Get Your Homeland Security Fix in a Flash

Niche marketing is where it’s at in the publications business. From orchids to kayaks to knives, somebody’s writing about it.

Still, I had no clue how pervasive the info industry has become. Who’d have thought there’d be something for people who want the very latest in homeland security news? Ball scores and movie reviews, yes. Weekly security news ... uh-uh.

I wouldn’t have guessed that anyone -- outside of the CIA, FBI and Congress -- would want the very latest news in homeland security. The less I know about homeland security, the better I sleep at night.

But, others apparently want to live in a constant state of high awareness. These are people who monitor the color-coded terrorism threats that flash on TV. For them, the Weekly Homeland Security Newsletter is the perfect bedtime reading.

The newsletter is an online service that claims 28,000 subscribers and entices you with this promo: “This Week in Homeland Security.”

For my tastes, any week in homeland security involves only one question: Were we attacked or not? If the answer is no, my interest is exhausted and I’m ready to pick up Sports Illustrated.

The newsletter goes far beyond that, however. The current issue features nearly 60 articles, with additional links to others and to countless newspapers across the country.

Not to quibble, but I wonder whether editors really should have picked this as the lead item this week: “Pennsylvania State Police Receive High-Tech Info System.”

You can tell the editors know the subject matter is heavy, because they pep things up with interesting elements like, “Quote of the Week.”

Again, not to quibble, but they might want to find something snappier than this week’s quote: “We recognize that with the globe getting smaller, with globalization, the Internet, with wire transfers, there is no one agency that can address the threats that we see. Whether it be terrorism or narcotics or trafficking of persons, we have to do it jointly if we are to be successful.”

In case you didn’t recognize it, the quote is from FBI Director Robert Mueller. He’s no Mark Twain.

In that same vein, the newsletter offers another feature called “Stats of the Week.”

I got a sinking feeling right off the bat when I discovered that this week’s stat was coming from “The U.S. Mayors’ Report on Communications Interoperability.”

In short, the mayors reported than more than 80% of their cities are “not interoperable” with key federal agencies. For a guy used to reading weekly stats about “Who’s Hot” in major league baseball, I wasn’t moved by the mayor’s report.

I’m afraid other articles weren’t much livelier. One of the headlines in the “What’s New” section is “Customs Needs to Change to Comply With Zadvydas Decision, Says GAO.”

I confess I didn’t read the article.

The newsletter is one of the services of the Homeland Security Institute, which was established and now being run by Analytic Services Inc., a Virginia-based private nonprofit public research company. The company was selected by the federal Department of Homeland Security and is the parent of the ANSER Institute, which publishes the newsletter.

If that sounds like more bureaucracy than you can handle, I see your point.

The layers of bureaucracy may account for the newsletter being pretty heavy sledding. Or, maybe homeland security isn’t an inherently funny subject.

I had some questions for the editor but was told she was busy working on next week’s issue. No problem, but here’s my advice to her if she wants to increase readership:

Add more humor.

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana. parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.