspaper’s online space.

The fundamental problem for many news organizations is that these things are hard to manage and it’s hard to know what kind of quality you’re getting.

We have created a structure which we think makes the Washington Times Communities “manageable” from an organizational perspective while at the same time open enough to make it a real blog network. At the same time, we’ve organized it so that, from a reader’s perspective, it should be easy to find what you are looking for.

There are really six Communities:

• Entertain Us (entertainment)
• Family Today (parenting and families)
• Life’s Online (lifestyle)
• Overtime (sports)
• Public Good (public life and community benefit)
• The Loop (politics)

Each of these communities is led by a “mayor” who essentially curates the content for each community. Within each Community, there are between five and ten (for now) “neighborhoods.” Each of these Neighborhoods is a blog, with one author responsible for the content.

So we’ve created a hierarchy, where each of the community “mayors” is acting like the editor of a newspaper section or magazine, with each author having a specific “neighborhood” beat.

It’s all volunteer, we are not staff for the paper.

What’s Different

While we don’t claim that this is a revolutionary idea (after all, it’s a blog network, nothing earth-shaking), we do think it’s an innovation in how to approach something like this. There are a few things that make this different, in my view:

1. There is direct involvement with senior management at the paper. The paper’s senior managers take a personal interest in this, all the way to the top.
2. There is a direct tie to the regular online space of the paper. Content from the Communities will be featured on the main page of the Times. This means that there is a greater chance for the community content to be seen by the many millions of unique visitors to the Times’ front page per day.
3. The writers are handpicked. People have to be invited to take part as an author. We chose participants keeping in mind both quality of their work, potential for growth, and willingness to devote the energy it takes to promote the Communities through social networks.
4. There is support at every level. Individual authors are supported, mayors are supported by management. Authors support one another.
5. There is ongoing innovation. The initiative is committed to iterating and learning at a rapid pace so we can best improve it.
6. There is a constant stream of content. Every author is committing to a certain number of posts per week, so there will always be something new coming from the Communities.

I sincerely hope you will take a look, poke around, comment on a few articles, and give your feedback.

Like other blog networks, viral word of mouth will be key. You can help this initiative out immensely by sharing any articles you find interesting and by spreading the word. The Times management will be watching this closely and we want it to succeed!

Public Good, A New Online Space

Public Good

There’s another aspect of this new initiative that I am very excited about. You might have noticed above that there’s a Community called “Public Good.” I am in charge of that, and it’s an online space devoted to examining various takes on public life and community today.

I have brought together a terrific portfolio of authors, each who is writing their own blog that takes a different perspective.

These are the “neighborhoods” in Public Good:

• Dispatches From The Heartland, by John Creighton: Community life and leadership lessons
• Faith: The Flip Side, by Allison Addicott: How faith and politics intersect around the globe
• Making Change, by Donna Rae Scheffert: About people who are getting involved in helping others and making a difference
• Public Square Today, by Brad Rourke: What’s happening in public life — and why it matters (this is my column)
• Teaming Up For Success, by Carla Ledbetter: People celebrating good things that happen through successful teamwork
• Truth Be Told, by Carla Harper: Thinking a little deeper about our lives, our country and our values
• Went West, by Sutton Stokes: A transplanted easterner reflects on culture, politics, and the pursuit of happiness from his new vantage point in the Rocky Mountain West
• Young, Willing and Able, by Angela Hopp: Emerging leaders accomplishing great things

As you can see, this is a varied group!

I know that many of my readers are deeply concerned with public life and thought leaders when it comes to many different aspects of it. I hope that you will get in touch to talk about ways that I might include your perspectives, perhaps by showcasing some of your work or through an interview or podcast, or through a guest post.

See you around the Communities! Drop by Public Good!

"JUDGE BEST" by Flickr user meormeor

The meaning of “professional” has changed drastically over time. It used to solely designate someone who had completed specialized training and been accepted into an organized group of others who pursue the same calling. These days, it often just means “someone who gets paid for what they do,” or “someone who works in an office.”

But even the “old” definition actually misses the mark, because it’s focused on the individual and not on society. So even using a strict designation, we can have “profession creep” so that all manner of occupations can become professions simply by adding a tough training course and a sanctioning body. For instance, there’s actually a group of “communications professionals.” I don’t dispute their skill, but I question the label.

Because, if you look at the role professionals play in society, a different definition comes to light:

A profession is someone to whom society grants special powers in return for special service that requires special skill.

This is a public definition of the word.

For instance, we give the police the power to carry weapons, use force, and detain us in return for their vital service protecting the peace. We allow medical doctors to wield almost God-like power over our well-being, in return for their service in healing the sick. We give judges power to remove our freedoms in return for their service in deciding disputes according to the law. All these uses of “professional” are rooted in the needs and perspective of the public, as opposed to the individual.

Using this litmus test, many occupations lose their “professional” status because they either lack the special powers or the special service aspect.

I have been interested lately in this as it relates to Journalism. I have written before about the differences between Journalism and news gathering. Lately I have thought about it more, as I have been involved in developing a new “citizen journalist” project that I’ll be writing about more in upcoming article.

There are professional Journalists, by the public definition: we grant them special powers (secrecy and protection of sources) in return for their specialized skill in illuminating the truth. But in a world where Journalism is being replaced by newsgathering, the perceived need for Journalism is waning. People can get their news from nonprofessionals, and don’t focus as individuals on whether they want Journalism or not.

This seems to me to be a problem that we need to address on a public, societal level. Though individuals may not perceive a personal need for it, a free society demands that Journalism be present and be robust.

People these days pooh-pooh professional training for Journalists, because so many amateurs are getting into the act — or what looks like the act. (I am one of them.)

But there come times when we need more than news (what happened) and need Journalism (deeper truth, investigated and uncovered). If there is no profession, I fear that there won’t be this Journalism around when we need it.

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about some things that were troubling me. I was unhappy with the behavior of others. As we discussed the situation, it became clear that the behavior may well have been driven by others’ reactions to my own behavior.
“You can’t control what they do,” said [...]

In this week’s edition of my podcast, Public Life Today, I talk about the balance that needs to be struck between freedom and responsibility.
For people who run online communities this can be especially troubling, as the relative anonymity of the online world makes it easy to go too far and say things that infringe on [...]

I have been working on a project with a number of collaborators to create an issue guide for communities to deliberate on the issue of childhood drinking. Our framework is in an early-draft state, but it is gettting better with each iteration. (By “better,” I mean that it will stimulate dialogue.)
In preparation for a recent [...]

Recently, for various reasons, I’ve been going through my old folders and documents. At various times in my life I’ve toyed with the idea of establishing an institute or center devoted to improving civic life. I’m glad to be able to say that just about all my work over the last decade has been in [...]

Ever since I discovered them, I’ve been fascinated by something called “performatives” in speech. These are statements that inherently change the state of affairs. The classic one is “naming,” as in “your name is. . . .” Before the statement, I did not have a name (or it was different).  After that statement, I did. It [...]