Jay Bildstein

"Strange fascination, fascinating me, ah changes are taking the pace I'm going through" the sound of Bowie's Changes backs a montage of Daryn Kagan, growing up in Beverly Hills, as a Stanford student, a novice reporter and then a flash of clips at CNN. She is in the newsroom -the camera pulls back revealing a television morphing into a computer monitor. Now, Daryn is sitting on a plaid easy chair. News of disaster gives way to the story of a person who has overcome adversity. The search bar says DarynKagan.com. If I were shooting the Daryn Kagan story, that would be my lead-in.

Madonna had her Re-Invention Tour. DarynKa- gan.com is Kagan's reinvention. And it is an inspirational tour de force, a critically important vision that she has made real and is, perhaps, even more powerful than she realizes. Daryn and I discussed her new venture among other things.

I wanted to know what the impetus for the website was.

"Well, the first thing that happened was, after twelve years, CNN told me they weren't going to renew my contract. So I faced what a lot of people do, and will, and that is an opportunity to reinvent myself and I really used it as an opportunity to ask myself if I could do anything, what would I do. What would I want to do with my time and these were always the kind of stories that I enjoyed the most and I just kind of made it up. There is nothing like it on the Internet. It seems so simple, one stop shop for inspiring and positive news that features a daily webcast. So I just created it and like the movie 'Field of Dreams', build it and they will come. And that's how it worked out."

Hearing that explanation, I asked if she is the media's Jerry Maguire. I was thinking of the movie with Tom Cruise as a high-powered sports agent who has an inspiration about the way business should be conducted where he works, his thesis being people centric rather than simply money based. She quickly dispossessed me of that notion explaining "I don't need to reinvent any other media outlet. I don't need to tell CNN they should have more inspiring news, or the local news should have this, or the newspaper. We are living at this amazing time with this thing called the Internet and there's room for all of it."

Kagan's venture is meeting with success. She explained that she has a media company and her Internet presence is its platform. According to her, the website is making money and "we're finalizing a book deal" that should be done in a couple of weeks. She is excited that she owns her content, has a PBS documentary coming up and is doing public speaking.

Daryn claims not to look back wistfully to the kinds of things she once did, but admits that being on the red carpet at the Oscars, covering the Democratic National Convention and traveling with Bono was heady stuff. She expresses gratitude for her past opportunities.

"Hang out with me for a day and see who I get to meet and hang out with now." Stories on her site cover a wide range of interests: the woman in her 40's who finds Mr. Right and ends up donating her kidney to him; a visit with Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu traveling the world with 700 students on the Semester At Sea program; a man who lost 140 lbs. and is working to end world hunger; a young inventor who combined a knife and fork into a utensil he calls the Knork and is succeeding as an entrepreneur; among many other stories that inspire, inform, teach and uplift.

Since she is a prominent journalist, I was anxious to gain her insight on the media. I had something specific in mind. "I have to ask you, Katie Couric, the CBS Evening News, have you had a chance to watch?".

"Yes, some, and in fact the new executive producer Rick Kaplan is my old boss from CNN and a friend."

"Questions, comments, criticisms geared toward what they're doing?" I wanted more.

"The fact that it's a woman doing it?" she asked.

"Period." I was looking for any viewpoint she was willing to offer.

"I think two things there. One, I am not as interested in the story because to me the whole idea of the evening news is a dinosaur. I mean in this day and age that you are going to wait for six thirty or seven o'clock to have somebody come and tell you what the news is, in the order that they think you should hear it. By six or seven o'clock I've been on 12 news sites four times".

I interrupted Daryn, asking if she is a news junkie. She said yes and went on to her second point.

"The whole paradigm of who's in charge and where the power is, is completely shifting from the day when you had to wait for a bunch of people who live in New York City to decide what the important stories are, at the end of your day, is gone. The power is in the hands of the consumer today, the information consumer. You decide".

We spoke about Mexico. Daryn visited Puerto Vallarta in November 2005 and said that it was similar to sou- thern California. She enjoyed swimming with the dolphins and canopying -gliding harnessed on cables above interesting scenery. I questioned about Mexican immigrants in the United States, as well as the value of people learning a second language.

On the immigrant issue, she offered that on her website "I've been able to feature some wonderful American dream stories of immigrants who have come to this country and done some incredible things." She mentioned that a key component of the site is the big box on every page giving people the opportunity to tell their story. "All people need to do is click on that and write in and we would love to feature them."

She thinks that studying a foreign language is an excellent idea and that for a well rounded education it is important to know a second language. "If that's meant to be Spanish for some people then that's great."

I was happy to hear that her mother Phyllis, a breast cancer survivor, is doing well. Daryn mentioned that her mom benefited from early detection and said that the Kagan family is big on mammograms. I asked about her dad, now 74, and she confided that he is probably her biggest cheerleader.

While Kagan maintains that she is not looking to influence major media outlets, she has -by my comparison- hit upon a salient reality of today's news business. A significant portion of what passes as news is negative, sad, gossipy and not even particularly relevant.

Maybe, the owners and managers of cable news outlets, publishers of tabloids and provocative radio talk show hosts should become familiar with this quote by the late, Austrian psychologist Otto Rank "... for the time being I gave up writing -there is already too much truth in the world- an over-production which apparently cannot be consumed!" Decades ago, Rank's humility led him to that conclusion even though his work was the stuff of genius. Too bad many media honchos, whose work is not the stuff of genius, do not recognize the fact that a large swath of society is tired of being drowned with a half empty glass.

American media organizations are not generally run by towering intellects, but -to be alliterative- by mainly, money motivated, mayhem merchants. And much of the public has wearied of their theater of the absurd and circus of the sad. A great number of people are looking for news, but not simply news cast out of that jaded and craven formula.

In speaking with Daryn I thought of the words of performer/artist Henry Rollins "I believe that the definition of definition is reinvention." And though Kagan is reinventing her professional life, I believe that her genuineness and positive spirit are immutable.

Daryn Kagan's website, with its notion of informing while inspiring, was born, in part, of an insightful market analysis. It is also a challenge -not proclaimed by her, but occasioned by her work- to the media as a whole to do better. DarynKagan.com is a daily must visit website. Her site's tagline "Show the world what's possible" has never resonated more clearly.

As always, you can reach us with your questions and comments at bothsidesdx@hotmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you. You can visit Daryn's website at www.darynkagan.com and email her with your feedback at daryn@darynkagan.com.