General Resume

Evan currently serves as president of the Massachusetts Chapter of A.G. Bell Association, having been elected in November 2010, where he oversees the 501(c)3 non-profit, founded in 2005 on principles of parent and family connections as well as child mentorship. Mass AG Bell offers three programs for youth, including Bell Teens, Bell Kids and Bell Tots. The activities are designed to bring children of similar age together in a safe, fun, and supportive atmosphere.

Evan is also a member of the national Board of Directors for the A.G. Bell Association, elected by members nationwide in May 2012 for a three-year term.

In addition to his work for AG Bell, Evan volunteers at Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, where he attended elementary school. He appears at seminars and panels, as well as running the Making Connections! student track at the annual Mainstream Conference in 2011 and 2012. Also in 2012, Evan served as summer-camp counselor for Clarke’s overnight camping trip for teens.

The Facebook page for the chapter is here.

Visit the homepage of the chapter, currently administered by the national A.G. Bell Association.

Fire Brand quickly grew into the most respected Red Sox blog on the internet, with Hall of Fame journalist Peter Gammons commenting “it’s amazing how many club officials read… Fire Brand of the American League.” Evan Brunell flew solo until September 2005. Since then, years later, additional, passionate authors also call Fire Brand home, dedicated to bringing the world musings from Red Sox Nation.

Click this link to view all of Evan’s articles written for Fire Brand. As of October 25, 2012, that number is at 1,896… and rising.

Currently undergoing revision. Clips are out-of-date.

CLIPS

• If I Ruled on United States v. Progressive
• Injuries to Pitchers
• The Podcast Revolution
• The Power of Baseball Blogging
• A Homage to Johnny Pesky
• How to create and monetize an effective blog
• A rhetorical analysis of Captain Aubrey Daniels’ closing in the My Lai Court Martial

COVERAGE

• Alumni Spotlight: Evan Brunell, AS ’09: Northeastern Alumni, 10/09

In October 2003, as Aaron Boone’s 11th-inning home run off Tim Wakefield landed in the left-field stands at Yankee Stadium and provided a gut-wrenching end to another chapter in the long-playing Red Sox-Yankees drama, Evan Brunell was not unlike the majority of Boston fans. The initial feeling of shock yielded to dismay and anger: a reserve third baseman who had hit just six home runs in the regular season became the latest Yankee to drive a stake through the heart of Red Sox Nation.

Brunell, a high school student at the time, took the loss hard. A diehard Red Sox fan, he couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the loss and the continued inability of Boston to exorcise the Yankee demons. While Sox fans flooded the airwaves of sports radio and consoled each other as best they could, Brunell discovered another coping tool: blogging.

What started as a way to deal with the heartbreaking end to a promising baseball season would evolve into MVN.com, a blogging Web site with a current stable of 200-300 fans who write about virtually every topic in sports. With MVN.com, Brunell, AS’09, who earned his degree in journalism, provides an outlet for fans to discuss the travails of their teams with an audience that shares their interests.

Brunell acknowledges there is a marked difference between sports bloggers and professional writers, but he attributes that to just one major difference: accessibility.

“The access journalists have in terms of locker rooms and the ear of ‘insiders’ gives them information they can use, and information bloggers need to do their work,” Brunell said. “As for those accomplished bloggers, not much differentiates them in terms of talent – or even an understanding of how journalism works – from a professional.

“Take myself, for example. I have a journalism degree. What is necessarily better about accepting a job at a low- to mid-level size newspaper to cover high school sports as opposed to creating a successful market for your blog in a high-profile subject?

“Newspapers are switching from having information and being the requisite influential voices to being gatekeepers of content.”

Brunell is sensitive to the opinions of those who feel blogging is simply an outlet for sports fans that can’t draw the line between team loyalty and objective reporting. But he also feels there is some credence in the remarks made by life-long fans.

“Readers gravitate to writers who live and die with each play along with them,” Brunell said. “It gives bloggers credibility, and readers are apt to consider their suggestions far more seriously than a journalist who grew up 500 miles away with no vested interest in the team.”

Because of the success of MVN.com and the hours required to manage its content – he is one of three full-time employees – Brunell has little time to do his own blogging. However, he has managed to continue to indulge his passion for the Red Sox with firebrandal.com, a Red Sox-themed blog that recently formed a partnership with ESPN. He describes himself as a “guardedly optimistic” Red Sox fan whose birthday (August 16) shares a date with two important events in Sox history: the anniversary of the death of Babe Ruth and the firing of manager Jimy Williams.

Brunell feels Northeastern was the perfect place to hone an interest and talent that existed before his arrival on campus.

“I’ve always been a good writer and I came to enjoy it in my class work,” said Brunell, who is deaf and credited NU’s Disability Resource Center for easing his transition on campus. “When I was trying to determine a future for myself, I thought about how I could fuse my two passions together: writing/reading and sports. Thus, sports journalism was born.

“My experience at Northeastern was amazing. I thought NU offered a great atmosphere, both academically and [in other opportunities]. I met a broad range of professors who all informed and improved my outlook on the world.

“There were four general areas that I pursued in higher learning: journalism, business [in which he has a minor], writing, and leadership. I can certainly say that I am rather advanced in knowledge in these areas thanks to Northeastern.”

“There is no magic number; it’s all about consistency and quality,” said Evan Brunell, president of the Most Valuable Network, or MVN, a conglomeration of hundreds of sports blogs at http://www.mvn.com. “If you write three times a week but are consistent with that number, and the quality commands going back, then it’s worth it.

“There is no magic number, but the magic word is consistency.”

…

Brunell goes a step farther and integrates his personal blog entries on Facebook, a social networking site. On Facebook he already has an audience of friends that could potentially be interested in his entries. However, Brunell said integrating your blog with your social networks can help a little “but not much.”

“Social networks, in my experience, are good to build awareness, but the hits don’t come until (an) event commands it,” he said.

Brunell is also a huge proponent of adding multimedia – pictures, videos, polls – to a blog to make it more interactive with the readership. He said these items are “woefully underused” in the blogosphere.

” ‘War and Peace’ is a great book, but you make a conscious choice to read that heavy text. Online, readers want it to be fast and intuitive,” he said.

…

Brunell, on the other hand, doesn’t even check (his readership tracker).

“As a blogger I have never had much use for a hits tracker. I will know if people read it. As a blogger, the best way to succeed is to start the blog for yourself. The readers will come,” he said. “If you start it for others, the passion will never be there, and readers will never come. … I know a lot of bloggers might disagree with me on the relevancy of a hit tracker, but I personally have no use for it.”

• Sturbridge student takes on ESPN: Sturbridge Villager, 8/24/07
• Worcester Telegram and Gazette (8/23/07) by Bill Doyle:

Blogs come into play
MVN thrives under Brunell

Hearing may be a problem for Evan Brunell, but vision isn’t.

The deaf Northeastern University student believes he can see the future of sports media, and he expects his Web site that has volunteer bloggers cover their favorite teams will be a major part of it.

Using his computer at his parents’ home in Sturbridge and renting server space, Brunell started what he believes was the first sports blog network, the Most Valuable Network, in December 2003 during his senior year at Tantasqua Regional High School.

“A friend and I,” Brunell said via e-mail, “decided instead of venting to each other about our favorite teams (Red Sox for me, Pirates for him), we would start venting to the world.”

