The Heroes of Hopelessness

I remember Hugh Downs as the former anchor of the ABC news program 20/20. In fact as I say his name in my head I can hear his deep voice announcing that he is Hugh Downs and telling me and the rest of America what was coming up on the program that night. The Museum of Broadcast Communications says this about Downs on its website:

Hugh Downs, a venerable and extremely affable television host, is known for telegraphing intelligence, patience, and decency. The Guinness Book of World Records reports that Downs, among the most familiar figures in the history of the medium, has clocked more hours on television (10,347 through May of 1994) than any other person in U.S. TV history.

He had one of those comforting anchorman voices that America relied upon in the early days of broadcasting, the ones that morphed over the years from genuine to the mock tones of Troy McClure from the Simpsons.

So this is why, when the “TV producer” from a show called Heroes of Hope appeared on my voice mail yesterday morning, telling me that he wanted to speak with my organization about people who make a difference for a documentary that has been featured on some major broadcast channels (he says Public Television and CNN) I was a little excited.

I’m a pessimist. At least that’s what my wife tells me. Whenever our 6-year old son starts exhibiting the same traits as dear old Dad, I laugh and she rolls her eyes in recognition of his future self—very similar to the person she married. I pride myself on my pessimist, which I lovingly correct my wife as “cynicism.” It’s similar to pessimism. It’s in the same family, but they’re not exactly the same. Let’s call them cousins.

At a time like this, my cynicism kicks into high gear. First, I’ve never heard of the program, “Heroes of Hope.” So I hit the Google search bar in Firefox. I get a slew of results but none of them look right. Listening to the message again, I jot down the correct url from the voice mail. A Flash based site comes up. It’s a little vague and some of the language on the description makes me even more cynical. The language talks about donors and marketing. Things you don’t expect to see on a documentary series homepage. Then there’s the fact that I see no direct links to any public television stations that have run the documentaries. In fact, I’m curious of the fact that no public television websites came up with urls for this supposedly fabulous series staring the legendary Hugh Downs and his buttery voice.

I check out their press release. In the “About Heroes of Hope” section they describe themselves as such:

Heroes of Hope is a series on the leading edge of documentary television industry distributed to Public Television nation-wide and is hosted by Mr. Hugh Downs. Utilizing global media outlets and distribution, Heroes of Hope reaches around the globe with stories that are documentary styled, and relevant to specific industries and organizations that are looking for educational information.

The website and this press release reads like a jargon laden sales pitch meant to impress but saying very little. They say “Heroes of Hope is a series on the leading edge of documentary television industry distributed to Public Television nation-wide” but no search results brought up any programming on ANY public television whatsoever. Not PBS not NPR not anything. No reviews, no references from outside sources, nothing but a list of press releases and a few blog entries. My BS antennae are way up now.

I decide to try one other route and look up Hugh Downs. I take Wikipedia entries with a huge grain of salt (cynic over here, remember) but in general I find that they’re extremely useful and mostly accurate. I triple verify everything I find on there and find the references and links to outside webpages immensely useful. Hugh Downs’ Wikipedia entry is pretty comprehensive. It also includes this tidbit:

Downs has made a cameo appearance on Family Guy.

Hey, that’s cool. I love Family Guy. But old establishment MSM guys on a hip cartoon series smacks a little of desperation. Perhaps he’s in need of extra cash? He probably spent all his MSM dough on scotch and betting the ponies. Or he was a big Madoff investor? Who knows?

Wikipedia goes on to explain:

Downs can currently be seen in infomercials for healthsecrets.com and another one for a personal coach. He did an infomercial for Where There's a Will There's an A in 2003. His infomercial work since then has aroused some controversy, with many arguing the products are scams.[1] As of the summer of 2008, Downs can also be seen in regional public service announcements in Arizona, where he currently lives, for that state's motor vehicles division, as well as in many Public TV short form programs as the Host of educational interstitials.[2]

OK. That’s very suspicious. He’s retired but he still wants work. Some guy gets in touch with him after seeing his infomercial work with a get-in-on-the-ground-floor proposition. I can hear the elevator pitch in my head as some guy tries to sell Downs on the idea of using his fame and reputation to sell charities on very highly produced documentaries about their causes. They can then buy time and broadcast the documentaries on major network for one low fee. You can see how charities would love to get this kind of exposure and professional video work done for them, especially with the super famous and sufficiently vanilla Hugh Downs as a backer.

It’s leaning toward a total scam but vague enough that I’m still not sure. Nobody wants to tell his boss not to take a phone call when the potential upside is huge if it’s legit. I go to my secondary source and most reliable resource, Twitter.

