beinguseless

I was flipping through some RSS headlines and am disgusted with how celebrities and their antics make it to headline level news. There is a section for that under entertainment with music and movie releases and it belongs in the little square under those, not with key issues with the top headlines. When I check the news I’m looking for progress or changes on subject matters that pertain to subjects including my local area, economies, countries, and people and not mere water cooler headlines for people to gossip and talk about these music stars, actors, and actresses as if they talk with them regularly. Sadly it is to a point that some know what is happening more about them than within their own town.

I’m not going to name any specific examples because they, and there are many, don’t deserve any additional publicity or commentary on the internet than what currently exists. I’m sure you can think of several with ease, and I would contribute that to be from the amount of exposure in numerous forms from websites to magazines and even local news broadcasts. This isn’t a rant about how television is poisoning our minds and we should get our pitchforks and torches and march down to our local broadcast station. In my point of view television, magazines, and news broadcasts exist based on the feedback from its viewers and readers. It’s quite simple really and there are examples of it daily and is something most of us know about from school or work – supply and demand. I know of numerous people that agree and disagree with this and have thought about to understand the opposing view and I can see how they enjoy reading about it and that it is a source of entertainment. It is only entertainment, news is good and bad and we must take one with the other like it or not because it is reporting on facts that effect people and society as a whole. The entertainment aspect seems to have over saturated its column and time block into those around it.

Only until the majority or readers and viewers speak up, or Nielsen ratings go down, enough that the shift will begin. I was happy to read back in July that there is a local news station in Boston (need to find the reference and station) which agreed not to air such material and hope others agree to do the same. In the end I suppose if that is what people enjoy to read, so be it, I’m not here to dictate others just as they won’t to me, but let’s leave the news casts and columns free of entertainment and left to clever writing and research to make a story meaningful.

Since I began thinking about starting a blog, about a week and a half ago, I’m finding more and more things related to them and RSS that I haven’t paid much attention too. What comes to mind at the moment are things like the feature’s I’ve seen in WordPress from the ease of adding a new post and category and it’s nice little additions such as the change notifications at the top and how something new is highlighted then faded out. RSS has come a long way too from the amount of feeds out there, advertisements in them, and the many readers out there to aggregate all of them for someone. On a quick side note I’m testing out one called GreatNews right now which is shaping up to be pretty nice, but more about that in another post.

For the past several years I’ve been spending time with technology and business but in a different realm. It has been focused much more on bringing them together with a business logic and backend kind of administration. I’ve also been involved with building, and in part creating, numerous websites and while I have the knowledge to programmatically built it I feel that I’m somewhat out of touch with some of the present day concepts around what comprises a useful traffic generating site. But it’s not to late to change my ways and get back up to speed, never too late to learn or change. I’m in fact encouraged that I am becoming more exposed to these and think they will be of good use both for my own blog and professionally. If you can’t tell from the title of this post I’m reminded of a book by Spencer Johnson, but instead of cheese I think it’s my website.