Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

For his business blog, visit http://www.digitaldeliverance.com

Kevin Crosbie (1960-2012)

admin
Kevin Crosbie

From The Chronicle, Willimantic, Connecticut, April 18, 2012:

WILLIMANTIC-Chronicle Publisher Kevin Crosbie suffered a heart attack and died in his home Tuesdoy. He was 52.

tn the aftermath of h1s untimely death, friends and colleagues remembered him for the. person he was behind the title—a famity man, a constant in the community, an ally, an athlete and a very good fnend.

News of Crosb1e’s passing moved quickly through the community. Windham town offices Tuesday honored Crosbie with a moment of silence before the town council meeting, expressing shock and disbelief that such a prominent member of the community was gone.

Crosbie was remembered 1n many ways, not the least of wh1ch was for h1s forthrightness and honesty. “If he liked something, he’d tell you. If he didn’t like something, he’d tell you that too,”said Windham Mayor Ernest Eldridge. “Kevin and l didn’t travel on the same orbit but l considered hom my good friend.”

Condolences poured into the Chronicle Tuesday from newspaper heads around the state who knew Crosb1e professionally and personally “Kevin was a dedicated journalist and worked diligently to preserve community newspaperingin central Connecticut. He was committed to do1ng what was right in every situation and I took away new ideas from each conversation I had with him. The news media will be much weaker in this state with the loss of Kevin,” said Michael Schroeder, pres1dent of the Bristol Press.

Crosbie was a hands·on publisher and ever present in the newsroom, operating at times out of nothing more grandiosethan a cubicle in the corner. He was the go-to person for just about everything and would just as soon climb a ladder to change a light bulb as put on a jacket and sit down with the governor-as he d1d recently when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy paid a visit to the Chronicle.

“Kevin was a soup to nuts guy,” said former Chronicle features editor Terese Karmel. “At m1dnight he’d be at the paper, in jeans and a sweatshirt, ironing out some printing problems with the Daily Campus production editors and then that night, he’d be in a gray suitand be hosting a Chamber of Commerce dinner.”

Chronicle photographer AI Molpa said Crosbie treated everyone -no matter his or her lot -the same “There was no hierarchy with him,” said Malpa, who described Crosb1e as a forward thinker, always drumming up innovative ways to make the paper better. His business savvy ways and his nose for news combined to make him one of a kind.

“Kevin was a smart businessman with the soul of a journalist,” said Gary Farrugia, publisher of The Day. “He was a fine human being.”

Outside of the newsroom, Crosbie held several roles in the greater newspaper community, serv1ng as past president for the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Assoc1ation and chairman of the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association’s legislative committee. “As president of the association, he was a committed leader. He was a fierce advocate for our industry who successfully fought legislation that stood to negatively affect our business in a significant way,” said Richard Graziano, publisher of the Hartford Courant.

Mike Killian Sr., vice president for the Record-Journal in Menden, descnbed Crosbie as a “fellow who loved the industry. He had a passionate commitment to journalism, as did Lucy, his mother.”

A graduate of Windham High School, Crosbie went on to earn a bachelor’s degree on English from Skidmore College in Saratoga, N.Y. He joined the Chronicle on 1984 and became publisher on 1992, making him the fifth generation of his family to act as publisher.

“Kevin was a class act. The closest I’ve come to George Bailey of  ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ said George Geers, who was the Chronide editor when Crosb1e made the transition to publisher.

Despite trying economic times that continue to take a toll on newspapers around the country, the Crosbies have fought to keep the Chronicle 1n the fam1ly and have done so despite great odds. ‘The fact that he was the fifth generation of a family that has lead a local media organization stnce 1877 speaks volumes,” said Graziano.

Despite the Chronicle‘s status as a smaller daily, Crosbie as its publisher was well respected as an Industry leader amongst his peers. “He was passionate about, and dedicated to, preserving the independence of the Chronicle,” said Shawn Palmer, publisher of the News T1mes 1n Danbury.

