Diggings

A blog by Toby Dayton

Category

Archive for the 'General' Category

The First Few Steps To Wean Myself From The Local Daily

In anticipation of the day that the Minneapolis Star Tribune stops publishing (which could happen any week now), I’ve decided to take steps to prepare for life without a local daily. I am also interested in determining how hard it would actually be to wean myself off of an increasingly irrational addiction to a local [...]

LinkUp Data Contradicts October Jobs Report

Even worse than expected, today’s jobs report from the Department of Labor was dismal, with the U.S. economy shedding 240,000 jobs in October. This was the 10th straight monthly decline, and the nation’s unemployment rate now stands at 6.5%, a 14 year high. So far this year, 1.2 million jobs have been lost, with more [...]

There Are Few Secrets To Business Success

I recently came across an amusing and quite insightful story in a book I’m reading at the moment. When B. Dalton was buying other booksellers around the country back in the 60’s and 70’s, a B. Dalton executive traveled to L.A. to talk with Louis Epstein, the founder of Pickwick Book Shops. Towards the end [...]

Win A Free Copy Of Sweet Land DVD!

The icon to the left will appear on anyone’s iPhone homepage if they bookmark this blog through safari on the iPhone. (Pretty cool, huh?). I will send a Sweet Land DVD (phenomenal movie - see here and here) to anyone who emails me a picture of the Diggings icon on their iPhone.
It’s a shovel in [...]

A Great Story About FDR, Mass Media, And Daily Newspapers

Driving to lunch yesterday listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation, I heard a great story from the author of a recently published biography on Franklin Roosevelt relating to the power of communicating effectively through mass media.
One week after being inaugurated in 1933, FDR spoke directly to the American people through the first of his [...]

State Operated, Publicly Financed Job Boards Failing To Gain Traction

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I thought I’d post a Compete.com graph of the visitors to a few state-operated, publicly financed job boards in a sample of states where JobDig operates (JobDig currently serves markets in 14 states, and just announced its 15th state - Indiana - that will launch August 4th). The chart [...]

Traditional Media Beats Digital Media On Key Metric

As detailed in a new study by Yankelovich in association with Sequent Partners, traditional media delivers a significantly more positive impression on consumers than digital media. The study, entitled “When Advertising Works” was released yesterday and tested people’s reactions to various advertisements across 16 media channels. The traditional media, which included TV, billboards, magazines, newspapers, [...]

Absurdly Low Cap on H1B Visas Is Wildly Misguided

In an excellent article this week (Lexington|Help Not Wanted), The Economist argues that the absurdly low cap on H1B visas is proving to be devastating to the U.S. economy. Allowing only 85,000 qualified immigrants to enter the country per year to start companies, practice medicine, advance science, etc. makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. As the [...]

Earnings Season Brings More Awful News For Dailies…

Once again, there are too many stories piling up on my ‘blog ideas’ list, so I have to resort to a list of one-liners and links to the full stories. I know it’s a little lame and doesn’t make for a great read, but it’s late in the day on a Monday, so…
1) Lee Enterprises [...]

What Would Dad Say (WWDS) Raising Ire Of The Church

It’s been a humbling experience trying to keep up with G.L. - fellow JobDig blogger and critically acclaimed author of What Would Dad Say (WWDS). His daily traffic numbers crush mine, as do his Technorati rank and authority, his Career 100 rank, and his RSS subscribers. An already sizable lead will be infinitely expanded when [...]