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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — By last September, the Army had had just about enough of infantryman Jacob Andrews, so it gave him a general discharge and a one-way bus ticket home to Kansas City.
He had plenty to think about on the 30-hour trip from Fort Drum, N.Y.
There were the alcohol-fueled mistakes that had led to the end of his military career, and the memories of good friends who had been killed the year before in Afghanistan. There was, in particular, his horrific discovery of the body of one friend who had been crushed to death in a Humvee accident.
There was the night back at Fort Drum when he'd tried to commit suicide.
Friends and family members say the Army was more than happy to take Andrews when it needed new soldiers for an unpopular war, but that it punished and abandoned him when he returned from Afghanistan, despite clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and possible traumatic brain injury.
Those actions, they charge, put Andrews on the path to his tragic demise. In April, as the government hounded him for repayment of his re-enlistment bonus, and after he was incorrectly denied the educational benefits he'd counted on to help make a new start, Andrews, 22, hanged himself in a wooded area near his parents' home in Kansas City.
"He tried. The kid asked for help," said Andrews' mother, Lauri Turner. "But to them, he was just a number."
Joining up
Numbers were exactly what the Army needed when Andrews joined in May 2007 as it struggled to meet recruiting goals. He'd dropped out of high school after his sophomore year, but he enlisted as one of a vanguard of new recruits who came in with GEDs instead of high school diplomas. He went to court to get charges of assault and vandalism dismissed before he could head to Fort Benning, Ga., for basic training, at a time when the Army accepted thousands of recruits who'd had minor criminal trouble.
Later, when the Army chaptered him out, Andrews joined a rising number of troubled soldiers quickly separated with general discharges or worse. Andrews was one of 8,175 soldiers separated from the military for misconduct in fiscal year 2010, up 42 percent from 2006.
Finally, when he killed himself last month, he became part of the grimmest military statistic of modern times: one of the 18 U.S. veterans, on average, who commits suicide each day.
The Army declined to comment for this story, citing "privacy concerns," except for a prepared statement offered a month after Stars and Stripes' first request that expressed concern for Andrews' family and emphasized that decisions on how to handle a troubled soldier like Andrews would be made at the brigade level.
Stars and Stripes also made multiple attempts to reach Andrews' former brigade, battalion and company commanders via email and through the military organizations to which they are currently assigned. All of those efforts went without reply.
This article was reported based on Andrews' records from the military and the Department of Veterans Affairs and on interviews with his friends, family and fellow soldiers, including his former platoon leader.
Heading to war
The Army seemed like a godsend when Andrews signed up. His family had never had much money, college was out of the question, and the chances of a high school dropout making a decent living were remote. His mother and stepfather encouraged him to enlist, although his mother begged him to pick a safer specialty than infantry.
Not a chance, Andrews told her; he wasn't going to be a "POG," military slang he'd already learned for "person other than grunt." He earned his "11B" infantry classification and was assigned to Company D, 2nd Batallion, 87th Infantry Regiment, part of the 10th Mountain Division.
At Fort Drum, Andrews fit in quickly among most of his fellow soldiers. They remember him as "wild," "fun" and "a firecracker," and they described a true "infantry" lifestyle — training and partying with equal intensity.
"Andrews was always a straight ladies' man," recalled Nick Ooten, a close friend who had reached the unit a few months earlier and who shared a similar background — a Midwesterner with a GED. "You know the girls that you dream about, that you wish [you] could talk to them? Andrews had no fear, drunk or sober. He would go and talk to any girl and he would get their attention. He could pull models. He was so smooth."
Andrews' unit expected to go to Iraq, but in late 2008 his battalion received orders instead for Wardak province in Afghanistan, about 20 miles from Kabul. Its mission would be to secure an area around a main highway and deny the Taliban a long-held safe haven.
For the first several months, Andrews did fine. On one of their first days in Wardak province, Andrews was the gunner on an M1117 Armored Security Vehicle, manning a .50-caliber machine gun and a Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher. They rushed to the aid of some soldiers on foot who were under fire.
"I was driving. He was gunning," recalled Zachary Precopio, a friend of Andrews' who is no longer in the Army. "My [truck commander] made me drive up this crazy hill and [Andrews] started rocking with the .50, and he switched over to the Mk 19, kept switching back and forth. He knew his [stuff] with that thing."
Andrews was promoted to specialist in May 2009. He'd re-enlisted just before the deployment — pocketing and quickly spending a $12,000 re-enlistment bonus — and he talked with friends about making a career out of the Army.
When a new soldier, Pvt. Peter Kyle Cross, 19, joined the unit, Andrews and Precopio took him under their wing. They rode in the same armored security vehicle for several weeks.
"You know how it is; the guys in your truck, you talk to them 24 hours a day. … That's when we started getting close," Precopio said. "So we were pretty well connected with Cross. It was like he was our little brother."
Andrews went home on mid-tour leave in May 2009. His mother and stepfather gave him an early surprise party for his 21st birthday in a local park. His played with his 2-year-old niece, Kayli, who had learned to say that her Uncle Jake was "fighting monsters in Afghanistan." He was happy and proud, his mother recalled.
When he returned to Afghanistan, things quickly fell apart.
He learned that two good friends, Sgt. Carlie M. Lee III and Staff Sergeant Esau I. De la Pena-Hernandez, had been killed while he was gone. Lee, especially, had been a mentor to Andrews.
Not long after he returned, a vehicle in which Andrews was riding was hit by a powerful improvised explosive device that knocked him unconscious.
Then came the event that truly devastated him.
On June 26, Andrews and another soldier were manning an observation post at the top of a hill. Cross was driving to bring them some food, but his Humvee slipped off the road and tumbled down the side of the hill.
Andrews ran and reached Cross long before anyone else. The young private had been thrown out and crushed by the Humvee. Andrews fell to the ground and cried.
"I'll be straight up and honest with you, sir," said another of Andrews' friends in the unit, Justin Chavez. "Jake was a different person [after Cross' death]. That totally [messed] up his head right there."
Precopio agreed.
"That's when I really think a lot of depression and sadness [started]. That ate at him more than anything bad in his past, just because of the way he saw him," he recalled.
"The kid was crushed by a Humvee. … Nobody should have to see that."
Andrews was one of the soldiers chosen to escort Cross' body to Bagram Air Base.
"All of us were upset, but he was the only person that was really in tears," recalled DeWitt Moss, who also escorted Cross' body. "I just seen it in his eyes. He went into detail, saying how he could tell [Cross's] neck was broke and he wasn't breathing. I'll just never forget the look on his face."
Soon afterward, a new platoon leader took over. The soldiers gave themselves a platoon nickname, Bohicas, and when the new lieutenant, Kyle Hooten, made Andrews his driver, Andrews took on the radio call sign "Bohica 6 Delta."
Andrews was a good soldier, Hooten recalled, "in the upper quarter" of the platoon, but he could be "restless" and seemed to be carrying a heavy burden at times. Hooten thought Andrews was likely worried about his mother, who had gotten sick while the unit had been in Afghanistan. He hadn't been in the platoon at the time of Cross' death, but later he wondered whether that might have been what was affecting Andrews.
"There's a specific incident I'm thinking of when he was almost in tears in the truck," Hooten recalled. "He was a good kid. He was a normal kid. But you knew that he was dealing with some demons."