Outside of the news bus1ness, Crosbie nurtured his longtime friendships and enjoyed some 30 years of ice hockey with old high school buddies. The group began getting together to play pond hockey in the woods of Windham and whole they all loved the game, their greatest fondness was for one other.

“They were terrific hockey players, but they were better friends,” said M1ke Sypher, Chronicle sports editor, who went to high school with Crosbie and has worked at the Chronicle for 25 years.

Norm Miller, a longtime friend and fellow hockey player, said there were countless good times to be remembered w1th Crosbie but what stuck out most 1n his mind was the kind of friend he was . ” He always seemed to be there when I needed a friend. When I came home from Iraq, he was the guy who p1cked me up. When I was down, he was there,” said Miller.

And for all that he was hands-on, Crosbie was hands-off where 1t mattered most. ‘”‘He let us do our jobs and he trusted our abilities. He was the best boss t ever had and ever will have, “said Sypher.

Michael Lemanski, Chronicle city editor, has known Crosbie since 1997. As a sports enthusiast, Lemanski said he admired Crosbie for his interests both 1ns1de and beyond the newsroom -and especially his membership on the Soubere and Buzzard hockey teams.

“Kevin was the only publisher I”ve ever worked for who played ice hockey,” said Lemanski. “He cared about his staff, family and community and he represented what newspapers should be.”

Lemanski’s sentiment was shared by others who knew Crosbie. “He was a man that you could trust,” said Eldridge. “There are not many newspaper people you can say that about, but Kevin was one of them.”

 •

From the Hartford Courant, April 17, 2012:

WILLIMANTIC — Kevin Crosbie, the publisher of The Chronicle newspaper of Willimantic has died at the age of 52.

Vincent Crosbie said Tuesday that his brother died unexpectedly overnight and that the cause was determined to be a heart attack.

The Crosbie family started The Chronicle in 1877, and Kevin Crosbie succeeded his mother, Lucy Crosbie, as publisher in 1992. He represented the fifth generation of the family to lead the daily newspaper. Lucy Crosbie died on Jan. 1.

Rich Graziano, publisher, president and CEO of the Courant and vice president and general manager of Fox CT, said he got to know Crosbie through their mutual involvement with the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association.

“As president of the association, he was a committed leader. He was a fierce advocate for our industry who successfully fought legislation that stood to negatively affect our business in a significant way,” Graziano said. “Kevin was a very special type of business leader. The fact that he was the fifth generation of a family that has led a local media organization since 1877 speaks volumes. But even more impressive than any of his accomplishments in business or at the CDNA is the type of person Kevin was.

“He was always passionate, prepared, warm … a class act. He was an ideal ambassador for our industry. I will miss Kevin. The industry will miss Kevin.”

Crosbie began working for the Chronicle within a few years of graduating from Skidmore College.

In addition to serving as president of the CDNA, he was a member of the board of the New England Newspaper Association.

•

From The Daily Campus, University of Connecticut, April 17, 2012:

Kevin Crosbie, the longtime publisher of The Chronicle newspaper in Willimantic, has died at age 52.

Kevin’s brother, Vincent, has told various news sources that Kevin died overnight Monday and that the cause was believed to be a heart attack. Kevin has been the publisher of The Chronicle since 1992.

This is not merely a loss of a well-respected local. For many years, The Chronicle has printed the copies of The Daily Campus that are delivered around UConn every weekday, and for as many years Kevin has served as the primary point of contact for the executive staff at The DC. For those of at The Daily Campus who had the pleasure of working with Kevin, he served as a mentor and a valuable resource.

“Kevin was a great mentor and friend to The Daily Campus and was always willing to help,” said Russell Blair, the Managing Editor of The Daily Campus for the 2010 to 2011 Production year.

“I remember calling him on a few occasions well past midnight, and even though I had woken him, he didn’t hesitate to help me with a technical problem,” Blair said. “I am confident that I am just one of the many journalists who Kevin mentored throughout his time at The Chronicle.”

