A view frequently expressed by internet entrepreneurs and commentators is: “Local is good”. To put it bluntly, it means that there’s more money to be made by serving a local community with advertising than by offering global coverage.

Three years ago that was not true. Even when the dollar was low and the pound high, a British website could make more from U.S. ads than British ones. I know, I tried both.

Here I’m more concerned with very local conditions: individual towns and counties. And, in particular, that “river of gold”, classified advertising.

Small Ads, as most people call them, are deserting local newspapers in a mad stampede and migrating online. Big ticket categories like cars, properties and jobs are piling into specialized websites where you can upload pictures and text, then sit back and wait for the response.

Local papers are losing out across the board in these areas. Many are closing down, most are currently up for sale. A month ago the Daily Mail group sold the prestigious London Evening Standard for £1 to a Russian oligarch who was once a KGB spy. The original Northcliffe must be spinning in his tomb.

The economics are stark: the costs of printing and distributing a newspaper or magazine, to the standards we have grown used to, are now prohibitive. Big websites may not yet be yielding a profit, but their smaller, nippier competitors are, or are about to do just that.

The question of where we will get our local news from is a pertinent one, especially as many councils are using badly-drafted anti-terror legislation to spy on people’s habits and activities. Not only do we get a KGB spymaster owning a major local newspaper, but KGB methodology too.

Clearly we need to be informed in our local patch. While 24-hour news concentrates on mainstream concerns at a national and international level, big TV is generally retreating from small stories in small towns. It’s not at all obvious whether small stations can fill the gap, while radio is blind and full of pop music.

It’s also true that big broadcasting and big print occasionally miss the point big time. The Daniel Hannan moment where a politician’s denunciation of Gordon Brown bypassed the mainstream media completely, but became a worldwide hit on YouTube, is a typical case. The story subsequently reflected back into MSM as an internet phenomenon rather than a political one.

Local information needs a light and deft touch, often absent from the big battalions.

As local newspapers fade away, they will be replaced by cheaply run local websites — a cut above blogs but using the same kind of technology and methods.

Here at Syntagma we are setting up a separate company to move into this space. We will start with a Devon and Cornwall site in May, followed by Somerset, and other counties down the line.

It’s an exciting time to be online in the content business. Costs are low, opportunities wide. But above all, with a whole tier of local news disappearing, including ITV’s variable contributions, it’s all to play for.

Local is not only good, it may well be best.

John Evans

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It’s not that I’m green in any political way, but I do hate seeing plastic carrier bags blowing down the street like tumbleweed, or hanging from trees like Tibetan prayer offerings.

In our house, we refuse to use them, entering supermarkets with rucksacks and other suitable containers, and feeling very virtuous in a dreary sort of way.

The trouble is, the world won’t allow us to dispense with them. Various charities that should know better put large, white plastic bags through the letterbox inviting us to donate items we don’t want.

Yesterday, it was the PDSA, an animal charity. Note to PDSA: wildlife is harmed by plastic bags!

Today it was a “mental health” organization, bleating “You’ll improve your mental health by donating your unwanted items.” Self-serving, or what?

This got me thinking about the whole business of mental health. For a start, what exactly is it?

When I was in my teens (duck out now or take the consequences), I developed an unhealthy taste for the novels of Dostoyevsky. The first one I laid my hands on was A Raw Youth, in the exquisite translation of Constance Garnett.

The work is an extended essay on frenzy. The youth in question stumbles around 19th-century Russia in an advanced stage of frenzied excitement. He clearly mirrors the psychological state of its author.

Callow youth that I was, I lapped it up, reading through the night in a frenzy of anticipation. This was the life for me: a frenzied one. What a pain I must have been in those days.

It’s easy to look back and gasp at the foolishness of young life, but we can’t relive it now. Too late, old chum.

My conundrum is, did Dostoyevsky have “mental health”? Would he even have recognized the pastel, slightly perfumed phrase? He simply got on with writing some of the world’s best political and psychological literature, and inspired countless teenagers with nothing better to do into the joys of a frenzied existence. It explains a lot, doesn’t it?

But would we actually want everyone to have mental health? Wouldn’t it be rather tedius?

In fairness, I’ve always been a laid back sort of fellow, frenzy never came easily, and I soon lost interest.

I’m beginning to think that my concern about plastic bags is the first sign of late-onset mental health.

Now where did I put my copy of Crime and Punishment?

