It’s been a long time coming ladies and gentlemen.  The newsprint companies are beginning to shift from squirming from thethought of changing with technology to floundering as they suffocate from the lack of water… err, I mean, revenue.

If the sleek and slim, narrower new look of your favorite newspaper has made you smile at the thought of them growing an environmental conscience, I’ll burst your bubble now.  Newspaper companies aren’t going green.  They’re going BROKE.  Very few people realized the push late last summer and fall for a Washington bailout of newspaper companies.  Yep, they too have jumped on the bandwagon.  Check out Reuters.com and TheHill.com for more info on that.  This whole, “newspapers are a staple of American society” argument is crap.  Timely and accurate news reporting is a staple of American society.  Not the fact that it’s printed on cheap paper with ink that gets all over your dress shirt.  Heck, I’m glad people realized that timely and affordable transportation was more important than keeping all of the buggie manufacturers from changing their business, or we’d still be scheduling a stage coach instead of hailing a cab.

Though some newsprint companies such as the Houston Chronicle have dared to dabble in the world of Internet marketing in order to evolve with the people that feed them, most have stood firm.  Years of being admired and controlling entities in their communities have emboldened many newsprint organizations with the foolishness to forget that though they may influence local perception for a while, ultimately, the people they serve will decide where they will turn for information.  Slow to grow is now causing many of the once prestigious companies to grasp at any hope of revenue.

In an effort to continue the old world way of requiring the reader pay to hear the news, the New York Times announced yesterday a plan for charging frequent readers of their website.  I can’t wait to pay a fee to surf through the NYT site rather than simply conducting a search on Google!  Whatever.  Hey NYT, how about this novel idea, instead of charging me to read your crap, write something that will cause me to come back tomorrow along with all of my friends that I forwarded your link to, give away some papers or market yourselves on the web in such a way to build traffic to your site (free to the user traffic).  Then, when enough people are coming to your site on a regular basis, charge advertisers for the opportunity to appear in front of your audience.  I know, I know… it sounds weird but believe it or not, that’s how thousands of people across America do to make their living every day.  You might have one problem though.  The web produces completely transparent and track-able results for advertisers, so, you’d have to deliver something worth while if you took that approach.  Since you’re highly unlikely to produce a product that will cause a substantial gain in your site’s usage, I’d suggest you go ahead and gouge the few loyal readers you have left until you drive all of them off and ask for more government money or go away.

Oh, and about that going green thing.  So much for Obama pushing for “green” companies.  What industry is more damaging to our environment than the one that makes its profit by distributing more heavy stacks of paper that need be wrapped in plastic and flown or trucked to every corner f the country using trees, ink, petroleum products for plastics, diesel & jet fuels.  All so that the majority of their product can end up back in a landfill without even being read.  And don’t tell me it’s being read.  If it were, the companies doing this, wouldn’t be going broke.

Thanks to American Idol for bringing this guy to national television.  I hope I’m as cool, energetic, and flexible as this guy when I get to be his age.

He’s here to tell the younger generation that they look like a fool with thier pants on the ground.  I’ll be downloading this from iTunes as soon as I can find it.

Frito Lays, parent company of soft drink giant, Pepsi announced it will pull 2010 SuperBowl Ads after a 23 year run in order to do what?  Focus on web based marketing.  That’s right.  You always wanted to market your business where all the big boys were, well now you can.

Great thing is, that unlike a SuperBowl Ad, web marketing is completely scalable to your target market, budget, and geographic target.  Plus, chances are, your company can maneuver positioning easier than the global giants giving the little guys the advantage.

You can check out more about it here:  http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4751415

My Step Father was a pretty good guy.  He was a much older gentleman (old enough to be my grandfather) who fought in the second World War.  After the war, he was stationed in the last US Horse Calvary unit, which patrolled the US / Mexico border.  My mother met him when I was in junior high school and he was a breath of fresh air who shared tons of advice with me during my teenage years before passing away when I was 22.

He was a really sweet guy with a big heart but would love to stir things up by saying stuff that would shock people or catch them off guard, coming across as the crotchety old man or a little bit loony.  Like the time my brother was visiting during the holiday season with his 3 sons who were wrestling around on the floor and the youngest, named Keith was struggling to participate while holding onto a handful of candy.  When Dad convinced him that he could trust Poppy to hold his candy while he played.  While Keith was busy being pinned on the ground by his brothers, Poppy ate all of the candy.  Just to see the 3 year old’s reaction.  We would sometimes go to the mall with my mother and sit on a bench cracking jokes as we did some people watching.

Some of the advice he gave me sank in right away, some took years before I would look back and understand with clarity.  Some of the advice were words to live by but unfortunately there were times that as I look back, I see that he was way off base.  Today, I’ll share with you one of those misses but will share some of his wisdom in later posts.

When I was a junior in high school, I joined the US Army Reserves and left to spend the summer between my junior and senior high school years in basic training.  Before I left, Poppy gave me some advice.

He reminded me that when I was in basic training, the best thing to do was blend in with the crowd.  “Don’t lag behind. Don’t blaze ahead and draw attention to yourself.  If so, that will make the next 8 weeks the most miserable you can imagine, he said.  Just blend in and get through it.”

Wow was he way off.  Unfortunately, this was advice I took at the time and for the next several years.  Blending in and settling for mediocrity.  I never was the bottom feeder but many times, I held back the reigns and was afraid to stand out.  Though most of us haven’t been actually given this advice by their father, many people unconsciously settle for mediocrity every day because their scarred of standing out and being exceptional.

Being exceptional may be painful, hard, tiring, sometimes frustrating.  But then again, so is parenting.  Or most anything worth while.  Don’t settle for blending in.  What do you have that’s different?  Whether it’s your looks, knowledge, quirky talent, or something others would consider a struggle.  Don’t smother it in order to blend in.  Exploit it and stand out from the crowd.  Use it as your advantage.