Owlspotting

A very good friend of mine wrote an awesome story for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. It’s a story of an orphaned rooster who made a home outside the city hall of small town Punta Gorda (of hurricane season 2004 fame).

Although some of her editors din not consider this “animal story” worthy enough for the front page, I was reminded today about why it is appealing and why the judgment of some editors that there are more important things to put on the front page is so often wrong.

I was reading from “A history of news,” where at one point Mitch Stephens discusses the sociological need for news, saying we are “hungry for awareness.” He talks about how people feel lost and isolated when deprived of news.

But it’s not the content of the news that makes them feel lost. “The importance of the news transcends the importance of the items upon which it focuses. More than specific information on specific events, the great gift a system of news bestows on us is the confidence that we will learn about any particularly important or interesting event.”

With all the news and platforms out there today, wouldn’t it be smarter for a local shop to satisfy the need for awareness (and entertain at the same time) than bask in self-congratulatory definitions of newsworthiness?

Let the rooster roost as prominently as possible.