Bloggers were sought for every baseball team, and the network began to take off after Dave Cohen, a software programmer with IBM, created the MVN.com Web site the following spring. With advertising revenue from ticket agencies, MVN bought out All-Baseball.com in March 2005 and 360ThePitch.com, a podcast network, the following July. Cohen wanted out last year after ESPN and AOL lured away some of MVN’s bloggers, so Brunell’s father, Dave, bought out his one-third share. Brandon Rosage, the webmaster at 360ThePitch.com, was hired to run the Web site, and Dan Benton came on board to provide some much needed marketing savvy.

MVN now has 20,000 readers a day, and Evan Brunell believes it has become the best source for independent sports blogging. Believe it or not, MVN.com is the No. 1 New York Giants site on the Internet, visited more than the team’s own Web site. MVN.com also covers 25 colleges, and Dave Brunell thinks providing an alternative to the colleges’ own Web sites holds great promise.

“On the college Web sites, there’s not going to be anyone saying they should fire the coach,” Dave Brunell said. “We are a fan-based driven site. We have commentators. We don’t really report the news.”

MVN now has 300 bloggers, ranging in age from 16 to 80. Many are college students building their résumés, but others are doctors, factory workers, travel agents and established journalists. Twenty-two are women. They all offer their opinions about baseball, football, golf, wrestling, boxing and other sports. Some bloggers attend games, some don’t. Some, as Evan Brunell pointed out, live abroad and follow their teams vicariously through the Internet. Locker room access is limited for bloggers because obtaining media credentials for major league sporting events and earning acceptance from most traditional sports media haven’t been easy.

On the other hand, MVN’s interactive capability provides readers an easy means to respond to bloggers, and MVN has become such an Internet staple, it has been written about by Sports Illustrated’s Web site, the Edmonton Sun and the popular sports blog, deadspin.com.

MVN’s bloggers receive a percentage of advertising revenue, but Evan Brunell hopes MVN grows enough to allow them to be paid regular salaries soon.

“Once we can turn MVN into a blogger’s job and not their hobby, that’s when it will really take off,” Evan Brunell wrote.

Evan Brunell said while MVN isn’t losing money, it isn’t making any, either. All revenues are poured back into the company, and the 20 or more hours a week he works at MVN don’t earn him a salary yet.

“I’m still living at the whim of my parents,” he wrote.

A recent partnership with Fantasy Sports Ventures provided MVN.com a much needed financial boost, and national advertisements began running on the site this month. By the time Brunell graduates from Northeastern, his father expects him to have a good full-time job waiting for him at MVN.

Deaf since birth, Brunell carries a 3.73 GPA in journalism at Northeastern with the help of an interpreter and is on schedule to graduate in 2009.

“I haven’t had to overcome anything in regards to being deaf,” Brunell insisted. “I simply am deaf. Always have been, always will be. Sure, I am limited in some aspects. You won’t see me as an anchor on our flagship show, and I probably won’t be involved in the day-to-day activities, but I certainly will be involved in starting up a TV network when — not if — it happens.”

Brunell sees a day when MVN adds a television network that competes with ESPN, but with one important difference. While ESPN provides national stories with national exposure, through its Web site and TV network MVN would cover local stories nationally.

“To make the jump from a Web site to a television network,” Brunell wrote, “will require many hours of sleepless nights, sweat, tears, but we can do it. It’s my goal, and I’m going to do everything I can to get there.”

“If we had a marketer at the beginning,” Dave Brunell said, “we’d already be the new ESPN.”

Evan Brunell’s intention to form a TV network may cause others to snicker, but he’s one determined young man. His relentlessness helped convince NESN to offer all of its Red Sox studio shows in closed caption two years ago.

“If people think I’m reaching too high, no one has told me,” Brunell wrote. “Really, can anyone ever reach too high? I live by a personal motto that I created: Reach for the universe, not the sky. If you don’t reach the universe, at least you’re higher than the sky.”

• The Northeastern Voice (8/12/07) by Jason Kornwitz:

If Evan Brunell hopes to build the next ESPN, he’s certainly on his way.

Brunell, a 21-year-old journalism major at Northeastern University, is the president of Most Valuable Network, a burgeoning, independent sports media company that relies on volunteer bloggers to cover their favorites teams.

What quietly began as an idea between a small circle of friends in high school just three years ago, has quickly become a phenomenon, a full-blown business venture that’s received coverage on Sports Illustrated’s web site, the Edmonton Sun and deadspin.com, one of the most popular sports blogs.

“It wasn’t intended to be a company,” Brunell says. “It wasn’t intended to be big. But I took charge of the whole thing and it kind of took off on me.”

And take off it did. Most Valuable Network (MVN.com), is currently made up of nearly 300 writers from all walks of life and from all age groups (bloggers range from 16 to 80 years old) bent on providing comprehensive sporting news, game stories, statistical analysis and editorial coverage of a range of sports from baseball and football to golf, wrestling and boxing.

Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon, St. Louis Cardinals ace Mark Mulder and tennis superstar Roger Federer are a few among a host of athletes interviewed on MVN. And while MVN doesn’t have a major backer like CBS or CNN, it has credentials to attend every minor league baseball game and has, for example, been invited to Spring Training for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Golden State Warriors’ practices.

“I want MVN to become the next ESPN,” Brunell says. “I want to get a TV channel, I want to pay our writers a full time salary. Once we can turn MVN into [a blogger’s] job and not their hobby, that’s when it will really take off.”

Brandon Rosage, MVN’s web designer and producer, has helped incorporate a podcast and live radio station into the network’s repertoire. Rosage, himself, hosts a two-hour general sports radio show every week day called “Outsider Radio” and “The Pitch,” which focuses on Major League Baseball.

Rosage, who began working full-time on MVN last October when Brunell bought-out his independent sports podcast network “360ThePitch,” trusted Brunell’s leadership qualities and management skills so much that he was willing to put his financial stability on the line.

“I’m not just here to do web design. This is something that for me was a major financial risk,” Rosage says.

“He’s built such an enormous network. Everything is really calculated and organized,” Rosage says. “I was surprised and hesitant at first but he finds a way to keep on top of things and keep MVN moving.”

Brunell’s intensity and passion for such a large undertaking is impressive when you realize he’s still a college student. But when coupled with the fact that he was diagnosed as deaf when he was 1 year old, it’s even more inspiring.

Still, Brunell doesn’t view his inability to hear as a challenge, but rather as a way of life.

“This was the hand I was dealt,” Brunell says, “and I just deal with it.”

At Northeastern, Brunell is active in the university’s Deaf Club (NUDC), where he designs the group’s website. And his involvement in the American Sign Language Program (ASL) allows him to interact and become friends with other students who look out for his best interests.

“When I was looking at colleges to go to, I kept hearing ‘you’re going to have problems with support services, you’re going to have to fight for everything you want.’ I’ve never had to fight for anything here. The support system is fantastic.”

A Sturbridge, Mass., native, Brunell attended The Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Mass., until he was 10 years old and received a cochlear implant at 16. Equipped today with a note-taker or an interpreter for class, Brunell carries a 3.73 GPA and plans to graduate in 2009.

David Del Pizzo, Assistant Director of Deaf Students and Interpreting Services at Northeastern, has known Brunell since he was a freshman and continues to work with him in an advisory role. What’s more important, however, is their friendship.