Real trouble begins
By December, the rest of the unit packed up and headed to Bagram Air Base, where they were to wait a few days for a flight home.
It was there that Andrews' real trouble began, on Christmas 2009.
He, Precopio and another soldier named Andrew Nordlund were bored and wandering around the base when they met a group of soldiers from other NATO countries. Americans are prohibited from drinking alcohol in Afghanistan, but the other soldiers, from Australia, France and the United Kingdom, had a copious supply of tequila, beer and wine.
"It was pretty much the United Nations of a drinking Christmas party, so we had to throw the U.S. in the ring," Precopio recalled. "We'd had a rough deployment, so we did it."
The alcohol hit the three soldiers hard. Before the night was out, Nordlund was passed out on the sidewalk. Precopio was covered in blood, courtesy of a punch to the nose from Andrews. Someone called the military police.
"Three infantrymen drinking and getting into a fight? It's really not that uncommon," Precopio said.
By the next morning, he had "brushed it off" and completely forgiven Andrews. He teased him for landing a lucky punch.
"It's funny stuff looking back on it," said Precopio, recalling how later that night he vomited in an MRI machine at the base hospital.
"It sucks that I got knocked down" in rank as a result of the episode, he said. "But now I've got a pretty funny story to tell about how I got drunk in Afghanistan."
The Army wasn't laughing, however, and it wasn't in a forgiving mood. When they got back to Fort Drum in January 2010, all three soldiers were busted to private. Precopio and Nordlund tried to get Andrews to take his punishment and keep his mouth shut, but his temper was short. He was withdrawn, and he was quick to argue with sergeants and officers.
The result was that he was denied post-deployment leave. He was assigned extra duty at Fort Drum while everyone else went home.
Many of the soldiers found shifting back to the civilian world difficult, but it was obvious to those closest to Andrews that he was struggling more than his peers.
"He wasn't the same person that I knew," Moss said.
"You could tell he was in some kind of emotional distress," said Andrews' girlfriend, Ashley Mercante, a nursing student who met him at a bar about 10 miles from Fort Drum just weeks after Andrews returned from Afghanistan. "He had a lot of nightmares. Graphic, horrible nightmares. He just always wondered why his buddies hadn't lived and he had."
His fellow enlisted soldiers also recalled that Andrews was the only soldier in his platoon not to be awarded the combat infantryman badge — a key decoration for an infantry soldier — despite clearly meeting the criteria for the award.
"Once he got in trouble, they said, 'Screw him,' " said Precopio, who eventually went AWOL and was chaptered out of the Army, but still got his combat badge.
Andrews' troubles compounded. According to what his family said he told them, the sergeant assigned to oversee his extra duty released him most days, but when they got caught, the sergeant denied having given permission. More military legal action was inevitable.
Andrews was drinking heavily by then. In March 2010, he admitted himself to the mental health unit of a civilian hospital, ostensibly because he realized he had a drinking problem. It's unclear from records whether Andrews told anyone in his unit, but he later told a Department of Veterans Affairs doctor that another impetus for admitting himself was that he'd tried to commit suicide.
'Breaks my heart'
Look up PTSD on the VA's website and you'll find the official psychological criteria for the disorder.
Did the soldier experience intense fear, helplessness or horror after witnessing a traumatic event involving serious injury or death?
Does he or she have recurring and intrusive dreams, memories or flashbacks?
Does he or she avoid talking or thinking about the event, or experience a "numbing of general responsiveness"?
Is the soldier having trouble sleeping, or is he or she prone to outbursts of anger, startling, hypervigilance or inability to concentrate?
Have the reactions been going on for more than a month?
In May 2010, as his commanders pursued formal disciplinary action against him, Andrews was sent to an Army psychiatrist who wrote after a "succinct" evaluation that he "[did] not have a psychiatric disorder which warrants disposition through medical channels."
His military records and the recollections of his fellow soldiers, however, suggest strong evidence for each of the PTSD criteria.
While stressing that he could not "diagnose Jacob from a distance," especially after his death, psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, one of the foremost authorities on PTSD, reviewed a summary of Andrews' records at Stars and Stripes' request.
"Jacob's story breaks my heart," said Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University who is also the former associate director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
"The most disabling wounds of war are, in my personal opinion, untreated PTSD, TBI and survivor guilt. These conditions cause haunting recollection of terrible events, isolation from sources of love and respect and often a reduced capacity to control aggressive impulses. Self-medication with alcohol is common."
Andrews, Ochberg added, "was injured in ways that should [have been] obvious to his command. Jacob deserved better."
In spring 2007, just as Andrews was starting basic training, the Department of Defense Task Force on Mental Health recommended that soldiers who engage in patterns of misconduct who have possible PTSD or TBI should be referred to medical evaluation boards instead of being involuntarily or administratively discharged.
The task force, however, had no power to enforce its recommendations.
Falling down
There is a point in Andrews' story in which his well-documented parade of troubles — some his fault, others not — grows almost unbelievable.
His mother and stepfather were strapped for cash, but they paid $850 to ship his truck from Missouri, since he wasn't allowed to leave Fort Drum to get it. Within 24 hours, he was arrested for drunken driving. He faced a summary court-martial over the dispute about his extra duty and was sentenced to 30 days at the Lewis County Jail in Lowville, N.Y., which had an arrangement to confine Fort Drum soldiers. He also had to forfeit half of his $1,400 monthly pay.
By the time he rejoined his unit, his slide was almost inexorable. He was drinking very heavily almost every day, downing a bottle of vodka or 30 cans of beer in a sitting.
According to Andrews' family, a clinical social worker in the behavioral health department at the Fort Drum hospital wanted to send him to a military in-patient treatment center for substance abuse in Texas.
"Most of us know that if somebody's drinking heavily, it's to self-medicate," said Turner, Andrews' mother. "So he asked for help, asked to go to the wounded warrior program."
A spokeswoman for Fort Drum declined to discuss Andrews specifically but said that any determination on whether to send a soldier to such a program would have been made "with input from the entire brigade chain of command" and from "subject-matter experts."
There is no indication in the records Stars and Stripes obtained that such a move was ever considered.
Andrews made matters worse in mid-August by driving his truck while intoxicated for the second time in five months, this time with a suspended license.
It's difficult to know the exact details, but Andrews told a VA doctor later that one of his commanders called him a "piece of shit" and told him he wanted him out of the Army immediately.
On Aug. 26, Andrews' company commander, Capt. Jonathan Cintron, recommended that he be separated with a general discharge under honorable conditions.
Though a "general under honorable" discharge sounds similar to an "honorable" discharge, the two characterizations of service are very different. Andrews' form DD-214 showing his release from active duty noted that the reason for his separation was "misconduct (serious offense)."
By mid-September, his brigade commander, Col. Patrick Frank, signed the papers, and Andrews was on the bus to Missouri with a $12,000 bill for repayment of the re-enlistment bonus he'd received nearly two years earlier. None of his time in the Army, including the year in Afghanistan, counted toward it.
"When they told Jake 'We just want you out now,' " Mercante said, "it's like, 'We're just sweeping this dirt out. Let's get rid of him.' They didn't really care. They didn't care about his well-being, because they were expendable."
A hero's welcome
Even though the Army had no use for him anymore, Andrews' family still planned a hero's welcome. Aboard the bus to Kansas City, he wore civilian clothes, but his short hair and steel physique gave him away as military. He wore two black memory bracelets inscribed with the names of friends killed in Afghanistan: Lee and De la Pena-Hernandez on one bracelet; Cross on the other. When his bus pulled into the station around 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 12, 2010, other passengers clapped and gave the thumbs-up sign.