But Kevin went beyond answering phone calls. He opened his pressroom to give personalized tours to DC staffers, and offered the use of his newsroom when power outages threatened to halt production. He worked with his staff to set up free training sessions and workshops for Daily Campus advertising representatives and photographers.

There is no other way to put it: Kevin loved The Daily Campus. He was equally as likely to brag about the achievements of The DC as its own staff, and he took great pride in being associated with a nationally ranked student newspaper.

But Kevin’s passion for UConn student journalism extended beyond The Daily Campus.

“For as long as most people can remember, the Crosbie family and Kevin in particular have been friends of UConn, especially the Journalism Department and its students,” said Marcel Dufresne, associate professor of journalism. “Kevin’s influence and support were felt in so many ways, whether it was working with students at The Daily Campus to get the paper published regularly and on time, or giving student interns a chance to gain experience and see their first byline in print.”

Dufrense also spoke of Crosbie’s selfless help with his Publication Practice class’ special project this past spring.

“I asked him for a price quote to print a special edition of a student reporting project about services for adults with autism,” Dufresne said. ”Once he heard what the topic was, Kevin immediately offered to print it for free, even using high-quality paper to give the publication a polished, professional look. To increase the exposure, Kevin had the newspaper inserted into a weekday edition of The Chronicle and delivered it to each of his subscribers.”

“When I first met Kevin, all he wanted to do was talk about how great he thought The Daily Campus was and how happy he was to get to work with us,” said Mac Cerullo, the current Managing Editor of The Daily Campus. “Every time I called him this past year to ask a question or work out a production issue, he always complimented us on our work.”

“No one was more supportive of us than him,” Cerullo said, “We’re all going to really miss him.”

Kevin’s experience, dedication and endless patience will be missed by The Daily Campus, and the newspaper staff wishes to extend condolences to Kevin’s family, friends and coworkers, who are undoubtedly mourning the sudden loss of this incredible man right along with us.

#

A Eulogy for My Mother

admin

Delivered by Vincent Bartlett Crosbie
Funeral of Lucy May Bartlett Crosbie

Friday, January 6, 2012
St. Joseph’s Church
99 Jackson Street
Willimantic, Connecticut, USA

 

Forgive me if my voice quavers or breaks. Outside as my role as her son, I’ve given perhaps 100 speeches, to up to a thousand people. But this will be the most difficult I’ve ever given: The eulogy for Lucy before her closest friends.

All who knew Lucy knew that she was as integral to Eastern Connecticut as are the Willimantic, Shetucket, and Thames rivers.

And like those rivers, her life was enriched by various streams:

  • The headspring of these streams was the legacy she inherited at a young age: The daily newspaper her great-great-grandfather founded in 1877 and which the family has operated ever since. She never had to find a purpose in life. The Chronicle was the effervescent stream that gave her life purpose.
  • That purpose was to ensure the flows, ebbs, eddies, and course of news and information about the area’s communities. To satisfy the thirsts of people who wanted to know what was going on in the town where they lived.
  • She was the reporter’s reporter. If she couldn’t find a reporter to report the story, she would do it herself. (Indeed, it wasn’t unusual for police or firemen to see the Chronicle’s publisher among the first responders at a blaze or accident. On the day she died I finally disconnected the police/fire radio in her home.)
  • Her standards of journalism were high. Those who worked for her know that she brooked no inaccuracies, never meandered from objectivity.
  • She was a font of local knowledge. The high water marks of her work were probably the 100th and 125th-year commemorative editions of the Chronicle and 275th and 300th-year editions about the founding of the town of Windham, each of which offered a flood of historical information and stories about this community—most written by Lucy. (She even wrote a history book about Groton Long Point, the community where for decades she spent summers.)
  • Her career, which lasted for 66 years, ran a remarkable course. She began working part-time at the Chronicle at age 16, one month after the death of her father, at the time the newspaper’s publisher. She then completed in just three years a B.A. in Management from Boston University, thereafter working for the Chronicle for the rest of her life. In 1954, she became its publisher at age 25. Not only was she among the first women to publish an American daily newspaper, but certainly the youngest.
  • Yet another major stream in her life was her marriage and family. She eloped with a naval officer, who became her partner in her business and purpose, as well in life; raising two children in a household in which I can tell you there was nary a turbulent word ever spoken between Lucy and her Arthur ‘Bud’ Crosbie. His untimely death left her a widow for more than 35 years.
  • Her friends—so many of whom are here today—were the stream of her life that buoyed her those years. She was a loyal, loving, and faithful friend to one and all. Fun to be with, humor bubbled from her.
  • And like a river, she nourished the community in many other ways, in so many fields. She sat on too many local, regional, and state foundations, boards, and charities for me to list. She was an avid local philanthropist, most often anonymously. No worthy cause went unaided if she could help.

