Once upon a time, this website was purely political; an Idaho news aggregator with a leftist-sarcastic tilt. People would ask me what PaleoMedia meant, and I’d say it was a description of my politics and that someday I’d write about it.

Future Farmers of Backyards

Well, I have a secret. The main reason I live in Idaho, the one thing I dream of every night, my goal for the rest of my career and into my pending retirement, is to strive for a simpler, more paleolithic existence. More caveman.

I say that sitting in my wooden house blanketed in fiberglass insulation typing on my PowerBook G4 and fully aware that I have pathetic facial hair and, while not perfect, a decent posture.

But I yearn to cut myself off from cheap plastics, processed foods, things that society tells us we need (insurance, investments, gasoline). And I yearn for DK Donuts and Hagen Daz and an iphone.

This is paleomedia: absolute relativity, the obliteration of contradiction. Online Luddite. Stem and seed eater who has a burger and fries for dessert. Total paleomedia is what you will find here.

At this point in my life I am failed big game hunter and lame fisherman. I am growing some lettuces and onions in my backyard, but the plot is rife with weeds and I let my chickens chew up the Asian greens. My pile of sheep and elk hides is starting to decay. It is time to get serious in my cave.

Join me in this journey, dear readers. I will need help. So I will turn to books and local experts to make me into the caveman I yearn be. Soon it will be my birthday. In the next year I plan to accomplish the following, and you, especially you boor bastards who don’t live in Idaho, can accomplish the following too and even make snide comments along the way, here, at PaleoMedia.org.

Here is my cave list for the next four seasons:

• Put up enough ginger pickled radishes, eggplant and bean “chopped liver” and stewed tomatoes to last through next winter.
• Tan the hides I’ve collected in the last year and make something useful from them (baby blankets and sheepskin vest to wear to the Legislature?)
• Shoot an elk or a deer with my heretofore ornamental bow.
• Keep my young flock of chickens alive long enough to make the ultimate caveman omlette (stay tuned for this one).
• Teach the 4-year-old to catch, clean and fry a fish, consistently, and maybe from the Boise River.
• Write regularly about these activities for the less fortunate.

Anything I missed? Probably. But it’s time to crack another beer and brainstorm ways to make my own beer by this time next year.

In the last week, thoughts of the future of journalism have gone to code red. It was one of those watershed weeks; more economic trouble at my newspaper and Boise’s daily paper and, well, at all of the papers. A meeting with a guy who suggested there are rich people out there who are finally realizing something must be done to preserve a modicum of watchdogging. Then waking up to an NPR series on the future of journalism, pointing to a few new models from not-for-profit to government supported to technology driven revenue models of the future.

Here’s a few links to get you started thinking about this too. In one of these stories, the point is made that there is no time to wait. So I started in on my personal j-schooling white papering yesterday.

National Public Radio, looked at a a few models of new, new, new journalism [listen], including the innovative world news site GlobalPost.

GlobalPost relies on paid ads, premium content and online opportunities for paid subscribers and syndication to fund a large network of foreign correspondents. Writers are paid a retainer and earn a stake in the company. (Did you know that 20 million Chinese migrant workers have lost their jobs?)

Walter Isaacson at TIME, who claims to have invented banner ads and such, recommends a system of micropayments to pay for online journalism. Like dropping a coin into a slot:

One of history’s ironies is that hypertext — an embedded Web link that refers you to another page or site — had been invented by Ted Nelson in the early 1960s with the goal of enabling micropayments for content. He wanted to make sure that the people who created good stuff got rewarded for it. In his vision, all links on a page would facilitate the accrual of small, automatic payments for whatever content was accessed. Instead, the Web got caught up in the ethos that information wants to be free.

I want information to be free too. And I want to be paid to tell stories. And I don’t want pity or charity. And, frankly, I don’t want to need to worry about the business side of journalism. But it’s time to worry. Or at least to get serious.

If you are reading this, you probably expect to get your news for free online, as I do. So who should pay for its production people?

Olmstead picks up the immigration football. Idaho Business Coalition for Immigration Reform gets racist flood after launch of education campaign. Spokesman Brent Olmstead: Employers want to hire a legal workforce. Prentice interviews Olmstead on Boise State Radio . Hopkins in Ag Weekly. Popkey. Coalition wants a new guest worker program (at least?).

Lawyers say talks to keep Tamarack running past March “challenging.” Just 27,000 skier visits this year; $304,000 deficit. Swiss bank attorney: “The operative part of the ski hill has proven to be more of a loss than the lender previously anticipated.” AP in IBR.

City of Boise facing ‘09, ‘10 shortfalls. $3.4 million in 2009 and looking like $9 million next year. Layoffs possible. Spokesman Adam Park: “In the months ahead, you probably will hear of cuts that we’re going to have to make. Dryden in the Idaho Statesman
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Obama tips hat to nonbelievers in inaugural Paleo did not even notice, but Lloyd Lowe did in theThe Arbiter. “Obama said: “… We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.” Sorry Sikhs, Pagans, and Buddhists. Better luck next time.”

Does cutting tax collectors cost the state more? Carlson asks the question in the IBR.

Community mental health crisis center victim of budget cuts. citydesk on http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=320091">pre-closure. 17 laid off, IDHW has a plan: “Franklin House closing is difficult for all of us, but I don’t want to paint a picture of it as a catastrophe.” Docs not so sure: “Essentially, they are going to shift a bunch of costs to the hospitals’ charity and bad-debt services.” LeMay in the Statesman
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Senate panel approves administrative cuts to state worker leave. Sagness tried to stop it: “Don’t strike it. Redefine it.” Hopkins at Magicvalley.com.

Sen. Mike Crapo, who told us last week he is skeptical of federal stimulus spending, tells the Associated Press he likes fed money for nuke cleanup. Crapo in Seattle P-I: “This is exactly the kind of thing a stimulus package should be composed of.” Crapo to Hoffman in yet unpublished interview: “My belief is that the notion that we can spend ourselves into prosperity is one that is not valid.” $6 billion is on the table for cleanup spending as part of stimulus package; Crapo and Sen. Jim Risch are signed on. H to the T.