His mother and stepfather, along with most of his family, were there to meet him.
"I was doing the mom thing, snapping pictures," his mother recalled. "When I got my arms around him I didn't want to let go. I was embarrassing him."
She staged a little ceremony where her son cut the yellow ribbon she had tied around a tree in the front yard of his childhood home.
In the days that followed, Turner was all business. She insisted that Andrews go to the VA hospital in Kansas City, where for the first time, according to his files, he was diagnosed with PTSD, depression and anxiety and sent for tests to determine whether he'd suffered traumatic brain injury in Afghanistan, possibly from being knocked unconscious by an IED.
Andrews was forthright about his drinking and his suicide attempt. He told a VA doctor he was glad to be home and that he hoped to keep busy, stay out of trouble and go to college. A Fort Drum counselor had told him that with his re-enlistment and his general discharge, he'd be entitled to 70 percent of the post-9/11 GI Bill.
"Sleep — no good," the doctor wrote in his file. "Trouble falling asleep. Nightmares every night. Tries to stay busy … crying spells … The veteran reported grieving every day over [his] fallen friends in combat."
Next to a line on the form reading, "sense of foreshortened future (e.g. does not expect to have a career, marriage, children or a normal life span)," the doctor marked an X, and added a quote from Andrews: "This stuff has ruined my life."
Andrews started on his paperwork — an application for the GI Bill, one for community college, another to try to get his discharge upgraded. He had another problem hanging over his head, though. His August arrest for drunken driving in New York was certain to mean going back to serve time in the county jail. Meanwhile, the bank repossessed his truck and sent him a bill for $7,000.
He filed for unemployment, but the Army reported that it had paid his accrued leave while neglecting to mention that it had applied the entire amount toward repaying his re-enlistment bonus, so his net benefit was zero. He got into college, but the VA rejected his GI Bill application.
In response to an inquiry from Stars and Stripes, the VA acknowledged weeks after Andrews' death that the denial was almost certainly a bureaucratic mistake.
A servicemember needs an honorable discharge to take advantage of the post-9/11 GI Bill, a VA spokesman explained, but re-enlisting, as Andrews did in November 2008, is treated as the equivalent of an honorable discharge. The problem was that the Department of Defense reported Andrews' general discharge to the VA, but did not report his re-enlistment.
'A cry for help'
In the days that followed that rejection, Andrews started spending a lot of time alone in the woods. He went back to the VA, with his mother driving him to medical appointments and waiting hours for him to finish. He became so agitated that he couldn't sit still. He stormed out at the end of one consultation with a VA psychologist.
He cut off all contact with Mercante, his girlfriend from Fort Drum. One of the few friends he still saw, Michael Lingenfelser, had known him since they were kids. He said Andrews was radically different from the smooth guy everyone liked who could talk to just about anyone.
"You could just see it in his face, that awkward feeling," Lingenfelser recalled. "He was socially awkward, like he didn't know what to say or do."
They shot pool in a bar one night last December, and suddenly Andrews disappeared. Lingenfelser found him outside, "just bawling, crying his eyes out."
Andrews stayed with his family for Christmas. His mother gave him an iPod, and he enjoyed his first holiday with them in three years. In January, his sister gave birth to a baby boy she named "Gunnar," in Andrews' honor, since he had been a gunner on an armored vehicle in the Army.
Then he flew back to New York to do his time for the second drunken driving conviction.
"All I really wanna do is get my discharge up and get a job," he wrote his mom from the Jefferson County Jail on Feb. 1. "It's not a whole lot to look forward to but better than where I am now."
He'd bought his round-trip flight without knowing when he'd be going home, and with no money to pay to change it, he had to find somewhere to go in New York for a few days when he was released. Around 7 a.m. on the day he got out, he called Mercante.
"I was so ecstatic, and told him to come right over," she said.
He hadn't talked with her since December, and hadn't let her know he'd returned to serve his jail time.
They got back together, but Andrews was volatile. He couldn't stop drinking, and he'd say mean, crazy things when he did, she said. He'd threaten to hurt himself, or worse, but the next morning he was always fine — embarrassed at the most, or ashamed.
Mercante came to visit him in Kansas City in early March, and Andrews went completely berserk after drinking a bottle of vodka.
He was "yelling obscenities," according to a police report on the incident, and "threatening to 'hurt someone' if he gets loose."
"That was the worst that it's ever been," Mercante said. "It was a cry for help."
Andrews' mother begged the police to take her son involuntarily to the VA or to a private hospital. Instead, they arrested him and charged him with disorderly conduct. He made his $100 bail in an hour, took a cab home and had no memory of the event the next day.
"It doesn't really make sense, because if you'd known Jake, the Jake that everybody loved, he has a heart of gold," Mercante recalled. "He was awesome to be around. He was the best person ever. … But it was the most bizarre thing, to see someone go just completely polar opposite. "
A nursing student, Mercante started researching traumatic brain injury and PTSD.
"The only way I can make a little bit of sense out of that is that when he drank, it switched his subconscious, the dial, just full on."
Turn for the better
Though he claimed not to remember that March night, something clearly changed afterward. Friends and family say Andrews went cold turkey and stopped drinking. His resolve strengthened after Mercante shared some surprising news soon afterward: She was pregnant with his child.
He was stunned when she told him, Mercante recalled, but added: "His first reaction was to take care of me. He was worried about me. 'Are you OK? We're going to keep it, right?' So quickly, he went into thinking about everything else that was going to have to happen."
He was adamant that he needed to get a job and an apartment. Finally, he landed a good offer, making $38 an hour with a contractor that maintains municipal water and sewer systems. He would start in April.
Andrews bought a mountain bike and climbing ropes and he spent his time until then going to the gym and riding trails near his home. He joined Facebook and started posting videos of his rides online. He played with his niece, Kayli, and when she mentioned that she wanted a Hello Kitty bicycle for her birthday, he promised to get her one.
Perhaps most important, he slowly ended his self-imposed isolation. He reached out to his old friends from the Army — calling Chavez, who was selling cars in Arizona; Ooten, who was working for the postal service in Indiana; and several others.
"He told me he got a brand new job, making about $30-something dollars an hour," Chavez recalled. "He had a baby on the way. He was doing pretty good for himself, finally. I felt like he'd made a turn for the best."
A sudden end
All of that apparent progress makes Andrews' final chapter so much harder to understand.
The last night of his life is both well-documented and a complete mystery.
What's clear is that in the early morning hours of April 5, after drinking heavily, he walked into a wooded area near his family's home, strung his climbing rope over a tree branch and hanged himself. The Kansas City medical examiner's report gives the cause of death as "asphyxia due to hanging" with "post-traumatic stress disorder" and "depression" listed under "other significant conditions."
But as clear as the cause of death was, nothing else makes sense.
How does it square with the long text message exchange he had with Lingenfelser the night before talking about mountain bikes, or the list he wrote earlier that day of trails that he hoped to ride? There was the normal conversation he'd had with his mom just before she'd gone to bed around 10 p.m. There was the new job, and his pending fatherhood.