Del Pizzo, who himself is deaf, recognizes Evan as a dedicated, hard-working individual with an insatiable thirst for sports.

“Evan is a very motivated person,” Del Pizzo says. “He knows so much about sports and he’s got great people skills and is very friendly.

“He’s a good debater on sports, and I’m a sports person too so I love to get into it with Evan. We can really have some hot discussions.”

Del Pizzo, who admits he favors MVN over ESPN, says he’s taught Brunell to meet challenges, assert himself and explore all avenues available to solve problems. But Brunell has taught Del Pizzo important lessons as well.

“One thing that I’ve learned from Evan is that you have to approach things with an open mind. You can’t make a decision based on small things; you have to have a broad perspective.”

Brunell’s talent for continually thinking ahead and his ability to transform his imagination into reality with MVN’s new radio and podcast channels has been helped along by his participation in Northeastern’s co-op program.

As an assistant for the Red Sox foundation, the official charity arm of the baseball club, Brunell created programs for various events such as the ever-popular Picnic in the Park and for the celebration of the opening of The Teddy Ebersol’s Red Sox Fields.
“The main reason I came to Northeastern was for the co-op. You come across all these different problems and difficult scenarios and you learn what to do on co-op so when you graduate you will know what to do.”

For his second co-op, Brunell worked for Northeastern Marketing and Communications web services. The opportunity to observe, first-hand, the inner-workings of an operation from a marketing and public relations perspective, has influenced Brunell’s approach to MVN.

“I got to see a better way of how an organization is run,” Brunell says. “I saw plans and outlines and that have helped me make MVN more professional.

“I’m starting to shift the way we do business to a more professional way. Now, I’m asking for business plans, setting up different guidelines, trying to make sure things run seamlessly. Co-op gave me a better idea of how a business should be run as a whole.”
Brunell’s current internship with ESPN Radio in Boston has given him the opportunity to write commercials for various organizations in the area, but if he has it his way, he’ll be able to work full-time on MVN by the time he graduates.
But it won’t be easy.

By incorporating a slew of advertisements into MVN, Brunell hopes to eventually gain the financial backing to pay the writers, but as of right now, it’s still a work in progress.

“I’m running a business,” Brunell says. “It takes a lot of work. More work than anybody thinks. My father runs an oil business. When I was little I used to think ‘that’s pretty easy, you just tell people what to do.’ But it’s so much more complicated than that.

“I’ve learned how to be a business man, I’ve learned how to approach people in a business-like way, I’ve learned what to do, what not to do. I still can’t really believe it but it is something that you’re not going to know what it entails until you actually do it.”
Bijan Bayne, however, strongly believes in Brunell, and says he’s a model for young students or sports fans with media aspirations.
Bayne covers the NFL in editorial style for his blog “No Huddle Offense” on MVN, and has written a book about the earliest Black professional basketball players called Sky Kings: Black Pioneers of Professional Basketball.

“[Brunell] is ambitious, business-like and the man has vision,” Bayne says. “I would believe in anything Evan sets his mind to doing. As the reputation [of MVN] grows, and the marketing and partnership skills of MVN bloggers and the front office grow, it will set a standard for grassroots sports communications—fan driven and aimed at fans.”

Accordingly, the enormous amount of effort Brunell puts into MVN (no fewer than 20 hours per week) and the responsibility attached to such a venture, enables Brunell to maintain an air of humility unfamiliar to many others his age.

“This isn’t something I did by grand design,” Brunell says. “I came up with a good idea one day and I ran with it. But at the end of the day, I’m still the college kid trying to graduate and trying to have fun while I still can. But I will say that there’s no better college I could have picked for it. I made the right choice, no doubt about that.”

• The Tantasqua Town Common (8/16/07) by Tim Peterson:

Sturbridge native Evan Brunell has been a diehard Boston Red Sox fan all of his life. He has always wrote and read everything he could about his favorite team. “I’ve always liked the Red Sox and I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing about them,” said Brunell. “My favorite subject in school has always been English, and I just wanted to become a baseball writer.”

Brunell graduated from Tantasqua in 2004 and is currently a student at Northeastern University in Boston.

A couple of years ago, Brunell and one of his friends, who’s a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, created the first sports blog network in the United States called MVN (Most Valuable Network). “The blog started when I wanted to write about the Red Sox and my friend wanted to write about the Pirates,” said Brunell, who played on the varsity baseball team at Tantasqua. “We just came up with the idea to get different people to write about their favorite team.”

Brunell is the MVN President and the Red Sox columnist for his site. He writes two or three columns a week. He also handles all of the customer and employee relations. “I usually work about 20 hours a week on my network. I take care of the day-to-day business of running the company,” he said.”We’re always trying to improve it.”

MVN has quickly become a very popular blog site with sports through- out the United States.

“It took off, and it has just kept growing and growing,” Brunell said. “We were able to find good writers and people were coming to read it. We also hired a professional, who put our Web site together, so we kind of got on the map because of that.”

MVN currently has over 250 sports- writers.

“MVN is accredited by MLB (Note by Evan: this particular quote is not exactly true — we probably couldn’t get into Kansas City or Cleveland), but it’s nearly impossible to get a press pass at Fenway Park,” said Dave Brunell, who’s the MVN treasurer, a Cleveland Indians fan, and Evan’s father. ” If we lived in Kansas City or Cleveland, Evan would be able to get into the press box with a press pass.”

According to Evan, the only thing a MVN sportswriter needs is a real passion for his or her team. “We have had people who worked for us who didn’t have the passion for it and they quickly flamed out,”Evan said.

Anyone who reads Evan’s stories or any other story written by a MVN sports- writer can give his or her opinion about it.

“It’s an interactive site and that’s why it’s such a popular site,”Dave Brunell said.

Despite not being able to sit in the press box with the other Red Sox beat writers from the Boston Globe or the Herald, it hasn’t stopped Evan from giving his opinion about his favorite team.

“I just blog from a fan prospective,” he said.”I watch the games on television or if I can a ticket, I’ll go to a game. I also read all of the Boston newspapers. I’m just like a normal fan except that I write
about it and give my opinion on the team.”

So far this season, Evan has attended about 10 Red Sox games at Fenway Park. One of his favorite games this season was the day he saw Daisuke Matsuzaka make his first start at home against the Seattle Mariners.

“That was probably the most exciting game I’ve seen them play this year,” he said.”Dice-K struck out Ichiro in his first at-bat of the game. I was sitting in the grandstand behind the plate and I’ve never seen that many flashbulbs go off at once. Not even in the playoffs or when Roger Clemens came back. It was amazing.”

He also had the opportunity to attend the 2005 home opener. “I’m never going to forget that day because I was there in person when the players received their World Series rings,” Brunell said. “It was very emotional for
everybody because all of the heartache that had built up over the years was gone.”

Brunell also has had the opportunity to interview Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia, and Manny Delcarmen when they played for the Red Sox AAA affiliate, Pawtucket.

Baseball isn’t the only sport that MVN covers.

Evan’s favorite NFL team is the New England Patriots, who he thinks will win the Super Bowl this season. “If they don’t win the Super Bowl this year, I’ll be shocked,” Brunell said. “I’ve only been a Patriots fan for about seven or eight years, but I’ve been a Red Sox fan since I was born.”

