Tom Ridge, Bush’s secretary for Homeland Security and former Governor of Pennsylvania, currently promoting his book in New York, admitted to the New York Post that he and his aides made sure not to select his ties in colours that could be linked to the colour-coded threat level.

He said that “all I wanted was to make sure I didn’t wear an orange or red one.” This has set me thinking about the role of the tie in politics. This extremely perceptive analysis on the subject from the Belfast Newletter points out that politicians, if not voters, seem to think that the colour of a tie makes some kind of statement. And this is the case – as a man in a suit, the one opportunity for the overt display of one’s preferences comes in the choice of tie. Do you, predictably, go for the colour associated with your party? Or, less predictably, with the colour of your opponent’s party? Or with a neutral shade? Or with a daring ‘comedy’ offering? On a slow news day, this kind of thing is all we’ll read about. But is anyone going to associate the colour of a tie with a potentially elevated threat level? Yes. Journalists are.

Of course, this is a dilemma only faced by male politicians. Women (see the reaction to Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin for examples) are judged on all aspects of their apparel, not just what they choose to knot around their necks. We know that image is everything, so why not make it easy for the journos to interpret and wear something like this:

No one could be in any doubt as to where you stand. It’s now my dearest wish to see Newt Gingrich in one of these.

Incidentally, this came from a site called ‘tackyobamastuff.com‘. If you want to buy a pair of Obama briefs, or some Obama-head Russian dolls, this is place.

I’ve seen the future. Of journalism, that is.

A group of journalists in the San Francisco Bay area have set up spot.us – a new model for the way news provision works, which they are calling ‘community funded reporting’. The project is run by the ‘Center for Media Change’, who are a ‘501(c) 3 non-profit organization that enriches our culture… by facilitating the creation, development and use of new Internet-based business models to preserve the economic and professional viability of journalism.’

The idea is that people can post ideas on the site for stories they’d like to read, and then others can pledge money to fund someone to write the article. When the total needed to fund the investigation is reached, the article is written and is licenced under Creative Commons, so that anyone is free to republish it as long as the author is credited.

At the moment, it is tightly integrated with local news provision in the Bay area, but the creators hope to be able to expand its scope in the future. The idea of non-profit news has also been taken up by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, who set up his own version, ProPublica, in 2007. This one perhaps has slightly more international clout, being located in Manhattan and staffed by high-profile ex-editors, but I have to say I admire the integral optimism of what the San Fran lot are trying to do.

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