He and Mercante fought that night over the phone, after everyone else was asleep. Andrews started drinking — the first time anyone is aware of that he drank since the March 6 incident — and he grew angry and morose. He said the kinds of crazy things he was prone to say when he drank, including talking about suicide, she said. He would hang up, or she would, over and over. One or the other would call back.
He'd done the same thing many times before. Mercante was 1,000 miles away. It was the middle of the night. She was exhausted and half-asleep.
"I just know that I told him I loved him, and people love him, and you have to be a father now. Don't do this," Mercante recalled. "But like so many times before, he would get drunk … and turn into this other guy.
"So I didn't ..."
She paused.
"I should have …"
She paused again.
"Anybody should take that seriously. But I don't know why I didn't. The only thing that can halfway make sense is that that had kind of happened before and Jake was always OK."
A neighbor walking his dog found Andrews' body the next morning. The rope around his neck had stretched to the point where Andrews' tan boots touched the ground. The earbuds to the iPod his mother had given him were in his ears, and his right hand clutched his cell phone. He wore the black memorial bracelets for Lee, De la Pena-Hernandez and Cross. Empty beer cans were strewn around the area.
Later, when his family checked his Facebook page, they saw his last postings had been around 3 a.m. — one highlighting a fatalistic Eminem music video and another commemorating the ninth anniversary of the death of Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley.
Wounds not visible
Lauri Turner woke up and immediately sensed that something was wrong. Her son's bedroom door was open; she saw empty beer cans inside. His climbing rope was missing. She ran outside, toward the woods.
She saw a firefighter first, and then her son's body, still hanging from the tree.
She fell to the ground and screamed.
Mercante said the reality of Andrews' death hasn't sunk in. She replays their conversations that night in her head and tells herself that she has to keep things together because she is carrying his baby.
His friend Lingenfelser was shocked to hear the news.
"Of any of the people I'd ever known, even with all the problems, I would have never thought he would have done that," Lingenfelser said. "That's what made me so mad. We talked about everything, and just one time he decided not to call me and talk to me."
Friends turned his Facebook page into a memorial wall.
"To Bohica 6 Delta," his old platoon leader, Hooten, wrote on the page. "You will always be remembered as a man of honor who both lived and fought hard. I am forever indebted to you as my driver … leading the rest of us Bohicas to safety."
His mother is haunted by the memory of her son's body, and by the fact that the night before he died was one of the few nights she hadn't kissed him goodnight and told him she loved him. She feels guilty that she slept soundly when he was walking around the house with his rope; that she encouraged him when he wanted to join the Army; that she cremated his remains because she couldn't afford a casket; that she was unable to get him more help.
The funeral was at the national veterans cemetery in Leavenworth, Kan. His friends grieved in their own ways. Most of them wore T-shirts bearing his photograph. On the way to the ceremony, his mother realized that they had no minister, no one to say a few words at the gravesite. She would have to do it herself.
She thanked the Patriot Guard members who had made up the procession — hundreds of motorcyclists who stood at attention for hours. Then she talked about her son. He'd served his country in a war, and been wounded in the process.
"Jacob's wounds weren't visible," she said, "but they were very deep."
A legacy
Andrews is gone, but the bureaucracies still don't get it. His mother has made it her mission to tangle with them in her son's place. She has his documents well-organized in folders on the kitchen table.
Her first fight was to get the highest rank Andrews earned, specialist, on his headstone.
A polite woman at the VA offered condolences on his death but said she couldn't release his medical records without an official death certificate. A dour clerk at the Kansas City police department refused to provide a copy of the March 6 police report because Turner wasn't named in it.
More reminders came in the mail.
The state of New York assessed $1,250 more for Andrews' drunken driving convictions. The bank that repossessed his truck sent notices that it wanted its money. A letter Jake wrote in jail in February arrived; the postmark showed the facility didn't bother to mail it until April. The state of Missouri wrote to say his license would be suspended until deep into a year he won't see.
The Army hasn't offered any condolences besides the brief statement for this story, but the Department of Defense sent more threatening letters, demanding repayment of the remaining $11,000 on Andrews' re-enlistment bonus.
Turner has been meeting with veterans' advocates who want to help her get her son's discharge upgraded. She wants the Army to award her son the combat infantryman badge his buddies say he earned. She plans to file a complaint against the Kansas City police department for not taking her son to a hospital when he was arrested on March 6.
"I'm gonna do everything in my power to take the [expletive] who betrayed you down," she wrote on his Facebook page May 5. "It's too late to help you, but maybe my actions will help another family from going through what we have gone through."
Turner was in court May 18 when her son was supposed to appear after the March 6 incident. The prosecutor offered sympathy. She gave Turner a copy of the report that the police clerk had refused, saying there was no reason why it should have been withheld from her.
The judge asked Turner whether her son had suffered from mental illness.
"He was a veteran and had PTSD," she answered.
The judge offered condolences.
"Be a voice," he told her.
She said she planned to, but for the moment, she had other concerns.
She went to a nearby office to apply for a refund of the $100 her son had posted for bail back in March.
Money is tight. It will go toward paying off his funeral.
If you know a veteran in crisis, call the VA's toll-free suicide hot line at (800) 273-TALK.
Twitter: @billmurphyjr


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IHG swaps out Oracle data warehouse with Teradata's new data warehouse appliance
Some analysts call Teradata's 2550 data warehouse appliance "entry-level." Don't tell that to IHG, which is in the process of replacing its Oracle data warehouse with the Teradata appliance.
Whatever you call InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)'s new data warehouse appliance, don't call it "entry-level" -- at least not when Alex Grigorian, vice president of enterprise technology at IHG, is within earshot.
According to Gartner Inc., nearly all enterprises have a data warehouse these days, thanks in part to the introduction of lower priced, entry-level data warehouse appliances from vendors like IBM, Oracle and Teradata.
Teradata's new 2550 data warehouse, which IHG is in the process of implementing, is one such appliance, Gartner says. Not so, says Grigorian.
"With all due respect to Gartner, I'm hesitant to use the word 'entry-level' [to describe the Teradata 2550 appliance]," he said in an interview last week.
To Grigorian, who last November decided to replace IHG's five-year-old Oracle data warehouse with the Teradata 2550, the decision to go with an appliance versus a traditional enterprise data warehouse was a philosophical one, not a question of choosing a simple, beginner strategy over a more complex, advanced one.
"I am a change agent," Grigorian said. "This is a case where thinking out of the box will hopefully differentiate us from our competition. This will be a business intelligence tool that will be almost bar none in the industry."
In fact, IHG's data management needs can hardly be called entry-level. The U.K.-based hotel chain collects guest and reservations data from each of its 4,100+ properties and loads it into the Oracle data warehouse for analysis. Grigorian estimates that the total surpasses 10 terabytes of data.
In the past, as the amount of data it collected increased, IHG simply added more software and hardware to the Oracle data warehouse as needed. But soon after taking over responsibility for enterprise data management for IHG in 2008, Grigorian decided he wanted a more scalable solution.
"What I wanted to do was stand back and take a holistic view of the problem," he said. "The technology that got us to where we were [the Oracle data warehouse] was fantastic, but is it the technology that will get us where we need to be in the next 12, 26, 60 months?" The answer, it turned out, was no.
After evaluating both Netezza and Teradata data warehouses, and consulting colleagues at Bank of America who use technology from both vendors, Grigorian decided to go with Miamisburg, Ohio-based Teradata. But IHG didn't choose to deploy Teradata's enterprise data warehouse, the 5550, as most large enterprise customers do, but instead chose the vendor's smaller 2550 appliance.