Every river must eventually end its course. In her hospital room on New Year’s Day moments after she had breathed her last breath; I watched as the sun rose over Eastern Connecticut and saw the colors of sunrise splash and play over her face. All I could think was that it was as if all the tributaries and streams of her life were saluting and celebrating all she had accomplished in life.

Today, we celebrate and tribute her, a life flowing with dedication, generosity, loyalty, love, humor, and community service. We shall miss her!

Thank you all for celebrating her fulfilling and remarkable life.

 

I Like Tunein Radio

admin

My local radio stations are OK. Yet I listened to shortwave radio when I was in secondary school. I strung a cheap bit of antenna wire out of the window of my third-story bedroom so I could listen to distant stations at night when their signals bounced off the Ionosphere and were able to reach my small town. That legacy is one of the reasons I love Internet radio. Years ago, I could receive only the FM within about 50 miles (80 km) of my town, only the AM stations within 25 miles (40 km) during the day or within 400 miles (640 km) at night, and only the shortwave signals strong enough to reach North America at night.

 

That’s why I love Internet radio. Every radio stations that broadcasts on the Internet is automatically within range. Over the past years (back in 1997 I authored the business models chapters of Internet World’s Guide to Webcasting), I’ve tried many Internet radio applications and aggregation sites. My favorite has become Tunein Radio. (They aren’t a consulting client of mine nor do I know anyone there, so this isn’t a paid endorsement.)

Tunein let’s me access 50,000 radio stations by genre, language, or location. It let’s me save my favorite channels as ‘presets’. And it synchronizes the Tunein Radio website and the Tunein Radio apps on my iPad and Android phone and on the Roku box connected to my television so that all those devices have my presets. Expansive, convenient, nice service.Tunein Radio

Cue Uma Thurman!

admin
Nuns practising kung fu at the Druk Gawa Khilwa Buddhist nunnery in Ramkot, Nepal. Photograph: Simon De Trey-White/Eyevine

Quick, get Quentin Tarantino’s scriptwriters on the line! Three hundred Buddhist nuns in Nepal have discovered Kung Fu as a means of self-defense and meditation, the Guardian reports. Gotta be an action movie plot in there somewhere! It comes on the same day that Saudi Arabia announces that its women will be given the right to vote.

Mass Replacement of Workers by Robots Will Cause Massive Chinese Unrest

admin

Here’s an technology story that portends civil unrest in China during the this and the next decade:

SHENZHEN, July 29 (Xinhua) — Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company, late Friday.

The robots will be used to do simple and routine work such as spraying, welding and assembling which are now mainly conducted by workers, said Gou at a workers’ dance party Friday night.

The company currently has 10,000 robots and the number will be increased to 300,000 next year and 1 million in three years, according to Gou.

Foxconn, the world’s largest maker of computer components which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, is in the spotlight after a string of suicides of workers at its massive Chinese plants, which some blamed on tough working conditions.

The company currently employs 1.2 million people, with about 1 million of them based on the Chinese mainland.