A couple of months ago, Evan created MVN Radio on the Internet. (Note by Evan: not true, I was misquoted. I did not come up with the idea, the Pirates fan mentioned in this article did. I brought the idea to the radio guy at MVN, but we decided not to pursue it at the time. Some months later, the decision was made to pursue it. I was involved in starting it up, but I do not deserve credit for this.) “I have someone else running MVN Radio, but I was the one who got it approved and got it started,”he said.

Someday, Evan hopes MVN can become bigger than ESPN. “I certainly would like to get to the point where ESPN is afraid of me. I would like to get a television channel and a radio station,” Brunell said.”ESPN just cov-
ers general sports. If something happens with the Patriots, you’ll read an objective straight story about it at ESPN, but if you go to my site, you get an opinion of whatever the news is from a Patriots fan point of view, not just a national beat writer point of view. That’s the biggest difference between the two sites.”

When Evan was a young kid, his dream was to be a baseball sportswriter, but now his main goal is to make MVN the best sports blog network in the country. “ESPN dominates the sports world. They just need someone to challenge them,”Brunell said.”I just hope we can do it someday.”

It is with regret that I’m writing to announce that I have made the decision to close down MVN.

There are many factors that led to this decision, and thusly I will not attempt to work through all the factors and the various happenings that led to this decision. I will, instead, simply cite that the biggest motivating factor was (what else?) finances.

MVN is backed by family money. In better economic times, our investment on this end was not significant. However, the downturn of the economy has hurt us. Online ad revenue dropped at a time we were pushing to make MVN a bigger and better destination. While we were fortunate to have the resources to exist to date, we’ve arrived at the situation where further investment can no longer be justified.

From a personal standpoint, I have worked full-time pro bono for MVN for the six years of existence. Given my current position in life, this was an arrangement that could not last. I did not see potential for future earning at MVN in a time frame that would have been acceptable — or even doable — to my personal welfare.

For the past three weeks, I have been working on getting all MVN blogs a future home. I am pleased to announce that many of the blogs were found homes, either at Bloguin or Real Clear Sports. Several blogs have made the decision to either shut down themselves or go independent. In the coming days, we will be providing you a full list of where the new homes of the blogs will be.

Over the next few weeks, the writing platform at MVN will be dismantled entirely. This means that any mvn.com inbound links to archives will not work. We will provide full archives to the blogs in question for them to import to their new homes. Before January is out, the only MVN page that will exist is the front page at MVN.com, which will continue to look as it does today.

Eventually, we plan on selling the domain. At that point, unfortunately, all traces of what MVN once was will have vanished.

What will survive are the blogs, and I hope that you will continue reading them. We are immensely proud of the blogs and writers that came through MVN. A lot of influential writers got their start or their big jump on these pages. We’re honored that we could provide that opportunity for them and hope that they look back on their tenure at MVN with fondness.

I know that I can say with utter certainty that I poured my heart and soul into MVN, at the expense of personal advancement. My life for six years was building up MVN and the blogs to the point where everyone could succeed. My goal this entire time has not been about personal success. It’s been about making everyone around me successful. I have found that if you do that, you will become successful yourself — and in better ways than if you had focused on yourself from the start.

While I would love to give thanks to many people in this space, I’m afraid this note would reach Moby Dick-ian levels in an attempt not to leave anyone out, so I will simply say: You know who you are, and I hope you know the amount of gratitude I feel for you.

On December 31, 2003, I was in my senior year of high school. I was still reeling from the Red Sox losing to the Aaron Boone-led Yankees two short months earlier… and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to make my voice known. I started a Red Sox blog, Fire Brand of the American League. A friend joined me, starting a Pirates blog. A light bulb went off over our heads, and here we are six years later.

If I had to choose a lasting legacy for MVN, it would be as early adopter of new media, to the point where MVN was a great influence in bringing sports blogs to the national mainstream of consciousness. When it got started, blogs weren’t even at the stage where it could be looked on with scorn by mainstream media. Heck, most of our early recruiting efforts came from message boards, because there weren’t enough blogs to find. (To be clear, I’m not citing MVN as the reason why sports blogs are popular — that would have happened regardless.) MVN was able to recognize early on the power of blogs, and what a network of blogs could do. Of course, to this day there are numerous sports blog networks. I remember when there was just one.

I’ll let our history and influence — whatever you think it is — speak for itself.

I’m just proud I got the opportunity to lead MVN and work with many wonderful people.

Sincerely,

Evan Brunell
Co-founder, Owner, President of Most Valuable Network, LLC

A rhetorical analysis of Captain Aubrey Daniels’ closing in the My Lai Court Martial

On November 13, 1969, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Seymour Hersh broke the news of a catastrophe that would become the “first officially-admitted United States atrocity against civilians” (Russell 710). With the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Captain Aubrey Daniels was tasked with prosecuting the man responsible, platoon leader William Calley. Calley had murdered hundreds of innocent Vietnamese civilians despite receiving no fire or resistance. It was not an easy task, as the United States Army would have the spotlight shone brightly on them and everything they stood for: honor, pride, sacrifice, serving your country. The Army was under attack from the world for this tragedy and had to be the one responsible for bringing itself to justice.

Daniels artfully exposed Calley for the murderer he was and set about doing so while absolving the Army of any blame. By appealing to the use of rationality and emotion, Daniels was able to identify Calley as the guilty party. After accomplishing that, he was able to set Calley apart from the United States Army ideal, painting Calley as a man who did his own bidding and did so of his own will, not the Army’s. Using methods derived from rhetorical critic Kenneth Burke, one can see clearly how Daniels was able to accomplish this task.

“TORE THIS NATION APART”
The Vietnam War in the American consciousness

The Vietnam War, staged from 1959 to 1975, is the most unpopular war in the history of the United States and is also the longest war in American history (the United States did not join the war until 1965). For all its unpopularity, the United States won every battle it fought against the North Vietnamese, but did so with a toll of 60,000 American deaths with over 300,000 injured (Mintz, Introduction, War at Home), affecting countless families. The systemic murder of civilians engineered by Calley was just one part of the story, but it was perhaps the most indelible event to occur in Vietnam. Over 250,000 protesters marched in opposition of the Vietnam War in November 1969 in Washington, D.C. The war also resulted in California’s entire university system being shut down (Mintz, War at Home).

According to Stephen Mintz, the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History at the University of Houston, “no American conflict in the 20th century so tore this nation apart, so scarred its social psyche, so embedded itself in its collective memory, and so altered the public view of institutions, government, the military, and the media” (American Culture). A generation after World War II and the atrocities the Nazis committed, Americans were about to find themselves on the other side of the coin. No longer were they good fighting evil, the ones horrified at the tragedies of the enemy. No, the tragedy would be their own and very real.

“DOWN HERE ON THE GROUND, I RUN THE SHOW.”
The My Lai Incident and platoon leader William Calley

Set in My Lai, Vietnam and referred to as “Pinkville” by American troops (Hersh, Lieutenant accused), the systemic murder of no less than 109 and perhaps more than 700 Vietnamese citizens, all elderly men, women, children and babies sparked outrage across the globe. People demanded answers from the United States a generation after the country had led the war crimes tribunals and laid down many of the rules that would later form the Geneva Convention (Russell 711).