The Teradata data warehouse appliance is more than capable of handling IHG's 10+ terabytes of customer data, Grigorian said, and it is scalable, thanks in part to its massive parallel processing (MPP) capabilities, so it can adapt to increasing data volumes. Grigorian said IHG plans to add financial data, and possibly employee data, to the appliance in the coming year for analysis.
But unlike a traditional data warehouse, the Teradata appliance will not need continuous performance tuning and optimization once up and running, he said. Once IHG completes loading its data into the appliance, Grigorian expects to enjoy its more robust analytic power "right out of the box."
One drawback of preconfigured data warehouse appliances, some argue, is that they are difficult to customize. What you gain in ease of use, deployment and administration, you lose in flexibility to make adjustments to changing data needs.
But Grigorian doesn't see it that way. "The word customization is an interesting one in this context," he said. "Do we call those customizations or do we call those necessary evils?"
"The appliance does not require [performance tuning and optimization]," he said. "An appliance brings that 'black box' environment where you don't have to stick your nose into the bowels of the system.
"But you have enough access and enough heft in the system to do whatever you need to," Grigorian said. "A lot of those tuning and optimization things that are always more traditional in RDBMS [relational database management system] environments, there will be no more with the appliance."
Another potential downside of data warehouse appliances is that, generally speaking, they cannot handle mixed workloads as efficiently as more traditional data warehouses. In the case of the Teradata 2550 appliance, it is also not optimized for real-time data loading, according to Dan Graham, product marketing manager at Teradata.
"The [Teradata] 5550 Active Data Warehouse would outperform the 2550 [appliance] when running mixed workloads," Graham said. "So we don't advise running near-real-time data loading concurrently with complex reporting on the 2550 appliance. It works, but not nearly as well. [The 2550 is] optimized primarily for reporting and analytics -- and priced for that workload too."
On that point -- price -- Grigorian does agree with Graham and Gartner. Though he declined to give exact figures, he said that "price was definitely a major decision maker" for IHG in selecting Teradata over competing vendors, and an appliance over a traditional data warehouse.
Going forward, if IHG's data volumes do exceed the 2550 appliance's capacity, Teradata assured Grigorian that an upgrade to its enterprise data warehouse, the 5550, would be a relatively simple one. Not that he expects that to happen.
"We are going to start sucking more data into our data warehouse [appliance] through various channels that will enable us to produce more intelligent reporting," Grigorian said. "I feel that an appliance will serve our growing needs. However, time will show."

subset: commoncrawl


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S: Belize 2011
1: Belize | What is a trip to Belize without a little car trouble?
2: Several of us got very up close and personal with this guy. He did some tricks for us and licked Wyatt's and Grandma's head. | Belize Zoo
3: These are just a few of the amazing birds we saw in Belize.
4: We had a great time on a very small island! | Picture perfect | A welcome surprise! | Two hot babes! | We snorkeled around a coral reef with lots of fish, swam with nurse sharks, sea turtles and manterays!
6: Kids, kids, kids. Wherever you go there are kids and they just love to hang on you.
9: Who knew these KY kids would love horses so much?
10: The river is a lot of fun on a hot day. It's not too big a leap from the rock to the water. This area is Brother Sho's campground. He brings bird watchers here to see the Scarlet macaw's migrating through. The water is much colder than you would expect.
11: Wyatt is in his element, Two beautiful ladies.
12: These pictures were taken at the Bladen church. The crowd really poured out for this event.
13: CT really stepped up this year by coming up with the theme for the VBS. Fortunately the weather held out as the VBS crowds were larger than ever. CT's loud voice was a benefit as he helped lead his very large class.
14: It is hard to say who got more inspiration from the class. Amazing!!!
15: Lynn and Rosalie taught a womens class that ranged from 80 to 130 women and children. The room was hot and stuffy but the women were very attentive.
16: The mother of this baby snapped up the baby carrier after Ashley demonstrates. | The teens try to distract the kids with a slip and slide during the clothing giveaway. Max had a great time demonstrating.
17: The clothing give away is always a long and rewarding day. The ladies of Red Bank took on the majority of the job of set up. It was a huge success.
19: Belizean animals are a bit different and generally smaller than our animals. | Who caught the chicken? Jerry, Wyatt or Alexis?
20: Dinner, a show and Toys. What a day!
22: The most attentive and best behaved VBS class of over 100 kids I have ever seen. Hayley and CT made us proud. | Wyatt and Ashley's group of VBS kids show off their craft. They did a great job with their group of 100+ kids.
24: These flowers are called dragon fruit plant. They only bloom once in the evening before becoming a tasty edible fruit.
25: We stayed at a "Green" motel in Guatemala The entrance was flanked by Toucans.
26: Techal was amazing. The architectural feats of these people was nothing short of astonishing.
27: Everyone even the "old lady" climbed the ruins. What a view!
28: Donna and Ashley climbing to the top. | Saundra,Margaret,CT, Max,Hayley,Jenna,Kim,Mayo. Lynn,Ashley,Rosalie,Wyatt, Donna,Lyle & Alexis,


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SiteNOTE runs on top of ASP.NET, CLR 2.0, on Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008.
As SiteNOTE runs as a standard file-based web site, it can run on any standard server (e.g. dual-core cpu, 2GB RAM)
SiteNOTE requires Internet Explorer 6sp2 or Internet Explorer 7 to edit or administer the website.
Visiting users can browse a SiteNOTE website using any standard web browser like IE 5+, Firefox 2.0+, Safari, etc...
SiteNOTE does not require a database for storing content. Changes are directly propagated to the files and served by Internet Information Server. When using the structured content editor to modify content, all the information is stored in XML within the file.
The site structure and security information are stored in XML files that can be rebuild from the information stored in files.
SiteNOTE is using an Access database (mdb file) to store statistics and data submitted through forms. It can be replaced by a SQL Server based data store if required.
Maintenance procedures for a SiteNOTE website are similar to procedures for a static website:
Unlike other CMS, SiteNOTE is only using one structure to manage websites: the navigation structure. It means that page adress paths reflects a natural, search-engine meaningful structure.
Specific cases in navigation are adressed to allow for maximum flexibility:
SiteNOTE has been designed from the ground up to make maintenance, personalization and development a straightforward experience:
Please register here for a guest account.


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Genuine Honda Parts
Whether your Honda is in need of new parts to run or you want to update it, one thing is for sure – you want to use genuine Honda parts when you do it. And the best way to go about this is to go through someone who knows a thing or two about Honda parts. We are going to go ahead and volunteer ourselves as the aforementioned experts on genuine Honda parts. Continue reading


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Lasting Memories
Laura Kathryn Frey
Aug. 21, 1968-Dec. 2, 2018
Woodside, California
Submitted by Leslie van Veenendaal
On Sunday, December 2, Laura Kathryn Frey loving sister, daughter, and friend lost her valiant 3+ year battle with cancer at the age of 50. Laura was born on August 21, 1968 along with her identical twin sister Jennifer. Born I n Hanau, Germany, parents are Theodore Drake Frey and Barbara Thornton Frey. Laura, Jennifer and their older sister Leslie lived in Brussels, Belgium for the first four years of her life. The family moved to Lafayette, California in 1972 where she attended Happy Valley Elementary School, Stanley Middle School and graduated from Acalanes High School in 1987.
