Before my brain has woken up on Sundays, I like to do the easy puzzles in the paper. My favorite is the “six differences” on the back of the comics section.
Here’s a puzzle for Friday from this photograph (found by clicking on the commuters link above). I got it from a man named Juan Giner, who is an extremely smart and well-traveled consultant—not always a dirty word—with an outfit called Innovation Media Consulting. He spoke with myself and several dozen news types on Wednesday. Look at this photo—taken in the 1950s—and then imagine all the ways the photo would likely be different if a photographer went to that same station today. There are at least six differences.
They are: More women. Not just white men. Nobody would be wearing a hat. Everybody would be talking on a cell phone ... and for the purposes of our discussion, there would be far fewer people with a paper tucked under their arm.
Giner’s message to all of us journalists wasn’t one of gloom and doom. Just a reality check. The center is always changing. As soon as you get comfortable with a center, it moves to the edge. There is more clutter in the world, more choices. If people don’t want to wear fedoras, then selling fedoras is a tough way to make a living. Better only takes you so far. At some point, you have to be better AND different than your competitors.
Oh, yeah. There was a sixth difference. The photo would be in color!
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from 
Newspapers aren’t a dying breed, but an evolving one. It’s moving away from print that makes some people in the industry crazy, but many would-be subscribers go to the web now. If there’s one (of many) maxims that papers should keep during this period it’s the one that says “Innovate, innovate, innovate. Or die.”
Call it Darwinism in Newsprint.
Please don’t foster the improper use of personal pronouns which is so commonplace today. In your brainteaser item you spoke of a gentleman speaking to you and referred to yourself
by saying that “he spoke to myself”. The correct pronoun here is me…...“he spoke to me”.....not “he spoke to myself”. You are the only one who speaks to yourself. It’s been a while since my good old Reynolds High days, but I know that the English teachers back then both knew and taught grammer. In general, I don’t think that’s the case anymore.
Post a comment
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.