John Evans

As it’s Sunday I’ve decided to give Gordon Brown a day off and continue with yesterday’s topic, “blogging”.

Doesn’t that sound old hat? Blogging is like last year’s newspapers — only of interest to historians and obsessives. Blogging, though, continues to get immense coverage on the “blogosphere,” mainly because lots of people invested money in it.

What I want to do here — very briefly — is to convince them they need to shift focus just a little to grasp the wider picture. Two years ago I wrote a rather silly piece on why I hated the “B” word in all its derivations. So I do have form here — I’m not just going off on one.

Blogs, or weblogs, began life as a new system of mass publishing. It made it easy for anyone interested in distributing their thoughts globally to do so at minimum cost. No wonder mainstream publishers felt threatened.

The problem for bloggers and blog-related businesses is that the word itself comes from a typical counter-culture and remains deeply embedded there. To say “blog” instead of “mass publishing technology” is to separate blogging from the world of publishing and lose its significance. Nowadays, “blogging” seems closer to politics than technology.

Typically, the mainstream has hoovered it up, adapted it to its own needs, and moved on. They have also raised the threshold of excellence by adding expensive new technologies.

When bloggers insist on standing aside, wearing their badge of defiance — blogging — they resemble the anti-capitalist mobs of the 1990s, the ragged-trousered international Marxists of the 1980s, and the newer “climuttchange” fanatics. They don’t seem part of the human race.

In the beginning blogging was a genuine topic of interest because it did have an immense releasing effect for many new voices. Now that it’s mainstream stuff, people should stop trying to create distinctions that are no longer there. They are not helping themselves if they want to earn a living online. Moving on is what successful people do, as Jason Calacanis has.

Blogging is not a movement, it’s lots of individuals doing their own thing.

Face it, blogging is boring. In the end, it’s what you publish, not how you published it that matters.

If you are anything like me, you will occasionally — as if by serendipity — come across a book you intended to write yourself.

The book I chanced upon is The Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black, a nom de plume of Mark Booth, Chief Executive of Century publishers, a British imprint of Random House. The author has used his many connections within publishing to amass an impressive array of data on his topic.

The simplest way to explain his subject is to state that science has become a militant materialist philosophy that believes matter precedes mind. Some scientists have even called consciousness “a disease of matter,” as if it were an interloper in a senseless universe.

This view is the complete opposite of what a majority of the greatest minds throughout history have believed — or better, known.

The perennial philosophy, as it has been called — that mind gives rise to matter — is still believed by the larger part of the human race. The last Pope, John Paul II, was taught in his youth by a Rosicrucian master. Following a car accident which nearly killed him, he had a spiritual experience which mirrored exactly what the teacher had taught him. Such was its overwhelming power, the young mystical Pole signed up for a seminary that led all the way to his becoming Pope in Rome.

The Rosicrucians (followers of the Rosy Cross) teach the age-old knowledge of idealism — that all is mind — in a Christian context. It is said that there are 20 miles of books in the Vatican library dedicated to this and similar points of view.

Quantum mechanics comes very close to idealism without quite letting go of the materialist base of science. There is no doubt that Einstein was a thorough-going adherent too. Everything he wrote screams “perennial philosophy”.

The problem is, the early Church came down very hard on anyone who challenged its materialist worldview, and, as Jonathan Black writes, today’s scientism demonizes anyone who as much as suggests an alternative to rocky lumps floating about in a void. Richard Dawkins is a prime example of the modern scientific inquisition. On the face of it, an alliance between early Catholicism and modern science is bizarre, but it’s a fact.

Most early believers in the supremacy of mind formed secret societies based on the Mystery Schools of antiquity, where spilling the beans meant death. According to Black, many of these societies still exist, though often branded with the tag “occult”, a word that simply means “hidden”, as in occluded.

Despite the iron fist in an iron glove approach of the present-day intellectual establishment, the vision of man’s ancient understanding of the universe lives on and thrives. As well as Einstein, the British astronomer James Jeans stated that, “the universe is nothing but a gigantic thought”. Isaac Newton spent most of his life studying aspects of it, so did C. G. Jung, the great Swiss joint-founder of psychology as we know it.

Buddhism and Hinduism are based on it, as are most religions, even Christianity, whose earliest exponents were Gnostics, a term meaning “knowers”, as opposed to believers. They sought, and many found, direct experience of the secret knowledge that mind creates matter, and not the other way round.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake, a contemporary biologist, has conducted many scientific experiments showing the influence of mind over matter, or “extended mind” as he calls it. His recent The Sense Of Being Stared At is a treasure chest of empirical idealism. His other work on the psychic abilities of animals is ground-breaking science at its unprejudiced best.