During her formative years in Lafayette, Laura loved playing soccer, basketball and softball. She played on the local traveling teams, she also played varsity basketball and softball for Acalanes High School. In college, Laura continued to play soccer for Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
Both Laura and her twin sister Jennifer Frey attended and graduated from Lewis and Clark College in 1991. Laura's major was Political Science and her minor was in Philosophy. While earning her undergraduate degree, Laura spent a college quarter in Washington, D.C. studying American Politics. She also spent two quarters in Turkey living with families, learning the language, the culture, and politics of the country.
She received three master's degrees, one in Political Science from the University of Toronto in 1993 and two others from University of California at Santa Barbara in Methodology and American Politics in 2009, 2010. Laura was a Ph. D. candidate, advanced her dissertation, and defended it. During her years as a graduate student she appeared on a number of panel discussions, and wrote six unpublished papers focusing on her area of expertise, Presidential Approval and events impacting it. She received an award for her exemplary student paper from PAPOR Conference in 2003. In addition, she worked as a Research Assistant with projects measuring Consumer Sentiment, Campaign finance data and Electoral Studies Data. While living in Santa Barbara, Laura became an avid cook, pie maker, and entertainer. She shared her love of cooking with her university friends and with her neighbors on La Cumbre Circle. With her studies almost complete Laura moved back to the Bay Area. Declining health began to impact her life. Laura was always upbeat and positive. She wanted the best for all of her friends and family members so she would drop all of her work to help them. She cared for her sister Jennifer when she became very ill and she was selfless in her giving. She had a joyous smile that showed how much she loved life.
Laura is survived by her parents Barbara and Theodore Frey, her sister Jennifer Frey, sister and brother-in-law Leslie and Frank van Veenendaal, her niece Monique van Veenendaal and nephew Mathew van Veenendaal, stepmother Anne Spanier, step sister and brother Gwynne and Brian Lovas and numerous cousins, aunts and uncles.


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Introduce your body to fibre and prebiotics: the secret to a lifetime of digestive joy.
Feeling good should taste good too! This tasty combination of crunchy buckwheat & sorghum flakes, whole pepitas and cranberries will leave you feeling like a million bucks.
A superfood mix of ancient grains; sorghum, quinoa and millet.
Start your day with a bowl full of superfoods – antioxidant-rich buckwheat and sorghum – and the food karma gods will surely smile upon you.
How do you improve a classic like the corn flake? With a recipe that has a good source of fibre, low fat, and is free from wheat & gluten.
Everything you love about muesli – from the seeds to the fruit to the crunch – without any gluten or nuts.
Tastes like a pancake breakfast, only crunchier. Trick your tastebuds every morning with this deliciously rich maple cereal free of gluten, wheat and nuts.
It's what these little beauties haven't got in them that make them so light and delightful to eat. With a good source of fibre, they make a cracking start to the day.
A good source of fibre and gluten free – these aren't your regular supermarket puffs.
Delicious cocoa XO shapes your kids will love.
Delicious XO berry puffs made with the same 3-grain goodness as our best-seller, XO Crunch!


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During the winter the humidity goes way down and the air outside is nippier, not to mention indoor heating sucks all the living moisture from your skin and hair. This means that hairstyles have to survive both dryness and extremes of hot and cold.
Check out this hairstyling video to see how to create two low humidity-proof looks:
1. A messy bun with flat twists
2. A messy bun with voluminous twists


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What, with wikileaks, phone hackin' journalists, social media on the interweb, a new UK Prime ministerial spin meister and things called quora, it's all enough to give you a migraine. Of course, it hasn't always been like this, and occasionally it is good for the soul to hark back to more tranquil times, just as Simon Hoggart of the Guardian did recently:
"Isn't it a reflection of modern times that the prime minister's appointment of a spin doctor has attracted as much attention as any new cabinet minister might? Rightly so – Craig Oliver will probably be more influential than almost all of them.
More than 60 years ago Clement Attlee had to be persuaded to install a Press Association ticker in Downing Street and only agreed when he was told it would allow him to follow the cricket scores.
One day Francis Williams, his press secretary, gave his usual briefing to the lobby. Later Attlee exclaimed in astonishment: "There's an account of this morning's cabinet on my cricket machine!" He didn't even know what his spin doctor did.
I think that, on the whole, that was a good thing, and we were better off."
Hear, hear!
"So what?"
It's a question that is under-used in any media campaign. People utterly involved in their work, be it selling microchips or helping others, are often pushing out press releases, statements, calling press conferences to tell the world their 'news', only to be often dumbfounded when the media fail to report it. That's because they often don't ask the "so what?" question in terms of news factors. There are factors which make news, which raise an eyebrow, which journalistic radars lock on to and which the general public wake up to. It's pretty obvious stuff but when down in the weeds working on a product or a campaign a myopia can strike preventing people from understanding, in media terms, what will 'fly' and what won't. Before sending that press release or calling that press conference, just check for news worthiness. If the story doesn't flick any of the switches below (edited from a version at cybercollege.com), it's failed the "so what?" test.
1. Timeliness: News is what's new. An afternoon raid on a drugs den may warrant a live ENG report during the 6 p.m. news. However, tomorrow, unless there are major new developments, the same story will probably not be important enough to mention.
2. Proximity: If 15 people are killed in your hometown, your local TV station will undoubtedly consider it news. But if 15 people are killed in Tokyo, Tipperary, Timisoara, or some other distant place you've never heard of, it will probably pass without notice. But there are exceptions.
3. Exceptional quality: One exception centres on how the people died. If the people in Timisoara were killed because of a bus or car accident, this would not be nearly as newsworthy as if they died from an earthquake or stings from "killer bees," feared insects that have now invaded France.
Exceptional quality refers to how uncommon an event is. A man getting a job as a music conductor is not news—unless that man is blind.
4. Possible future impact: The killer bee example illustrates another news element: possible future impact. The fact that the killer bees are now in France and may eventually be a threat to people watching the news makes the story much more newsworthy.
5. Prominence: The 15 deaths in Timisoara might also go by unnoticed by the local media unless someone prominent was on the bus—possibly a movie star or a well-known politician. If a soap star gets married, it's news; if John Smith, your next-door neighbour, gets married, it probably isn't.
6. Conflict: Conflict in its many forms has long held the interest of observers. The conflict may be physical or emotional. It can be open, overt conflict, such as a civil uprising against police authority, or it may be ideological conflict between political candidates.
The conflict could be as simple as a person standing on his principles and spending a year fighting city hall over a parking citation. In addition to "people against people" conflict, there can be conflict with wild animals, nature, the environment, or even the frontier of space.
7. Numbers: The more people involved in a news event, be it a demonstration or a tragic accident, the more newsworthy the story is. Likewise, the number of people affected by the event, whether it's a new health threat or a new tax ruling, the more newsworthy the story is.
8. Consequence: The fact that a car hit a power pylon isn't news, unless, as a consequence, power is lost throughout a city for several hours. The fact that a computer virus found its way into a computer system might not be news until it bankrupts a business, shuts down a telephone system, or endangers lives by destroying crucial medical data at a hospital.
9. Human interest: Human-interest stories are generally soft news. Examples would be a baby beauty contest, a person whose pet happens to be a nine-foot boa constrictor, or a man who makes a cart so that his two-legged dog can move around again.