@obilon: Anyone ever hear of "Heroes of Hope" hosted by Hugh Downs? What is this about? I can't tell if it's legit or not? Anyone? Thx.

Immediately I got two very good responses:

@bonnerj: I'm not familiar with Heroes of Hope, but it sounds like "pay for play." I'd stay away. More here: http://bit.ly/RaKhi

@angelb123: If it's similiar to group that approached me once (program also hosted by Hugh Downs), then not legit. Will ask you for tons of $.

@angelb123: NYT article about the operation here: http://tinyurl.com/cq2ev8 Be very careful.

The two articles revealed to me without a doubt that this was a scam operation.

Now, selling a charity the ability to produce a documentary about their cause is not in and of itself a scam. There are many, may production companies out there that will do a high quality job of filming a story about your organization for a variety of uses, including for your website, presentations and mailers to potential donors and many other venues. It’s a legitimate business, I’m sure.

But the way “Heroes of Hope” was first presented to my organization and how the production company’s website positions itself as a legitimate media source rather than a pay service is blatant enough that I’m calling BS here. The phone call I received was vague and misleading. I first thought that I was being contacted by a legitimate production company for a news organization.

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It Ain't Easy Being Green, But It's Worth It!

By Lon S. Cohen

This post originally ran in my "Ask Dad" column in Long Island Pulse Magazine's April 2008 issue. It has been edited slightly for a wider audience.

While environmental issues have been talked about ad nauseam since Senator Gaylord Nelson put them squarely onto the nation’s conscious with the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, popular commentary such as Al Gore’s, A Inconvenient Truth, show that we still have a long way to go.

So what’s a parent to do in a world succumbing to the effects of a disastrous global policy toward the earth? Is anything going to work in the face of such a monstrous tidal wave of environmental doom and gloom? Perhaps there are a few strategies we can employ with our kids.

Tu B'Shevat is called the “New Year for trees” in Judaism. It’s frequently used as an opportunity to teach children about the environment by planting a new tree or learning about fruits. Think: Jewish Arbor Day. Religion instills a sense of stewardship over the earth as protectors of God’s creation. If you are raising your child with any religious affinity, try to put environmental lessons in there for good measure.

Expose children to nature, firsthand. Take them out to see what this world has to offer in the way of natural preserves and wilderness; believe it or not, there’s still a lot left around here. Better yet, plan a camping trip with the kids and tech them to live with nature at the basic level. There are plenty of campsites with direct access to woodland trails, waterways, and animals in their natural habitat.

Instruct and inform children on how to be a better environmental citizen. Start by not littering. Even a flick of used chewing gum amounts to wastefulness. Teach that on a personal level it’s a small effort to live by the three R’s of environmentalism and it can go a long way over time.

Lead by example. There are plenty of ways to do this, but here’s one tip: Use eBay. My friend buys lots of good quality toys for her kids from eBay. Not only does it reuse items that might end up in the trash, it reduces the amount of waste because the toy has already gone through the wasteful packaging cycle. And who doesn’t hate opening those little plastic twisty-tie things anyway? Even better, why not consider opening an eBay store yourself to recycle the toys your kids are finished with, instead of throwing them in the trash.

It ain’t easy being Green, but it’s worth it.

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My Social Media Grandpa

My grandpa is now on Facebook.

Let me explain who my grandfather is. He’s a World War II veteran. He plays the horses at the track. He used to be a cab driver in Queens. He’s the biggest Yankee fan you’ve ever seen and has been around for almost every championship they ever played. He taught me how to throw a baseball. He is retired and lives with my grandma in Fort Lauderdale.

He’s also 87 years old.

And, he has a Facebook profile.

Which he uses.

Almost every day.

He is not your typical Facebook demographic. Whenever I overhear conversation between people who still think Facebook is for young people who understand all that computer stuff, I laugh, thinking of an octogenarian in South Florida sitting in his little air-conditioned condo at his laptop messing around with his profile picture.

He’s not a pro. He still uses his status updates to talk to specific individuals like my cousin or my mother. (Yes, my mother is also on Facebook, which brings up a whole slew of Jewish cyber-guilt jokes.) He hasn’t figured out quite how to share links or photos. He’s also not joining any groups or causes anytime soon. But he’s staked his ground. He’s a member.

To my delight, my family has been flocking to Facebook as a means of communication that is quickly replacing many other forms of online sharing. I used to upload the kids pictures to Snapfish so everyone can view their birthday parties. Now they go to Facebook. I used to play games with them on Pogo. Now we play Scrabble on Facebook. I used to email them all the time. Now I post messages to their Wall on Facebook. I used to use AIM to chat with my siblings, now… Yep, Facebook. I used to send evites… Facebook Events Calendar. I used to send links to interesting articles and websites. Facebook.

