The best story about The New York Times this week didn’t appear in the paper. In fact it wasn’t an article at all, but a web site created by a freelance journalist named Ted Alcorn. Alcorn tapped into the paper’s public API to create a dashboard that...

My alma mater, St. John’s College, has just one intercollegiate sport: croquet It started in 1983, with an annual match against the U.S. Naval Academy. Two years later, I attended the third such contest during my freshman year.  Someone took a black...

Dad has a trophy on his dresser of a silver figure wearing a Greek tunic and holding a laurel wreath over his head.  The base reads: “Allenhurst Beach Club, Second Place, 1941.” That trophy has been there most of my life and it was obviously important...

In the fall of 1962, my father drove my mother to Annapolis see his alma mater Cornell play Navy in football. My dad’s a sports fan and I’ve been asking him about famous games he attended and this one turned out to be one of the most memorable. He said...

Sometimes you can win big by playing the game differently. My father shared a story about one of the most famous football games in history. We were asking him about great sports moments he had witnessed such as Joe DiMaggio in the middle of his...

Origin stories can be powerful and effective. I spent the week working on a project to help two founders frame their story. I told them that a successful origin story has three criteria: -It has to be true -It needs to be simple -It must be memorable...

The word of the day is Stammtisch. I was at a dinner party of a group of guys in Manhattan and we were talking about how to communicate more regularly and effectively. Right now, we meet three to four times a year. I always wanted to be part of a group...

When my dad was discharged from the Navy at the end of World War II, he took the train from California first to Chicago, then to Newark, then down to the Jersey Shore. His family had no idea he was heading home much less exactly when he would arrive. He...

I’ve always thought Bloomberg LP’s success was driven as much by paying attention to the customer as building technology. There’s a good story that illustrates the emphasis Mike Bloomberg puts on clients that I heard this week. It came from Lloyd...

There is a saying that history is written by the victors.  But history is also written by whoever writes it. In the era of ChatGPT that is something that hasn’t been fully appreciated by companies and people who do communications for a living. And it is...