On a slow news day even a story of fire fighters getting a cat out of a tree might make a suitable story. Human-interest angles can be found in most hard news stories. A flood will undoubtedly have many human-interest angles: a lost child reunited with its parents after two days, a boy who lost his dog, or families returning to their mud-filled homes.
10. Pathos: The fact that people like to hear about the misfortunes of others can't be denied. Seeing or hearing about such things commonly elicits feelings of pity, sorrow, sympathy, and compassion. Some call these stories "tear jerkers."
Examples are the child who is now all alone after his parents were killed in a car accident, the elderly woman who just lost her life savings to a con artist, or the blind man whose seeing-eye dog was poisoned.
This category isn't just limited to people. How about horses that were found neglected and starving, or the dog that sits at the curb expectantly waiting for its master to return from work each day, even though the man was killed in an accident weeks ago.
11. Shock Value: An explosion in a factory has less shock value if it was caused by gas leak than if it was caused by a terrorist. The story of a six year-old boy who shot his mother with a revolver found in a bedside drawer has more shock (and therefore news) value than if same woman died of a heart attack.
Both shock value and the titillation factor (below) are well known to the tabloid press. The lure of these two factors is also related to some stories getting inordinate attention, such as the sordid details of a politician's or evangelist's affair—which brings us to the final point.
12. Titillation: This factor primarily involves sex and is commonly featured—some would say exploited—during rating periods.
It's a simple question – "so what?"
We noticed Rohit Bhargava's list of the Top 15 Marketing & Social Media Trends To Watch In 2011 – some interesting concepts, a few of which we'd like to point to, considering their possibilities within communications campaigns. The main list covers:
- Likeonomics
- Approachable Celebrity
- Desperate Simplification
- Essential Integration
- Rise of Curation
- Visualized Data
- Crowdsourced Innovation
- Instant PR & Customer Service
- App-fication of the Web
- Reimagining Charity
- Employees As Heroes
- Locationcasting
- Brutal Transparency
- Addictive Randomness
- Culting Of Retail
Let's take a few an expand:
Desperate simplification – Data overload is increasingly hampering any coherent and strong messaging as we are all bombarded with information on several platforms. People will congregate around those tools which give them a degree of control of this deluge and provide simplification. Such platforms will be the iPad (and the myriad of apps), tumblr, animoto, amazon, and maybe quora.
Essential integration – With this almost limitless number of platforms, the holy grail will increasingly become integration of campaigns, often screwed up my departmental infighting, agencies working to subtly different objectives and downright laziness or lack of creativity. Last year's viral phenomena of the Old Spice Guy worked not only because of its creative content but die to its seamless integration and placement across different platforms.
Content Curation – Increasingly aggregators or curators, such as paper.li, are becoming seen as effective filters and hubs for information centred upon a campaign, product or idea. These can act as effectively draw the audience, as a trusted and simple source.
Addictive randomness: Ever found yourself just clicking to see what's next – addicted to the random nature of internet available information? The phenomena is not researched but there's something there. How can it be used to push the boundaries of a campaign? The American Red Cross provides a great example
Brutal transparency – Many lessons have been learned throughout several corporate crises over 2010. One is a more proactive approach to issue management in which painfully a honest approach to negativity is seen to outweigh the costs of reactive efforts after the event. Rohit cites the Domino Pizza and Southwest Airlines campaigns to raise themselves above the others in this regard. The whole idea is an advance on our mantra of 'Get dirty early'.
This is just a smattering – things are moving at a blistering pace. Keep up now!
Over the last 18 months, events affecting Toyota and BP have dealt catastrophic blows to the reputations of these two mighty companies. Poor PR efforts and, more noticeably, disastrous media handling contributed significantly the severity of their respective crises.
But the trials and tribulations of these global conglomerates seem far away from the dreamy spires of Cambridge, the tranquil Fens or the placid waters of the Cam.
Yet, as the successful companies of this region ever expand their markets, providing vital products and services increasingly impinging on the lives of millions, be they pharmaceuticals through to computer chips, the likelihood and impact of intense media storms in similar circumstances increases.
Of course, not on the same scale – there are few Deepwater Horizons across the Fens – but potentially devastating nonetheless. The poor media handling of a recall of vital computer components embedded in a critical system or medicines due questionable research can sink a small business providing these products. This is the volatile and dangerous nature of the information environment in the 21st century. Referring the media to the marketing department just won't cut it. Unfortunately, anecdotal research of Cambridgeshire-based companies has revealed that predominantly communication issues are referred to … the marketing department.
The demands of such crises require people – real people not just twitter handles or blog aliases – to stand up and explain, inform, justify, defend and educate, and to do it quickly. Not doing so merely adds fuel to the fire and doing it badly lobs a grenade in after that fuel.
The notion that 'the spokesperson will deal with it' or 'that's something for marketing' is sheer folly, as has been shown time and time again. Management, at the very least, need to be fully engaged in the media process and prepared, if necessary, to engage directly with the media. Further, if in crisis, a media interview can be a brutal event, both personally and for the organization. By not preparing anyone for such, any HR department can be seen as neglecting its duty in training its staff for their duties and responsibilities.
But why bother? Is it really worthwhile getting worked up about this? Two counter arguments are often expressed by small and medium enterprises. One: surely it's all about social, new, digital media nowadays, not the good old-fashioned spokesperson in front of a camera. Two: we're not BP. The national and international media will never focus on us; we're just too small and therefore off their radar.
This is flawed logic. Regarding social media – all that tweeting, blogging, websites and the like – the marketing departments are increasingly getting involved in that, and rightly so. But in crisis, it is about people, not so much technology. People want someone, not something, to reassure them. Besides, it is that very technology which is paradoxically enabling the personal interface. The traditional media interview, once destined for the six o'clock news and maybe the ten o'clock slot but then forgotten about, now readily enters the internet echo-chamber, to be viewed and, more importantly, critiqued and commented upon, over and over again online on YouTube or BBC iPlayer, across the world, with interest fuelled by a torrent of Tweets and blogposts. New social media has made the skills of the traditional spokesperson even more important.
On the second point, technology now allows the 'harvesting' of ever more low level news by the larger media outlets, making the tactical issue a strategic problem very quickly. That technology has also enabled the citizen journalist. Further, the coalition government is rightly forging ahead with ideas for digital Britain, including major policies in opening up local media and, not least, local television. Technology is ensuring that, when it comes to even a minor crisis, there will be no way of hiding it, the potential of exacerbating it and the possibility of rapidly widening coverage of it.
Just as successful companies will invest huge amounts of effort in market research, R&D, branding, advertising and marketing, the lean and mean, the aggressive winners in the marketplace do not skimp on crisis communications and media relations. This involves having key personnel, not just the spokespersons, prepared and able to handle the media. If it comes to a battle for reputation, it will most likely be fought in the glare of the camera, and the arsenal must be ready, otherwise getting into the ring with experienced journalists will be a painful and damaging experience. It also necessitates comprehensive crisis communications planning beforehand.
Of course, not all organizations will find themselves in the media spotlight (although the potential is always there) and may not consider media training a high priority – a reasonable judgement call. But many, many companies can quickly be under the microscope and media engagement can rapidly become very critical to the future fortunes of a company, especially during a crisis. The speed at which this can happen can be breathtaking and by this time it may be too late to consider training. Those caught in such a media storm can then reflect on the fact that hindsight is a wonderful thing.
