Google has a service where you can set up certain words or phrases and once a day Google sends along links to all the newspaper and magazine articles that came along in the past day containing the word or phrase. One of the words I watch is “mormon”. That Google alert lately has mostly been about the HBO series on the polygamists which isn’t even worthy of a further mention in my blog. Occasionally something interesting shows up … and this time it was a blog from a journalist for the East Valley Tribune published in Scottsdale, Arizona. Slim Smith, a forty-something, single, newspaper writer walked from one end of the Phoenix valley to the other end over a sixteen day period finishing a day or so ago. His Sidewalk Stories along with his own personal blog came up on the Google alert because he spent a part of his Easter Sunday with a Mormon family. That particular entry was interesting, so I went back to the beginning of his trek and read all the way through. It was worth the read — a very enjoyable set of entries.

Perhaps the Tribune is beginning to get it. Blogs have seriously eroded newspaper revenues just as podcasting is now seriously disrupting both TV and traditional radio. There is a significant change happening which is, in some ways, going back to the roots of American journalism. In the early 1700’s, for instance, there were close to thirty newspapers in Philadelphia alone. Each were one or two pages of small print. No advertising. The papers cost about a penny and were sold by kids on street corners. The content was primarily opinion pieces written by the people publishing the paper. If there was any news, it was printed in small boxes on the right sidebar. In other words, the newspapers of that day consisted of the writer’s and publisher’s view and opinion of the news. It was more than a hundred years later before advertising started appearing in newspapers and that’s about the time that newspapers started separating opinion from “news” in order to appease potential advertisers. The Internet has reintroduced that ability — everyone being able to publish their own view and opinion of the news. Some opinions are more valuable than others — but freedom of speech means more than just being able to hear other opinions; it means being able to publish and make known your own opinions. It’s a good change that’s underway. Slim Smith’s trek across the greater Phoenix valley is heartening. Thanks, Google, for bringing it to my attention.