A Flag Day salute to 34 years at the Daily Times

Believe it or not, there was a time when an important story could not be delivered in 140 characters.

I think that was a good thing. To be honest, most days anymore I'm not really sure.

Some day (I hope in the distant future) those of us who toil in journalism will look back at the seismic change that has convulsed our industry over the past 10 years and realize we lived - and worked - through one of the most precipitous industrial changes in history. I am thinking about that today because it is Flag Day.

June 14.

Or, if you prefer, Tuesday.

Flag Day is always special to me. It was exactly 34 years ago that I walked into these offices in beautiful downtown Primos for my first day at the Delaware County Daily Times.

It's been quite a ride.

We didn't Tweet. We certainly did not post pithy comments on Facebook. The Internet was still a couple of decades away. Podcasting? No,it wasn't around back then either.

We toiled for the most part in anonymity. There is a comfort in that. Comfort is something those of us in the news business don't know a lot of these days.

But we soldier on.

Today I will Tweet. I will post on Facebook. It will write my blog. I will record my Podcast. And after that I will start the process of thinking about tomorrow's print edition.

We do all of that today. It's a new world, one I've been blessed to toil in for more than three decades.

My kids today kind of smirk every time I mention how long I've worked at the same job, in the same place, at the same desk.

Apparently, that is an anomaly today. They don't expect to work at one place for very long. They do not believe there is anything wrong in moving from one place to another.

I guess that is just one more thing they did not inherit from their old man.

I was a print guy. Now I'm a little bit of everything - print, online, social media, you name it.

The goal is the same; how we deliver that information has changed immensely.

Thanks for reading along the way.

Comments