For more than 60 years, the Chinese Communist Party has been carefully (some say dictatorially) trying to grow the Chinese economy without creating civil unrest resulting from first industrialization and lately a conversion to a capitalistic economy. How to keep the country fed when farmers are tempted to quit the plows for higher paying factory work? How to keep the factory workers happy without slowing down production or causing economic inflation? Etc. The bloody Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 showed just how close to boiling over social unrest is in the People’s Republic of China.

If Foxconn, whose workforce is already anxious (some suicidally so), plans to replace a large number of workers with millions of robots, how soon before other Chinese factories similarly replace their own workers. What will such conversions means to the hundreds of millions of factory workers in China. Unemployment. Perhaps there employee retraining programs will be offered, but for hundreds of millions of workers? And to do what?

During the early 1800s in Britain, textile workers who were replaced by machines protested and rioted. They were called Luddites, after a figure from English myth. I wonder what will we call the Chinese software factory workers who will be replaced by robots and who will surely protest and riot?

Lack of Enforcement is the Real Problem With Nuclear Power

admin

Nuclear power

Most of the world’s most controversial subjects tend to polarize people’s opinions: people not only disagree about the subject, but do so by being either completely for or against the subject. Generating electricity from nuclear power is one of these subjects.

Too bad, because it’s people’s polarization itself that prevents a solution. Yes, nuclear power is environmentally clean and therefore nuclear power should be used. Yes, nuclear accidents will happen and therefore nuclear power shouldn’t be used. However, the reality of the subject isn’t at all that polar.

Among the people who know that is the board of editors of Scientific American magazine. They include people who not only understand both sides of the issues, but realize that the ultimate problem about nuclear power generation isn’t nuclear power but the cases of duplicity, corruption, and incompetence about it. Here is their editorial about it, which appeared in the June issue of their magazine. I applauded the editorial when I first read it earlier this summer:

 “…If we gave it up, what would replace it? Pollution from fossil-fueled power plants shortens the life span of as many as 30,000 Americans a year. Coal companies lop off mountaintops, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas threatens water supplies, and oil dependence undermines the nation’s energy security. Then there is the small matter of greenhouse gas emissions. Clean renewable technologies will take years to reach the scale needed to replace the power we get from splitting atoms….

“…The industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) claim that nuclear power is safe, but their lack of transparency does not inspire confidence. For example, an Associated Press investigation in March revealed 24 cases from December 2009 to September 2010 in which plant operators did not report equipment defects to the NRC….

“…The trouble is that regulations are not being enforced rigorously. The NRC has to mete out stiff penalties for violations and make every action transparent to us all….

“…If exercises showed that residents around a plant could not leave quickly enough, the NRC should consider shutting it down. A good test case is the Indian Point plant 38 miles north of New York City. Evacuating the 20 million people who live within 50 miles staggers belief….

“…If an operator proposes a site that is too close to an earthquake fault, or too close to oceanfront that is vulnerable to a tsunami or hurricane storm surge, or downriver from a huge dam that could burst, then the NRC should reject the bid. Similarly, if the utility could not protect spent fuel pools or casks from being breached during a severe accident, which happened in Japan, the NRC should not license it. Saying no to a suspect plant would do more than anything else to restore public confidence….

“…The 22 new reactors proposed in the U.S. use so-called Gen III+ designs that are safer than today’s reactors, which date to the 1970s or earlier…. Manufacturers should pursue even safer, meltdown-proof designs that they have experimented with but shelved, such as liquid fluoride thorium reactors and pebble bed reactors. China is developing both….

“…Reactors across the country have accumulated 72,000 tons of spent fuel. Some utilities have packed four times as many spent fuel rods into temporary holding pools than the structures were designed to contain. The government poured $9 billion and decades of effort into the planned permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, with little to show for it. Then President Barack Obama scuttled the project. The waste continues to pile up. At some point, officials will have to face down the citizen refrain of “not in my backyard.”

Nuclear power has a good safety record, but when it fails it can fail catastrophically. Now is the time to make tough, transparent decisions that could regain public trust. Otherwise, the public might make the ultimate call: “no more nukes.”