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.

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?

View Larger Map

Note Idaho’s 33 percent evangelical vote, with 80 percent for McCain. Oklahoma, which gave McCain his highest margin of victory, had a 52 percent born-again vote.

You may be interested in a new blog that is part of my day job. I call is citydesk (lower case please) and it is a mix of Boise, Boise Valley and state news that comes across our radar down at the Boise Weekly offices. You can take a peak todaycheck it out here, but set your bookmarks for citydesk.boiseweekly.com…

I am going to keep PaleoMedia.org going because I still think it’s a good idea. But I encourage you to check back maybe once a week rather than every day. Maybe consider it like your Sunday paper, without the paper… We’ll have lots more stuff on here during the legislative session of course and maybe some new features.

So stay in touch.