Led by Calley on March 16, 1968, the only person to be convicted at a court martial over the proceedings, the platoon burned the village and left no stone overturned, shepherding dozens of Vietnamese civilians to ditches where they were promptly pumped full of bullets or had hand grenades blow them to bits. Women were resorted to rape to attempt to save their lives and their children’s’ lives, only to be murdered after the soldier got his pleasure (Jones).

A total of three platoons took part in the My Lai incident, not just those under Calley’s watch. This called into question the validity of Captain Ernest Medina as an Army witness against Calley as Calley and several others claimed that Medina had given orders to shoot civilians. Medina has denied these accusations (Beidler). A witness recalled Medina shooting a young girl point-blank and grinning afterwards (Lief 347).

The entire company of which Calley participated in (called Charlie Company) had a bad reputation. Calley was the worst of the bunch and was constantly harassed about his ineptitude. Calley developed a mean streak and a constant desire to prove himself as no pushover:

“He was the laughing stock of Charlie Company. In the platoon, his men didn’t know whether to ignore him or kill him. He was an incompetent and a pariah, under attack from both above and below, who tried to mask his insecurities with unconvincing explosions of rage. The resultant buffoonery was further packaged back into the blustering and strutting often characteristic of the little man in the military, the proverbial shortround. Nor was any of this helped by the company commander’s unrelenting mockery of him in front of his men, who consistently heard him addressed as “young thing,” “sweetheart,” or ‘Lieutenant shithead’” (Beidler).

A helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, attempted to end the madness but was rebuffed by Calley, with Calley stating “Down here on the ground, I run the show” (Jones). Many of My Lai’s inhabitants that survived the massacre did so thanks to Thompson. Many, however, were at a loss as to what to do. Several soldiers broke down in tears as they committed the atrocities or refused to take part in the event. One soldier even shot himself in the foot so he wouldn’t be obligated to take part (Jones).

The incident took over a year to enter the public consciousness and only did so thanks to the efforts of a former soldier, Ronald Ridenhour, who heard stories of the incident. He persisted in bringing the matter to the attention of Congress (Russell 704). In addition, Army photographer Ron Haeberle sold the photos he had taken of the massacre to LIFE magazine which put the unflinching candids in stark color in front of the public (Jones).

The Army was caught between trying to solve the matter internally and withstanding the calls for an international investigation; a war crimes tribunal. Complicating the matter was the United States’ heavy influence in such tribunals that occurred after World War II. In accordance with the Nuremberg Trials, every man was to be held responsible for his actions and using the excuse of “following orders” was not grounds to indemnify a soldier (Russell, 705). This would come in play during the trial when Calley claimed he was just following orders of Captain Ernest Medina, something Medina and some members of the platoon contested (Lief, 345). The United States, however, did not follow its own lead started a generation earlier and granted full military and civilian immunity to Paul Meadlo, a soldier involved in the attacks. This flew in the face of the code of the Nuremberg Trials (Punishment 1315).

Sentiment in America was decidedly pro-Calley:

“Instead of dismissing Calley as a cold-blooded killer, the majority of ordinary Americans accepted his claim that he was simply a patriotic soldier, faithfully acting out his duty and viewed him as a heroic martyr (Jones).”

In addition, fellow soldiers expressed support for Calley, according to Hersh. He quoted several soldiers saying things such as “There are always some civilian casualties in a combat operation. He isn’t guilty of murder.” “There are two instances where murder is acceptable to anybody: where it is excusable and where it is justified. If Calley did shoot anybody because of the tactical situation or while in a firefight, it was either excusable or justifiable.”

In the midst of all this, Army Captain Aubrey Daniels was tasked with prosecuting Calley in the court-martial that began November 17, 1970. Daniels, as an Army officer, could not use prose to convict Calley much like Robert Jackson had done to convict the Nazis in the Nuremberg Trials. Instead, he painstakingly covered every salient point in the events that occurred and left no shred of doubt that Calley had willfully committed murder. The jury had two major things to determine. The first was if Calley was responsible for the murders and the second was if he should be exonerated on the basis that he was following orders. More pressing than the thought of following orders (as the Nuremberg Trials had invalidated them as a defense) was the concept of if these orders should have even been followed had they, in fact, been ordered. “The court held that Calley, by virtue of his age, rank, experience, and training should have known such an order was illegal and convicted him primarily on that basis” (Cockerham 1274).

Calley, found guilty of 22 murders on March 29, 1971 and sentenced to live with hard labor, quickly walked out a free man. President Richard Nixon changed the sentence to house arrest and pardoned him three years later. He later married and ran his father-in-law’s jewelry store in Columbus, Georgia where he is considered a military hero (Lief 351).

“PROSTITUTE THE TRUE MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES SOLDIER”
Rhetorical analysis of Daniels’ closing

Daniels had to juxtapose getting justice for the genocide with the dilemma of trying an American soldier. Daniels was challenged with distancing Calley from the ideal of the American soldier. Condoning the conduct of Calley would have been tantamount to idealizing the soldier as a ruthless murderer. This was a huge public relations blow for the United States, and Daniels had to save the image of the Army while at the same time tarnishing an active soldier who had served the country in the Vietnam War. Daniels needed to expose Calley for what he was and convince the jury through several modes of argument that Calley was guilty of the crimes committed against him and then effectively separate him from the Army.

In Daniels’ closing, he draws in the jury and worldwide audience effectively by utilizing enthymemes and rhetorical questions. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an enthymeme is an argument “in which one of the premises is implicit.” To take it a step further, implicit is defined as “capable of being understood from something else though unexpressed.” When constructing an argument that leads to an implicit conclusion, the audience is drawn in and involved in the argument. Instead of being told the conclusion; the reasoning behind the correct path to take, the audience comes up with the answer on their own, framing their thoughts and opinions while being influenced by the rhetor’s arguments.

He produces his first enthymeme in striking fashion, saying that Calley “came to a man that was dressed in white, a man that was described as a monk…he blew half of his head off” (Lief 354). What does a logical person, a logical soldier do when he comes across a man clearly a monk? Is his head blown off or is he accorded more respect than that? In addition, this monk was of old age, as all the men in the village were elderly (346). Daniels goes on to explain the reaction of the village to the First Platoon moving into the village: “They received no fire from that village. None.” The inference is that there was no reason to open fire and start killing, which of course, the platoon would end up doing.

Daniels had to prove that Calley had, in fact, committed the murders: the ones that he personally did and the ones that were committed by virtue of giving the order to do so. He did this through recapping the witnesses’ claims and providing an enthymeme: “[The witness] observed Lieutenant Calley and Meadlo place the people in the irrigation ditch and fire into the people, but he didn’t see the people come out” (356). Another inference, this time in a direct question, comes with Meadlo and another soldier named Jim Dursi who had similar testimonies on Calley ordering the civilians killed. Says Daniels: “And here are two men testifying to that fact, both of whom are out of the service, one of whom is from Brooklyn, New York, and the other is from Indiana. Do you think they made up something like that?” (362)

In an additional enthymeme, Daniels recollects the testimony of a soldier named Thomas Turner, in which he subtly interjects two adjectives used to describe Turner that suggest that there is every reason in the world to believe Turner is unequivocally telling the truth. Right after mentioning Turner’s name, he clarifies Turner being a married student in Nebraska. Left unexplained is that a married student is one of the most trustworthy things a man can be. Indeed, Turner is referenced to have been the witness that “brings it all together” (365). Daniels continues this pattern of inference throughout his text. He relates a witness seeing Calley conversing with a sergeant, in which the sergeant then immediately went to the ditch holding the civilians with Calley and began firing in the ditch. Despite not having any proof what the conversation is about, Daniels makes it clear to the jury there can be no debate what the conversation was about. He asks several questions, all challenging the jury to infer that the conversation was about, “at a minimum encouraging him” (377).