Black’s book is eye-wateringly comprehensive across the field, but concentrates on the ancient timeline and secret society aspects of the topic.

Anyone who has ever doubted the primacy of matter over mind, should read it with an open mind. It is a richly rewarding classic of its kind.

Announcing my new book, Mediate Yourself – Stand Out From The Crowd, targeted for pre-Christmas publication.

The title more or less explains what the book is about, but not why it has now taken primary place above two others I’ve been working on for a while.

Superdemocray – A New Art Of Corporate Governance was always a long-term project and is slowly falling into place.

Cosmosity – The Natural History of Nirvana was almost finished when an Indian author nicked the main title, and someone else “borrowed” the principal theme. Writing an online running commentary on a work-in-progress is not always a good idea. This book has been put on the shelf pending a complete rewrite.

However, Mediate Yourself has been quietly writing itself for some months and exists in multifarious pieces widely distributed on many sites and blogs. It would be impossible for any literary pickpocket to find them and piece them together into a coherent whole.

In fact, so much progress has been made beneath the radar that I’m able to announce it now without fear of exact plagiarism.

The domains, mediateyourself.com and .org were also available, which is always a good sign. The site will go up within shouting distance of publication.

The only decision still to make is whether the subtitle should be “stand out from the cloud”, instead of “crowd”. The first is more colourful and unexpected, while the second has more precision.

The New York Times has a rather gloomy piece on how bloggers are dropping dead like flies, apparently overcome by the strains of the 24/7 global internet culture.

Personally, I’ve not known a blogger who has slumped lifeless over a keyboard (touch wood). I imagine people pass away at inconvenient moments in many professions. Blogging and writing from home must have its share of dicky tickers like any other walk of life.

However, the NYT has chapter and verse :

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December. Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

From these few examples you would have to subtract the number of deaths and heart attacks in the general population to arrive at a guesstimate of internet publishing’s real rate of attrition.

No doubt there are serious stresses and strains working in the new online environment. However, a word of caution. Anyone who has worked for newspapers to tight daily deadlines will recognize the same pressures and symptoms. Journalists are not notorious for their alcohol consumption for nothing.

And try slaving in a factory, repetitively doing the same tasks thousands of times a day. Or surviving the water-cooler politics of office life. Worse, the back-breaking toil of farm work. There are no easy options in “the world of work”.

Methinks the problem lies, as ever, with meetings, travel, networking and other inconsequentials of the wired-up sector. Networking for the internetizen means Twittering and Tweeting incoherently to hundreds, maybe thousands, of “followers”, mostly without a shred of benefit to the bottom line. Email is another source of stress and should be stamped on ruthlessly, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote a day or two ago.

The Times has this quote from him, “‘I haven’t died yet,’ said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. ‘At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen. This is not sustainable,’ he said.”

Syntagma’s advice : drop the Tweets, do the paid work efficiently — a three-hour morning should suffice — then get out of the house on a long Photowalk, or maybe to the golf course or coffee shop (preferably without a Hotspot), and forget about the Labours of Hercules. He was a mythical character and is not one to emulate.

This morning I received a couple of comments on two old posts dating back to October 2005 and July 2006. Both posts have been popular for comments and email conversations. Neither is on topic — which are, Tech, Media, Publishing — and would fall into the very ample category of self-indulgence.

The first is, Hey, I’m a Viking, which tells how I discovered that I’m … erm … a Viking. It seems I have the genetic configuration called Baron Dupuytren’s disease, or Viking Finger. Here’s a snippet :

“This weekend I discovered I’m a Viking. … Yes, I’m one of those horn-headed, axe-wielding types who terrorized Europe for centuries. Before you run for cover, I’m not about to go on a spreadeagling spree or demand you pay me Danegeld — although that might not be a bad idea.