Many of the things I used to do in a multitude of other applications and website have been replaced by Facebook. Why? It’s much easier, simpler and less time consuming. Besides, everyone is on Facebook. Even grandpa.



You can look at it two ways. One, is that Facebook has become uncool. It’s too big. Like Yogi Berra once said, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” Or you can look at it another way. Facebook has replaced my phone book plus email, plus photo sharing, plus chat, etc. It’s a necessary and welcome utility. Imagine, all those years I tried to get people to give up the walled garden of AOL because they were missing out on the bigger world wide web and now all I want to do is corral them all back behind another even more restrictive one.

I for one am glad grandpa is on Facebook. It started out as a bit of a joke. “We have to get grandpa on Facebook,” we’d say. “He’d like it.” But once he was there, it immediately made sense. And despite the fact that he still types in comments in a conversational tone to photos, not knowing millions of people can see it even though he’s asking a particular person who may or may not have a Facebook account a question, he’s doing very well navigating his way around the site.

We think that he may be the oldest active user of Facebook but we’re not sure. All I know is that for me, Facebook has become a better place. With one more person with whom I can share my family pictures and who really, really cares about my status updates like only my grandpa can care.

Image: My grandpa back in the day.

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Non-Profit Prepares For Bleak Times

by Lon S. Cohen

It’s looking bleak out there for non-profits. Last year started with the housing market continuing to crash through the floor, wiping out many a family’s largest personal equity investment, which then dovetailed into an unparalleled economic crisis that rivals one most of us only heard about in the history books and ended with a scandalous ponzi scheme whose perpetrator single-handedly swindled some large non-profits of all their savings not to mention the other tens of billions of dollars in private investments it ate up.

2008 certainly was a year of when big events populated the economic landscape with huge storied corporations like Bears Stearn, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup all falling victim one after the other.

But, far down the food chain are the lowly, local non-profits, just trying to cut a small swath for themselves out of the ever-dwindling philanthropic dollars given by businesses and private donors every year. Sadly, these are the ones who need the money most when economic times get tough but see the their income stream reduced to a trickle.

In times like these that donations go down but the use of services goes up, like the organization I work for. I’m the Director of Communications for The ALS Association Greater New York Chapter. My Chapter provides crucial services like equipment loan programs and support groups to ALS patients and their families. They also provide services for caregivers, information about benefits, seminars and they manage and staff three area ALS clinics, one each in New Jersey, New York City and Long Island. Local patients seek us out to help make up their own shortfalls. We will never refuse a patient of services when we have them to offer, but our resources become stretched at times like these. The ALS Association relies on many volunteers to fill in where they can, using individuals with particular expertise to supplement a very dedicated, but beleaguered, staff.

President Barack Obama’s fundraising campaign relied on millions of what are called micro-donations along with locally formed fundraising campaigns to fill the coffers. This “Obama Effect” did not go unnoticed by the development departments in non-profits. The ALS Association had been working toward that type of online grassroots fundraising all throughout 2008 but has really stepped up their efforts for 2009.

Through a strategic Social Networking campaign along with a greater focus on helping individuals and groups form their own fundraising events. It’s going to be a tough year ahead but with some creative thinking and lots of hard work, we think we can make up for the shortfall in donations this coming year.

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Bloggers united against decision to block websites in Bahrain

This is a couple of months old, but I came across it and thought it still was appropriate to post. Bahrain (which according to Wikipedia is an Arabic island microstate in the Persian Gulf ruled by the Al Khalifa regime) apparently blocked Internet access to its citizens.

Of course Bahrain bloggers reacted. I read many comments over at the Global Voices website but I think the best one is this one below that succinctly summarizes censorship of media in his country. He metaphorically compares his brother who was a “mere idea” a little more than twenty years ago to the phenomenal growth in distribution of information by the world wide web nowadays:

Let me try to paint you a picture:

It is the 1980’s. No internet and no Satellite TV channels and nothing. The only communications we have with the outside world are videotapes, cassettes, books and magazines. In these simpler times, banning something would actually work. If the government says for a reason or another that a film for example is unacceptable and not wanted, the majority of the population, if not all, will not get to see it. Tapes will be easily found and confiscated. And then what? Banning media at that age was quite effective. But that was a long, long, LONG time ago. Just look at my brother, he was a mere idea in ’86 and was born in ’87. Today he is a 186 cm tall man, with a goatee, driving license and a college degree. Media has grown that much too.

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