In addition to using enthymemes and rhetorical questions to appeal to a person’s sense of logic, Daniels plays to the emotions of the jury. By establishing Calley as a man who went off on his own, unchecked and not representing the values of an American soldier, Daniels had to then paint Calley cruelly; deserving of punishment. How does he do that? He constantly repeats the phrase “unarmed men, women, children and babies,” ensuring that the jury understands clearly that there was no resistance from any person, no cause for any person to deserve being shot. He outlines a graphic display of murdering a child by relating a story of how Calley was apprised of the fact that a child was running away. Calley threw the approximately two year old child into the ditch and shot him (354). If not emotional enough for the jury, he relates how “that baby was at the end of that barrel” (368). Near the closing argument, he ponders the question “Would the evidence have proven any infant guilty of any offense which could justify his execution?” (398)

Daniels also takes care to provide various ways of referring to death as Calley referred to it – by doing such, he allows the jury to see how callously Calley referred to committing murder of innocent civilians. Daniels attributes statements of “Take care of them,” “Waste them,” “I want them dead,” “Kill them,” “We’ve got another job to do,” to Calley. He takes care to particularly repeat the term “waste” throughout his closing, perhaps the most callous statement Calley could have made that showed his frame of mind. Daniels also conjures up the thought of inhuman execution by referring to the unarmed men, women, children and babies as “cattle,” slaughtering them (383). He evokes the ultimate sign of sacrifice – “Mothers trying to protect their children” (362).” This tugs at the jury’s heartstrings while receiving a ‘double whammy’ of symbols of inhuman execution.

Daniels ties together the concept of the negative, as advanced by rhetorical critic Kenneth Burke, with the concept of emotion. The negative is “a powerful symbolic tool human beings use to create categories of experiences.” By using certain words and messages, a division is created that isolates what a person is and what a person is not (Stoner 215). Take for example Daniels’ use of the word “cattle” to describe how Calley arranged the victims in the ditch. By referring to them as cattle, he illustrates that Calley saw and treated them as cattle – ripe for butchering. The problem is that they were human, not cattle.

Daniels uses this concept of division to point the finger at Calley for the horrors inflicted; the Army or Captain Medina was not responsible. This is where Daniels starts isolating Calley from the Army. Throughout the text, Calley is constantly referred to as the one who gave the orders or who made the commands. Not once does Daniels suggest that Calley was following orders or doing what he told. No, Calley was running the ship, even when people tried to stop him.

Unlike Robert Jackson’s closing argument in the Nuremberg trials in which he disparages the men and their positions in Hitler’s army, Daniels paints Calley as an irrational, murdering savant who disgraced the name of the United States Army. He does so in an especially scathing close to his speech. He starts out by saying:

The accused was a commissioned officer of the armed forces of this United States when he slaughtered his innocent victims in My Lai. He has attempted to absolve himself of responsibility by saying that he had his duty there, that he acted in the name of this country and the law of this nation, and I submit to you and the government submits to you that he did not and upon that question there can be no doubt.

Daniels admits right up front that Calley was a member of the United States Army. He also nods to Calley’s contention that he was only serving at the pleasure of the Army, but Daniels refutes that argument. Throughout the whole closing argument, Calley has painstakingly verified that Calley is guilty of murder and uses this ending to hammer home the point he has made all along in the artifact; Calley did not represent the United States Army:

To make that assertion is to prostitute all of the humanitarian principles for which this nation stands. It is to prostitute the true mission of the United States soldier. It has been said that the soldier, be he friendly or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed. It is the very essence and reason for his being. When he violates this sacred trust, he not only profanes his entire cult but threatens the very fabric of international society.

These are harsh, heavy words. The word “prostitute” is especially striking, as the word evinces an image of an immoral person who sleeps with anyone possible for personal gain. By pairing together the word “prostitute” with a United States soldier, it is made extremely clear that those reflect two conflicting ideals. Daniels also cites the honored tradition of a soldier protecting “the weak and unarmed,” and goes so far as to say that this is the sole reason a soldier exists; not for war, but for protection of “the weak and the unarmed.” Daniels goes on to rephrase the “prostitute” argument in a different way, alleging that Calley’s actions was a direct insult to his “cult,” which can be taken one of two ways: the cult of America or the cult of the Army. He addresses the world’s outrage by referencing international society by decreeing that the world’s very survival is dependent on ensuring that soldiers of armies act honorably. With the atrocities of the Nazis a generation ago and then an American soldier joining these Nazis in infamy, Daniels used this stage to send a message to all countries of the world; the actions of the Nazis were unacceptable, and the actions of Calley ranked right up there to the point that his own Army was willing to blight him in such a way. No future incidents would be treated any less harshly. Daniels then wraps up:

The traditions of fighting men are long and honorable. They are based upon the noblest of human faith, sacrifice. … When the accused put on the uniform of an American soldier and took the oath of allegiance to this country, he was not relieved of his conscience… He was not given a license to slaughter unarmed men, women and children on his own personal supposition that they were the enemy…This accused has failed in his duty as an officer (Leif 399, 400).

By bringing up the oath of allegiance, Daniels has put a great burden on Calley’s shoulders, the shoulders of any soldier, for that matter. He is now an agent, a representative of the country and cannot just blindly follow orders (if there were even orders); a conscience has to come into play. By also dangling the nugget that every other soldier was implied to have been participated in “the noblest of human faith, sacrifice,” he divides Calley into the outcast who is certainly far from noble

Daniels effectively isolated Calley from the United States Army, absolving the Army of any wrongdoing. He holds Calley, and Calley alone, responsible for the murders even though no other soldier, following Calley’s orders, was convicted in accordance with the Nuremberg laws. All of his arguments point to one thing: Calley was of sound mental clarity and possessed the intent to kill and did indeed kill unresisting, unarmed men, women, children and babies. “Your duty is clear,” Daniels said to the jury. “…Find the accused guilty as charged” (400).

“NO COMPROMISE”
The aftermath

Aubrey Daniels faced a hard road in prosecuting Calley. Jury selection took three days with 25 officers dismissed due to being pro-Calley and anti-Army (Stoner, 348). He faced a country who defended Calley’s actions and called him a national hero while at the same time outraged at the fact the Americans were being sent abroad to war. He faced being called an enemy by America and the soldiers in the Army. He was also subject to international criticism at the hands of people who felt that despite their prosecution of Calley, America was sheltering its Army.

