The way news is shared has changed so much in the last twenty five years. I don’t know how many of you remember the old dial-up internet (AOL and such), but I’m sure a bunch of you do - with the sounds of connecting to the ‘world wide web’ a constant reminder of progress you will never forget.
Nobody could call you on the landline because the internet needed the same phone line, and if you were like me, your parents put a time limit on your internet use because they couldn’t use the phone at the same time you were on the ‘net’. In 1994 I got 60 minutes a month. And it was so agonizing to figure out how to use those 60 minutes and make them last. I knew if I went over my 60 minutes my parents would be so disappointed because it was insanely expensive to be online even one minute over the allotted time. And then I had extra chores to make up for it and I seriously don’t recommend that… Prior to the internet we relied on the printed newspaper to find out information about the world and our communities..
In the days of Society Pages we found out what our neighbors were up to and where they traveled. Who they visited and what everyone was up to. It was a way to keep in touch with people without keeping in touch with them. Sort of like facebook today.
On the front page we got breaking news we couldn’t get anywhere else - because there wasn’t any internet! Now you can google a topic and it shows up within seconds. It makes newspapers seem obsolete.
These days we have facebook, instagram, ticktok, and so much more with social media. In the ‘old days’ we received ‘breaking news’ even if it was days or weeks later, but at that time it was ‘on time’ because there wasn’t any other way to share information quickly. The internet changed that forever.
Today, news is available at your fingertips.
We can look up news in the US, England, South America, Africa, the whole world, etc. in real time, and not even miss a thing. I can spend days on the internet if I want to and it doesn’t cost me an extra penny. Yay for progress. More than twenty five years ago we didn’t have the luxury of having news at our fingertips - we had ‘Dogpile’ and ‘Ask Jeeves’, and Google was a baby.
Our news came from newspapers and whatever we could glean from conversations.
We downloaded songs on Napster until we figured out the FCC knew what we were up to (and we were terrified that what we did would send us to jail) so we quit that (mostly).
JLS Group doesn’t own a bunch of big-time papers (although sometimes it would be cool to be the Hearsts!). And that’s ok. We aren’t going to get rich from our efforts, and we don’t care at the end of the day because we want to make our communities proud.
We’re a small group of locals living real-time in our communities that only want to put out a quality product that makes the community proud to support us.
Because at the end of the day we are proud to support YOU.
We aren’t selling news you can get that anywhere - we are sharing humanity - because in a world of huge papers where else are you going to see pictures of your kids and your community but in your local paper. It’s not going to be showcased in the New York Times. But it will probably be shared in your local paper!
At the end of the day we are here for you. For all of us. We support all of you.
