OK, so June 5 has come and gone, and this essay is getting long in the tooth, but it is still relavent:
Ben Franklin was correct when he opined that guests are like fish. He said more, but we will pass on the remainder. The guests are gone and we have time for our other interests, including servicing this site. It was hard to do when we were playing tour guide eight hours a day and then playing cards until midnight. That is a killer schedule. (Just kidding about the fish, sis)
Catch-up: This past week, Policy Media published two essays that we thought were well worth commenting on. The first was Breaking News, Content is King
Of course that’s not breaking news. But what is exciting is how that online content has evolved from the product of professional writers to semi-pro bloggers/ vidcasters. In this process, an interesting question arises: If content is king, then whose content wins - the professionals or the passionate?
Normally, we like to link to the sources we quote, but for the last two weeks, our time to do this site as professionally as we would like has been limited. Here are two stats we have seen but can't find: 1) The internet has led to such a profusion of content that the amount of content contained in all of the volumes in the library of Congress is matched every 15 minutes. 2) The number of paid professional journalists is declining and stands at just over 50,000.
Not long ago we attended a meeting where it was speculated that the Rocky Mountain News would be gone in five years. The Rocky won't disappear as long as the joint operating agreement with the Denver Post continues, but the speculation was that that may not happen. As electronic media continues to supplant print media, the number of unemployed journalists will only increase.
BUT, and this is a big BUT, the professionally trained journalists may not have the skills to compete, as Policy media opined:
And often, the writers best suited to produce content online are those who were never trained for the old media.
These three observations are likely to be interconnected in a way that will give more influence to bloggers who are willing to do the work necessary to gain and retain an audience. How much work is necessary? We are guessing that it is at least two and may be as many as five years of steady blogging.
The other Policy Media essay caused us to think about where the wealth is going in this country. The essay was More Positive Economic News. The sentence that caught our attention was:
When the stocks go down, it's a very big deal and it's all the Republicans' fault. When the stocks go up, they only benefit rich Republicans and that's Republicans' fault too
Think about this for a few minutes: How many Republican billionaires are there, and how many are politically active? Is the rising stock market really benefiting "rich Republicans," or is it actually benefiting anti-capitalist Democrat politicians? If it is the latter, how do Republicans proceed to educate the public that the Republican party is the party of the middle class while the Democrat party is the party of the economic elite?
Finally, an UGLY AMERICAN story to tell. One of our visitors this past week was a Japanese foreign exchange student who just finished up her year. The purpose of that program is to give foreign students an opportunity to see the best of America. We can't do that when they meet Americans who go out of their way to insult them.
This week, one of our many tourist destinations was Seven Falls. After a climb to the top of the falls, we took a short hike to another, small waterfall. On the way, our high school age guest got ahead of us and stopped to wait. As we came up, a father and his two children approached from the other direction. In a tone that wasn't intended to be friendly, he said to her "In America we stand on the right side of the path." Since she was dressed in American purchased clothes and wasn't speaking, we won't guess what might have prompted this man to think she wasn't American.
A large number of volunteers and educators had gone out of their way to make the student feel welcome and wanted. Also, Colorado has a tourist economy. It is in no one's interest that Americans mistreat either exchange students or tourists who come to visit and leave their money.
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