With Medina serving as a witness and getting off scot-free despite leading the company and reportedly participating in the murders along with other participants (such as Meadlo) not being charged for their crimes is one of the many flaws of the trial and caused outrage on an international scale and led people to wonder if the effectiveness of the court-martial at the hands of the United States would serve as a deterrent; that only bringing in international law would serve as a deterrent (Russell, 706-7). Indeed, the later incidents at Abu Ghraib and Haditha at the hands of the United States Army in the Iraq War would suggest Kent Russell, author of “My Lai Massacre: The Need for an International Investigation,” was correct when he said that “it would seem that individual prosecutions alone will not effectively deter United States soldiers from committing further atrocities” (706).

At a relatively young age, 29, Daniels had to stave off the media attention the case brought and focus on the task at hand. That task included helming the largest trial in army history, consisting of over 100 witnesses. Daniels capped off the exhausting process with a three-hour closing argument just explored.

When Calley was later placed under house arrest, Daniels wrote a letter of protest to then-President Richard Nixon. In it, he says that that decision gave “credence to those who believed that Calley and his troops were merely ‘killing the enemy’” and that Nixon “should and would stand fully behind the law of this land on a moral issue about which there can be no compromise.”

Daniels used several relevant techniques to distance the Army from the catastrophe that Calley had engineered. He painted Calley as a vicious murderer who showed no remorse for his actions, a man who abused the privilege and power of being a United States soldier. He used the concepts of pathos and logos to convince the jury of Calley’s peers that Calley was in fact, guilty and then harshly rebuked Calley as a representative of the United States by using the Burkean concept of division. Given an impartial jury, he engineered a resounding victory. Unfortunately, Calley would shamefully escape the throes of the law thanks to public perception that Calley was a hero, when, in fact, Calley was a villain.

WORKS CITED

Beidler, Philip D. “Calley’s Ghost.” The Virginia Quarterly Review Winter 2003: 30-50.

<http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2003/winter/beidler-calleys-ghost/>.

Cockerham, William C., and Lawrence E. Cohen. “Obedience to Orders: Issues of Morality and

Legality in Combat among U.S. Army Paratroopers .” Special Forces. 4th ed. Vol. 58.

University of North Carolina P. 1272-288. JSTOR. June 1980.

Hersh, Seymour M. “Lieutenant Accused of Murdering 109 Civilians” “Hamlet Attack Called

‘Point-Blank Murder.’” “Ex-GI Tells of Killing Civilians at Pinkville” St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 13, 20, 25 Nov. 1969. Candide’s Notebooks. <http://www.pierretristam.com/Bobst/library/wf-200.htm&gt;.

Jones, David. “FOUND: THE MY LAI MONSTER OF MASSACRE.” London Daily Mail 6

Oct. 2007: 50. Academic. Lexis Nexis. Keyword: My Lai.

Lief, Michael S., H. Mitchell Caldwell, and Ben Bycel, eds. “Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and

My Lai.” Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury : Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law. By Michael S. Lief, H. Mitchell Caldwell and Ben Bycel. New York: Simon & Schuster, Limited, 2000. 345-400.

Mintz, S. (2007). The Vietnam War. Digital History. University of Houston.

< http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu>

“Punishment for War Crimes: Duty: Or Discretion?” Michigan Law Review. Vol. 69, No. 7.

The Michigan Law Review Association. 1312-1346. JSTOR. June 1971.

Russell, Kent A. “My Lai Massacre: The Need for an International Investigation.” California

Law Review. Vol. 58, No. 3. California Law Review, Inc. 703-729. JSTOR. May 1970.

Stoner, Mark and Sally Perkins. Making Sense of Messages: A Critical Apprenticeship on

Rhetorical Criticism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005.

bschmove – Flickr

THOUGHTS OF LEADERSHIP

Throughout my tenure as heading up an independent sports media organization (MVN.com), I have constantly had to adjust my notion of thinking of how to lead an organization. The readings (specifically Creating Leaderful Organizations by Joseph A. Raelin and Exploring Leadership by Susan Komives, Nance Lucas and Timothy McMahon) I have done have not necessarily changed my concept of leadership, but they have strengthened my ideas and given me additional ideas to build upon.

Prior to entering those readings, I was of the mindset that the situational model was the best form of leadership to follow. Several other valued aspects of leadership that I have learned is the idea of power being shared back and forth; the value in employees/colleagues feeling as of they are a part of the company and the decision process therein; the value of creating “intradepenence,” as opposed to interdependence; and knowing and understanding the five phases of positive response to change.

One primary form of leadership that Exploring Leadershiprelies on is relational leadership.

RELATIONAL LEADERSHIP

One aspect of relational leadership is the absence of authoritarian power; power is given to the leader by his or her colleagues. There are many different types of power, ranging from expert to legitimate, but the theory holds that all types of effective leadership can be drawn to one effective tool: the colleagues “assigning” power to the leader.

Some very salient points are brought up in this manner, but the model glosses over too quickly on legitimate leadership. Whether or not a dissatisfied colleague likes it or not, he or she either has to follow the lead of the boss or quit. To be sure, if too many competent employees quit, the onus is on the boss to change course or to be fired.

Nonetheless, for the most part, legitimate leadership is a motivating tool in corporate America that I daresay is a large reason for how leaders are created. There are certainly born leaders, but there are also created leaders, and most created leaders who then go on to be viewed as a model for leadership were assigned legitimate leadership at first and then learned what it means to be a leader; what tactics to take and not take, what tone of voice in what situation to use… essentially, the created leader succeeds because of adaptability.

The relational model is a good one to follow, reasoning that the more power you give away, the more you will get – your own voice will be increased in value if the listeners feel they have increased power as well. They are more comfortable in speaking out; they are more willing to listen. But it disregards the benefit of legitimate leadership altogether, and sometimes people need power to transform themselves. The popular notion is that power is corruption, but it can also be a means towards leadership.

SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP

I am a proponent of situational leadership. As Raelin says, “since the multifaceted, dynamic organizations of the modern era require nimble and behaviorally complex managers, leaderful managers are needed to perform a variety of leadership functions and vary them with the situations that they encounter.”

Prior to the Raelin book, I had learned and experienced situational leadership, but I had not been able to put it so succinctly into words that Raelin has been able to. Exploring Leadership has documented that situational contingency leadership was popular in the 1950s and ‘60s. Since then, leadership has evolved to influence, reciprocal and the current chaos leadership. Reading over the major assumptions and criticism for situational, influence, reciprocal and chaos makes me question whether or not we really have moved on from situational and the following iterations are just situational leadership in different packaging.

Take the major criticism of situational leadership: “Most contingency theories are ambiguous, making it difficult to formulate specific, testable proportions. Theories lack accurate measures.”

I fail to see how this is a major criticism when it is the very foundation that situational leadership is built on. Of course it’s ambiguous! It varies from person to person and there is no set rule of how to act or set tenet to follow. It’s meant to be ambiguous and flexible, molding a person into a leader that can effectively work with multi-varied personalities.

Take the assumptions of the influence, reciprocal and chaos approaches, respectively: “Leadership is an influence or social exchange process, Leadership is a shared process, Attempts to describe leadership within a context of a complex, rapidly changing world.”

What of these couldn’t apply to situational leadership? None.

CHANGE

In a business, change occurs rapidly, both foreseen and unforeseen. The Social Change Model in Exploring Leadership introduces key elements of both positive and negative change in an ability to reflect and react to the stages that people go through.

Negative change starts with stability, the status quo. Negative change is then implemented, which is greeted with shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and finally, acceptance – the latter of which may convert the person into believing it is positive change but at the very least allows the person a form of stability to rely on.