So, the bottom line? While it may take years to build a good reputation, it can be shattered in hours through the media, and relying solely on the marketing department or, if you're lucky, a spokesperson to save the day on their lonesome or wielding unprepared and untrained senior staff and subject matter experts in front of the camera, is plain asking for trouble. Just ask Tony Hayward.
A few weeks ago Jeremy Hunt, the UK coalition government's Culture Secretary, unveiled new plans for media provision in the UK. "We need to do something to stimulate investment in new media services that give a proper voice to local people," he told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme. He is seeking to encourage commercial public service broadcasters (PSBs) including BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to back a new generation of local TV and online services by making the provision of local sevices a condition of their licences.
There have been many moans and groans from several quarters, not least the PSBs themselves over the viability of these grand plans. Indeed it is proably internet TV, not digital terrestrial television, that is most promising in the local TV revolution. Internet TV also presents an opportunity for other organisations such as local newspapers and smaller niche outfits to get into the game. In a major sense this is already happing through digital convergence, as video becomes a major factor in online publication. There are already many local internet based news outlets using existing broadband technology. There has been an interesting comparison between two cities, one here and one in the US:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx Birmingham, UK Birmingham, Alabama
This may be the trajectory we're already on.
So the notion of Digital Britain charges on. But what does it mean for businesses and their handling of this media in the UK?
Let's recap. Over the last 18 months, events affecting Toyota and BP have dealt catastrophic blows to the reputations of these two mighty companies. Poor PR efforts and, more noticeably, disastrous media handling contributed significantly the severity of their respective crises.
As successful UK companies ever expand their markets, providing vital products and services increasingly impinging on the lives of millions, be they pharmaceuticals through to computer chips, the likelihood and impact of intense media storms in similar circumstances increases. And with the approach of more localised digital media capability, that impact and likelihood increases even more. Well, that's our contention anyway.
Two counter arguments are often expressed by small and medium enterprises. One: surely it's all about social, new, digital media nowadays, not the good old-fashioned spokesperson in front of a camera. Two: we're not BP. The national and international media will never focus on us; we're just too small and therefore off their radar.
This is flawed logic. Regarding social media – all that tweeting, blogging, websites and the like – the marketing departments are increasingly getting involved in that, and rightly so. But in crisis, it is about people, not so much technology. People want someone, not something, to reassure them. Besides, it is that very technology which is paradoxically enabling the personal interface. The traditional media interview, once destined for the six o'clock news and maybe the ten o'clock slot but then forgotten about, now readily enters the internet echo-chamber, to be viewed and, more importantly, critiqued and commented upon, over and over again online on YouTube or BBC iPlayer, across the world, with interest fuelled by a tidal wave of Tweets and blogposts. New social media has made the skills of the traditional spokesperson even more important.
On the second point, technology now allows the 'harvesting' of ever more low level news by the larger media outlets, making the tactical issue a strategic problem very quickly. That technology has also enabled the citizen journalist. And with increasing decentralisation and access to media bandwidth for local PSBs, the camera will be ever closer to one's business. The chances of that interview being required, especially during a crisis, are increased. Technology is ensuring that, when it comes to even a minor crisis, there will be no way of hiding it, the potential of exacerbating it and the possibility of rapidly widening coverage of it.
Counter-intuitively, digital Britain and the local TV revolution merely increase the need for good old-fashioned media skills.
You have been warned.
Isn't technology wonderful? In a world full of information and content is king, anyone with a video camera can film, record and download to their heart's content. In the good old days, an organisation had to rely on expensive production companies to produce video material and then hand-deliver the tape to distribution centre. Now, it can be done by anyone, anywhere at any time and delivered to the wires almost immediately. And so began the rise of the Video News Release (VNR).
As part of any communication strategy in the digital age, producing one's own video material is now widely accepted. Digital convergence has increased the demand for video, a demand driven by both print and broadcast media for web application as well as for traditional broadcast. If you've something to say or promote, why wait for the media to come to you (and deliver your message in their terms) when you can produce the content yourself (under your conditions and control) and provide it to them. Although there is always the issue of being seen as 'propaganda or spin', any quality content – balanced, open, well produced and edited, with relevant background information – has a good chance of gaining traction in the media – a bonus when advertising is going through patchy times. In fact the media are hungry for these VNRs.
But here's where the problem lies – balanced, open, well produced and edited, with relevant background information (note: balanced and open – CB3 isn't too keen on the 'Fake TV news' style VNR) Experience shows that much of the content provided through VNRs is of poor quality, even from top companies who have paid for production. Editors at Reuters, AP, AFP etc are constantly bombarded with VNRs which are indecipherable, poorly shot, almost unedited (or so they appear), with rambling commentary and little supporting data. One might as well pick at random something from Youtube and try and make something of it (and there's some weird stuff out there!). Trying to make something useful from some of these VNRs is almost futile, disheartening and annoying – a waste of an editor's time and the providing organisation's effort.
The technical capability – a decent camera and basic software – to produce good VNRs is everywhere. The wise have embraced the idea of providing self-generated content to the media, even encouraged their people to do so (with some degree of control). That's far from dumb – it's very smart. But the knowledge to use that technical capability has been lacking, as many working in the newswires, those who will get the good content out across the globe, are attesting. They want, they need, the content but they need it to be good (not necessarily excellent – there's room for a little grittiness). The more work they've got to do to make a mish-mash of poor quality material into something they're happy to use, the less likely the can use it and, even if they do, that it'll attract attention. (Same principle applies with press releases – make the journalist's life easy). It's not rocket science and not a new problem – the effective use of technological resources must be matched by the human capability to utilise them, which will involve a degree of training and experience. Unfortunately, as in many cases involving social media, organisations have failed to recognise this.
It's not difficult – you don't need cameramen, editors, soundmen etc – your people, be they in PR or on the front line, can do it. They just need to be given the knowledge (and we're not talking about the camera manual here) and training to do it.
Good VNRs can be invaluable, be they internal interviews, product promotion, disaster reporting or simple news release. But if they remain dumbed down, due to the sheer lack of training and competence of those given cameras and told to 'get on with it', then they'll be consigned to the Youtube hinterland (note: if they're good Youtube will enhance their value anyway).


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A Great Wine List In Oman??
I've written about poorly organized wine lists before, but until now, I haven't felt moved to remark on a particularly well done wine list. Apparently, it took traveling to Muscat, the capital of Oman, to find one worthy of note!
Our first night, we dined at a hilltop Indian restaurant called Mumtaz Mahal. Because I was worried that jet lag, alcohol and a rental car wouldn't mix, I didn't drink any wine, but I did marvel at the restaurant's list. Here, on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula — a region not exactly known for wine appreciation — was one of the better wine lists I've ever encountered:
Not only does it list the regions from which the wines originate, it indicates all the regions on a map! For those of us interested in a wine's terroir, this information is particularly useful. How strange though, that they chose not to list the vintages. For some regions the vintage isn't especially important, but for Bordeaux, the year is vital.
I also appreciated that the wine list offered a range of offbeat selections, even including a couple of wines from India:
Should you ever have a chance to dine at Mumtaz Mahal, try the cubes of kingfish roasted in a clay pot with caraway, mustard oil and yogurt. Delicious! And heck, go for that Chenin Blanc from Nasik while you're at it.