Oh, Lord help us. A company holds a golf tournament to raise money for charity and to bring together its executives and suppliers? The Wall Street Journal story, “At CVS Golf Gala, Suppliers Pay for Access to Executives” (Sept. 24), reads like breaking news. Of course, it is not anything close. Tens of thousands of similar events have been held on U.S. golf courses, at beachside hotels, on Rocky Mountain ski slopes and in Orlando conference centers. Corporate sponsorships of charitable activities are both traditional and critical. If a company complies with the law, it should not be blocked from nurturing relationships with the groups with which it works. Today’s commerce happens in an increasingly disparate and disconnected manner. Is it better to make deals through emails and webcasts, or does it still mean something to shake hands with your supplier or customer? It’s important to remember this: people don’t do business with a business – people do business with people.
Media outlets fall over themselves to report the news faster and first. I heard a lot about their strategies at the Society of Professional Journalists national conference last week.
The pace of information is relentless — we all know that. For me, the biggest question arising from that pace is this: Can I absorb it and, if I can, will I understand it?
Reporters, editors, owners and professors at the conference were rightly focused on the future of the profession. Discussion and debate about the future was lively, heated, nostalgic. Many creative ideas popped up. I even felt a palpable sense of hopefulness, even as the dozens of journalism students in attendance gathered business cards and compared credentials and job prospects. In fact, the students provided a surprising grasp of the profession and asked pointed questions of high ranking media executives. They also dinged folks like me — who are of a certain generation — as being incapable of connecting today’s emerging information technologies with the time-honored tradition of gathering and pitching news stories.
Hmmm. So I’m a Luddite after all? A 21-year-old thinks I, and others like me, are dinosauring our way through life and career? If my daughter has 6,000 songs on her iPod, and I only have 1,200, do I belong in a lower professional caste? (Even if my songs are better than hers?)
Here’s the thing. Information breaks the speed limit all the time. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s like fishing in a stocked pond; you’ve got lots of fish, but you can catch just one at a time. Be selective in how you absorb and understand information. Follow your interests, develop new ones, and use the flow of information as a benchmark — not as a wide net into which you gather everything.
I may be a recovering Luddite, but I am not ready to be an information schizophrenic.