Traditional Media misses one of the reasons behind Social Media successes.
Grand Traverse County has about 92,000 People within it’s boundaries.
Of those 92,000 people, there are 72,891 adults, (16,856 of whom are seniors) with most being (presumably) literate. But of those who are literate (and some who are not), most are blessed with their own perspective, ideals, their own take on the community and thoughts on each day’s events. In short they have their own opinions.
And for the time of all humanity before the early 1990’s, those opinions might have been limited to written correspondence, trips before a jury, the occasional party, social gathering, political event, or even a torch and pitchfork mob. Daily expressions of perspective were hardly possible or practicable, or anything close to what can be done now within seconds on new media platforms such as email, Facebook, Gab , instagram, or Twitter.
And newsprint media has always had, yet strangely maintains it’s own limits. The local newspaper is typically published daily and has one, and rarely two pages dedicated to the pulse of the community.
Of those nearly 17,000 seniors in our county (as described above), how many don’t have any interest in Facebook or the other platforms? Out of those shouldn’t we be curious how many have given up on trying to let their views be seen because of limits that the print media enforces in its soy-ink ‘community’ forum?
(8)Nuh Uh.
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