Positive change occurs with uninformed optimism, informed pessimism, hopeful realism, informed optimism and completion. I will now briefly run through each stage as it correlated with the new platform and my feelings which is slated to launch October 15, the phases of change which I could remarkably identify with:

• Uninformed optimism causes excitement in a new project, one that sounds fantastic and could be game-changing. When the concept of MVN’s new iteration was broached, there was widespread excitement without having gone into the nitty-gritty of it.
• Informed pessimism came in the focus of the preliminary discussions and budget concerns. Amid rising prices, hard realities and new concepts (which evoked its own subset of positive and negative change), the platform had to be tweaked and while there was still excitement in the project, it was tempered.
• Hopeful realism came about on the building of the project and all the positives that could be derived from the project. It quickly became abundantly clear that even if consumers did not respond with as much enthusiasm as we “in the know” did, it was an improvement on the current MVN regardless, which made the project worth it.
• Informed optimism occurred not too long ago. The project looks excellent, people who have seen the new platform are stoked and we are ready to catch the world by storm.
• Completion is the final stage of positive change, and we are in the final stages of preparing for launch; making sure everyone is on the same page, making sure the Web site is prepared for the launch.

CONCLUSION

One of my favorite tools to evaluate my leadership is to conduct surveys, often anonymous, with people who can offer feedback on my leadership skills and strategies.  Garnering feedback from those with constant contact with myself can be invaluable and also a form of sharing power with employees (or colleagues, as I prefer to put it) who then feel that they can help shape my leadership and my actions therein to sustain a positive environment for all.

My personal model of leadership can best be described as situational leadership, but borrowing from many other tenets of leadership. There is not just one form of leadership that should be the end-all, be-all. Leadership is constantly changing, permeable and malleable and to allow oneself to conform to one model of leadership is to limit one’s abilities to be a successful leader.

The year 1948 was a pivotal year for the Middle East as it gave one disenfranchised population (the Jewish) a long-coveted homeland while relegating the inhabitants of said homeland into a smaller, partitioned state that quickly was militarily occupied by the Jewish army after the Arab neighbors of the homeland attacked.

Since then, the Jewish people of the homeland termed Israel have gone from the oppressed and persecuted against for thousands of years to the oppressors, adamantly refusing to give up (rightly) its land it worked so hard to obtain but not sympathizing with the plight of the refugee Palestinians despite a curiously similar parallel to the Palestinian plight.

The sensitive issues that have plagued this region for 60 years have increasingly become focused in the lens of the world as violence escalates and a solution remains tantalizingly close but never consummated.

Gaza Strip, by James Longley, presents a harrowing description of life as a Palestinian youth, shuttered away in the Gaza Strip. Remaining as an impartial observer, the camera documents conditions that Americans would not stand for in their own land and uses the children that it focuses on to strike at the heart of the emotions of the reader.

By using this child to confront “grown-up” issues, the viewer is compelled to watch how the future, or lack thereof, of Palestinian youths is being played out. Youths drop out of school to support their family, risk their lives to throw stones of no importance other than a declaration of their outrage and dream of death, for the life they are living is not life at all.

The sense of the documentary is not one of bias despite the lack of Israeli representation in defending their actions. The director of the documentary does not concern himself with political ideologies or opinion. Rather, the focus of the film is to allow the viewer to experience what the Palestinians have had to endure since “The Catastrophe” of 1948. While the documentary never directly addresses the Nakba, it is referred to as the agent of what has caused the suffering of the Palestinians.

Does the documentary attempt to engage our sympathy for the Nakba? Not so much as it attempts to engage our sympathy for the present-day Palestinian plight and the implicit plea to find a solution for peace. However, all of this stems from the Nakba, and one is forced to wonder if the War of ’48 was indeed a victory. To be sure, it was a victory for Israelis, but was it a victory for the world?

Exodus says yes. Starring Paul Newman, Exodus is the story of the founding of the state of Israel. It documents the yearning to throw off the British rule and find a homeland where they can rule themselves. It shows the different avenues the Jewish take to achieve said goal and essentially ignores the Palestine question to focus on the Jewish plight.

The War for Independence is framed in the light of necessity, of earning what is their right and defending it at all costs. The Palestinians are irrelevant to the Jewish and draws the viewer in to identify with their plight and disregard the opposition – much like Gaza Strip does for the other side.

Exodus does not attempt to draw the viewer in identifying with youth and their bleak outlook on life. Rather, Exodus uses the tool of determined adults intent on providing themselves and their children a bright outlook. Gaza Strip used pessimism to make the point, Exodus used optimism. It’s a logical difference given the situation of each nationality, but it is done with the same sense of wrongdoing. The Jewish were wronged by World War II and need a homeland to call their own. The Palestinians were wronged by being expelled from their homeland and call for a right of return.

The Lemon Tree, a book penned by Sandy Tolan, brings the two obstacles together in a detached, historical telling of the conflict in the Middle East. The book begins by showing us how the Palestinians were set in their land and how the Jewish were oppressed and persecuted against by the Hitler regime.

Through a series of events, again recounted with no bias, the state of Israel is founded and the Palestinians are expelled. The author presents the facts on the backdrop of a Palestinian hell-bent on the right of return visiting the house he was expelled from as a young child. The book recounts the history of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict while retelling the story of the Palestinian and the Israeli he encounters living in his house.

While the beginning of the book makes obvious the need for a homeland for the Jewish, the emotional story plays out on the side of the Palestinian. It is the Palestinians that were wronged for much of the book; it is the main character, Bashir, that gets the most attention, and the Israelis who come across as the oppressors after having been the oppressed and fighting for their lives in the War of Independence.

While Tolan tries hard to maintain as neutral as possible, the dynamics surrounding the issue play out with Bashir commanding our attention and identification, while the Israeli, Dalia, wanders throughout the book frightened for the future of Israel. The only emotion evoked on behalf of the Israelis in the book come in the beginning, where  Dalia’s parents narrowly escape being sent to a concentration camp. After that, the emotional pendulum swings to the Palestinians where it remains. While logical because the Israel/Palestinian conflict started because of the founding of Israel, it nonetheless gives off the vibe that a solution must be reached that satisfies the Palestinians.

Tolan does, however, imply that what the more steadfast Palestinians, like Bashir, require as a solution is unacceptable – the removal of Israel as a state and every Jew that arrived post-1917 being expelled from the region. In the end, the book forces the reader to believe that the War of ’48 was a negative experience for it oppressed the Palestinians and expelled them from the little land they had.

The War of ’48 is presented more as a loss for the Palestinians than a victory for the Israelis because the Israelis are portrayed as being the attackers in the situation while the Arabs purportedly had no intention of going to war. While Tolan does his best to stick to the facts, the facts that create the Israeli/Palestinian conflict combined with the dynamics of the relationship Bashir holds with Dalia engender the War of ’48 to be seen more as a catastrophe than a war for independence.

The War of ’48 continues to plague the region to this day, and Israel is seemingly intent on not giving back any land and forcing Palestinians to live in poverty. No wonder it is a “Catastrophe” for the Palestinians. The challenge is juxtaposing the Nakba alongside the view of the Israelis – the war was establishing their independence, their homeland, their freedom from persecution.