Welcome to my Facebook Page and my LinkedIn Page and my every other wizardry format you might think would suit these weekly ramblings.
I have checked out Facebook profiles. Enough said. They aren't that compelling. It's not that you don't have exciting and useful lives dear diary, it's just that well, it's just, oh, I don't know how to put this. Let's just say I'd rather visit with you in person, if you'd just put your little screen down for a few seconds.
Hey, I have a Facebook presence too you know. But don't bother looking it up, there isn't anything of note to be found. As I said, anything you might need to know from me, I've probably spilled out in this column at one time or another. This is my pulpit.
I, like most of you, Googled my name once and after wading through 28 pages of mostly South Korean researchers by the name of Park, plus eight members of the LPGA, I came to my name. There wasn't much except for a contribution I had made to Time Magazine several years ago which they probably included so they didn't have to pay me.
And that leads me to another facet of the Internet world that requires some resuscitation.
Did you know that in this wonderful digital cyber world, anybody can be a reporter?
OK, being a reliable, believable reporter requires a few additional steps, but for the most part, readers of screens don't really care whether the report they're reading is true or not. The important thing is to be first. Accurate not so much. Carelessness doesn't count. Corrections, clarifications, clear statements not necessary. If it's really wrong, just "take it down," as if the damage had never occurred. No wonder cyber bullying is so popular.
It's silliness at work when word spreads quickly about an NHL fourth-line eight goal scorer who just got traded from Tampa Bay to Carolina for another fourth-line nine-goal scorer and "considerations." Whoopee, spread the good news.
Sarah Palin, Anthony Weiner, Rob Ford well, they're doing something stupid again. Is that news I need to have right now?
Now a text from a wife who may have lost the keys to the house, that's news I might need. It's not news for the global village and if the global village is, in fact interested in that, they need a new globe.
I often read stories for the first time, especially politically speculative pieces, that are a few months old and compare the author's speculations with what really happened, just to see if he or she was correct. Most often they were off, which makes their piece even more entertaining. And just to be clear, they weren't reporting, they were speculating or pontificating and editorializing which is quite different from reporting, as we all know, or should know.
So we continue cyber bullying because it's so easy. You get to hurt people without having to confront them. You get to be stupid, you get to be careless, you are allowed to have Bieber-like brain cramps, just because it's easy to go there with no consequences. You get to steal government and military secrets and splay them about at your leisure for the entertainment of others and call it reporting.
Well, it is reporting, but it's not responsible reporting, it's not good journalism and it certainly has consequences, it's just that you don't have to see them. And that's not the best of both worlds..