“I realized I’ve got Viking blood — as many in the British Isles have — because of a minor medical condition which affects the small finger tendon in the palm of a hand. This progressive condition pulls the small finger gradually across the palm, giving a rather gnarled, even romantic, impression to the onlooker. The figure of Captain Hook springs to mind. ”

The second, is about an obscure Cornish author called Crosbie Garstin, now utterly forgotten, even in Cornwall. Yet, he wrote a major Hollywood film, China Seas (1935), which starred Clark Gable, plus a memorable trilogy about the Penhales family. Here’s a taster :

“Crosbie Garstin is best known for his trilogy of novels about the Penhales family, published before the last war by Heinemann. The Owls’ House, High Noon and The West Wind are all cracking adventures set in Cornwall and on the high seas in the days of sail. China Seas, his last book, continued the genre, and was made into a Hollywood film starring Clark Gable. Garstin was an interesting character, a true adventurer and traveller. He served during the first world war in King Edward’s Horse and was commissioned on the battlefield in 1915.”

It always intrigues me why some posts attract comments long after they were published. Clearly, these two contain specific keywords that are regularly searched for on Google and other engines. Syntagma is number 1 on Google for both “crosbie garstin” and “viking finger”.

So doctors searching for medical information on Baron Dupuytren’s disease will land on our silly post. Let’s hope they don’t kill anyone with an axe.

It’s 2008 at last and the energies across the internet (especially the blogosphere) are very different from last year. It’s a bit like looking at the Earth from the barren wastes of the Moon.

That’s enough poetry for at least 12 months. Time for business.

The question on everyone’s face is : where are we now? So, where are we now at Syntagma Media?

In response to the general climate, we’ve contracted our network from 55 sites at peak, to around 30. This has been done by merging similar topics, archiving low performers and deleting the occasional dud. It leaves us with a more manageable portfolio of properties and with the task of defining a new advertising strategy for it.

We’re also anticipating the launch of our first private information site dedicated to the retail sector and aimed at retail corporations. This will become the core business in 2008 and should provide some spinoff advertising for the network.

Our print publishing program has been put on hold pending the completion of my personal writing projects, which should be wrapped up by late spring.

Energies are generally low this week and it took great effort to complete this short post.

Thank you for reading it. We’ll be back on Planet Earth soon.

We’ve all had the experience of a good mood turning sour after watching a news bulletin full of distant, but gloomy, events. It can ruin a whole evening by casting a pall of low-level misery over everything else.

Obviously there are health implications in this phenomenon usually observable through higher blood pressure and faster pulse rate. But can it also affect your wealth?

Jason Zweig believes that “the more you look at stock prices, the more illusory ‘trends’ you see.” His thesis is that Neuro-Economics “can help you understand your reactions and get richer”.

All this appears in his book, Your Money and Your Brain — Become a Smarter, More Successful Investor, the Neuroscience Way.

Neuro-Economics is a blend of neuroscience, economics and psychology designed to interpret the brain’s reaction to economic stimuli like falling stock prices. Apparently, within 12 milliseconds (one-25th of the time it takes to blink an eye), the news activates the amygdala, a part of the brain that initiates fear and anger. Falling stock prices incite the same brain circuits as the roar of a wild beast.

In those moments, if you make a snap decision, the likelihood is that you will sell your shares. You will also believe you have made a rational decision because the process happens so fast you are unaware of it.

However, all data shows that if you hang onto your shares, you will do much better in the long run. So what’s happening here?

The conclusion is that, the impulse to stay continuously informed about your shares in times of market turmoil leads to nothing but trouble — not to mention high blood pressure and pulse rate.

“Furthermore, the more often you update the prices of your stocks, the more often you will perceive ‘trends’ that are most likely to be just illusions.”

Neuroscience shows that it takes only two iterations of a stimulus for your brain to form an automatic and uncontrollable anticipation of another repetition. However, it’s more likely than not that the “news” was just noise.

Zweig’s advice to investors is : “Stop clicking on market websites. Stay away from the Bloomberg terminal. If you read the FT, pass over the market news and spend your time on the opinion pages instead. You will surely be happier — and almost certainly end up richer.”

Now that sage advice applies not only to economics and investments, but it can also be extrapolated into other areas as well.

It’s generally agreed that 90 percent of what we worry about never happens. It follows that 90 percent of speculation and prognoses never happen either. Keeping up with news, current affairs, politics, and many other topics, will prove to be nothing but hot air and a lot of bothersome timewasting. We should save our equanimity for the actuality of our own lives and never make decisions on the basis of incoming “news”.

This book neatly adds convergence to a couple of trends. All those books that tell us how to save time, e.g. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, and the current crop of books showing how great scare stories like mad-cow disease and apocalyptic warnings of the end of the world, never turn out the way the doomsters predict.

The Simpsons really is good for your health and your wealth.